Top Hard

by Stephen Booth

  "That's terrible," said Nuala, moving away from the car again, ears flapping. "Somebody ought to do something. There should be a community action group."

  They looked at her, then back at me. I was starting to get the impression they felt sorry for me.

  "You know I can make it worth your while."

  "What's this, charity?" snapped Colin.

  "No. Payment. Information is valuable."

  "Well..."

  "Well?"

  "There might have been some bugger," admitted Jeff.

  "Who?"

  "Don't know his name. Our Ryan said this bloke come up to him and some of his mates outside the Welfare. They'd never seen him before. He was selling."

  "Drugs?"

  "Well, he weren't the Avon lady," said Jeff.

  "What did he look like?"

  "You'd have to ask Ryan. He's down at the rec, playing football."

  "Okay. Anybody else?"

  "There was that car hanging about," said Colin.

  "Yeah? Whereabouts?"

  "Couple of places I've seen it. Same car. Waiting, like."

  "What make of car?"

  "Dunno. Blue-coloured thing. German. Not the usual sort of motor that visits round here. You'd think it might be the doctor on a call or something. But it wasn't, not this one."

  "Oh yeah, and somebody from the Gazette was round asking questions," said Jeff.

  The local press? Blimey, it must have been something earth shattering like a golden wedding to bring them out onto the Forest Estate.

  "What were they after?"

  "Background."

  "Eh?"

  "That's what they called it. Two of them, there were. One with a camera. Doing an article on drugs."

  "What did you tell them?"

  "Nowt. We don't talk to the Gazette."

  I bit my lip impatiently, but said nothing. I knew it would be a waste of time. Not good old Nuala, though. She walked straight into it.

  "Why not?" she said. "Have they done something to upset you?"

  Jeff and Colin turned to look at her as if she was an invader from the planet Mars, or maybe even some soft southerner who didn't know any better. For a moment, it seemed as though they were just going to ignore her question. She was still only a woman. But a faint stirring of defensiveness won the day.

  "We don't talk to the Gazette since the strike," said Jeff. "Nobody does."

  Nuala had every right to look gobsmacked at this. The miners' strike was in 1984. To her, it was ancient history. It might as well have happened just after the Battle of Hastings and the Spanish Armada. It was something you read about in books that have grainy black and white photographs of men with donkey jackets and long sideburns standing round braziers, facing columns of helmeted police. Maybe, at a pinch, you might accidentally catch a snippet of TV archive footage showing Arthur Scargill in full rant, his words meaning no more to anybody now than King Harold's address to his troops before Hastings - and I'm not forgetting the fact that Harold would have been speaking in Anglo Saxon.

  But these men were ex-miners who'd lived through the strike, and they had long memories. Come to think of it, they still had the donkey jackets and the sideburns too.

  Although geographically in Nottinghamshire, some of the local pits had been part of British Coal's South Yorkshire area. In the Yorkshire coalfields they were NUM men, the National Union of Mineworkers, some of Scargill's brave, ageing lads. The breakaway union, the UDM, had recruited its members from the Nottinghamshire coalfield, whose pits that stood no more than a mile or two away. It was no wonder this had been the scene of so many bitter confrontations.

  But Nuala wasn't to know that. She'd missed the mass pickets and the intimidation, the armies of police, the strike-breakers and the communities ripped apart by violent feuding. She wasn't to know that these men had taken a decision not to talk to their local paper following a front page editorial during the strike urging them to go back to work. As far as they were concerned, the paper had taken sides, and it had been the wrong side - the side of Maggie Thatcher and the bosses. The decision not to speak to the Gazette had probably been taken during a heated meeting of an NUM branch that was now long since defunct.

  Their pit itself had closed years ago. The newspaper had been taken over by a big national group, and the owners and editors had all moved on since 1984. But Jeff and Colin were still sticking to the decision not to speak to the Gazette. They would stick to it until they died. They were NUM men.

  "It seems a bit short-sighted to me," said Nuala.

  For God's sake, didn't she get the vibes? I thought women were supposed to be sensitive to people's feelings? These blokes were suddenly giving off hostility like a barbed wire fence. And if their thoughts weren't enough, they were giving it some body language too - shoulders hunched forward, heads lowered like bulls about to charge, eyes staring unblinking at this irritating thing in their midst. Their sideburns bristled like the spines of hedgehogs about to perforate an inquisitive cat.

  "Well, I mean - they could help you, couldn't they? If you asked them, they might give you some support here. A bit of publicity for your problems."

  God knows what might have happened if the Fiesta XR2 hadn't screamed round the corner on two wheels just at that moment. I don't suppose Jeff or Colin would actually have hit a woman. They might have taken the preferable course and hit me instead. Once the first fist went in, that would have been it - they would all have been on me. One in, all in. That's solidarity.

  But as it was, they turned as a man, their jeans stretching over their spreading hips and their false teeth twitching angrily as they eyeballed the Fiesta and its occupants. The car bounced off one kerb and was in the air for a few seconds as it hit the speed ramp before disappearing round the next corner.

  "Bloody joy riders!" said Colin.

  "Who is it? We'll have the buggers."

  "Them two pillocks from the Villas again."

  "They'll kill somebody one day."

  "It's their mam and dad's fault, I reckon. They've got no more sense than to let the silly sods do it."

  "Let's go round there and sort 'em out."

  "Aye, Jeff, you're right. Time somebody did that."

  "Bloody police are useless, any road."

  "Police? They'll be sitting on their arses at Ollerton."

  "Come on, then."

  And off they went, chuntering among themselves, suddenly converted from aggressive left-wing trade union radicals to equally aggressive reactionary property-owning citizens. The moment saved us - or me, at least. But it hadn't got us any further.

  Before we got to the car, I stopped dead on the pavement and turned to speak to Nuala.

  "Nuala - clear off. Go. Quick."

  "Don't talk to me like that. I was only trying to help."

  "Sod that. Will you just get away? Move!"

  I gave her a shove that sent her tottering off down the street. She threw her arms in the air angrily and flounced off, muttering abuse. As she went, she got a couple of appreciative leers from the windows of the big car that had been cruising quietly up behind us. I must have been thinking too hard, or I would have noticed it before. Anyway, I stood quite still as it came alongside me, letting Nuala get clear.

  A rear door came open as the Jaguar pulled into the kerb in front of a parked-up Transit van with a smashed wing. There were three lads in the car. The one in the back was Sledgehammer Stan, as ugly as ever. The other two looked like ageing rejects from the Hell's Angels, but without the bikes or the hair styles. I recognised the stubble on one of them. He'd left his shades off today - probably so that he could give me the evil eye better.

  "McClure. Eddie wants to talk to you."

  "Fine, fine. I'll give him a ring some time, when I'm not so busy."

  I kept walking, at a brisk pace. I was gambling that Stan and his mates wouldn't resort to extreme violence here in the street in broad daylight, but it wasn't a certainty. Since there were three of them and only one o
f me, and one of them was Sledgehammer Stan, I'd already decided to co-operate for once, if they insisted. I know, I know - it's not like me, but it was one of those days. I just couldn't be bothered taking them on.

  The car had to pull out to go round a roadside skip and an old Ford Cortina that hadn't moved for years. It wasn't likely to, either, with those bricks under the wheels. Then the Jag got back to the kerb and the door opened again.

  "McClure. Get in."

  "Nice of you to offer me a lift. But I've got an urgent appointment up the Cow's Arse."

  "Eddie wants to talk to you now," said Stan.

  No sense of humour, Stan. I reckon he's been watching too many films, the sort where the heavies only have one line. I knew better than to try engaging Sledgehammer or his mates in conversation. You can't communicate with pondlife.

  Stan and one of the lads started to get out of the Jag. I resigned myself to a ride. Then they stopped and went suddenly into reverse. It was like one of those old silent films when they run the frames backwards for comic effect. Had they decided I was too hard for them after all? Had my wit put them off?

  As the Jaguar pulled away and accelerated down the street, another motor came cruising the other way. This one was less flashy, a red Mondeo with mud splattered on its door panels and a pair of glasses glinting behind the windscreen. I kept walking. DI Frank Moxon may be slightly preferable to Sledgehammer Stan, but it doesn't mean I have to say thank you.

  12

  Then I remembered I'd promised to visit Uncle Willis. Rolling Meadows seemed as safe a place as any to be just now.

  As I passed St Asaph's, I could see a local builder, Gary Lockman, and a youth I didn't know up a couple of ladders on the vestry roof. A second youth was helping Gary's mate pass up some roof tiles. It looked like the Rev was getting his hole fixed.

  Gary spotted me as soon as I arrived, and his eyes lit up. The lads were doing it for nowt, of course, but Gary had to be paid - he has a legit business to run and a tax man to satisfy, poor sod.

  "It's not my normal sort of job this, you know, Stones. I'm a craftsman builder, not a chuffin' social worker."

  "Yeah, yeah."

  "I mean, I've got to watch these kids all the time. They might nick me tools or something."

  "Just let me have the bill, Gary, okay?"

  "All right, all right. I'm only saying."

  It does that to you, being legit. It makes you treat everybody else as though they're suspicious persons. I know this because I was legit myself once.

  "Ah, the roof repair men," said the Rev's voice. "Thank you so much. It's wonderful, what you're doing here. God bless you all."

  The Rev favoured Gary and the two sullen kids with his best smile. "Let me know when it's time for your break, gentlemen, and I'll brew up. Or mash the tea, as I'm told I should say in these parts."

  The lads looked baffled. Naturally, they expected this poncy vicar bloke to be really pissed off with them for nicking his roof. And here he was thanking them and offering to brew up. But they didn't know the half of it. The Rev is on a totally different planet, permanently. I mean he's a brick short of a privy; a pickle short of a jar. This is the bloke who once found four glue sniffers in the churchyard just getting their snouts into the plastic bags behind one of those big eighteenth century tombs, where they'd pulled some stones down to crash out on. And what did he do? He only invited them into the vestry for a chat and a Bible reading. So they went in, laughing, taking the mickey, thinking they might do the old bloke over for the collection money. Six months later, two of them are still in the church choir and their spots have healed up.

  I wanted to sneak away before the Rev started asking me about nuptials again. I sometimes think he has a one-track mind - he's always on about people making commitments. As if we could all commit ourselves to something, like he has. Just how long will he have to live in Medensworth before he discovers that you can't go looking for the good in everybody when there's none to be found? Commitment isn't in our shopping trolleys. They haven't sold it at Cost Cutters for years.

  When I turned away from the Rev I almost bumped into a big, red-faced man with a grey moustache and no more than a few wisps of hair on his head. He was dressed in an old boiler suit, trouser legs tucked into a pair of boots as if he was ready for work. He was carrying an electric strimmer and a suspicious expression. Right now he was looking at the ladders propped against the wall of the vestry.

  Welsh Border. How could my timing have been so bad?

  "What's going on here, then?"

  When he says that, he sounds so much like a copper it makes me want to reach for the roll of cash I keep in my back pocket for emergencies. I mean emergencies like a quick bung to keep me out of the nick. But it wouldn't work with Councillor Border anyway. Pillar of the community, he is. Straight as a die. He's making up for a lifetime working as a company accountant, you see. If you want a professional crook, try those guys. There's more money goes missing in the small print of company accounts every year than in a thousand Great Train Robberies. They call it modern business practice. I call it authorised robbery. Anyway, Councillor Border is desperately trying to balance his own personal profit and loss accounts before that Great Auditor in the Sky finally gets a look at his books. All right, you might say - let him get on with it. But the trouble is, he can't bear to let the rest of us get on with a bit of creative accounting of our own. Me, I'm happy to let the bottom line take care of itself. I don't need Welsh Border trying to keep me on the straight and narrow. And he's so suspicious. Unhealthy, that is.

  "Where have those roof tiles come from? Who's paying for them?"

  The last question pained the Rev. He prefers not to think about who's paying for things like this.

  "Don't worry about it, Rev," I said quickly.

  "Do you know who these people are, Mr Bowring?"

  "Well, I'm sure - "

  Whatever the Rev was sure of, it wasn't enough for Welsh. He recognised Gary, who was a perfectly reputable tradesman. But he was frowning at the two lads, and I could see him mentally slotting them into a category. No matter how right he might be in this case, I don't like to see that. It makes me go into righteous mode, and that's not a pretty sight. It can take me days to recover, and it feels like going I'm going through cold turkey. No wonder I try to avoid Welsh Border.

  "And what's McClure got to do with it? If he's involved, there's something crooked going on. Mark my words, vicar."

  "Oh no, that's a terrible thing to say."

  The Rev was defending me like a martyr, bless him. He might be naive and ready to believe the best in people, but on the other hand Welsh is too clever for his own good. I know which I prefer. And it wasn't a very nice thing to say, was it? As a Christian, Welsh had definitely got on the wrong bus. I hate to admit that I worked for him at one time, in a way.

  Me and the councillor eyeballed each other for a bit. This was the Rev's territory, and I didn't want to antagonise Welsh any more than necessary. It might become necessary at any moment, though.

  "Livingstone and his friends have kindly volunteered to repair the damage to the vestry roof," pointed out the Rev in a hurt voice. There was a general shuffling of feet and dropping of jaws behind me as four pairs of ears picked up the word 'volunteered'. Not now, Gary, I thought - don't go on about your invoice right now.

  "Very noble, I'm sure."

  "The Lord provides a roof over our heads," said the Rev mysteriously. The Lord? I was impressed that he'd granted me a title, but I didn't really want it. Me and the nobility don't mix.

  Welsh Border glowered at me again. It must be his party piece, he does it so often.

  "Would you like to help us, Councillor Border?" I offered. "I'm sure we could find you some bricks that need chewing." There - you can't say I don't try to make peace.

  The Rev hovered uncertainly, aware that the conversation was rising a bit above his level. Then he invited Welsh down to the bottom of the churchyard to look at some rhododendr
ons that might need tidying up. He gave the impression that only Councillor Border's opinion could decide their fate. It was like the intervention of the United Nations. With one last glower, Welsh went.

  Next thing the mobile rang again, and it was Lisa.

  "Oh, hi."

  "Hello, Stones."

  "How are you?"

  "I'm okay. You?"

  "Yeah, great. How's the course, then?"

  "Fascinating. We've been doing Footfall Optimisation today."

  "Brilliant."

  I hadn't a clue what she was talking about. But she went on a bit before she wound down. Then, in the silence, I remembered it was me that had been trying to get hold of her. Now what was it I wanted to say to her?

  "Is everything all right, Stones?"

  Oh yeah, that was just it. Everything wasn't all right.

  "Yeah, fine. Just fine. I was just, er, wondering when you were coming back."

  "I told you. Tomorrow. Can you pick me up at the station? If you're busy, it doesn't matter. I'll understand."

  "Sure. What time?"

  "If I get away promptly, I should get the five-fifteen train. I'll be in Mansfield about six o'clock."

  "Is there any reason why you shouldn't get away on time?"

  "Not really. It's just that, you know, if we get involved in a discussion..."

  I didn't like the sound of that 'we'. There are 'we's and 'we's, and this sounded like the other one. It didn't conjure up a picture of a load of old biddies from evening classes to me.

  "Has there been anybody interesting on the course with you?"

  "Oh, a few people I've managed to talk to. In the bar at night, you know."

  "Yeah, I can imagine."

  "Actually," she said, "there is one that you've met."

  "Really?" Definitely not an old biddy. I could tell by the tone of her voice. In any case, I don't know any old biddies. The only evening class I ever went to was an educational visit to Lazy Maisie's brothel when I was fifteen.

  "Yes, I'm sure you remember." Lisa laughed, but the laugh didn't sound quite right. "You introduced yourself to him just the other day. At Hardwick."