UNCONSECRATED GROUND

by Mark Woolridge

‘It’s worked so far.’

  ‘Right; it’s worked for two days. There are never going to be any breakdowns. Nobody’s ever going to be poorly. Nothing can possibly go wrong.’

  ‘Whenever there’s an emergency, I’ll step in.’

  ‘And how long is it going to take you to get back from Leeds? An hour? Twice as long if the traffic’s bad? Nice try Geoff, but no cigar.’

  ‘If things go wrong I’ll do some fine-tuning. For now it’s the best I can come up with.’

  ‘Hmmm. Didn’t you consider getting a nanny?’

  ‘I did, but Mum went spare. She doesn’t want a total stranger looking after her grandkids. In fact nothing I suggest is good enough. It’s impossible to come up with a plan that pleases her. She worries about simply everything.’

  ‘She’s your mum, Geoff. It’s her job to worry.’

  ‘Yeah, I just wish she wasn’t so good at it.’

  The delay before Penny resumed was tiny. A suspicious mind might have thought her next words had been prepared earlier.

  ‘How about this? Until your arrangements come crashing round your ears, which they surely will, I’ll be your emergency back-up. I’ll give you my home number as well as this one. When you need somebody with a reliable car, ring me. Whatever the problem, I’ll sort it. I promise.’

  ‘You can’t promise me that. You’ve got your own life to live. And what about work?’

  ‘Fiddlesticks to work. I’ve promised now, and I never go back on my promises. So that’s that. You’d better tell me the moment you need help. If I find out you’ve had a problem and not told me, I’ll be very angry. And you won’t like me when I’m angry.’

  Geoff hesitated for just a second. He knew he shouldn’t, but her offer was too generous to refuse.

  Besides, he’d never have to take her up on it, so where was the harm?

  ‘I’d like you however angry you got,’ he said. ‘And Penny, thank you. I really appreciate it.’

  It was Penny’s turn to hesitate. ‘Just call me the moment you need help,’ she said finally. ‘And make sure you turn up for the next disco. I felt silly last time, dancing on my own.’

  Geoff rang off and glanced over the foothills, up at Everest. One step at a time, wasn’t that the way to do it?

  The conversation with Penny hadn’t been quite what he’d expected. Not that he’d really known what to expect. Rick had made a similar call early on the morning after the funeral, then vanished into some girl’s arms for three days. He certainly hadn’t been expecting that; if he had, he’d have tried to set up a date.

  Despite not having asked anyone for a date since he’d been sixteen.

  Or felt the inclination to ask.

  Geoff still hadn’t cried, not even when he was clearing out the last of Samantha’s things and getting rid of their bed. He recognized this as unhealthy. That closure he’d been hoping for was no nearer. The cremation hadn’t done the trick, neither had his return to the office. Although it was better to be out and doing, he was by no means cured. It was obviously going to take time.

  Time wasn’t in short supply, though; he had plenty ahead of him. Which was just as well, because there were kids to bring up and he was determined to do everything properly.

  Pubs and dates could wait until next millennium. They’d still be there when his duties were done.

  So would K1 if he didn’t crack on with it.

  Taking a purposeful breath, he set out.

  * * *

  Rick peeled the cling-film from his Mars bar and bit off half of it. The rain teemed down as relentlessly as ever. He crammed the rest of the chocolate into his mouth while it was still relatively dry and kept on chewing.

  Holiday in Ulster, he thought. You know it makes sense.

  It was still early June. Europe was roasting as the globe warmed . . . everywhere but here.

  He had been lying in thin cover for fourteen hours now, watching a deserted farmhouse while nothing happened. It was cold and the rain had been constant. If he’d been told his calendar was wrong and it was really November, he’d have believed it. Even the lushest bushes were halfway dead. The contrast between conditions here and Elaine’s bed couldn’t have been greater. But this was why he’d joined up. He was privileged to be on this team.

  There were four of them altogether. Phil and Scouse were currently getting some kip while he and Tommy watched. They were due to rotate in a couple of hours, and keep rotating until the action went down. Or until head-shed got bored and pulled them out.

  Rick desperately wanted the action. They hadn’t been told much at the briefing but he’d heard enough. Intelligence (meaning a covert infiltration team) had established there were arms buried under the flagged floor of the farmhouse. There was reason to believe a collection was imminent. Three PIRA men were expected to do the collecting. At the brief the PIRA men were simply identified as Player One, Player Two and Player Three. The photographs meant nothing to Rick but Tommy had recognized them. ‘Killers,’ he’d said afterwards, when the spooks were gone. ‘Soldiers, RUC and civilians; those bastards have done the lot.’ That would do for Rick. He couldn’t wait.

  Then again, he was prepared to wait as long as it took.

  Bring it on.

  Chapter Eight

  Pat McGuire had heard so much about the anonymous telephone call he could have taken it himself. He hadn’t, of course; it had arrived on the unlisted landline at Southfork, by a miracle catching Sean home alone.

  The message had been short and not at all sweet.

  Pongo wasn’t in Dwyer’s gang anymore. Dwyer should tell his kiddies that Shipley was too dangerous to play in; they might end up badly hurt.

  And by the way, the next kiddie who conned a working girl was getting castrated.

  Pat had given up smoking but was into today’s second pack already. Smoking kept his hands busy during times of stress.

  Like now.

  Castrated, for Christ’s sake!

  He’d never seen Sean as mad as this, not in all the years since primary school. Not as mad and certainly not as impotent. When Sean quit drug-dealing he’d as good as disarmed. And he hadn’t had dozens of hard men to start with. Now, not only could he not take on the likes of Harry Williamson, he daren’t even try.

  And no doubt about it, that message had come on behalf of Harry Williamson. It had been coming for almost a week, from the day Pongo went missing. Getting it only confirmed what they’d as good as known.

  Pat lit up and had a moody swig of lager. He hated punishment beatings and kept out of them as much as he could. But not tonight. Tinner and Moggs wouldn’t be able to control Sean if he really lost it. Tonight Good Ol’ Pat had to come along.

  If Sean lost it? Make that when he lost it.

  As for times of stress . . . right now Good Ol’ Pat could do without them. This was worse than waiting to see the dentist. Not that he had one anymore.

  He sighed. It was yet another fine evening but, although the beer garden by the canal was full, he was the only one outside the front of The Fisherman’s. Tinner and Moggs were inside, downing pints and chatting while they kept an eye on Maurice Evans, who was ploughing money into the bandit. Maurice always went home for ten. Tonight Tinner and Moggs were going to make sure no-one else left at the same time, using force if necessary. Pat was going to follow Maurice as he strolled across the road to the car park, cutting off his retreat. Sean would then get out of his motor, do whatever the hell he intended to do . . .

  And that would be it, a piece of cake.

  Except this was no ordinary piece of cake. Sean had sayings for all occasions (Revenge is a dish best served cold being used more often than not) but this was ridiculous. This wasn’t about revenge; this was about working off a vicious temper on some poor bastard who hadn’t got any important friends.

  The vicious temper was Pat’s main worry. Sean had always had a temper but it hadn’t always been vicious. He’d changed when he was fourteen and his dad died. Before then he
’d been relatively easy-going.

  Pat laughed shortly. Sean had been bitter about his dad’s heart attack, telling everyone he was now part of a dysfunctional family, backing that up by hanging out with lads from the most dysfunctional families he could find. He’d also bad-mouthed the late Al Dwyer, calling him “absentee”, blaming him for anything that ever went wrong.

  ‘Left us with nowt,’ he’d said. ‘Not even free school meals. What a twat.’

  That had annoyed Pat. Sean’s dad had been a good bloke who took them to the football whenever he could. Sean’s bad-mouthing wasn’t fair. More to the point, it wasn’t remotely true.

  The viciousness had arrived with Sean’s new obsession for money. At school he started running card games, somehow managing to make his the game to be at. While other games happened from time to time, Sean’s game was always on. It was always three- or four-card brag (never pontoon or poker), always high stakes and there was always a queue to join.

  And Sean always won.

  Well, nearly always.

  One day, perhaps six months after his dad died, some hard-case fifth formers muscled in. Pat had been off playing rugby, so he hadn’t been able to save his mate from being suckered on one killer hand . . . and severely suckered at that. As well as cleaning Sean out of all his readies, the fifth formers left with an IOU for seventy quid. Being considerate, listening hard-cases, they’d said they’d give him a week to pay before breaking an arm and adding on thirty quid interest. Just like the Midland Bank.

  Seventy quid had been a lot of money for a schoolboy back then. Owing it had brought out the bad and a sort of good in Sean. He’d inherited the mean streak from the fifth formers, later taking it to new extremes, but had also created the nick-to-order business that still flourished to this day. Once, in drink, he’d confessed he’d known seventy quid would take a lot of thieving and hadn’t a clue where to begin. He’d hit on nick-to-order while trying to decide what best to thieve.

  Anyway, it had worked like a dream, far too sweetly to be simply used and then dumped. Sean had paid off his IOU and, not liking actual theft, employed fellow fourth formers to do the dirty work from then-on. Virtually overnight the racket became a roaring success. Others ran the risks while Sean took the orders and reaped the rewards. He’d been in clover ever after. With money to burn he’d cheerfully burnt it on beer, soft drugs and impressing the girls, frittering most of the rest away. Okay, maybe not frittering, but he’d made sure he always seen to have the latest and best of everything. The kit in his bedroom would have fuelled any gadget freak’s wet dreams.

  Not that a gadget freak would have ever got in there. That bedroom had strict entry conditions. A couple of life-long friends were allowed in, otherwise you had to have tits and a pussy . . . and preferably no morals at all.

  Nearly everyone must have used nick-to-order by the time Sean finished the Fifth Form. From genial cardsharp he’d become the school’s Mr Big, and nasty with it . . . sometimes very nasty. He even recruited a team of enforcers when Pat flatly refused to have anything to do with such a blatantly criminal enterprise. There were four of them, all violent bastards. With backing like that nobody crossed him. If an order was placed there was no cooling off period. When someone was sent away to steal there was no bottling out. On the rare occasions when someone got caught, they kept mum.

  Or at least they did until the very last week of the very last term.

  Like most of Sean’s hired help, Maurice was from a reasonably well-to-do, four-point-two family with an otherwise squeaky-clean record. Very carelessly for so experienced a shoplifter, he got collared in Halfords, trying to lift a dynamo for a push-bike. For some reason he stood up to the police but cracked back at school, when thrown to the Gestapo. Christ knew why he could see off the Pigs but not the year masters. Maybe it was the black uniforms and piano wire. Anyway, they broke him and he coughed what little he knew.

  At the time Sean hadn’t been bothered. He’d finished his exams and left for good before the Nazi swine could snatch him. And, despite Maurice’s abject surrender, the police were never recalled. Sean got a two-liner from the headmaster, advising him not to waste ink applying for the Sixth Form, and that had been that. In hindsight Pat supposed the head, realizing the scale of nick-to-order, had decided a hush-up was better than a tarnished reputation.

  That had been then, though. Today Sean’s position had shifted. Today, ten years on, hurt by Pongo’s murder and unable to retaliate, Maurice was suddenly up there with Saddam.

  * * *

  ‘We're true sisters now. Meg and Jo!'

  Heather couldn't quite match Mare's breathless enthusiasm. It was well after Lights-out and the threat of dungeons beckoned.

  ‘I love you,' she said awkwardly. 'But for Goodness' sake . . .'

  ‘That was brilliant,' Mary Rose continued, rolling straight over her friend’s weak protest. 'I won't sleep a wink tonight. I do hope there's some life left in Mad’s batteries.'

  ‘Mare . . .'

  ‘Honestly Hev, I wasn't expecting anything like that. Talk about best-ever!'

  ‘Mare . . .'

  Heather broke off and smiled. She hadn’t been expecting anything like that either. ‘It was my best-ever afternoon,’ she confessed. ‘Was it really yours too?’

  ‘How can you ask? Of course it was. Just remember to keep mum about my most secret place. We’ll be needing it again.’

  Heather’s smile became a wide grin. They’d found themselves an oak tree but, as predicted, the camouflage had been woefully inadequate. After five minutes of stop/starting, flinching at the sound of passing voices, Mare had grabbed her hand and led her back towards school. ‘Come on,’ she’d said, ‘this calls for somewhere more secluded.’

  Shaking with excitement, Heather had followed her friend through a labyrinth of passageways and up a twisting staircase she hadn’t previously noticed. “Somewhere more secluded” turned out to be an attic over the gym. Like the staircase, it was prehistoric and forgotten. Old vaulting horses lined one wall, half-buried under heaps of chipped and splintered hockey sticks. Most of the rest of the floor space was taken up by boxes stuffed with discarded sports equipment. Heather had seen worn-out medicine balls in one box, grass-stained keepers’ pads in another.

  She’d abandoned her inspection when she realized Mary Rose was waving something at her. It was a big, ancient-looking key. The good news was that it had just locked the door from the inside. Heather almost swooned as the redhead quickly stripped off and threw herself onto a pile of faded and torn crash mats.

  ‘Now we’re safe from interruptions,’ Mare had said softly, very seductively. ‘So why don’t you tell me exactly what naughtiness you have in mind?’

  * * *

  Pat stubbed out the latest cigarette and raised his glass. There was a wasp in his lager. It looked to be doing the backstroke. He was already almost finished. By the time he’d tipped the wasp out there wasn’t any lager left.

  Sod it. He lit another cig and went back to his thoughts.

  Sean had dabbled in all sorts since leaving school. He wasn’t Mr Big in the wider world yet, but he was definitely climbing the ladder, diversifying from nick-to-order by recycling his profits in many weird and wonderful ways. Loansharking had been particularly good for him. Nobody knew exactly how much he had out there, but the returns could be astonishing. The things people gave up to avoid a beating! Watches, jewellery, gold Krugerrands, you name it. He’d once got a twenty grand motor in settlement of a loan that set off as seven hundred quid.

  Houses and land too. He had an incredible talent for sniffing out desperate borrowers with assets. He’d draw them in, letting them borrow more and more until they couldn’t possibly ever pay him back.

  It was despicable, really. From being Mr Nice Guy he’d turn completely when instalments were missed. Exorbitant charges would be added onto the smallest debt. He’d order varying degrees of violence and issue the most terrible threats. And all the while he’d be calc
ulating how best to use those assets. Did he want them for himself?

  Sometimes he did: the land he’d used for Southfork had been (quite legally) sold to him for one pound.

  Sometimes he didn’t: he’d co-ordinated dozens of fire sales, tipping off commission-paying speculators about a debtor suddenly anxious for cash.

  Yes, he could be a proper bastard, could Sean.

  Not that everything went his way. He’d tried dealing, buying in bulk and selling on to smaller, independent dealers. That had gone okay for a while, until Huyton showed up, wanting to take over.

  Although Pat laughed to himself there was nothing funny about the man in question. Judging from his accent, Huyton came from Liverpool. Judging by his looks, he was mixed Chinese and West Indian, with a generous dash of who-knows-what-else thrown in for luck. Come to think of it, there wasn’t a conceivable minority that could fail to include him; majorities too, probably. One way or another, Huyton had something in common with everyone.

  He was also ambitious beyond all reason.

  Arriving unannounced, Huyton began by trying to take over a couple of nearby operations, obviously not knowing Keighley was twinned with Dodge City. After receiving short shrift there, he’d moved on to the more genteel Bingley.

  Well, the supposedly more genteel Bingley.

  The first Sean had known about him was when, on a strictly non-business night out, he’d been grabbed by the throat in The Queens’ toilets. Huyton had black dreadlocks and must have looked like a fearsome warrior as he waved a cut-throat razor in the smaller man’s face. What he had to say was simple.

  Hand over your business. Or die.

  Sean never personally touched the merchandise, so all Huyton got there and then was his wallet with a hundred quid inside. Losing it riled him more for the principle than anything else. But the principle was bad enough. By the time the fearsome warrior left (giving assurances he’d be back) and Good Ol’ Pat arrived (wondering what the hell was keeping his mate) Sean was in a murderous fury. He’d quickly tooled up and the two of them went hunting, finally catching their man on the other side of Main Street, looking for someone else to terrorize, likely as not.