“But only on two conditions.”
“Name them.”
“You’re not coming unless you’re in dark clothing, black preferably.”
Moe gave a thumbs-up. “I’ve got just the thing.” He vanished for a brief interval, reappearing in his long black lycra cycle-pants, complemented by a navy blue anorak – collar up – and black woolly hat.
“Don’t let Marie catch you in those pants. She’d have them off you before you could say ‘Tour de France’.”
“She’d have to buy my bike first,” Moe shot back. “You said two conditions. What’s the second?”
“Stay behind me. Hang on to my belt if you have trouble keeping up. But mind my radio – I might need it.” Moe had a brief glimpse of an expensive multi-channel set holstered at his companion’s left hip.
“Should I bring my pump in lieu of a truncheon?” Moe enquired.
He was rewarded with an old-fashioned look from the younger man.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’. Now what?”
The light snapped off.
“We wait. Quietly”
It seemed like an eternity to Moe, huddled there in the dark with only the heavy breathing of Marie’s brother to keep him company. But just when he was getting cramp in underused parts of his anatomy, Moe heard a faint crackle from the holstered handset.
“That’s the signal. The main target is on the move. Now remember, stay with me or my guv’nor will have my guts for garters.” With a warning squeeze of Moe’s arm, Harry Mee edged open the door and ducked into a crouch, pulling Moe down with him. Deciding that discretion was indeed the better part of valour, the older man grabbed his companion’s belt as instructed and hung on … just in time.
“NOW!” With a hoarse whisper, Harry Mee slipped out through the opening and ducked away to his left, towards some handy bushes. Moe hung on like grim death. He wasn’t proud. It didn’t take him long to adjust his eyes to the night and when he did, he saw that they were the “Tail-End Charlies” in a black-garbed snake of a dozen or so crouching figures winding its way towards the cover of trees on the camp side of the coast path that led down to the shore. No one with better things to do would want to be out tonight. Hadn’t they been Swift’s words? Life was a funny old game.
Moe’s breathing had deteriorated into a range of rasping gasps, caused in part by his enforced posture, but, more, he was obliged to admit to himself, to a lack of mountain bike fitness. By now, he had both hands on the belt in front and no intention of letting go, much as he wanted to. How Harry Mee managed to run for the two of them, Moe could barely comprehend. He understood then that his original assessment of the younger man had been spot on. Not to be messed with.
But blessed relief was at hand. They had arrived on the cliffs and he saw the others ahead fan out and disappear into the void.
“You can let go now, Arthur … please.” Moe was pulled down beneath a scrub bush that gave them both cover and afforded an almost surreal aspect of the holiday park, latticed across its width by the elongated shadows of the coastal road lamps. Harry Mee lifted a hand.
“Here we go. Look there!”
Moe strained to see what he was pointing at. Then he saw the car. His first reaction was derision. Bloody copycat. Doing exactly as Moe did, the car was free-wheeling, silent and unlit, into the holiday park from the direction of the road. Unlike Moe, this car avoided the parking bays and instead, came to a stop almost exactly opposite the coast path.
Moments later, two occupants got out and, despite the conditions, scanned their surroundings for some seconds before retreating back inside. Scarcely had they done so when two other figures emerged from between unlit caravans and made their way towards the parked car.
Moe started. Even at that distance, with the wind-driven rain in his eyes to contend with, he suffered a gut thump of premonition. A hand on his shoulder told Moe that his reaction had been noted.
The occupants of the car emerged to meet their visitors and the four of them appeared to be paying a lot of attention to the cliffs where Moe and the rest lay in wait. Then, without any warning, the group of four began making its way quickly across the coast path and out on to the cliff top. Harry Mee was muttering into his radio by now, watching the oncoming four newcomers. Moe could see that if the group kept to their present course they would pass perilously close to their own windblown bit of scrub.
Moe tried to bury himself, pulling his woolly hat down over face and neck. An age later, he got a quick a tap on his shoulder. All clear. Looking up, Moe could see the group some way on past their position, disappearing from view now – heading down, it seemed, to the nearest cove. And now there was something else. The faint throb of a boat’s engine, barely audible over the gusting wind and the boom of the sea beyond. And then it was gone and just the noise of nature remained.
Moe’s arm was grabbed and once more, he was being led at a crouch, this time towards the cliff edge. A few feet short of the rim, right above the sea, they flung themselves down, to crawl crab-like until they could peer down at the scene below.
Shadowy shapes stood staring out to sea. Not far from the rocks, a small boat was being propelled by silent oars for the final few yards to where the reception committee were waiting. And as the two men above watched, a number of packages, each the size of a small suitcase, were thrown ashore into eager arms. Then, as smoothly as it had come, the boat backed away and was soon heading out to sea under powerful pulling. Only when it was some way off, did the sound of a motor sparking into life reach the officers’ ears. Then it was gone.
Meanwhile, in the cove, the packages were being distributed between each individual in the gang. That done, they turned and started back up. The watching officers made their getaway, back to their scrub bush, with Harry Mee muttering urgently into his radio as they went.
Once more, the group passed near where the two men lay but on this occasion their attention was focussed on the packages they carried. Patsy Bottoms was having trouble with hers, even though she had only the one to hold. Moe actually heard her complain to Benny Fitts. A rude voice told her to “shut it”. She did. Moe didn’t blame her for not arguing with the shaven-headed hulk. But if Moe thought that was to be the biggest of the night’s surprises, the fickle finger of fate had another waiting.
The remaining member of the quartet was slouching along some yards adrift of the rest when he tripped and sprawled headlong, his load flying forward to hit the ground. The colourful, not to say obscene invective that followed this occurrence incurred instant recognition.
“Carter!”
Such was Moe’s astonishment that he said the name out loud. Despite his predicament and the dismal conditions, something must have carried to the grotesque gravedigger as he scrabbled around in the dark for his mislaid load. His head cocked, Carter paused and listened. The others had stopped and were waving at him impatiently.
With a final furtive glance around, Carter continued his Quasimodo style progress in their direction, catching up just as they reached the car.
The hulk with the charming line in conversation soon had the lid of the boot up and all of the packages were soon stowed away. Closing the boot, he quickly extracted two banknote size bundles from his overcoat pockets and handed them over to Patsy and Benny. Then, with a nod at Carter, he unlocked the battered Capri. Moe was uncharitably inclined to believe that if the car had reached that spot without the help of engine and lights, it was probably because they had packed up.
But he was wrong. The engine rumbled into life and the Capri took off, leaving the other two to scurry away towards the lines of unlit caravans where they disappeared from view.
“Drugs?” Moe muttered at his companion. The younger man jerked his head in assent. Moe was nonplussed. They were getting away. He looked back at the younger man for guidance. He, in turn, was listening to his radio. Thrusting it back in its holster, Harry Mee pulled Moe with him. “It’s OK, we’re on to them. C’mon.”
With th
at, he was off on his toes, with Moe close up in his wake.
The shapes of other officers rose up like ghosts to join them. DI Tighe was easy to pick out. He had TIGHE in immodest letters on his officer-issue overalls. And he was imperiously pointing some of the others in the direction taken by Patsy and Benny. His men needed no second telling and legged it away like hounds let off the leash.
Headlamps lanced the night as two nondescript vans roared into the holiday park and screeched to a halt by the coast path. Tighe was leading from the front, jumping in the first van and beckoning to the remaining officers, including Moe and Harry Mee, to follow him.
“Let’s go get ’em!” he called theatrically. Seeing Moe, he did a double-take. Harry Mee got in first. “He’s with me, sir.” Tighe stared hard at Moe. “OK. You too,” he said with some reluctance.
Moe exulted. This was more like it. He hadn’t done this for years. Throwing himself in, he hung on tight as the Transit powered back up to the main road, leaving the other van to collect Patsy and Benny, Moe assumed.
Tighe was shouting into a radio mike from his position, riding shotgun up front.
“Alpha Two from Alpha One, where are you?”
The loudspeaker above the shelf to his front crackled back.
“Alpha One from Alpha Two, we’re on the coast road heading into Baytown. The target has taken the designated route, over.”
“Two from One, received. We’re on our way. Keep us posted – and DON’T let then suss you – out!”
Tighe dropped the radio mike on to the shelf and turned to the men behind.
“This time we should get what we came for. More besides, maybe.”
He leaned towards Harry Mee. “I trust you have a good story for him.” His finger jabbed accusingly in Moe’s direction.
“Glad to be aboard, sir. Always did prefer a “HANDS” on style of policing, if you know what I mean.” Moe couldn’t resist the wind-up. The DI gave him a sharp look and retired hurt, scooping up the radio mike and barking into it.
“Alpha Two, are you there? Where’s that com- mentary?”
“Alpha One from Two, the target has just turned into Cemetery Road and is heading for the main gates. Stand by.”
“Nearer My God To Thee,” Moe observed, loud enough for all to hear. Appreciative chuckles died as Tighe shouted irritably at the driver. “Can’t we go any faster?”
“The speedo’s doing sixty, sir!”
“Then it’s going a damn sight faster than we are. Hurry it up!” He swung back in his seat and shouted behind. “Get ready, you lot.”
Moe was to say later that at no time in the here and now had he felt so near to entering the hereafter. The view outside the rain-sluiced windscreen was like some Keystone Cops chase on fast-forward, whilst inside, all was queasily comparable to incarceration in an overcrowded, crazily canting metal coffin.
They entered Baytown cemetery on two wheels, a dented wing, and a prayer from Moe who, up to then, had thought that the lads in the Met topped the league for “crazy”.
“Shit!” said the driver.
The next few seconds were a blur. Moe’s little world spun out of focus as the Transit pirouetted effortlessly on greasy grass towards an awkwardly open grave. But its route was littered with fallen headstones, which whilst doing nothing for its suspension, acted like large ‘stingers’ on the tyres of the wayward van. With loud bangs and snorts of escaping air, both inside and out, the Transit slid out of its spin and came to a rest, teetering over the edge of the vacant pit.
Tighe made downward motions with both hands, exhorting everyone to take life easy. NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS; THANK YOU. Ever so carefully, the man nearest the back opened the rear door and waited obediently for Tighe’s say-so. But the DI and the driver were looking to save themselves and had already made their exits.
“Go!” Moe was surprised to hear the voice, especially as it was his own. But it did the trick. Safe evacuation had hardly been completed when there was a riotous rush of wildly glaring headlights and two other vehicles roared out of the gloom like hellish hallucinations. And since the preservation of life was a primary object of police, Moe took immediate evasive action by leaping into the open grave, only to fall on top of the others who had had the same well-trained notion.
Moe had barely begun to offer his apologies for dropping in like that on a very mad, very muddy DI Tighe, when his words were lost in the shriek of crashing metal above their heads. Being uppermost, Moe found himself pushed up to see what had happened.
Something resembling a heavenly scrapyard met his gaze. The Capri was firmly embedded in the side of the Transit and had, in its turn, been rammed by the pursuing police car. The hulk and Carter could be seen banging at the doors of their newly modified motor, while in the police car behind, not a lot seemed to be happening.
With speed born of self-preservation, Moe heaved himself up and out on to the opposite side of the pit. Tighe, taking the hint, bellowed at his men, more John Wayne than Errol Flynn.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
It was not a moment too soon. With a terrifying grinding and crunching of rending metalwork, the Transit tipped itself free of the other vehicles and slid headlong into the open grave in a welter of flying mud and debris, just missing the last man as he scrambled clear.
Beyond, in the remaining wreckage, Moe saw Carter haul himself free from the Capri and head off into the night, followed by the shaven headed hulk who almost immediately veered off in another direction.
“Oh no you DON’T!” Moe wasn’t having that. In a flash he was chasing the fleeing gravedigger, only to find he wasn’t alone. Harry Mee flew past him, making Moe feel he was running in slow motion.
“Go get him, Arthur. I’ll get the bald bastard.”
A couple of other officers had started after them but soon gave up after losing them in the dark. But Moe wasn’t about to let Carter give him the slip, cursing as he only narrowly missed emasculating himself on a tilting headstone that came at him out of nowhere. It was all right for his quarry; probably knew the place like the back of his own calloused claws. But Moe could try to outlast him.
There he was! A dim shade darting and ducking with the desperation of a hunted animal. To Moe, it seemed that they were going in circles. Ahead, he saw a familiar outline and braked to avoid the yew tree just in time to hear Carter yell in fury as he pitched headlong into the grave he had dug himself. No lights … thought Moe … told you so.
His sense of déjà vu saved him as the trenching tool whipped out of the hole and buried itself deep into the soggy turf a fraction from his skidding feet. Moe was off-balance, giving the gravedigger the time to spring up and out like a fiend from the depths, heaving on the tool for support and yanking it free as he came.
“NOW I know ’ee. Oh yes. You running like that. I know ’ee now.” Carter sprung but Moe was ready for him this time. He leapt back, only to find himself caught up in the branches of the tree. Carter rushed at him, holding the trenching tool like a headsman’s axe.
“Thought I’d forgotten, did ’ee? Thought you could ’ave a laugh at I, did ’ee?” The tool hissed past Moe’s head, slashing into the wood where Moe’s ear had been a fraction previously.
“Tormented him, you did! Made ’is life a misery. ’Ow I ’ated you for that.” The tool tore another lump out of the tree as Moe spun away from its slicing path. “But I ’ated and despised ’im more – for lettin’ ’ee do that to ’im!” Carter’s breath was coming in violent gulps of exertion reinforced with years of pent-up rage. “God, ’ee was pathetic, was my old man!”
Moe had the distinctly unpleasant notion that Carter had left him with nowhere to go. His back hard up against the huge trunk of the age-old tree of tears, Moe looked left and right, desperately seeking room to manoeuvre. Carter was sniggering malevolently.
“Got yersel’ trapped, ’aven’t ’ee? No place to run now.” Spittle was running down the gravedigger’s chin and dropping on to the handle o
f the weapon he held. “Say yer prayers, yer smart arsed tosser. I’m going to put out yer lights, just like I did that whining old fart of a father I was cursed with.”
Carter’s admission hit Moe like iced water. His hand found a branch almost chopped free by Carter’s wild blows. And as Carter leapt, intent on aiming a last demonic downward blow, Moe ducked low and piling forward, he rammed the branch into his assailant’s exposed groin. The effect was instantaneous. With a gurgle, Carter sank to his knees, the shock and pain shutting his eyes and forcing the tool from a suddenly lifeless grasp. Both of his hands reached instead to his crotch. Slowly, with a groan of deepest anguish, closely followed by a loud fart, he fell forward on to his face.
“Sorry, chum. Three strikes and you’re out,” Moe murmured, reaching down to take hold of the trenching tool, just to be on the safe side. You never knew with a creature like Carter. The gravedigger moaned piteously, oblivious to all else but the agony below.
“They’re the only assets you’ll get your hands on for some time to come, old son.” Moe observed, still watching him carefully.
The piercing beam of a lamp from the search team picked them out and held them. Moe could imagine how they must appear to the arriving officers, led by DI Tighe whose look suggested that words like police brutality were not far from his ambitious mind.
“You all right?” Tighe asked, hard eyes fixed on Carter.
“No thanks to him,” Moe replied.
“It’s him I’m talking to.” Tighe signalled to a couple of his men to help the grimacing gravedigger to his knees … then to his feet.
“He did his worst and I did my best. Here’s his little helper.” Moe threw the trenching tool a little harder than necessary at Tighe who jumped back in alarm, fumbling at first but managing to hang on to it.
“And while he was trying to do for me, he confessed to murdering his old man. Does that interest you?”
To give Tighe his due as a senior officer in the making – taking Moe back to “Chief” Cholmondeley – he smiled a smarmy smile and stepped closer to Moe, putting an arm around the other man’s shoulders. But Moe wasn’t fooled. He knew that Tighe was having visions of Detective Chief Inspector embellishing his desk. Tighe was talking with newly enervated enthusiasm, waving for Carter to be dragged off to await the arrival of a hopefully undamaged police vehicle.
November Uniform or the Wagers of Sin Page 16
