Death in Distribution

by David W Robinson

  Kane had already made his decision, and he quickly rehearsed the correct phrasing. Although Crowther would get what he wanted, it was important to underline that he had not ‘won’.

  “Right. Peter, I want you to get onto the agency and change the shift for their man. Then tell the girls in Dispatch to put Stan’s name in on the Sunderland, Middlesbrough job.” He turned his attention to the driver. “Stan, you’ve got your early start on Friday and Saturday, but mark my words. I don’t want you hanging out your time in Sunderland or Middlesbrough to make sure you can’t be given anything else. I want you back here on schedule. And, you will be held on Standby until three at the earliest. Understood.”

  “I won’t let you down, boss.”

  “Good. If there’s nothing else, can we get on with our day’s work?”

  “I’m not leaving this here, Dave,” Amy insisted.

  Her announcement drew a sigh from the manager. “What do you mean, Amy?”

  “I seem to spend most of my time settling arguments between Peter and Stan. It has to stop, and I’m going to put a stop to it one way or another. The first thing I’m going to do is get the union office to run a study on the way Peter treats the drivers. If I find any significant variation in the way he deals with Stan, then I’ll be back, and I’m prepared to go to grievance if I have to.”

  “I treat everyone the same,” Cruikshank argued.

  “If that’s true, you won’t have anything to worry about then, will you?”

  Kane readily understood Amy’s tart response, but he could not let it pass without coming in to Cruikshank’s defence. “While you’re doing that, Amy, I’ll have admin run a similar study, so that we’re both singing from same hymn sheet. At the same time, I’ll get them to check on Stan’s dealings with Peter, and if I find any variation between him and the other drivers, then I will be asking to see you.” He allowed short pause to let the message sink in. “Now is that it? Can we please get back to work?”

  With a few mutters and glares exchanged between the two men, Amy and Crowther left.

  Kane waited for the door to close behind them before leaving his seat and crossing to the window of his third floor office. Behind him, Cruikshank waited in silence.

  With views of Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Tower in the distance, the window overlooked the north yard, where the company trailers were parked at an angle which made life easier for drivers reversing into tight lanes. There were thirty lanes, and when they were full, they would accommodate three trailers each, parked nose to tail. Around the corner, in the east yard, there were forty more lanes, opposite the loading bays, each accommodating two trailers. Add to that sixty loading bays, all with a trailer backed on for either loading or unloading, and that came to 230 trailers in the vast yard. As an exercise in logistics, it was a mammoth operation, and for the most part it ran smoothly, without hitch … for the most part.

  “It can’t go on, Peter,” Kane said.

  He did not turn away, but continued looking out through the window, across the yard to the Maintenance workshop. Thanks to the design of the yard and the number of trailers parked there, coupled to an oversight in security, the third floor of the Sort Centre, was the only place where the entrance to Maintenance could be seen. From anywhere else, it was just another tall, broad building in the huge complex that was Ballantyne Mail Order’s National Distribution Centre.

  “Again, Dave?”

  He sensed Peter moving to stand alongside him.

  “You and Stan Crowther.”

  Kane looked again at the maintenance area, and spotted several apprentices climbing into the wheelie bins. Because of its comparative invisibility, the crew of mechanics, tyre fitters, bodywork specialists, tended to play silly games which, Kane had often been at pains to point out, if they went wrong, could land the company in serious trouble with the Health & Safety Executive.

  “Get onto Security, please, Peter. The lads in Maintenance are jousting in the bloody wheelie bins again.”

  He listened a moment while Peter rang the security office. When he heard the receiver replaced, Kane turned from the window.

  “You and Stan Crowther,” he repeated.

  “Dave, I—”

  Kane held up a hand to forestall the inevitable string of excuses. “I don’t want to hear it. Amy may or may not carry out her threat to check the stats, but we all know the truth, Peter. Look, I retire in four years. You are my natural successor. You know what Ballantynes are like. They won’t bring in an outsider if they have someone in their own ranks who can do the job. That’s you, my friend. You know the company, you know how we operate. Who better to take over after me? But if Amy nails you for victimisation, even on the smallest of detail, you can forget it. It’s personal, Peter, and you cannot be personal. You have to treat them all exactly the same.”

  “I hate Crowther,” Cruikshank admitted. “And we all know why.”

  “I know, and I can’t say I blame you, but leave it at home. Don’t bring it to work with you. If you don’t, if this business with Stan Crowther goes on, it’s not him who’ll suffer. It’s you.”

  ***

  On the barren, stone staircase at the end of the building, a similar conversation was taking place between Amy and Crowther.

  “It has to stop, Stan. One of these days, Peter will get something serious on you, and you will be out on your ear.”

  Only half listening to her lecture, when she had finished, Crowther pointed across the yard to the horseplay amongst the workshop apprentices. “That’s where Cruikshank should be concentrating. Kids larking around like that. Never mind trying to do the dirty on me.”

  “And you’re so innocent, are you?”

  “I didn’t start it.”

  “Yes you did,” Amy argued.

  Crowther faced her and shrugged. “What happened, happened. I can’t make it un-happen.”

  “No, but you could be a bit more adult about it. All these years and you never even apologised. Instead you carry on making snide jokes about him behind his back. Try putting yourself in his place. What if it had been your wife and him?”

  Crowther smiled. “I’ve never been married.” When he saw that his effort to lighten the mood had no effect, he went back to sourness. “It takes two to tango, you know.”

  Chapter Two

  Joe cleared his throat and read aloud from the letter in his hand.

  “As you are aware, Britannia Parade, in which your premises are situated, has stood since the early 1900s, and Sanford Borough Council feel it no longer presents the correct image of a town looking ahead to the future. We therefore feel that the offer from Gleason Holdings should be accepted and that the parade should be demolished to make way for smarter, new, innovative business premises. In the light of your refusal to accept our offer, we are serving you with a Compulsory Purchase Order.” He looked up at Sheila and Brenda, who sat behind him. “Any time you want something doing, like the potholes repairing in the roads, the council take months over it. The minute they want something done, like knocking down The Lazy Luncheonette, it happens in days. I only met with them on Monday, and I received this today. That rotten sod, Queenan, had the CPO in the pipeline before I turned up on Monday, but he didn’t have the bottle to hand it to me then.” He fumed for a moment. “And what in the name of bacon and egg sandwiches are innovative business premises? A building is a building, full stop.”

  “Never mind the iffy terminology,” Sheila said. “What happens to The Lazy Luncheonette?”

  “I just told you. It gets bulldozed,” Joe said, “along with my flat, my living and your jobs. Oh, they’re offering compensation and new premises on the industrial estate opposite, but there’s no living accommodation with them, they’re on the wrong side of Doncaster Road and I’ll have to pay rent on it. I own The Lazy Luncheonette, but I’ll end up renting a portakabin. Combined with the rates, I’ll be shelling out double what I’m paying now.”

  “Double?” Brenda looked down her nose at him.


  “All right, about fifty percent more.”

  Sat in the jump seat, across the aisle from the bus driver, Joe had half turned to read the letter to his two employees. Now he turned again, to stare malevolently through the windscreen.

  “Another twenty minutes, Joe,” said Keith Lowry, the driver. “Give or take.”

  Joe responded with a taciturn grunt.

  Overhead gantries warned drivers for North Blackpool to stay in the inside lane, and those for the Pleasure Beach and South and Central Blackpool to move to the right. Keith checked his mirror, indicated to pull out, and slowed down, waiting for a lorry to pass him. Glancing across and into Keith’s mirror, Joe could see the side of the lorry making its way forward. His agile mind automatically translated the reversed wording on the sides as Tyne Distribution, but as the truck drew alongside and began to move ahead, he could see that more lettering had been erased, probably as a result of replacing a side panel.

  Looking across the far side of the motorway and away to their right, bathed in April sunshine, Blackpool Tower stood stark against the flat, Lancashire landscape. One of the most recognisable landmarks in Great Britain, it symbolised the hedonism and freedom of the ‘Fun Capital of the North’, as the town was often designated, and until the arrival of the postman back in Sanford, Joe had anticipated a weekend of exactly that: fun.

  The lorry drew alongside, and blocked his view of the tower. Half turning in his seat once more, so he could face his two closest friends, he said, “They’ve been threatening this for years. Britannia Parade doesn’t sit well with those fancy shops in the retail park. So they decided to knock it down, kill off half a dozen small and profitable businesses, hype the rents on fancy new premises and no one will shop there because the prices will be too high.”

  “We know all this, Joe,” Sheila replied, “but have you done anything about it? You know you can appeal against a CPO.”

  Joe grinned. “Already in hand. I rang my solicitor before we left this morning. Got him out of bed and told him to get on with it. If nothing else, it’ll slow ’em down, while I think of something. Any idea what more I can do?”

  “No point whining to your MP,” Brenda observed. “He’s all for it, and according to whisper, he’s a consultant to Gleason Holdings.”

  Joe tutted. “Here I am asking what I can do, and you tell me what I shouldn’t do.” He took a breath. “Bloody MPs. And there was me thinking he’s supposed to be for the people who voted him in. Y’know. Working people.”

  “Depends what century you’re living in,” Keith commented from the driver’s seat. “And what would you know about working? You’ve never done a day’s proper work in your life.”

  Falling silent again, watching the lorry slowly overtake them, Joe was acutely aware that the seventy or so members of the Sanford 3rd Age Club on the bus had their share of problems: health, money, relationships, and for those who still worked, the ever-present worry of employment security. He counted himself lucky. As the proprietor of a thriving trucker’s café, he had no money or employment issues, his health troubles had drifted into the background since he gave up smoking, and any worries concerning relationships had disappeared on a plane to Tenerife when his ex-wife left him.

  And now, suddenly, out of the blue, he did have employment worries. They wanted to pull down his café. The business, which had stood in the centre of Britannia Parade since just after the war, would be gone, and when the bulldozers moved in, they would carry off most of his trade too.

  Keith’s last comment resounded in his head. “Feeding idiot drivers like you is proper work,” he argued. “At least, I don’t just sit on my backside all day, turning a steering wheel.”

  “You don’t feed bus drivers, Joe. You feed truckers: dipsticks like this.” He nodded at the passing lorry and checked his mirror again. “And I wish he’d get a bloody move on. I need to be in that lane.”

  “I feed draymen. It’s not much different. They do just as much moaning and whining—”

  The tail end of the lorry still had a yard or two to go when without warning, the driver moved to the left.

  Shouting a curse, Keith braked hard and yanked the wheel to the left, steering the bus onto the hard shoulder. Cut off mid-sentence, Joe was flung from his seat to the floor where he struck his back on the front fascia. There was a clunk as the lorry clipped the bus and tore off the external mirror. Apparently oblivious to the collision, the driver allowed his vehicle to continue drifting left. Keith swerved further, ran over the drains on the extreme edge of the hard shoulder, and the front wheel dropped into a narrow ditch. Keith dragged the wheel hard right and pulled the front wheel out. The seventy passengers let out a chorus of cries, gasps, and “Oohs.” Joe tried to drag himself upright, but with the bus swerving erratically and a line of cars ahead of him, Keith had to stand on the brakes, and pull the wheel right again, throwing Joe back to the floor. The back end slewed over and dropped into the shallow ditch, the coach tilted dangerously on its nearside before coming to a stop, and Joe rolled down to hit his head on the door.

  Ahead of them, the lorry driver clipped more vehicles but still did not stop. The vehicle careened up the slip road to the roundabout where, without pausing, caused several vehicles to brake sharply as the driver pulled out and hurtled away towards Lytham St Annes.

  Keith cut the engine, flipped off his seatbelt and crossed to Joe. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m okay.”

  Keith helped him up. “I’m sick of telling you to fasten your belt when you’re on that jump seat. One of these days, you’ll get me booked.”

  “Stop fussing. I told you, I’m all right.” Joe rubbed the back of his head. “Just a bump on the nut. That’s all.”

  Already struggling out of her seat into the lopsided aisle, Brenda commented, “A knock on the head like that can be dangerous, Joe. It might trick you into getting your wallet out.”

  “Thanks for your concern, Brenda. If you can, why don’t you get along the bus and make sure everyone is all right.” While Brenda struggled to leave the tilted seat, and made her way along the aisle, Joe concentrated on Keith again. “Did you get his number?”

  “I don’t talk to strange truckers.”

  “His registration number, you idiot.”

  “No. Did you?”

  “I was busy rolling all over the floor.”

  “And I was busy trying to stop the bus from rolling over and killing someone.”

  “That makes a change from trying to kill them with your driving.”

  “Now listen you awkward old git, I—”

  “Why don’t you two stop arguing and get people off the bus?” Sheila interrupted, straining as Brenda had, to get into the aisle.

  Joe stared. “Sheila, we’re on the motorway. You can’t have people wandering about on the hard shoulder.”

  “Shows how much you know,” Keith said. “Sheila is right. You don’t sit in a vehicle on the hard shoulder in case someone runs up your backside. As long as everyone is okay, get them off the bus and off the hard shoulder onto the grass verges.” He took out his mobile. I’ll bell the filth.”

  “The cops?” Joe protested. “I thought you only needed to call them when someone is injured.”

  “Joe, do I come to your café and tell you how to cook meat pies?” Keith waved at his seat and the missing mirror beyond the windows. “I’ve no offside mirror, so I can’t drive the bloody bus. And I don’t know what other damage that barmpot trucker might have done. Now let me do my job, and you do yours. Get your crumblies off the bus.”

  While Keith dialled the police and waited for an answer, Joe took the PA mike from its rail above Sheila’s seat, tapped the head to ensure it was working, and began speaking.

  “All right, folks, as long as none of you are injured, I’m told that we have to get off the bus, then off the hard shoulder and onto the grass verges. If any of you have been hurt in the collision, let Brenda or Sheila know, and we’ll ma
ke the necessary arrangements.” He eyed Keith sourly. “As well as starting on the legal claims.”

  “What are we doing about getting to the hotel, Joe,” Alec Staines asked from half way down on the offside.

  “We can’t do anything. According to our pilot, the bus can’t be moved because he doesn’t know the extent of the damage.” Once again, he glanced sideways at Keith, now talking into his phone. “I’m sure the cops will arrange something.”

  “Did anyone get that idiot’s registration?” Captain Tanner demanded.

  “No, but we know which company he works for, Les. It won’t take long to track him down.”

  Joe hooked the microphone back up, as Brenda and Sheila returned reporting that everyone was okay.

  Alongside him, Keith brought the phone call to an end. “Right, Joe, the cops are on their way. I’ve told ’em I have seventy passengers plus luggage for the Monarch Hotel, and they’re getting onto Blackpool transport for a double-decker bus. They’ll send a van out to collect the baggage. For now, we should get everyone off and I need to check the bus over for damage.”

  He pulled the lever to open the bus door, and a second one to raise the luggage panels. Keith was first off the bus and while he began a walk-round inspection, Joe climbed off and waited at the door for his club members to alight, guiding them beyond the hard shoulder and onto the fresh grass of the verges.

  Further up the slip road, three other vehicles, two cars and a light van, were also on the hard shoulder, their occupants climbing out to examine whatever damage had been done. Other drivers, using the exit lane, slowed down to see what was going on, and a considerable queue had already begun to back up onto the motorway while drivers took in the scene.

  “I do hope we’re not going to be too long,” Sylvia Goodson said as Joe and Les Tanner helped her from the bus.

  “It’ll take as long as it takes, Sylvia.” Joe looked up into the cloudless, spring sky and took a deep breath of the fresh air. “Besides, it’s a beautiful day. Find yourself a little spot on the grass and enjoy the sunshine.”