by Pete Adams
There was a short silence. ‘You imagined me in with you.’
‘Jack, I’m trying to unwind.’
‘I’ll take a rain check, suppose a fuck’s out the question?’
An exasperated sigh and agitated water. ‘Jack, why did you call?’
The end of the conversation was nigh, he had a sense for these things. ‘I’m worried about Biscuit. He was the one calling saying he was my dad.’
‘Well, now I’m worried about him.’
‘No, he was scared, Mandy. I arranged to meet at the seafront, only he didn’t show. I phoned the nick, and some tart answered who said she was one of Mackeroon’s volunteers saving the country, said Biscuit’s wife had been calling, expecting him home. Telephone tart suggested he would likely be down the pub like all other coppers. Mandy, what’s happening?’
‘Big Society volunteers. I’ll make some calls, where are you?’
He mumbled a response. ‘Err, just going into the pub, but I’m meeting to talk sedition,’ he replied, as though this was a reasonable thing.
‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, now get off the line and leave your phone on.’
‘Wilco, Ma’am, roger you and out,’ and he hung up to dodge Mandy’s repost, and man and dog went into the pub.
C&A’s was a quiet, old-style, English local, no music, and a friendly landlord and landlady. The long, narrow bar had its inconveniences but meant you were easily in touch with the other regulars. Sidling along this bar, Jack acknowledged greetings from friendly faces, and as he approached the counter, Bruce the landlord was filling Martin’s bowl with cooking bitter, Martin’s favourite; it was weak, so he didn’t get too pissed. Jack’s drink came second. It’s a dog’s life, he remarked to himself as he always did. Jack called out to his table of co-conspirators, they all had full glasses but had a drink off him anyway, except Bernie, who wanted a cheese sandwich. ‘I asked if you wanted a drink, not a four-course bleedin’ meal,’ Jack responded curtly to the dishevelled reporter.
‘Cheese sandwich?’ Bruce asked.
‘Yeah, old cheese and no pickle, got any stale bread?’ Then Jack’s standard, ‘How much? How Much!’ and paid, he always did. He needed more exertion classes, and lifting the drinks over heads and around bodies, ‘There you go, you greedy bastards, and there’s a cheese sandwich coming for the gutter press.’
‘You prolong active life, Jack,’ Bernie said, quoting back one of Jack’s expressions that drew on a dog food advert for PAL. It amused those present except Martin, who looked up from his bowl, thinking PAL would be nice, better than the dried crap he was forced to eat. Jack had heard this all before, and many times, especially after Martin had had a drink.
Jack supped a satisfying draft of beer and scanned his co-conspirators. Bernie Lebolt, a medium-height fella, fair hair going grey, no surprise at just over 50, but still thick, the hair but Jack did wonder. Bernie showed the wear and tear from smoking sixty a-day, dishevelled clothes stinking of fag ash and sweat; Jack thought Bernie cultivated his reporter look. He had no woman, no surprise there.
What could you say about the intellectualising Brainiac, a University lecturer? Jack would say, “Shut-up, Brainiac, we’ve come out for a larf,” thinking it odd Brainiac didn’t enjoy his jokes, nice bloke, bushy academic beard, struggling to disguise flaky skin below that made you marvel at the stomachs of women.
Pin Head was a short nervous man, dead skinny, dead ugly, like a shrivelled prune, and dead jumpy; they called it St Vitas dance in the old days, sitting still only when it was his round. Brilliant sense of humour, which Jack thought essential with his condition, but you had to concentrate as he bounced all over the place.
Then there was the evangelical Jon-Bob and Mary-Bob, husband and wife with the look of the Von Trapp family; fortunately, C&A’s didn’t have a puppet theatre, although he’d often noticed them eying up Bruce’s curtains, probably to make play clothes. A nice couple, though irritating, finishing each other’s sentences, but it was fun distracting them and observing their frustration when they messed up.
The good thing about all Jack’s fellow conspirators was they could sit all evening and not say a word to each other, enjoy a few beers, leave and say they’d had a good night. One of the qualities of a good English pub, sublime nothingness, companionable and comfortable silence, and despite the desperate need to overthrow the Government, this was one of those nights where little would be said. Mackeroon could sleep safe; Jack’s thoughts were of concern for Biscuit and miffed Bernie wanted a cheese sandwich.
A murmuring, much like hubba, hubba, energised the comfortable silence, and Jack took in the vision of loveliness that was Alice Herring, framed in the portal to this fine, but ordinary, hostelry. Alice was scanning, looking for someone, and when her eyes alighted on Jack, she wiggled her fingers as if saying hallo to a two-year-old. Always intimidated by women, which he never acknowledged, Jack lifted his arm and mimicked a finger wiggle in response; reduced to a quivering imbecile by a girl, Jack Austin, what are you man or moose?
He did a moose sound, trying to get his deep voice going as Alice wafted like a wood nymph would if there’d been a carpenter around, making her way in a sensuous slow motion, passing by stunned men and envious women. Alice swivelled her beautifully rounded hips, tightly contained in Levi’s, and sat on Jack’s lap, stroked his face with her right hand, slipped it around his neck, and pulled his face to hers. She hugged and kissed his disfigured cheek, lingered around his neck, and breathed in like she was enjoying his scent in an oxygen tent; and Jack, being only human, was affected by this and not just in the cheek, neck, and ear department, wondering if Alice was asthmatic.
She surfaced, a stunned silence in the bar. ‘Jack, is that your telephone?’ but that was on the table, was she stupid? She kissed him again; so what if she was learning impaired. ‘My oncle Alf wants to meet you at the Mother Ship,’ huskily said. A Star Trek aficionado could be convinced this was a temptress alien luring him back to her spacecraft for scientific experiments, except Jack knew Alice Herring’s uncle was Alfie Herring, a villain shading the likeable rogue side of dangerous, and the Mother Ship was Alfie’s local pub in bandit territory. ‘Spit-spot,’ and she made to lift off his lap.
‘I’ll need about ten minutes before I can respectably walk out of here.’
Alice smiled sweetly; make that fifteen minutes. ‘Mandy’s in for a treat, but I have to admit, I’m wet.’
‘You are?’
‘Yeah, Martin’s been licking my hand.’
Jack slumped. ‘Alice, babes, I’d love to meet your oncle, but I’m not up to cycling all that way, and my bike’s outside.’
She looked into his swimming eyeball, and he readied himself in case she sat on him again. ‘Is it?’
Aware of the silence, the thumping pulse in his ears, Jack gathered his anorak and used it to cover his embarrassment, croaked, ‘Police work,’ and bent double, shuffled to the exit as bright red as his eejit coat. As he stepped outside, so the jeering started, quietly at first, and reaching a crescendo of, “Get em down, you Zulu warrior, get em down...” ‘They always sing that when I leave. I think it’s juvenile,’ Jack said.
The cool air worked wonders for Jack’s bits and pieces, but what really did the trick was his bike had been stolen. “Bastard,” he said, several times.
An amused Alice suggested this was not likely to get his bike back. ‘Jump in my car; we can report it tomorrow morning.’
Like a Buddhist mantra, Jack repeated “Bastard” as he climbed awkwardly into Alice’s old mini, bending his stiff, wounded knees. Martin pushed past to get on the front seat; he liked to pretend he was driving. ‘To the back, hound,’ and Martin weighed up the prospects before bounding into the back seat, and the mini gave a throaty roar as Alice screeched off. Jack thought he would liked to have had a conversation with Alice, sort of post-coastal, but was too scared, looked back to Martin, legs akimbo, claws out and thoroughly enjoying himself. Feckin' dogs!
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In what seemed like a lifetime, but probably only a nanosecond, they pulled up outside The Mother Ship, completely the other end of the City. An attractive Hansel and Gretel, figurative pub from the outside, Victorian, glazed ceramic tiles, frosted windows, acid etched, but that was where the fairy-tale charm ended; this was a bandit pub, in bandit territory, and he was a cop Hansel and didn’t think going in with Gretel would help. Jack thought he must be mad; this was not the sort of place you go in if you were a copper, except Alice, who was Alfie Herring’s niece.
The Herrings were one of the big Pompey Families, related to the Splifs along the way somewhere. They were everywhere, and Jack began to rethink his concept of community policing, getting out meeting the people, but then he had in mind nice, civilised people, not Herberts. A bit like being a doctor. He always thought it would be okay treating nubile young women; after that, it went downhill, even if you could stand the sight of blood, and Jack couldn’t, even struggled with the odd magno. I wonder if my bike’s in here, he thought.
Alice had parked and wafted across the road, feline, a sensual walk, pushing a barrage of intoxicating perfume. She patted Jack’s backside, ‘Come on,’ and breezed into the pub. Fearless Martin, the wonder police dog, was in like a rat up a drainpipe; the door slammed in Jack’s face. Thinking he may have lost the impact he wanted, he gingerly pushed open the door, his bum feeling odd, as did his kissed other cheeks.
Thirteen
Machine gun fire greeted Jack across the crowded and hostile bar; Uncle Alfie was laughing and playing with Martin; Alice giggled at his side. A cheer mutated to a jeer when people spotted Jack; he wasn’t sure how to read this. Oh yeah, fuzz alert, but he brazened it and moved into the crowd wishing he had Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.
A thug with one brain cell blocked his way. ‘Well, if it ain’t dead eye Dick.’
Jack thought, he had to be Slytherin. ‘Jack, but you can call me Jane,’ Jack said, feeling more than a bit Hufflepuff.
One cell started making pig noises. ‘We don’t like pigs in here.’
To which Jack replied, rather wittily, he thought, and with no hint of the fear he felt in his watery bowels, ‘Darcy, I would not be as fastidious as you for a kingdom,’ his best Biggam.
One Cell, obviously inspired by PP, moved onto creative thinking, ‘You’re doing my fucking ‘ed in copper,’ obviously Wickham; you see, are you not diverted?
Alfie diverted his way through the testosteroned melee and directed himself to the skinhead. ‘Now, now, One Cell,’ blimey that was his name, ‘Jack’s my guest, got that.’ Alfie was quite clear in what he meant, and turning from One Cell, ‘Fanks for coming, Jack, sorry about the bleedin’ Nazis. Come, sit, what d’yer want to drink?’
Still beside One Cell, Jack replied in his best Hufflepuff voice, ‘Campari and soda, please, Oncle Alfie.’ Had Mandy been there she would have rolled her eyes, again.
‘Fuck off,’ Alfie shouted and, turning to the bar, ‘pint of best, my table.’ He was talking to Len Bone, the fat greasy landlord in a dirty vest that seemed to stop just beneath a fine set of man boobs, supported by a thick black belt that held up huge shiny arsed trousers.
As they sat, Alfie looked at Jack quizzically, ‘You really want a Campari, Jack?’
‘No, that was for One Cell’s benefit,’ and Alfie’s machine gun, fitful laughter, was enthusiastically enjoined by the other customers, although clearly none of them had any idea what the joke was. Alfie was about the same age as Jack and had to be a good villain to survive this long, with the patent respect. Always smartly dressed in a suit, Italian, slim tie, straight out of the sixties. He was short, and that made Jack think of small-man syndrome, but Alfie had the personality, presence, and presumably the backup, to overcome any deficiencies in the height department. He was a man to be respected, whether good or bad, but Jack liked him.
Jack took a long suck of his pint. He needed this following the kiss with Alice, strange feeling that, her driving, One Cell, he had an odd sense of elation, he might get out of this pub alive. Mickey Splif sidled and sat. Alfie’s eyes swivelled in their sockets like a ventriloquist’s dummy, and Jack had to stop himself laughing, which morphed into concern Alfie was having a stroke, when Alfie’s lips screwed and he started speaking out of the side of his mouth, ‘Good fing you did for Mickey’s boy. You’re a diamond, and that’s sayin’ somfing for a filf. Got the lad a job with Osama as well.’
Something was brewing within Alfie, Jack thought, and it wasn’t a fart. But it was a fart, and he let it go by lifting one of his substantial cheeks off the chair, and the parping noise and aroma received respectable acknowledgement as the toxic miasma pervaded the bar like a nuclear cloud. Jack was put in mind of Mrs Ali’s breath as he laughed and gagged with the rest, then shut up with the rest. The gangster’s face gurneyed to release confidential information, ‘I wantsyer to see Mickey’s missus, 'ave a cup of splosh, she wants ter fank yer, personal loike.’
Looking at Mickey, aware all eyes in the pub were on him, and every one of them watering due to the chemical reaction of bad eggs and onion, Jack replied, ‘Really? There’s no need.’
But clearly there was, ‘No, yer missing me drift.’
‘I’yam, I finks I’yam?’ Jack couldn’t help mimicking out the side of his mouth.
‘I’m sayin’ go see Gail, make like you’re having a good chin-wag, you might need to take some antidote for the tea wiv yer,’ and he laughed, which was a cue for everyone to start breathing again and laugh with him. ‘When you’ve spent a respectable time, take a gander at a terrace of houses down by the community centre,’ and at that, he touched his nose, apparently knowingly. This was clearly the signal for something dodgy but was also the signal, beware shagging in progress. Obviously universal, Jack thought, but he was intrigued, for Alfie to speak to him in a very pointed way meant this was something important, and he was about to question further when there was a blood-curdling squeal.
Jack knew Martin had been hurt and, looking up, saw his dog fly across the room, hit the distant wall and slump to the floor. Alice attacked One Cell, and Jack, in a berserking mist, saw another skinhead go after her. He was out of his bench seat, on top of one table then another, drinks spilled, glasses smashed as he launched himself at the now two skinheads attacking Alice. His fists and feet flailed, and the two lads had no repost, taken more by surprise than by Jack’s pensioner brute force, on the floor having the lights kicked out of them, not moving.
Instinctively, Jack moved to One Cell, pulling Alice away as he went in battering and kicking. He scurfed the brawny yob against the bar, held him, and time stood still, then out of the blue, Jack nutted him. One Cell’s nose split and teeth broke, reminding him of his mum’s best rag and bone china when, as kids, they played football in the living room. He heard in his mind his dad call “Cups,” even One Cell was shocked, but not as shocked as he was when Jack tipped him over the bar as Len Bone looked around for the cups.
Jack clambered over the bar and hoisted One Cell by the scruff, shoved his shaven head into the washing up sink, holding him under the dirty water, bloody bubbles surfacing. Alfie was calling to Jack, ‘S’alreet, you’ve done im, ease up he’s not werf it, old bill’s on its way.’
Jack released a limp thug, who slithered to the floor. Alice zipped around the bar, grabbed One Cell, laid him out and started to pump, then amazingly gave him the kiss of life, those lips that had kissed him now on this bottom feeding lowlife. One Cell was recovering as the police burst in, weighed up what was happening, grabbed Jack, and frog-marched him through the pub door, Jack protesting he was a police officer and the arresting officers’ laughing, as they thrust him into the meat wagon. Martin was limp and lifeless, blood dribbling from his mouth.
After a short drive, the van halted, ‘Out you come, sunshine,’ and strong arms steered Jack forcefully from the van to the desk in the custody room; public enemy number one. He’d been taken to Cosham nick, and when the custodia
n sergeant appeared, Jack thought, I know him, but what’s his name?
‘'Allo, 'Allo if it isn’t Jane Austin, shag spoiler and pub brawler extraordinaire. Welcome, Jack, my old cocker, been read your rights?’
Summoning deep reserves of energy, ‘Rights, you plank, I’m on an enquiry,’ Jack pleaded.
‘In the Mother Ship? A quiet drink and a chat with those ‘ardened crim-types?’
Jack remembered this bloke now, Nitty Norris, corpulent rugby ball-shaped body with a complementary football head with wisps of hair that seemed to move in a wavy motion, and along with his mystic ping pong ball eyes, the effect had a tendency to mesmerise Jack. ‘Listen, Nitty, I’m entitled to one call, right, well, call Superintendent Bruce. I’ve got her number on my phone.’ He took his phone out, and it completely disintegrated. ‘Feckin’ duct tape.’
‘No worries, Jane, I’ll call Kingston and get her number.’ Oh no, Jack thought, and sure enough, ten minutes later, Nitty came back. ‘What’s going on in your nick, all I got was this snotty bird who kept hanging up and saying she and Mackeroon were saving the world.’
‘Nitty, lock me up, I’m tired and shagged out, but do me a flavour, get hold of Alfie Herring and ask how my dog is, please.’
Nitty’s face changed, he might not like Jack, but everyone loved Martin, there was immediate concern. ‘I’ll do that, I’ll get one of the boys to drive you home, or do you need casualty?’
Shaking his head, ‘No fanks, Nitty, just me hands are scraped to buggary and my toe’s about to fall off.’
‘What’s that, gout?’
‘Yeah, Nitty, goat.’
Fourteen