by Ripley, Mike
18
Rufus walked us out of his office and through the beer maze back to the truck in case we got lost or decided to pocket a few thousand bottles on the way. I thought about what he would say if the police or Customs paid him a visit. Trouble was there wasn’t much chance of that. Statistically speaking, the odds were on his side and he knew it.
‘Stocking up for a party?’ I said out loud, though I had in truth only been thinking it as one of a hundred lame excuses in the event of a raid.
‘You’re not wrong there,’ he said to my surprise. ‘Biggest party of them all. The Millennium, the Big Two Thousand. New Year’s Eve this year starts a four-day party. Fuck, even a six-day, seven-day party. And I’m gonna have enough beer to supply all of South London, at prices you’ll be amazed at.’
I had to admire his logic, and his nerve if he was going to sit on this much bootleg for eight months. The country was gearing up for an extended booze-up – or so the papers had us believe – stretching from Christmas Eve, right through to January 4th or 5th. A lot of pubs would close for the duration as their staff went home for Millennium parties and so would shops and off-licences. Even those who stayed open would have trouble getting deliveries as drivers and depot workers demanded time off.
If Combo’s theory – and he’d heard it from Rufus – about Customs opening up a checkpoint on the French side of the Channel Tunnel was right, that would deter large numbers of amateur bootleggers trying to stock up at the last minute. By Christmas, the bootleg conduit under the Channel could be squeezed shut, so it made good business sense to build your stocks now.
‘Listen.’
Rufus held the plastic curtain aside for us, but stopped in his tracks and held up a finger to my face. From the speakers came the soft vibraphone introduction to ‘How High The Moon’.
‘Lionel Hampton,’ I said. ‘Easy.’
I could have told him it was Nat Adderley on trumpet, but that would have been showing off.
Rufus stared at me again, trying to remember where he’d seen me before, but it just wouldn’t come, and I could breathe again.
‘Drive carefully,’ he said.
I didn’t need telling twice.
The Angel’s Wings (domestic removals of Salford) trailer was already one quarter unloaded, the Pakistani warehouse crew unloading by hand on to wooden pallets balanced on the spears of fork-lift trucks. Someone had already set the dolly wheels and disconnected the power lines to the tractor unit, so all I had to do was drive away from under it and reverse on to the empty, unmarked trailer unit next to it.
‘Can you change over the rear plate while I get hooked up?’ I asked Combo.
He clutched the metal briefcase to his chest and stared at me as if I was talking Finnish. Then it sank in and he repeated ‘Plates’ to himself and nodded and headed for the rear of the trailer, still hugging the case. If he froze up like that when threatened with a Lionel Hampton solo, he was going to have a hard life.
I swung the DAF tractor unit out and to the left, then reversed under the empty trailer and got down again to lock off the fifth wheel and connect the umbilical pipes. Combo joined me back in the cab. He was shaking all over.
‘It’s done,’ I said, ‘and we’re out of here.’
We were, once one of the Asians hit a switch to make the door slide open.
I inched the truck forward and out into the rain which was coming down in a steady sheet. I looked beyond Combo, shivering in the passenger seat, and in the nearside wing mirror I could see back into the warehouse to where Rufus Radabe was standing, supervising the unloading of his latest delivery, his left foot in its red shoe tapping to a beat I could no longer hear.
There was no sign of his Rhythm Section bodyguards, but I really didn’t give that a second thought.
Then.
We were back on the M2 motorway, bypassing Chatham, before Combo spoke.
‘Did he?’
‘Did who what?’
‘Radabe. Did he know you?’
‘I’ve been around. He may have seen me around. I’ve heard of him, but I’ve never met him as far as I know.’ I glanced at his ashen face. ‘Honest.’
‘That music, though, and the way he offered you a drink. You, not me. It was like he knew you and you knew him.’
‘I know the type,’ I said, but it didn’t come out as comforting as it should have.
‘I don’t like his type.’ Combo was staring out through the windscreen into the dark and the rain, talking to himself now, not me. ‘I’ve had enough. Scooter was with me last time and I was still scared. The beer runs were a bit of fun at first. A nice little earner – isn’t that what they say? – if you’re trying to live on a student loan. And there was always plenty of beer to take back for parties. Made you dead popular.’
‘I can see that.’
‘But I can’t hack it having to deal with people like Radabe, I just can’t hack it.’
‘Then don’t. Quit. Walk away. Go home.’
‘I can’t go home, I’ve got exams this term.’
‘What are you reading?’
‘Law.’
‘Most lawyers wait until they’ve qualified before getting a criminal record. I should quit whilst you were ahead. Go home.’
‘I think I just might,’ he said. ‘Pull in at the next services, so I can do a sweep for bugs.’
‘Why would Rufus bug us? He’s expecting another load, or at least his trailer back, isn’t he?’
‘Scooter insists, so I’d better do it. It’ll be the last time.’
A few miles down the motorway I pulled off into the lorry-park of a big service area which boasted a supermarket, a McDonald’s and a games arcade. I parked as far away from the other trucks as I could and watched the mirror just in case somebody was tailing us and wondering why their electronic bug had stopped moving.
Combo got out his side and I noticed that he pushed the briefcase of money on to the floor of the cab without a second glance. Suddenly, he didn’t want to know about the money and probably wouldn’t have cared if I had driven off with it. He had had a spiritual conversion, and those were rare on the road to Canterbury these days.
I saw nothing suspicious in the mirror and Combo was back inside two minutes. He climbed up the steps of the cab but didn’t get into his seat. Instead, he flung the debugging device on to the dashboard and reached for the metal case. For a second, I thought he was going to do the runner I had been thinking about.
‘Give that back to Scooter, would you?’ he said, putting the briefcase on the seat and clicking it open. ‘Tell him the rig is clean, no sign of a bug.’
He took out a wad of notes and counted off what looked like about £200 worth of notes.
‘And tell him I’ve taken my wages. I’m going back to college before I get ulcers.’
‘How . . . ?’
‘I’ll thumb a lift with a truck driver,’ he said with a grin as he closed the case.
‘Haven’t you got a car down there?’
‘Yeah, my dad’s old Volvo. Chip and Dale are using it. I’ll bell them on their mobile, get them to drive it up to Cambridge. Tell Scooter goodbye and thanks for all the free drinks. Good luck with the pub and those barmaids.’
He made to jump down. Now that the cares of the world had lifted from his shoulders, I was warming to him.
‘See you in court,’ I said.
He froze, one hand on the cab door, registering alarm.
‘Later, when you’ve qualified,’ I explained.
‘Oh yeah, right. But not if I see you first.’
‘Good answer!’ I shouted after him as the door slammed.
I fired up the truck and snaked back on to the motorway heading east and making good time as the nightly exodus from London had thinned out considerably. I checked my watch and found it was not yet eight o’clock. At this rate I could stop for a meal, get the truck back to Scooter and be in the Rising Sun well before closing if the girls hadn’t smoked, eaten and drunk the plac
e dry by then.
Alternatively, I could pull off the road into a quiet country lane, disconnect the trailer and let Rufus Radabe worry about it, drive the tractor unit up to London and dump it somewhere near the Elephant and Castle for Scooter to worry about. Then I could ride the Northern Line back home, pick up Armstrong and drive over to Hackney to stash the contents of the metal briefcase in the Stuart Street flat. Given that I’d worked out that Scooter was looking at £9000 profit from the load, there could be as much as £18,000 in there. I’d even have enough to send a minicab down to the Rising Sun to rescue the girls. Murdo Seton could look after the pub; it was his after all. And Nick Lawrence and his Excisemen could take care of the rest.
It seemed like a plan; a good one, with no obvious downside.
Why didn’t I listen to me?
I had to crawl down the old Roman road on the approach to the hop farm in order to spot the turning into the wood. The rain was slashing down now and I had the wipers on full speed. At least the straightness of the road meant that I could check the mirrors for headlights behind me for perhaps two miles and I found the inky darkness strangely comforting.
Once the rig was ten feet off the road and inside the wood, I began to relax, knowing that I was now virtually invisible from passing traffic. I eased the truck down the slope, conscious that now I had a trailer twenty-five or thirty tons lighter than the one I had taken out and it would react differently. I was also wary of the conditions as the concrete track up through the hop field was wet and smeared with mud leaking from the fields.
At one point I felt the trailer swing fractionally, so I changed down again and crawled uphill towards the stripping shed where the lights were still on, although the door at my end was only open about a yard.
I was tempted to give them a blast on the horn, but that would have scared the wildlife for miles around and probably stopped the hens at the Rising Sun laying for the rest of the year.
But there was no need. I could see in my headlights that it was Scooter himself who came out to slide the door open for me so I pulled up to the side of the shed and began the reversing operation. At the far end of the shed, cases of beer were stacked inside the other door to a height of about eight feet, so I aimed for them and managed to park without hitting them and, to my amazement, almost in a straight line.
The brakes hissed on and I killed the engine and the lights and climbed down from the cab. There was no sign of Scooter on my side of the rig, so I slid the door closed myself to keep out the rain and just in case a stray aircraft mistook us for a landing beacon.
I had opened the passenger door of the cab and was reaching in for the metal briefcase when I heard Scooter shout:
‘What have you done with Combo?’
It was a fair question in a way. First Axeman doesn’t turn up for work, then Combo doesn’t come home from work, and I was always in there somewhere.
‘He’s quit,’ I said, ‘had enough. He’s gone back to Cambridge.’
I grabbed the case and the electronic sweeper device and climbed down. Scooter was way back near the other doors, standing to the side of the pile of beer cases. I hadn’t expected him to rush for a hug, but this was stand-offish to the point of rude.
‘Where did you leave him?’ Scooter’s voice went up a notch as I walked towards him.
‘I didn’t leave him, he got out when we stopped at Medway Service Station. He said to tell you he had taken his wages out of this.’ I held up the case. ‘Rufus Radabe sends his regards.’
‘Just put it down,’ he said and for the first time I realised how nervous he was.
‘What?’ I was genuinely puzzled.
‘Put the case down and don’t come any closer.’
I stopped dead, about ten feet from him.
‘What the fuck’s going on, Scooter?’
‘You tell me,’ he said, petulantly like an angry child.
But before I could start to select a suitable lie, another voice said:
‘Yeah, tell us about it.’
Mel’s wheelchair appeared from behind the stack of cases of beer. It was being pushed by a middle-aged woman wearing trainers and a livid purple shell suit who seemed oddly familiar and I tried to remember where I had seen her before.
I didn’t spend long doing that. I was more interested in the fact that Melanie had a double-barrelled shotgun across her knees and that she was swinging the business end of it up towards me.
‘Hi there, Mel,’ was all I could think of to say.
Once the wheelchair – and the gun – were clear of the stack of beer and facing directly at me, I placed the woman.
‘Beatrice,’ I said.
I hadn’t recognised her with her legs covered, but I had talked to her since I had last seen her; that afternoon, when she answered my call with ‘Seton and Nephew, Seagrave’s Seaside Ales.’
‘Stop smiling,’ snapped Melanie, tucking the gun under her arm, the barrels aimed at my chest. If she fired it, the recoil would probably push the chair back over Beatrice’s foot.
‘Look, I hear you quit the pub in a bad mood, but this is a bit extreme, isn’t it?’
‘Shut up. What’s your game?’
‘Which?’ I said reasonably.
‘What? What do you mean?’ She flashed a glance behind her up at Beatrice, whose face remained pale, pained and uncertain.
‘Do you want me to shut up or tell you what my game is?’
She shook her head as if to clear it.
‘Just explain yourself! Scooter, show him.’
Scooter reached into the inside pocket of his denim jacket and produced a mobile phone. My mobile phone.
‘I found it in the Rising Sun,’ said Mel.
‘It’s got HMCE – Customs and Excise – on speed-dial,’ said Scooter. ‘Why would that be?’
‘Press Send and find out,’ I said with a confidence I had no right to.
‘No!’ said Beatrice in a strangled soprano.
‘Don’t worry, he won’t,’ I said, ‘but he might as well. All he’d get would be the Dover Customs’ public information line. I was just doing a bit of research into bootlegging, that was all, to see what I was getting into. Size of the problem, how well Customs was dealing with it, all that public relations bullshit. Told ‘em I was a journalist.’
I was gambling that Scooter wouldn’t press the button. How the hell did I know if they had a public information line?
He pressed the button.
After about half a minute he turned the phone off without having said a word.
‘It’s Dover Customs all right, but it’s just an answerphone,’ he said to Mel.
‘What do you expect this time of night?’ I said, dead cool once more, thankful that Nick Lawrence was out bashing somebody’s door in with his ‘masterkey’ somewhere. ‘Anyway, Beatrice knows what my game is.’
The only sound was the drumming of the rain on the shed’s metal roof as Scooter and then Mel turned to look at her.
‘No, I don’t! All I know is you’re spying on me!’
She was chewing at her lower lip, holding back the tears.
‘Now why on earth would . . .’ I started, then the penny dropped. ‘Because this is the brewery’s old hop farm, that’s it, isn’t it? You’ve rented it out to Scooter and his boys but nobody knows that back at the brewery, do they?’
Her silence meant I was on the right track.
‘Who thought it up? It’s brilliant. A gang of beer-runners working out of a base which is owned by the brewery that is investigating beer-running. Who would look here? Who suggested it to Scooter? I bet it was Mel – what, in the student bar one night? At a seminar on marketing and business administration? And who gets the rent? I’m guessing that Murdo Seton doesn’t.’
‘Some of it,’ Beatrice said sulkily as Mel gave her an over-the shoulder I don’t believe it look. ‘There has to be rental income on the books so we could get the water and electricity connected.’
‘But Murdo doesn’t look
at the books too often, huh?’
She nodded.
Mel said: ‘Muuum?’ in the whining voice children reserve for when their parents embarrass them.
‘Quite a scam,’ I said, nodding in admiration, ‘but not the one Murdo asked me to look into.’
‘That was me, huh?’ said Scooter.
‘Only in passing. Everybody knows the stuff is coming in, just nobody knew where it was going. I do, now. Or at least I know one conduit into London. That’s enough for my report to Mr Seton. These are yours, by the way.’
I held out the briefcase and the sweeper device and he took half a step towards me. It seemed like ages since any of us had moved and I included the barrels of the shotgun in that.
‘You’re giving me the money?’ he said, flicking back his lock of blond hair.
‘It’s not mine, apart from five hundred quid for doing the drop. I take it there won’t be another trip this week now?’
He came towards me holding out my phone for the case and the sweeper and Mel waved the shotgun in my general direction as we exchanged.
‘No tricks,’ she said in her toughest voice. ‘Don’t make me shoot you.’
‘Last thing on my mind,’ I said.
‘It would be,’ she came back with style.
Scooter backed off and went down on one knee to open the case on the floor, flipping through the bundles of notes.
‘It looks like it’s all here,’ he said to the two women.
Beatrice looked at the money open-mouthed. Mel hardly gave it a glance, keeping her eyes on me.
‘Combo took his cut and, like I say, you owe me. In fact you should pay me double for having to deal with Rufus Radabe. Just seeing him brought on Combo’s ulcers.’
Scooter looked up at me but held the lock of hair out of the way to show he wasn’t being coy. In his other hand he held out a thick bundle of notes, much thicker than £500-worth.
‘I’ll pay you double if you take the trailer back to Radabe and dump the tractor unit somewhere far away.’
‘Scooter!’ Melanie was outraged, but unfortunately not angry enough to turn the gun on him. ‘He was going to shop you to the Excise.’
Beatrice put a hand on her shoulder.