by Mike Ripley
I dug into my wallet and found the slip of headed notepaper that Bert Bassotti had given me bearing the company’s phone number. I hadn’t looked at it closely enough before now, but under the bit that said ‘Registered House Builder’ came, in very small print, the names of the directors:
U Bassotti, E Bassotti, L Hubbard.
The ‘H.B.’ stood for Hubbard and Bassotti, partners in more than just the building game. What was it I’d heard down in Nether World? ‘Mr Hubbard said no marks, Sammy’ – something like that. I hadn’t met Mr Hubbard, and it seemed sensible to keep things that way.
But partners in what? Illegal fly-tipping was, well, illegal, but hardly a reason to cough up two grand in blackmail. Or reason enough to kill somebody.
There was one package I still had not opened, the roll of plastic material rather like the tape the police stretch across the road when there’s been an accident. Except this wasn’t a roll, it was a bundle of adhesive notices about the same size and shape as a car bumper sticker. They had all been used, the backing sheets ripped off them, and several were stuck together with what remained of the adhesive.
They all said the same thing: HAZCHEM – BIOLOGICAL WASTE – AUTHORISED DISPOSAL ONLY.
Suddenly I didn’t want to touch the money any more.
Fenella was waiting in ambush on the stairs outside her flat when I got back to Stuart Street.
‘Angel, I just had to tell you,’ she whispered, having put a finger to her lips to tell me to be quiet. ‘Mr Goodson thinks I should put in for my driving test. What have you got inside your jacket?’
‘Oh, nothing, just some papers. Did he say when?’
‘Well, he thinks there’s quite a waiting list and it might be a year or more before I get a test.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘But he thinks I should go to a driving school and get professional lessons.’
‘Good idea.’ Mr Goodson was not as daft as I’d thought.
‘But if I do that it will mean staying here and not moving to the country. I don’t know how to break it to Lisabeth.’
I eased my way around her and continued up the stairs.
‘Where is she, anyway? I haven’t seen her for days.’
‘Her circadian rhythms are out of step,’ she hissed.
‘Her what?’
‘Circadian body rhythms. You know, your biological clock that has 25 hours in the day. Well she’s got this notion that her clock is slow and she’s having to put in 26 hours a day, so she needs her sleep.’
‘I won’t argue,’ I said quietly, ‘not while oxygen is still precious.’
‘I think she’d miss the city, anyway,’ Fenella said, more or less to herself. ‘She’s really a town mouse at heart.’
‘It’s the rats you have to worry about,’ I said, but I don’t think she heard.
Inside my flat, I locked the door behind me and went into the bedroom. Leaning over the bed, I unzipped my leather jacket and all of Tigger’s envelopes fell out on to the duvet.
I sorted most of the money and the building society passbook to one side and loaded five £20 notes into my wallet as I fetched my special edition of Hugh Brogan’s History of the United States from the bookshelf.
As part repayment of a debt some years ago, an acquaintance known as Lenny the Lathe had converted the book into a metal, fireproof, miniature safe, complete with combination lock. I referred to it occasionally as my War Chest, but times had been so thin of late I was just glad there wasn’t a war on.
I crammed the money and passbook in and spun the small wheel to lock the combination. The envelopes I tore into shreds and scattered in Springsteen’s litter tray along with a fresh sprinkling of non-mineral, biodegradable, pine-scented, recycled, absorbent wood chips. He rarely used the tray, but let’s face it, who would go rooting around in there for evidence?
I stripped off most of my clothes and put on the black T-shirt I had worn down in Nether World, which Fenella had washed for me, along with some black brushed cotton trousers and dark blue, canvas deck shoes. So it wasn’t an ensemble to be seen in; but that was the point.
The T-shirt reminded me of Nether World and the fact that I had left my torch down there somewhere, so I decided to borrow one from Doogie upstairs.
He answered the door himself, but behind him I could see Miranda sitting cross-legged on the floor packing things into a cardboard box.
‘Hello, Angel. What’s up? Going burgling?’
‘Can’t fool you, Doogie, but I thought I’d knock and see if you had anything worth nicking first. No, look, I’ve got to do some running repairs on Armstrong and I’m buggered if I can find a torch. Would you have the loan of one?’
He gave me his tough-guy look, which for him comes naturally.
‘As long as I get it back this time.’
‘What have I borrowed that you never got back?’ I asked him.
‘Two corkscrews, a wine cooler and three-quarters of a bottle of malt whisky.’
‘That was a party.’ I was indignant. ‘Parties don’t count.’
‘Hah!’ He stalked off into his kitchen.
Miranda smiled up at me.
‘You were right, Angel,’ she said softly.
I don’t know which surprised me more, her smiling or me being accused of being right.
‘About what?’
‘About our move to Scotland. Doogie has his heart set on it, but I wouldn’t be happy playing the wee lassie tending the hearth.’
I suddenly realised she was unpacking, not packing.
‘So I’m not going with him.’
‘How’s he taking it? And you didn’t say I had anything to do with this, did you?’
‘He’s reconsidering,’ she said primly. ‘Which means he’ll stay with me. We’d both miss London if the truth were told. We’d miss the excitement, the big city life.’
‘Yeah, it’s just a barrel of fun isn’t it?’
Doogie reappeared with a black plastic torch.
‘Just twist the head to turn it on,’ he said. ‘I’ve counted the batteries.’
‘Don’t panic, you’ll get it back in the morning.’
He produced something from behind his back.
‘And you might as well borrow this.’
It was a black woollen bobble hat, and he pulled it over my hair until it covered my ears.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Now you look the part.’
Chapter Sixteen
Rewind. Pause. Fast forward.
I almost had it all now. Things I should have noticed at the time but failed to. Or maybe I did but just blotted them out. Like the fact that every time Tigger and I picked up a van on Bassotti’s instructions, it would be parked within half a mile of a hospital.
On the way over to Globe Town, I stopped at a 7-11 convenience store and bought a pair of extra-strength washing-up gloves.
You can never be too careful.
Someone had repaired the broken gate at Hubbard’s Yard and they had thoughtfully added a new padlock and hasp. So that ruled out the front door.
I drove slowly along the perimeter fence and chose my spot, then I ditched Armstrong around a corner out of sight. I carried only Doogie’s torch and Armstrong’s keys with me, leaving anything that could identify me locked in the glove compartment. I zippered Armstrong’s keys into the inside pocket of my jacket and pulled on the rubber kitchen gloves, pulling a pair of black leather gloves on top.
The double glove felt cumbersome, but I tested my grip on the large-mesh wire fence and found I could hold well enough. At my chosen spot, I reached up and grabbed the wire, hauling myself up and digging the toes of my canvas shoes in to get purchase. The fence wasn’t that high, perhaps ten feet, but it had a single strand of barbed wire running along the top. I negotiated that but for a second lay along the top
of the wire, swaying wildly.
The reason I had picked this spot, though, was because on the other side of the fence was the nearest pile of junked cars. There were three on top of each other and I had only to reach out a hand to grab the door handle of a gutted, partially crushed Ford pick-up to pull myself over and into the back of the truck. From there I could look down on to the empty street and the rest of the yard, stretching beyond the avenues of wrecked vehicles and into the darkness where the canal must be.
The large brick shed was still padlocked, and on its corners the two fake video cameras – at least according to Tigger – flashed their little red lights to the night sky just to show their batteries were working. I knew enough to keep near the line of wrecked cars to avoid the movement-sensitive lights, and anyway, that was where I was hoping to find whatever it was I was looking for.
The last time Tigger and I had been here he had dumped six bags of something from the van. But unlike the first trip, he had not gone as far as the canal and I had distinctly heard him crashing around among the wrecked cars. He had not had a torch, so whatever he had stashed would be in one of the first rank of wrecks, which in some cases were stacked five high and seven or eight deep.
I lowered myself over the side of the pick-up and dropped gingerly to the ground. Taking Doogie’s torch from inside my jacket, I tried the beam on an experimental basis. It was like a searchlight and a dead giveaway to any curious passers-by.
I congratulated myself on thinking ahead and took a roll of black insulating tape from my pocket, ripping off four pieces to reduce the face area of the torch to a one-inch square. That gave me a powerful pencil beam that was far more controllable and less noticeable from outside the yard.
From where I guessed I had parked the van that time with Tigger, I walked about 30 yards until I was opposite the far end of the brick building. That, I estimated, was the earliest point Tigger would have dumped anything.
The nearest pile of wrecks contained a Ford Thames van, a Triumph Toledo squashed to a thickness of no more than a foot, the rear end of a Vauxhall of some sort and a chassis and frame of what might once have been a Fiat. I flicked the torch beam up and down the pile and decided there was no way anything other than a single cigarette paper could be inserted into such a twisted mass of metal.
The second row looked more promising, with a pair of Renault saloons sandwiched between an old London Electricity Board van and a crushed Skoda. The Renaults both pointed the same way and their bodies seemed more or less intact, although all the wheels were missing, as probably the engines were too.
I stood on the remains of the Skoda and shone the torch in the back window of the lower Renault. There was nothing in there, not even seats, and neither of the doors on my side would open.
I reached up to the Renault above and tried the back door handle more in hope than expectation. I was surprised when it opened and horrified when something black and bulky fell towards me at head height.
It was one of Tigger’s black plastic sacks. I knew it had to be, but it still scared the hell out of me. I suppose it was because I was powerless to stop it falling on me, with one hand on the car door handle and the other holding the torch.
I tried to ward it off and discovered it was not as heavy as it looked. But by that time I had missed my footing on the Skoda and was falling backwards, conscious only of a frantic need to protect the right side of my face from further damage. I didn’t have far to fall, but I managed to do it as awkwardly as possible, the back of my head taking the brunt of the impact as I bounced off one of the neighbouring wrecks. My foot caught on a jagged spear of metal and I felt my sock rip and a searing pain, and after that it just seemed easier to flop down on my backside.
The black plastic dustbin bag was at my feet and I stared at it as I shook my head gently and rubbed my bleeding right ankle.
I shone Doogie’s torch at it but it didn’t move. I shone the torch up towards the Renault where the back door was still open. Through it I could see several other black sacks.
The one at my feet had a heavy-duty wire twist clip around its neck. I wondered if the others did. I wondered how much longer I could put off opening one of the damn things.
I got to my knees and, holding the torch in my left hand, I began to untwist the wire clip around the sack that had fallen on me. Half a dozen turns and it fell away and the sack opened to reveal another black sack with a wire clip inside.
I tore into that one and pulled it off, ripping the bag in the process. There was enough light without the torch to see that the sack contained hundreds of used hypodermic syringes.
I never knew before then just how fast I could travel backwards whilst still on my knees.
There were hundreds of them; thousands altogether. And – oh, God – there were used swabs and bits of cotton wool with blood spots ... Just some harmless, non-toxic industrial waste, eh? Next time, let’s be really socially responsible and dump the stuff on a playground or maybe in a school yard.
And Tigger, of all people, must have known. And not only known, but was prepared to make capital out of it by blackmailing either Bassotti or Hubbard or, knowing Tigger, probably both. Bassotti had cracked when it got nasty. Hubbard just got nasty.
Hence the HAZCHEM adhesive signs in Tigger’s dead letter box. Bassotti and Hubbard – or why not Hubbard/Bassotti as in H B Builders? – must have got themselves some sort of licensed franchise to collect the bio-waste from various hospitals on a promise to incinerate it. But incinerators cost money; fly-tipping is cheaper.
The vans would have done the hospital runs, and then they were parked up and the official signs peeled off – they were easy enough to get printed up on crack-back plastic – awaiting some likely mug like me to come and do the driving. Goodness knows how many trips they’d done before I joined the outfit, or how long Tigger had been screwing them for extra cash. I could only hazard a guess that the racket was sufficiently large scale to warrant killing Tigger. Or maybe it was small scale and they were just bastards.
I still didn’t want to touch the open sack and I had no ideas what to do next, when my mind was made up for me.
I heard the engine but didn’t really register it until it stopped and idled and I realised it was outside the yard gate. I poked my head around one of the wrecks and could see fingers of light from its headlights stabbing through the holes and cracks and around the hinges in the gates.
Shit!
I grabbed the sack by the neck and dragged it around the back of the first row of wrecks. The gates were opening now, I could hear them creaking, and headlight beams were illuminating the yard.
As the lights got nearer, I remembered to go back and close the door of the Renault, forcing the bags in there back inside. And it was then I realised what Tigger had been up to on that last run. He had planted these six bags in Hubbard’s own yard, and as they were still there, he hadn’t told anyone about them. So he was planning to blow the whistle on the racket, though not before he had increased the size of his nest egg.
I risked another look. It was a white Transit van and it had parked outside the padlocked brick building. A dark-coloured Jaguar had followed it.
Sure enough, the van had a sign on its side: HAZCHEM – BIOLOGICAL WASTE – AUTHORISED DISPOSAL ONLY.
The driver let his engine idle again and opened his door. I saw his shadow in the headlights as he walked across the beams, and as he approached the brick building, the sensor lights on the walls came on.
I could see him from behind, a short guy, walking into the light as if from a scene in a ‘70s sci-fi movie.
From behind him I heard an electric car window go down and then a voice: ‘Have you got the keys, Sammy?’
The short guy raised an arm and yelled, without looking round: ‘Sure thing, Mister Aitch.’
Sammy opened the doors of the brick building, returned to the van and drove it insid
e. He didn’t bother turning on any lights inside, he just switched off the engine, locked up and came out and began closing the doors.
The driver of the Jag, Mr H., had switched off too and I could hear Sammy grunt pushing the doors. Sammy would lock them, get in the Jag and drive away. That’s what I reckoned would happen. Why else would anyone want to spend good drinking time or quality TV time hanging around a scrap yard in east London?
‘Don’t rush, Sammy,’ came the voice from the Jaguar. ‘I’ll give the dogs a bit of a run.’
Oh fuck.
I moved as quickly as I could into the maze of wrecks, conscious of the need to be quiet now there were no engines running and not even a passing train to mask the noise of my stumblings.
I used the torch, because I was frightened of impaling myself on a sharpened Lada axle or similar, the car’s last act of revenge for being crushed or scrapped. So I kept the beam pointed down and close to my body, allowing only a small pool of light for my feet to follow.
When I was three rows of wrecks into the forest of metal I tried to pick a route left. It was easy enough to keep my bearings: just head away from the light. Eventually I must come to either the scrubland and the canal or the railway line. The trouble was that even at this depth in – only three car lengths – the wrecks had tipped and tilted or been shoved closer together so that in some cases it was impossible to squeeze between the piles.
I heard a deep bark, and it seemed far too close for comfort. Then the voice from the Jaguar saying: ‘What’s up, Simba? Spotted a rat have we?’
Why did he have to give the stupid animal ideas?
There was only one thing for it, I had to go up and over and just hope that I had enough wrecks between me and Sammy and co to keep me hidden.
Thankful for the gloves, I pulled myself up on to the roof of a Volvo that had seen happier days. From there I jumped on to the bonnet of half an Alpha Romeo and from there, up slightly on to the roof of what appeared to have been an ice-cream van at some time.