Top Hard

by Stephen Booth

  "Right, Donc."

  The Naz it was. Maybe I'd find the party later. We'd gone like bats out of hell ourselves for a few minutes there, I thought. But hell was closer than I knew right then.

  10

  On Tuesday morning I called some of the boys round for an emergency meeting. There were three of them making my sitting room look untidy. Untidier than usual.

  "We lost another load last night," I told them.

  "Shit, Stones, what's going on?"

  Slow was slouched on my second armchair, kicking his trainers over the arm like some street kid. Metal Jacket was flat on his back on the floor, meditating or something. There wasn't much room for him on the settee, because it was occupied by Doncaster Dave.

  "I don't know," I said. "I'm getting nowhere and things just keep getting worse."

  "It's a pisser all right."

  "Is it the police?" asked Metal.

  "No, no. Somebody's tipping them off, that's what."

  "Only, I hope it isn't my fault, what with that nicked motor, you remember. The Citroen."

  "I don't think so, Metal. Forget it."

  "Ta."

  They all had cans of Mansfield Bitter in their hands, at my expense. It was supposed to make their brains work, ease their ideas out. But it wasn't having any effect so far.

  "What you going to do then, Stones?"

  "Yeah, what you going to do?" That was Metal, doing his impersonation of an echo.

  "Some planning meeting this is, if all you lot can do is sit there and ask me what I'm going to do. Why does it have to me who has the ideas? You've all got a brain, haven't you?"

  Slow Kid did an eye roll towards Dave. "Sort of. Well, two out of three ain't bad."

  Dave stirred, like a slag heap settling. "Is he taking the piss, Stones?"

  "Never mind, Donc. We'll skip the brains bit. What we need is some cunning."

  "Right," said Slow.

  "Right, right," said Metal.

  "Uh?"

  "The thing that's worrying me now is Eddie Craig."

  "No. You think he's in this somewhere, Stones? That's real bad," said Slow Kid.

  "Me and Dave saw his lads last night at the Ferret. And they were looking for Mick Kelk. It's like they were just a few minutes behind us, as if they knew where I was going and what I was doing. I don't like that."

  "You could have sorted 'em out, Donc, yeah?"

  "Yeah."

  "Baffled 'em with your wit, I bet."

  "Eh?"

  "Only Stones is always saying we've got the brains to take this market."

  "What you on about?"

  "Give over, Slow."

  "Is he taking the piss again, Stones?"

  "Here, have these biscuits, Donc."

  "Right."

  "You think Craig's got it in for us? Is he trying to sink us just when we're getting going?"

  "Could be, Slow. Maybe he sees us as a threat."

  "But we're not, though. Nowhere near. Hasn't he got the sense?"

  "Doubt it."

  We all thought about Eddie Craig for a bit. At least I did, and I reckon Slow Kid did. Not Dave, obviously. And Metal Jacket looked to be asleep, dreaming of Morris Travellers.

  "What can we do then, Stones?"

  "Hell, I dunno. Just keep our eyes and ears open. And be careful."

  "Yeah, right."

  "That includes you too, Metal."

  "What? Course."

  "We keep our heads down. Keep out of the way of the cops, don't try anything too ambitious. And don't attract attention."

  "You going to keep Dave indoors then?"

  Doncaster Dave looked pissed off, and I'd run out of chocolate digestives. It was time to bring the meeting to an end.

  * * * *

  I wanted some time to turn things over in my mind, but Nuala didn't understand. Does she ever? She can't get the idea that sometimes people need to think about what's going on in their lives. Thinking doesn't feature much in Nuala's lifestyle. Basically, it's something unpleasant that happens to her brain when she has to stop talking.

  You'll have noticed that she doesn't give up talking very often. Maybe it's like that film a few years ago - you remember, Speed, with Keanu Reeves? Where he has to keep driving the bus, because if the speed drops below fifty miles an hour a bomb will go off? Maybe if Nuala stops talking at fifty miles an hour her head will explode. It's just a theory.

  The person I really needed to talk to at the moment was Lisa, but she'd swanned off to Sheffield. Heritage Bleedin' Management. When was she back? Thursday? And she hadn't even phoned me, had she?

  For some reason, this made me feel really bad. I dwelled on it for a while, until it really rankled. Then I found myself on the phone ringing a list of hotels in the centre of Sheffield. Did they have a Heritage Management course on? They wanted to know who was running it. But how the hell could I tell them that? I hadn't asked.

  After a lot of this stuff, I finally got through to the Old Victoria Hotel. It felt like the three hundredth phone call I'd made, and I was losing enthusiasm. So it took me a bit by surprise when they asked for the delegate's name and said they would get a message to her when her seminar broke up for lunch.

  I put the phone down regretting what I'd done. What was Lisa going to think when she got the message? 'Here's Stones, phoning up to pester me. He can't do without me even for a couple of days.' Oh, shit. What a mess. That wasn't what I wanted at all.

  I still had this feeling inside, as if I was missing something that I really ought to take notice of.

  Slow Kid called in. "I got the word out about that roof job, Stones."

  "That's good, Slow. Thanks."

  "You want me and Dave to lean on the boys that done it when we find 'em?"

  "I mainly want them to put the roof back, Slow."

  "Yeah? Them roof slates sell really well. There's lots of places being worked on out Retford way, and that. Old barns and things. The council tells the builders they got to use old slates, like. But the builders can't get hold of enough of them."

  "I want them put back," I said.

  "Right, right." I heard him make a mental note. I knew it would get done.

  Next I had to drive down to the cop shop at Ollerton with Dave so that we could make statements about our little French connection. There was no sign of Moxon and Stubbs, which was a small mercy. We just got some DC, with a pimply youth in police uniform to do the writing. There was nothing they could argue with really. It was all down to a communication problem. This is one of the major benefits of the European Union - there are a lot more communication problems to blame when things go wrong.

  Dave's statement was pretty brief anyway, and it was all in words of half a syllable. Even the young bobby had no difficulty writing it down. But then they really threw Dave with a tough one when they asked him to sign his name. After a bit, they were panicking about whether to send for a doctor to see if he'd gone into a coma. But I took pity on them and dictated it to him a letter at a time. 'D' for dinner, 'a' for afters... otherwise, we could have been there all day.

  I was feeling even more depressed by the time we got back to Sherwood Crescent. It was this depression that made me do the one thing that brought me even worse trouble. I took a walk up through the estate to see if it would give me any ideas.

  You might not think the Forest can possibly be the sort of place to bring anybody inspiration but you'd be wrong. Sometimes it tells me what's up with the world.

  Take a look down First Avenue, for example. You can see down the hill into Oak Avenue and right round the corner into Birch and Maple Crescents. There are rows and rows of grey council houses with tiny porches over their front doors. Those porches are covered by a sheet of lead to keep the rain out. If you can collect enough of them, you can turn the lead in for scrap. Some of the kids take it as a challenge to see how many they can strip.

  If you look a bit closer, you'll see that the latest in style round here is to decorate the top of your porch wi
th one of those garden ornaments made out of resin and moulded into the shape of an animal, like an otter or a toad, really rural. Or an Alsatian dog maybe, if you want to look tough. The trouble is, they don't wear well in the weather up there, and nobody ever takes them down for cleaning. So after a while it's like looking at the grisly trophies that used to be stuck over the huts of Celtic tribesmen to warn strangers away. Maybe it has some deep significance, I don't know.

  The estate is in two halves really. The older streets at Top Forest are the old British Coal houses. They were actually built by the company that sank Medensworth pit, long before nationalisation and the NCB. Medensworth was one of that flurry of pits sunk in the 1920s, along with Rufford, Clipstone, Ollerton, Blidworth and Thoresby. Suddenly mineral railways and headstocks appeared everywhere among the farms and woods. Huge splodges of miners' houses were grafted onto traditional farming villages. Planned communities, these were called. They have geometric rows and terraces, and grid pattern streets. They didn't need names for these streets - they were called First Avenue, Second Avenue and Third Avenue.

  A lot of pit owners took a paternal interest in their employees. The company had complete control over its tenants, giving it the sort of power that the lord of the manor might have envied. At one time, different grades of employees occupied particular streets - such as at Edwinstowe, where only colliery officials lived in First Avenue. The company owners themselves tended to move into prestige residences. Montague Wright of Butterley Company lived in Ollerton Hall - now derelict and awaiting conversion into a Sue Ryder Home.

  At Bestwood, where the first shaft was sunk by the Bestwood Coal and Iron Company in 1872, an entire village was built. The houses all have the initials of the company, BCIC, over the front door, just in case the serfs forgot who they belonged to. When a new village was built for miners at Shireoaks pit, the place was even named after the boss of the mining company. Unfortunately, his name was Rhodes. That's why we now have a place called Rhodesia in North Nottinghamshire, which is about as far as you can get from Central Africa. If you start to look, there's not much difference between these mine owners and the dukes, is there?

  Later on, British Coal came up for privatisation, and it sold off all its pit houses. They went into the hands of private landlords.

  Down on Bottom Forest, though, the houses are a bit newer, and they're council houses. You can buy your council house these days, and some folk have done just that. You can tell the ones - where the open front gardens have been fenced in with wavy lines of larchlap panelling, like the stockade of a little Englishman's castle. Owning property does funny things to your mind. It can even make you plant a privet hedge.

  Some of these houses are tarted up with leaded windows, or even a mock brass carriage lamp by the front door. It's like folk are saying they aren't on a council estate at all, but really belong up Budby Road, where all the big houses are with their landscaped lawns and wrought iron gates.

  These leaded windows and carriage lamps say you think you're too good for your neighbours. It's like you're expecting the chauffeur to bring the Bentley round to the front door at any moment, except he can't get it past the second-hand caravan parked on the concrete apron where the front garden used to be, and he's worried about scraping the paintwork on the old Mini Cooper with its wheels off that's been standing in the driveway for the past eight years. The servants just don't put things away properly, do they?

  But the most common decoration on the front of these houses is the satellite dish. Your kids can do without clothes, you can go without proper food for weeks, and you can fail to pay the rent, your Council Tax or your court fines. But you've got to have the satellite dish. It's still number one on the list of essentials items for the nub end of the 1990s.

  These things tell me what's wrong with the world. It's like all the money's going to Rupert Murdoch, who already has more than enough, thank you very much. And there are lots more Rupert Murdochs around, only they don't make such a shout about it. I read the figures once. They were printed in The Sun, with a diagram. They said the income of the top tenth of society grew by over fifty per cent in the 1980s and 90s, but the income of the bottom tenth actually fell by eighteen per cent. Well, these are the bottom tenth, right here. You don't have to look any further.

  Now, they tell us that one child in three lives in a poor household, the highest rate of any European country. A lot of these kids are suffering ill health and stunted growth because of their lousy diet. Well, the European Union has done one thing for us anyway - it's helped us to compare ourselves to others and see what a pathetic state we're in.

  Sometimes it feels like there's a mountain to climb. Usually it's on days like these that the mountain seems highest. Why don't I just forget about all this and concentrate on lining my own pocket like everyone else is doing? Why don't I sell up and move to somewhere with warmer rain, like Devon? Well, it's tempting, now and then. Otherwise, I'm going to end up as another daft old sod in a nursing home.

  * * * *

  Dave was with me on my stroll, but as usual he wasn't making with the witty conversation too much. Eventually we reached the end of the estate and turned the corner onto Ollerton Road, at the end of the village's main shopping street.

  It hadn't dawned on me that we'd come out near McDonald's until Dave suddenly began to veer towards the arched entrance as if drawn by a huge, golden magnet.

  "All right, then. Maybe a burger and fries will help me think."

  There are no tattooed waitresses in McDonald's, so I thought Dave's attention might be totally occupied by the food. This turned out to be almost true, but not quite.

  We'd collected what seemed like a huge stack of containers oozing various appetising smells and we were winding our way to a convenient table. This takes a bit of doing, because Dave doesn't fit too easily between tables in these places. He needs a stretch of clear water, like a cruise liner negotiating its way into harbour. While we were doing this, I half noticed four blokes come through the door. I paid a lot more attention when they gathered round us, as if desperately wanting to share our large fries.

  "Are you McClure?" said the one in front.

  First off, I had this lot pegged as a dissatisfied customer and his mates. It happens now and then. Ungrateful lot the punters, sometimes. They find out they've been ripped off, and some jerk tips them my name, so they come looking for a bit of compensation. It's a sad old world. But you see why I need Doncaster Dave on the payroll.

  Yes, these were definitely amateur talent. Local accents, cheap trainers. It's pitiful, really. A few half-hearted bottle fights down the pub on a Saturday night and they all think they're the Terminator. I could have told them they were wrong. The real Terminator was standing just behind me, waiting for a signal.

  "We want a word with you, McClure."

  This bloke doing the talking, now. He was trying to look hard, but he was dressed in a leather jacket and chains. He had three days of stubble - and he was even wearing shades, for God's sake, as if Medensworth had been transplanted to California suddenly. If you have to dress up to look hard, then you're not hard at all really, just fashion conscious.

  "You want a word? How about 'piss off'," I said, trying out the theory. "No, sorry - that's two words, isn't it?"

  "Save the clever shit. Just put the stuff down and come outside where we can talk private, like."

  "Sorry, but I can't talk on an empty stomach. So you might as well piss off anyway."

  He was starting to get annoyed, but I didn't care. At least, not until I noticed that the bloke standing behind him had a noticeable bulge in his jacket pocket. Bulges make me nervous. Somebody can get hurt when there are bulges about, amateur or not. The other two lads had edged their way round so they were near Dave. They were watching him curiously as he dipped into one of the cartons with his fingers and started poking french fries into his mouth.

  "I won't say it again," snarled the bloke with the shades, saying it again. "Outside."
r />   I turned to look at Dave. He looked pretty casual, as if the whole thing had nothing to do with him. He'd keep like that for as long as I stayed relaxed.

  Dave picks things up like a dog does. I don't mean sticks and slippers and things, but atmospheres and intentions. Just like a good dog can sense you're upset, Donc knows when I'm worried, or I'm about to do something risky. Like an Alsatian or a Rottweiler, he recognises danger and reacts accordingly. I hoped his instincts were working properly right now. There are times when you need a Rottweiler instead of a dopey Labrador. In other words, I was about to do something risky.

  "Oh shit," I said. "Hold these a minute."

  I shoved the stack of polystyrene containers at the lad with the shades, and he held his hands out and took them automatically. Then he looked round, puzzled, to see what was happening. That was two mistakes at once, so he was definitely an amateur. I grabbed his jacket, swung him round and hoisted him halfway into the air, straight into his mate with the bulge in his pocket. Fries and burgers went flying everywhere. Shades got a face full of Chicken McNuggets, and a carton of coke exploded and soaked two teenage girls sitting with their mouths open. Meanwhile, Dave had come awake, both hands reaching out deceptively slowly to grab the collars of the other two lads. They stood frozen like rabbits in car headlights as his massive fists closed around their jackets and their heads jerked forward to meet each other with a horrible crack. They both fell face forward on the nearest table, which happened to be empty but for the salt. Trust Dave not to waste any food.

  A moment later we'd got out of the door of McDonald's without even being wished a nice day. Remind me to complain to Ronald some time about the standard of service.

  "Stones?" said Dave as we legged it through the car park and over the back fence.

  "Yeah?"

  "Do you think I should have shown them my trick shot again?"

  I laughed for second or two, breathlessly, as I ran.

  "What do you mean, again? Had you seen them before?"

  "A couple."

  I was amazed at this. With Dave's memory, it would have to be in the last twenty-four hours for him to remember a face.