Two Faced (Harry Tyler Book 2)

by Garry Bushell

  ‘Yahoo, it’s me.’ A girl’s voice rang out.

  Harry looked over to see an attractive teenager dressed like a refugee from the Isle of Wight Festival: long floral dress, silver boots, huge hooped earrings, round John Lennon specs, an abundance of beads and wrists covered in cheap bracelets. She had a funny upturned nose and her freckled face peered out through a ruffled haystack of curling auburn hair.

  ‘Eggy.’ Potman grinned. ‘Say hello to Harry Tyler, he’s one of us. H, meet the company secretary.’

  Harry went to peck her cheek and the girl kissed him full on the lips, slipping a tongue mischievously into his mouth. That surprised him.

  Harry drew back and took a better look at her. Beneath the flower-child rags, Eggy was a fit bird. She had dancing doe eyes, a playful smile and two small, pert breasts with nipples that stood proudly to attention under her dress. She wore no bra.

  Potman laughed. ‘Come on H, I’ll show you the rest.’

  The rest I would like to see, Harry thought, but he kept that to himself as the big man gave him a guided tour of his empire. The Angels’ office was the shocker. It made Ronnie Clavin’s look organised. The carpet was filthy with spilt alcohol, blood, dog-ends and gear burns. Fungus was growing on the yellow walls. The bin had long overflowed. Dozens of empty beer bottles lay around it like corpses on a battlefield. The desk was lined with half-empty takeaway containers.

  Harry tried to hide his revulsion.

  ‘If you think this is bad, son,’ Potman said solemnly, ‘don’t use the khazi.’

  After work, Harry joined the Angels in their local, the Red House. He had expected to find a pub full of head-banging rockers with more dandruff than brain cells but it was one of those real ale places with a mixed if mainly masculine clientele. Only a jukebox packed with boisterous rock anthems betrayed a less orthodox presence. Harry skimmed through the titles: ‘Up Around The Bend’ – Creedence Clearwater Revival; ‘Radar Love’ – Golden Earring; ‘Sylvia’ – Focus; ‘Centerfold’ – J. Geils Band; ‘Crazy Train’ – Ozzy Osbourne; ‘Bomber’ – Motörhead; ‘The Joker’ – Steve Miller; ‘The Trooper’ – Iron Maiden; ‘Jump’ – Van Halen; ‘Born To Be Wild’ – Steppenwolf; ‘Smoke On The Water’ – Deep Purple; ‘Jailbreak’ and ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ – Thin Lizzy; ‘In A Broken Dream’ – Python Lee Jackson; ‘Living After Midnight’– Judas Priest; ‘Wishing Well’– Free; ‘Wheels Of Steel’ – Saxon; ‘Voodoo Chile’ – Jimi Hendrix; ‘Tumbling Dice’ – The Rolling Stones; ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Outlaw’ – Rose Tattoo; ‘Paranoid’ – Black Sabbath; ‘Urban Guerrilla’– Hawkwind; ‘The Boston Tea Party’– Sensational Alex Harvey Band; about ten Elvis hits; and bang in the middle, sticking out like a porn star’s appendage, ‘Deck Of Cards’ by Wink Martindale.

  It was ten years since punk but, aside from ‘Golden Brown’ by The Stranglers, the new wave had yet to gob and maul its way into this god-forsaken corner of Middlesex. The most recent song on there was ‘Kayleigh’ by Marillion.

  ‘Nothing tickle your fancy, Harry?’ Noodles asked.

  ‘I’m more Millican and Nesbitt, me, mate,’ he lied with a smile. ‘No, a bit of Paul Weller would have done. I’m not a rocker, mate. Don’t mind Lizzy, but some of their lyrics were a bit daft. I mean, “Tonight there’s gonna be a jailbreak, somewhere in this town”; thanks boys, I wonder where that could be. Possibly the JAIL?’

  ‘Don’t let Potman hear you say that.’

  ‘Eh?’

  The big man loomed up behind him, half of a newspaper in his hand.

  ‘Sort the bog paper out in that khazi, Eric,’ he boomed at the old fella behind the bar. ‘I’ve just lost Jonathan King’s Bizarre column wiping me arse.’

  ‘Best use for it,’ muttered the barman.

  Noodles smiled wanly. ‘Here, show Harry yer Phil Lynott,’ he said.

  Potman rolled up his left sleeve to reveal a tattooed portrait of the Lizzy singer across his biceps.

  ‘Class,’ Harry said. He studied Potman’s arm for some terrible indication of adolescent foolishness, like ‘Bay City Rollers Forever’ but, apart from a baffling reference to Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts, all he could see was a menagerie of swallows, eagles, mad dogs, axe-wielding vikings and the like.

  ‘Now show him Adolf,’ said Noodles with a grin.

  Ah, now this surely was a tattoo from the teenage regrets section of his collection.

  ‘Not in here,’ Potman grunted. There were two pints of Guinness and cider waiting for him and he downed the first in one gulp.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘According to the Sun …’

  ‘Scabs!’ shouted Noodles.

  ‘Bollocks, no, listen. According to this, after wearing their pants for a day, the French turn them inside out and put ’em back on. They wear them inside out.’

  ‘The dirty bastards,’ said Harry. ‘You mean, they don’t wear them for a week and then chuck ’em in the washing like we do?’

  Potman grinned. ‘Where do you hide your money to keep it safe in a French hotel?’ he asked.

  Harry knew the gag but played along.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Under the soap.’

  Harry smiled.

  ‘You’re from over East, aren’t you Harry?’ asked Noodles, who was quietly rolling a spliff. ‘Ian Dury country.’

  ‘Sure am.’

  ‘What did your father do to earn a crust?’

  ‘Docker.’

  ‘A good law-abiding citizen?’

  ‘No, mate, I said docker, not doctor.’

  All three laughed.

  ‘This a private party?’ asked Eggy, who had materialised alongside them. ‘Get us some pop, Pops,’ she said to Noodles.

  Harry tried not to react as Eggy sat beside him and shuffled up so close their hips could have been magnetised.

  ‘You shouldn’t read that paper,’ she scolded Potman.

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘I’ve been to Wapping.’

  ‘Hanging out with all the silly Lefties,’ the Angel grunted. ‘Save the whale, ban the bomb, hug a tree, up with poofs and Paks, down with the Union Jack … a bunch of soap-dodging, 2CV-driving layabouts. I’d roll over the lot of ’em in a Panzer.’

  ‘I can see why you’ve got a Hitler tattoo, mate,’ Harry grinned.

  ‘No, it’s not political,’ Potman began. ‘It’s just …’

  ‘Do you fancy coming to the pictures tonight, Harry?’ Eggy interrupted, pressing into him even tighter. ‘Instead of hanging out here with Southall’s answer to the Oxford Union?’

  ‘I’d love to, angel face, but we’ve got business here.’

  ‘Your loss.’

  Eggy moved away sulkily and when Noodles came back with a vodka and orange she stood up, drained it and waved goodbye.

  ‘See you later?’ Harry said, trying not to sound too interested.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. Depends if anything more exciting happens, like a traffic light failure or a blocked sewer in the High Street. Ciao.’

  And with that she was gone.

  ‘She’s a handful, that girl.’ Potman smiled. ‘I told your Eileen she shouldn’t drop acid while she was pregnant.’

  Noodles just scowled. ‘Ciao,’ he said. ‘Don’t you hate ciao?’

  ‘I could do with some,’ said Harry. ‘Fish and chips, gents, on me?’

  ‘Fuck off,’ growled Potman. ‘You’re helping us out so the grub is on us, and besides we’ve got proper traditional English restaurants round here. What will it be, H, Chinkie or the curry house?’

  It was 11.30pm when they arrived back at the scrapyard. Not drunk, but buzzing nicely on a mix of adrenalin and alcohol. Noodles laid out a fine array of weaponry on his office table: baseball bats, pickaxe handles, machetes, Ninja throwing stars, survival knives and lengths of thick, strong chain.

  ‘Take whichever implement suits you best, my friend,’ he said.

  Then the three holed up in different parts of the yard to wait for the thieves to strike.
Harry sat stooped on the back seat of a doomed Cortina, a baseball bat in his hand. Minutes turned to hours and nothing happened until he heard the side door open to his left. He turned swiftly, his fist in a ball ready to strike. It was Eggy. She pressed a finger to his lips and tucked in beside him.

  They chatted in whispers about everything and nothing. Periodically her left hand brushed the top of Harry’s thigh and he hardened. Eggy noticed, laughed and traced the outline of his erection through his jeans with her fingernail.

  ‘I just went and saw 9½ Weeks,’ she said. ‘I was so turned on in there you could hear me sloshing.’

  ‘You talk like a geezer.’

  There was a note of disapproval in Harry’s voice.

  ‘Do I feel like a geezer?’ Eggy took his right hand and clamped it on her left breast.

  ‘Do you want to?’ he asked hopefully.

  She smiled coquettishly.

  ‘You could get your red wings if you like.’

  ‘Eh?’

  Eggy explained the delightful process by which an Angel earned his wings – by performing oral sex on a menstruating woman.

  ‘Do you mind if I don’t? Not this time at any rate …’

  ‘How about the Queen Mum?’

  Harry looked puzzled. He knew most Cockney rhyming slang, but it took a moment for this disrespectful reference to his favourite Royal to register. He shook his head.

  ‘No, ta.’

  ‘I could toss you off if you like.’

  ‘That will do nicely.’

  ‘Mirror,’ she said, pouting into the rear-view as she unzipped his fly. ‘Signal …’ She released his erection from the constraints of his briefs and grasped the shaft. ‘Manoeuvre …’

  Eric and Geoff Marley came climbing over the scrapyard fence as Harry came over his handkerchief. The brothers separated. Eric, the skinnier man, crouched forward with a torch in his hand and made his way softly towards the Angels’ hut, tools clanking inside his green combat jacket. He paused to admire four mag wheels left nearby to ‘bring the bees to the flowers’. Potman leaped out and slammed a helve straight into his stomach. He doubled up in pain. Then Noodles appeared, looking even more ratlike in the moonlight, and smashed a pole into the back of the terrified thief’s legs. As he went down, the man let out a scream of agony. Geoff Marley heard it and bolted.

  ‘Leave him,’ said Potman. ‘We’ve got this little prat.’

  Harry Tyler was just zipping himself up when he heard the yell. He leaped out of the Cortina and sprinted over to the hut in time to watch the bulky Hell’s Angel pulling his prey across the yard by his hair. Noodles produced a pair of pliers from his army surplus coat. With Potman holding Eric down, Noodles stuck the pliers straight on to the ring finger of the thief’s right hand and closed them tight, crushing the bone. Eric Marley let out an even more tortured scream.

  Harry realised then and there that they were going to kill Marley and made an instant decision. He needed to get over the fence and out of the yard so he could phone the Feds without either the Angels or Eggy seeing him. That way, they would assume that Geoff Marley had made the call and he wouldn’t blow his cover. He moved as quickly and quietly as he could. Any sense of diplomacy, any idea of mercy, was way ahead of him.

  ‘Right, you tosspot,’ Noodles sneered. ‘You are in a world of shit.’

  ‘Where’s our fucking gear?’ snarled Potman.

  The colour had drained out of Eric Marley’s face.

  ‘What gear? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Noddles drove a screwdriver straight through the palm of Marley’s left hand. There was a crunch of bone. His blood spurted out like juice from a squeezed lemon. Marley seemed to shrivel up like a salted slug.

  Potman leaned forward and said quietly, ‘I’m going to ask you once more, and if I don’t get an answer I will run my blowtorch over your bollocks. Where is our fucking gear?’

  A distinctive smell wafted up from the floor.

  ‘Have you shit yerself, you filthy bastard?’ Potman roared.

  ‘We can’t have people defecaterating in our yard,’ said Noodles.

  ‘Look,’ Eric Marley stuttered. ‘I’ll get it back for you, all of it.’

  ‘Who’s had it?’ said Noodles. ‘We want names.’

  The guy spilled the lot. ‘It was Jack Ritchie, up at Wey Hill behind the Sun and Moon.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Noodles, before hitting him in the face with a claw hammer. Marley passed out.

  ‘That Ritchie’s got some coming,’ said Potman. ‘What shall we do with this little prick?’

  ‘Only one thing for it,’ said Noodles. He turned towards the car shredder. Potman nodded in agreement. ‘Pizza to go,’ he said.

  It took the two men just over four minutes to wrap chain around their victim, who was starting to regain consciousness.

  ‘What are you gonna do to me?’

  ‘Thanks for the info, chum,’ said Noodles. ‘But now it’s pizza time. You, my friend, could very well be a Hawaiian. I’ll see if I can dig out a tin of pineapples.’

  ‘What do you mean? What’s happening?’

  Noodles pointed to Potman, who was walking up the yard.

  ‘My amigo is going to fetch his truck, then he will run you over six or seven times. Then I am going to put your miserable remains through the shredder. In the morning all that will be left of you, my friend, is a pint and a half of non-vintage claret on the ground. We’ll give you the last rites with a hose.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, no …’

  ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if you steal from Hell’s Angels, your arse will get bust.’

  Potman turned the key in the ignition just as the police arrived.

  The Friday after the Angels were lifted, Harry bumped into Marlene Clavin accidentally on purpose at Charlton Conservative Club, and told her a tall story about how he had evaded the Old Bill when they had swooped, knowing that it would play well with Ronnie. He said he would ‘duck his nut’ in Torquay for a fortnight while the fuss blew over. Marlene purred sympathy and, eyelids fluttering, she dropped heavy hints about how much she loved that part of Devon herself, especially Cockington. Opportunity was knocking, but Harry blanked it. Although his time with Ronnie was coming to an end, he had no wish to abuse their relationship. He had too much respect for the man to do that. He mumbled something about helping Alfie out at Valley Metals when he got back until Ronnie got out of hospital, but rang her ten days later to say that he had landed a job in an Exeter nightclub and wouldn’t be back for a while.

  Throughout his long undercover initiation period, Harry Tyler had been booking on and off duty through his controller, a gruff Scot called Bobby McCall. The money that he had been earning ‘off the cards’ was paid into the police covert operations branch. It was then surrendered for tax purposes against his police wages. ‘I declared all of it too,’ he told his second wife Kara years later. ‘What a mug.’ His work experience was a complete success. He had established Harry Tyler as an identity, and set himself up with names to drop and references that could be easily checked out. Scores of people in the London underworld who had come to Ronnie’s yard with their lorry-loads now knew Harry’s face, if not his name. For years to come, he was able to casually slip ‘I know Noodles and Potman …’ or ‘I used to work on the scrap down at Ronnie’s …’ into conversations, and find that these magic words unlocked barriers; although no UC job he ever had after this would feel so goddamn easy.

  October 25, 1986. Harry had met Ronnie Clavin in Gambadella’s caff near the Royal Standard at Blackheath. Ronnie was on crutches and still heavily bandaged but he was in good spirits. They had been there long enough to drain two teas. Ronnie called over to the waitress.

  ‘How long have you worked here, luv?’

  ‘Three weeks.’

  ‘Well, it weren’t you who took our order then.’

  Harry grinned.

  ‘Did you have a laugh with Potman?’

  ‘Yeah, R
on. Proper.’ He paused. ‘Why is he called Potman? I meant to ask him but it all got a bit lively. Did he work in a pub?’

  ‘Did he bollocks. You should have asked him to show you round the greenhouse, son. He grows his own. Pot plants everywhere. He must keep half of West London on puff.’

  ‘You know, I never thought of that. So why Noodles then, some Far East connection? Opium, smack, lady-boys?’

  ‘No mate, he just likes Pot Noodles. There was a time they were all he’d eat, morning noon and night.’

  ‘And where does Eggy fit into the equation?’

  ‘She is Noodle’s daughter.’

  ‘Fuck. How old is she then?’

  ‘Sixteen, I believe.’

  Harry signed with relief.

  ‘Yeah, it was her birthday yesterday.’

  ‘Shit.’ A pause. ‘Why is she called Eggy?’

  ‘Because she’s over easy, and everyone has had a dip, but I never told you that.’

  ‘OK, last question: what was the deal with Potman and his Hitler tattoo?’

  ‘Oh, Adolf,’ Ron chuckled. ‘Well, y’see, he’s got this big Adolf on his left thigh, see, and Hitler’s arm is tattooed on his cock, so every time he gets a perk on Adolf gives the old siegheil salute.’

  ‘No! Fuck …’ Harry was lost for words.

  ‘I took him to see the strippers down the Fort Tavern in Plumstead once and it was like Springtime For Hitler going on in his pants. And that ’appens every time someone orders pizza to go. He’s invaded a few hinterlands an’ all.’

  ‘I’m quite relieved I never saw it. Here, I thought Hitler only had one ball.’

  ‘Old wives’ tale, boy.’

  ‘Maybe, mate,’ Harry smiled. ‘But he dropped a bollock when he invaded Russia.’

  Both men laughed as the waitress turned up with their breakfast. Harry had a sausage roll, Ronnie a mountain of cholesterol: two fried eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato, beans and chips, which he covered liberally with brown sauce.

  ‘So tell me what happened after that night in Southall, mate,’ said Harry. ‘’Cos as soon as the Filth turned up I had it on me toes and I ain’t heard a word about them since.’