by Mark Timlin
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Hop in then.’ I turned to Charlie and said, ‘I appreciate this, mate. I owe you one.’
‘One? As I remember we’ve still got the matter of a small outstanding bill from about eighteen months ago.’
‘Didn’t I settle up?’ I said. ‘I’ll have to have a word with my accountant.’
‘Make sure you do,’ said Charlie. We shook hands and Dawn and I climbed into the leather interior of the motor.
It was a real classy set of wheels and the engine started with no more than a hum. I put the gear stick into ‘Drive’ and bounced the Rover over the kerb and on to the road, pointed in the direction of Crown Point.
We arrived at Laura’s hotel and found her in the restaurant finishing her breakfast. We ordered more coffee and discussed our plan of attack.
It sounded simple. Go to Banbury, find the hotel, check in, go to the Festival site and ask around about any groups of travellers who’d been spotted in the area. It sounded simple, but I had the feeling it wasn’t going to be as simple as that. And of course I was right.
Dawn and I waited in reception whilst Laura settled her bill and got her stuff together. Then we went back to the Range Rover. Laura was well impressed with the wheels and we headed back to the flat.
Whilst we’d been out a messenger had called and I found an envelope addressed to me propped up on the radiator in the hall. I opened it to find three artists’ passes and a car park sticker for the Festival, plus a short note from Chris Kennedy-Sloane wishing us luck in our endeavours. Endeavours. I ask you.
I collected our bag, stowed it in the back of the Vogue with Laura’s and we took the South Circular to Shepherd’s Bush, joined the A40, then the motorway, and we were in Banbury before lunch.
The hotel was close to the town centre and we checked in quickly, grabbed a drink and a sandwich in the bar, got directions to the Festival site and set off. It was about a fifteen-minute drive away and we found it easily. There were already quite a number of people around. A motley collection of old and new hippies, skinheads, grungers, folkies and straight-looking ex-grammar school boys and girls. The site was a hive of activity, with riggers putting the finishing touches to a large, enclosed stage, technicians setting up a massive PA, concessionaires getting their stalls set up and about forty people from a northern brewery organising a massive open air bar down one side of the field. I stuck the car park pass on the inside of the windscreen of the Vogue and we were waved through an open five-barred gate by a couple of security guys under the watchful eye of two uniformed coppers. More security stopped us inside at the gate of a storm fence around the Festival site, and we were sent over to a Portakabin to exchange our artists’ passes for plastic bracelets that allowed us access to all areas. It was all very efficient, and when I mentioned the name of Chris Kennedy-Sloane’s management company we were made very welcome.
I drove the Range Rover through the inner security gates and bumped it down the long, sloping field, through more gates and into the backstage car park, where we abandoned the motor and went exploring.
Next to the field where the festival was held was another larger field that had been turned into a temporary tent city for people who wanted to camp at the site, and that was where we started our search for the travellers that Paula and Judith had left Scotland with. There was no sign on the campsite of the convoy that Clare had told me about, but we found half a dozen bikers gathered around a campfire and I collared one of them. At first he regarded me with the suspicion I expected, but when I explained why Dawn, Laura and I were there, his attitude changed. ‘I’ve got three girls of my own at home,’ he said tiredly. ‘What with them and the wife I can never get into the bleedin’ bathroom. This is luxury compared.’ He threw his arm out to encompass the site. ‘If it wasn’t for me bike and weekends away with the boys I think I’d go barmy. The people who run this thing won’t let New Agers on the site,’ he went on. ‘They cause trouble and never want to leave. You can’t blame the organisers I suppose. Not them or the hippies. It’s hard enough for ’em to find anywhere to stay at the best of times. They hang out wherever they can find a spot with no hassle. And they’re few and far between. Your best bet is to go round the local boozers. Some of the landlords won’t let hippies within a mile of the place, others will. Just depends on their attitude. But you won’t have much trouble spotting the ones that will.’ He grinned. ‘Loads of dogs on bits of string tied up out front. Then you’ll just have to buy a few drinks and you’ll be top man. Anyhow, we’ll be about tonight ourselves getting a few pints. I’ll ask around meself. If you have no joy come round again tomorrow. My name’s Ace. Just ask for me. Everyone knows me.’
I took out a twenty-pound note. ‘Have a drink on me tonight, Ace,’ I said.
‘You’re all right, mate.’
‘No. I insist.’
He shrugged. ‘If you like,’ he said. ‘I never say no to a freebie.’ And he took the note with his oil-stained fingers and tucked it away in one of the zippered pockets of his leather jacket. Then he opened another and pulled out a fingernailsized piece of black. ‘If I have a drink on you, you have a smoke on me. It’ll ’elp you relax if you get stressed out.’
‘Cheers, mate,’ I said, and took the proffered dope and put it into my shirt pocket.
‘Be lucky,’ he said. ‘I hope you find your girl.’
‘So do I,’ I replied, and went back to Dawn and Laura and told them what Ace had told me.
So we started our pub crawl search. Ace had been correct. It wasn’t hard to spot which pubs welcomed the hippies and which didn’t. And there were lots of pubs available, dotted around those lazy, twisting Oxfordshire highways and byways. That afternoon I think we hit about twenty. Ace had been right on his other point too. Where we did find gatherings of the New Age, a few quid spent on beer soon found us many friends willing to listen to our story. So willing, in fact, I felt we were being wound up a lot of the time, and as the wad of notes in my pocket rapidly diminished I began to realise how my clients must have felt when I presented them with the bill for expenses on cases I’d worked for them.
By six that evening, Dawn, Laura and I were tired and dispirited. We’d spoken to a hundred or more people but no one recognised our description of the convoy that we were searching for, or admitted any knowledge of Eno, Spider, Max, Mechanic or Noddy. Or if they did, they weren’t telling.
Just past the hour, after another fruitless interrogation, I turned the car in the direction of Banbury again and said, ‘I could do with something to eat.’
‘We should tell the police,’ said Laura from the back seat. ‘This is pointless.’
‘We’ll eat and try again later. People are still arriving. They might not be here yet. If we have no joy by tomorrow we’ll go to Old Bill.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘But on your head be it.’
When wasn’t it? I thought, but said nothing in reply.
We ate dinner at the hotel. Not the happiest meal I’ve ever had, but then I hadn’t expected balloons and crackers. I laid off the vino, and after coffee we went back out to the Range Rover and I aimed it in the direction of the Festival site once more.
We spent the evening driving from pub to pub again. More punters were arriving all the time, but we still had no joy. As the summer sun dropped in the sky and twilight moved in over the countryside, I started to share my ex-wife’s pessimism about the search.
It was almost full dark when I drove into the car park of the Poacher’s Friend, about three miles from Banbury as the crow flies, but about twenty on the tiny lanes I’d been reduced to driving.
The three of us piled out of the motor and we went through the single, half-glassed door marked BAR.
There were half a dozen or so people inside the pub. All men and all local by the looks of it. Country people. Old fashioned, like we’d suddenly stepped back forty years into one of those Ealing films you get on TV on a Saturday afternoon as BBC2’s answer to the sport on the other cha
nnels. There were no festival-goers present and the conversation stopped when we entered and every head turned to look at us.
‘Fancy a quick one?’ I asked my companions.
Even though it wasn’t the friendliest of boozers, they agreed. Dawn went for a gin and tonic, Laura asked for a vodka and orange. I sat them down at a table and went to the bar, ordered their drinks and a half of lager for myself.
‘Evening,’ I said to the bloke standing next to me. A fifty-year-old geezer in a tweedy jacket, heavy cords and boots.
‘Evenin’,’ he replied.
‘Nice weather.’
He nodded and turned back to the bloke standing next to him.
When the barman served the drinks and I’d asked for the ice he’d omitted to put into the gin and the vodka, I paid for them and said, ‘Lots of strangers about.’
He looked me up and down then over to the two women. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘For the Festival?’
‘Damn thing. It gets bigger every year.’
‘But they stay pretty close to the site. Don’t get out this far.’
‘They’d better not.’
‘You don’t like them.’ An understatement, but one I had to make to keep the sparse conversation going.
‘No.’
‘You don’t get anyone camping out close by then?’
‘Why’d you want to know?’ This question came from the geezer with the tweed jacket, who’d obviously been listening and took this opportunity to stick his beak in.
‘Just interested,’ I said.
‘We get ’em,’ he said. ‘But not for long.’
‘You move them on?’
‘That’s right.’
‘All private land round here then?’
‘All except Hangman’s Field,’ said the barman, and Tweed Jacket sent him a warning glare.
‘Hangman’s Field,’ I said. ‘Where’s that?’
The barman didn’t reply and avoided my eye.
‘Why’d you want to know?’ Tweed Jacket repeated his earlier question.
‘I’m looking for some people,’ I said. ‘It’s not important.’ And I picked up the drinks and went over to the table. When I sat down I saw Tweed Jacket and the barman talking, and they both glanced over in our direction.
‘Something’s up,’ I said.
‘What?’ asked Laura.
‘I don’t know yet. Drink up and we’ll move on.’
‘Where to?’
‘Hangman’s Field,’ I said and drank half my half in one gulp.
As we were standing up to go, Tweed Jacket walked over from the bar. ‘Who you looking for exactly?’ he asked.
‘My daughter. And her friend.’
‘What makes you think they be here?’
‘I don’t. I’ve been looking all round the area.’
‘There’s no one here,’ he said emphatically.
I shrugged. ‘Then we’ll keep on looking,’ I said.
‘You do that.’ And he turned on his heel and went back to the bar.
Dawn, Laura and I walked out of the pub and back to the car. I started it and turned it out of the car park. As I did so, a bloke on a push bike pedalled round the corner. I ran down the electric window and called out: ‘Excuse me.’
‘Yes?’
‘Hangman’s Field. Which way?’
He pointed back the way he’d come. ‘Straight on, through the village and out the other side, then it’s about a mile down on the right.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, and turned the Vogue in the direction he’d indicated and accelerated it through the automatic box.
Hangman’s Field wasn’t hard to find. I followed the geezer on the bike’s directions, but before we arrived I saw the reflection of flames on the underside of the trees in the twilight. The field was quite small, entry was by an open gate, and parked inside, around the huge campfire, like a wagon train awaiting the arrival of hostile Apaches, were three cars and an old coach with a dodgy-looking rainbow painted on the side.
‘Bingo,’ I said. ‘The happy campers.’
I pulled the Range Rover up to the gap in the fence and blocked the entrance with it, putting the gear stick into ‘Park’, setting the handbrake and locking the doors after we got out, but leaving the headlights on full beam and switching on both spotlights.
There was no one in sight and the three of us walked up to the coach, the windows of which had been covered by some dark material on the inside, and hammered on the door.
No answer.
I hammered again, and it slid open and a long, skinny punter, aged about thirty, with thick ginger dreadlocks tied back with a ribbon, a ring in his nose and half a dozen in each ear, wearing a ratty sweater and oily jeans, shoved himself through the gap.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Eno?’ I asked politely.
I saw from his eyes in the light from the fire that it was and that he was stoned, but he said, ‘Don’t know him, mate.’
I grabbed a handful of locks, pulled him from the step of the bus and dragged him over to the fire where I forced him down until his barnet was trailing in the embers.
‘One more lie,’ I said, ‘and you’ll get the Michael Jackson memorial medal for the quickest crew cut in history.’
‘Fuck, man,’ he said. ‘Take it easy. What’s going on? This is public land . . .’
‘Wrong,’ I said. ‘I’m not here to move you on. I’m looking for my daughter.’
‘What?’
I pushed his head nearer to the flames so that the heat pinpricked the skin of my hands. ‘Wake up, Eno,’ I said. ‘And say hello to the real world.’
‘Leave him,’ said a voice from behind me. I turned and looked back at the bus, where a young woman with long, black tangled hair, dark lipstick, as much face furniture as Eno, a velvet top that showed off her high, firm breasts and a long skirt that looked like it was made out of granny’s tasselled tablecloth was standing in the coach door.
‘Why?’ I said.
‘Because your daughter’s in here. And her friend. They’re OK.’
‘You know who I am?’
‘I know her,’ she said, nodding her head at Laura. ‘The grand lady.’
I dropped Eno on to the ground where he sat knocking the sparks out of his do and walked back to the coach. ‘Let’s see them then,’ I said.
The woman stood aside and I went in, closely followed by Dawn and Laura. It wasn’t a centre spread from Homes and Gardens inside, but it wasn’t too bad. It was just an old coach with all the seats except the driver’s ripped out and a sort of kitchen/living room built at the front, consisting of an old sofa, two mismatched armchairs, a sink without a soil pipe and a stove attached to a Calorgas tank. The floor was carpeted and lamps were attached to the walls. There was a ghetto blaster and about a hundred tapes in one corner and a pile of old newspapers, books and magazines in another. The back half of the bus was divided off with a curtain that looked like it had come from Marrakesh some time in the late sixties and hadn’t been washed since. The place stank of marijuana and there was an ashtray full of roaches on the floor next to a tray covered in Rizla packets, busted cigarettes and what looked to be about half an ounce of grass.
Curled up asleep in one of the armchairs was a toddler of about three, a baby gurgled in a cot beside the other armchair and a young girl dressed in leggings, a sweatshirt and trainers sat on the sofa. She had long, honey-coloured hair and a very pretty face spoiled only by what looked like a perpetual sneer.
‘Paula McGann I presume,’ I said to her. She didn’t reply, so I looked at Laura who nodded.
‘How did you find us?’ Paula demanded.
I ignored her.
‘And you must be Spider,’ I said to the woman who’d admitted us.
She nodded too.
‘So where’s my daughter?’ I asked.
‘In the back,’ said Spider.
I walked across the floor, pulled aside the curtain and found Judith.
She was plugged into a Walkman and was rocking gently back and forth on one of the four beds that were jammed together in the back of the bus. She didn’t look up when I went in, or when I pulled the headphones out of her ears, just kept on rocking and singing in a breathy voice, ‘Es are good. Es are good.’ I could hear the same words coming out of the tiny loudspeakers in the phones and I switched off the power to the tape machine, but still she kept on singing the same words over and over again.
I pulled her face round into the light and looked into her eyes. Her pupils were tiny, and when I sat down and hugged her I might just as well have not been there.
I stood up and walked back to the front of the bus. ‘What’s she on exactly?’ I said to both Paula and Spider.
‘She’s OK,’ said Paula. ‘She took an E.’ She had a broad yet soft Scottish accent.
‘Oh good,’ I said. ‘That makes it all right then.’
‘What’s an E?’ said Laura.
I couldn’t believe she was that innocent. ‘Ecstasy,’ I explained. ‘MDMA. A synthetic that makes you love everyone. At least that’s the idea. It doesn’t seem to be working too well for Judith. It comes in pill or capsule form. But these suckers don’t come with a government health stamp. They’re homemade and they’re always cut. Sometimes with harmless stuff, but often with speed or acid, or in the case of whatever Judith’s taken, smack. Or at least some kind of downer. Look at her eyes.’
Laura sobbed and pushed through the curtain where I heard her croon to Judith who just kept on singing along to the music in her head.
‘They’re OK,’ said Paula. ‘Good kit. She’ll be all right in the morning.’
‘She’d better be,’ I said. ‘Or someone round here is dead.’ I looked pointedly at Spider as I said it, and Eno came through the door, his dreadlocks looking a little tattier than they had before and his face bright red from the fire.
‘There was no need for all that violence,’ he said. His speech was a little slurred and I guessed it was him that had been at the puff.
‘I ain’t started yet, son,’ I replied. ‘’Specially if Judith doesn’t come back from whatever planet you’ve sent her to.’