by Rod Glenn
“I’m four,” she said matter-of-factly.
Feigning astonishment, he said, “Wow, I woulda thought you were at least five!”
She offered him a thin smile, but it was brief and followed by a shrug that said, ‘yeah, typical adult thing to say’. She kicked her small legs off the ground to resume the swing motion and her gaze returned to the stream.
“Yeah, Haley weren’t exactly planned,” Lisa said awkwardly, almost apologetically. “But she’s me little angel.”
“Well, she’s got her mother’s looks, that’s for sure,” Han replied, with a flicker of a glint in his eye.
“Pretty smooth, Mister …Whitman wasn’t it?”
“Call me Han.”
“And what should you call me?” She gave her daughter’s back another gentle push then turned back to Han with a teasing smile brightening her fair complexion.
Her playful expression was infectious; he returned the smile effortlessly. “Why don’t you be my Princess Lisa?”
She laughed at that, throwing her head back to expose more of the slender angle of her neck. Han was pleasantly surprised by how glowing and alive it made her look, despite her gaunt features. The short exchange had allowed him to move closer to the young woman, but as he ventured to gently touch her arm, Haley jumped down from the swing and squeezed in between them with a protective scowl on her face.
He backed off immediately, apologising to both mother and daughter.
“Haley, be nice, angel,” Lisa said with an affectionate firmness. “It’s okay, Han. Haley’s just a little over protective sometimes.”
The rest of the day was spent leisurely finding his way around the village and surrounding fields and woodland. He made a point of visiting each of the shops. His first stop was Priestly’s to buy condoms, just to see if he could get a reaction out of the mid forties, prim looking bespectacled man behind the counter (a little positive thinking for Princess Lisa might have constituted a second reason). He was disappointed to receive only a polite ‘good day to you’ for his trouble from Mister Priestly himself, who then calmly went back to reading a well-thumbed and faded copy of Reader’s Digest. Han couldn’t make out the year, but it had illustrated cats on the cover that made it look vintage.
Crossing over Main Street, he then entered the Co-op to buy a newspaper, but was rather surprised that they didn’t stock any. A husband and wife (young enough to be his daughter) were running the show there. He, Duncan Fairbank, seemed like the rugged outdoors type, but not far off being sent to pasture, but the wife, Loretta, was all smiles, with a look of Olivia Newton John about her (pre Grease badgirl unfortunately, but still very easy on the eye). As he was leaving, a very pretty blonde in her late teens almost bumped straight into him, saying, “Sorry I’m late, Mister Fairbank – oop! Sorry, sir!” She was flushed from running and clutching a purple bag protectively to her chest. She offered a melting-heart apologetic smile and stepped to the side.
Returning the smile, he said, “No worries, hun.” His eyes only stayed on her for a moment, but it was enough to take in her Barbie-like frame, tight shorts over long slender and tanned legs, and a warm, intelligent face. Sandys and Barbies, he thought with mild amusement.
“No problem, Mand,” Duncan replied, ignoring the near collision.
His next stop was the Post Office to buy a notepad from a stork-like older gent with a nervous twitch. The stumpy wife, with an acute dodgy hip, appeared from nowhere as soon as she heard a stranger’s voice.
She was quick to introduce herself as Agatha (but you can call me ‘Aggie’) Smith, and, as an afterthought, waved a curt hand towards her husband, Leonard (or ‘Lenny’, presumably only when he was in favour, which was probably not that often). The husband offered what was somewhere between a scowl and a forced smile, which Han imagined as a plea. K-kill me …
Outside the Owen and Momma Lift Post Office, he paused, one foot on the curb. A dusty green Land Rover, with Bryce & Son stencilled on the hardtop in faded white lettering, pulled up to the intersection. It slowed, before swinging out onto Main Street, giving Han a brief glimpse of a big bear of a man with a wide spade-like face sporting a deep frown.
Crossing over Bell Lane, he looked through the window at Merlin’s Meats, but found neither an excuse nor the inclination to enter. The proprietors seemed to be a couple, based on a few simple observations; they were both fat, with similar glazed expressions and open, toothy grins, and both wore matching cords and woolly jumpers under blood-stained aprons.
It was clearly a local shop, for local people, he mused. He released a mock shiver and vowed never to buy anything from them. There were a few oddballs in the village, but gold medals had to go to the Merlins, aka Edward and Tubbs.
His final stop was Little Baker’s, and what was a huge contrast to the demon butchers of Main Street next door. The aroma of freshly baked bread aroused his nose and taste buds even as the bell tinkled to announce his entrance. As he bought a sandwich, he discovered that Simon and Kim Little seemed almost normal for Haydon. They were friendly, but not overbearing and kept a beautifully clean – if a little chintzy – shop. They were both in their forties, a little haggard looking, but, at least on the surface, happy enough with their lot in life.
Strolling back along Main Street, he decided to eat his lunch in the grounds of St. Bart’s. The graveyard and gardens were on the unkempt side, but were pleasant enough, bordered by mossy dry stone walls and faintly scented with lavender. As he sat, a pair of chaffinches sitting high up on a sturdy branch of an oak in the corner of the graveyard, their white shoulder patches glinting in the summer sunshine, chirped to one another. He sat for a time, shaded by the branches of a sycamore, eating the sandwich and contemplating the various characters he had met so far.
It was not long before the resident vicar, obviously smelling the scent of a fresh agnostic quarry, appeared and headed in his direction. This man was at least six foot three, beanpole skinny with a shocking mess of ginger hair, still thick and red, despite his advancing years.
As he approached, the vicar surprised Han by producing a Hamlet cigar and popping it into his mouth. Lighting it with an old Ronson lighter, he nodded as he puffed. “Afternoon to you.”
“Afternoon, Father,” Han said genially after swallowing a bite of his sandwich. “I hope you don’t mind me stopping for a spot of lunch in your lovely gardens.”
“Not at all, friend. I’m not a Father, though, I’m a Reverend – Church of England, you see. Reverend Dunhealy; Morgan. Now, I know that sounds like I should be Catholic, but what can I do?” He grinned, revealing a mouth full of slightly stained and crooked tombstone teeth. “You must be the newcomer I’ve been hearing whispers of about the place.”
Leaning back against the wood slats of the bench, Han grunted a short laugh and shook his head. “Sorry, Reverend. The gossip is far more reliable than your mobile service.”
The reverend frowned and stared at him.
“I mean, news certainly travels fast around here.”
The frown switched to a cheerful nod and he said, “Aye, there’s nothing goes on round here without the whole village getting to know about it.” There was a subtle hint of Scot to his accent.
Han stood up, dropping the empty wrapper into a waste bin beside the bench. He held out a hand. “Han Whitman, Reverend. Pleased to meet you.” The vicar took it without reservation, but, for a split second a look of uncertainty passed across the old man’s face. Han’s strong hand gripped the slender, musical hand of the vicar’s and he offered him a wide, cheery smile.
You’re bugging me.
Several days passed as he began to find his feet in the small village of Haydon. Gradually, he developed a feel for the rhythm of the village and its strange array of occupants. During those early days, occasionally it would rain – heavy summer rain, richly scented with the surrounding woodland, grass and thirsty flora – then a few clear powder-blue sunny days would follow, before returning to chilly showers. Such was the
climate of northern England (well, pretty much all of England for that matter).
He continued the gentle flirting with the skinny young mother, Lisa, who seemed only too flattered with the playful banter from an older, supposedly wiser, pretend writer. Martha persisted in fussing about him at every opportunity in her grinning motherly way, which, once acclimatised to, actually became moderately pleasant and comforting. For the most part, Big Joe left him to his own devices, apart from an occasional chat about life in the village. Tam Wellright would appear every evening at the same time and shuffle across to his same spot at the end of the bar, and, without a word, Big Joe would bring him his usual bottle of stout.
Janet and Loretta Fairbank dropped in one evening for a girly night without the husbands (or bits on the side). They made one or two whispered comments aimed in his direction that frequently ended with a giggle from one or the other. The Haydon cock, Steve Belmont, would never be far away when Janet was around, but Carol managed to keep her distance; Han only spotted her once, standing across the street from the Miller’s while Steve was inside chatting, for a change, to Duncan, rather than Janet. It had been a cool, cloudless evening and a breeze licked the unkempt strands of her dirty blonde hair while she stood rigid by the curb side. A haunted expression was fixed to her rigid features. Unmoving and silent, she clutched a Co-op carrier bag with an unseen bottle inside like it was the secret elixir to everlasting life.
Over the placid shuffle of time, at a pace to relax even the most high-octane, coke-sniffing stockbroker from The City, the residents of Haydon slowly began to get used to his presence. The ever watchful eyes of the nosey-parkers and curtain-twitchers ceased scrutinising him quite so closely. Heads stopped turning as he passed by and skulking whispers moved on to fresh subjects. He waited patiently for guards to slip before commencing with his chores.
The first job was intelligence gathering. That meant surveillance, and that in turn involved breaking out some of his online purchases. All of his more sensitive equipment was stored in a combination-locked titanium luggage case which now lay open on his bed as he sorted through some of its contents.
An assortment of electronic devices had been laid out either side of the open case. There was a large clear plastic bag full of telephone transmitters, which were small white plastic devices that plugged into telephone wall sockets, a chrome high performance wall microphone and two dozen black transmitters, which were about half the size of a pack of playing cards. His high-spec laptop had been set on the desk and was fitted with a state-of-the art radio receiver and recorder that enabled the recording of multiple devices instantaneously, as well as listening while recording.
Every piece of equipment for the experiment had been purchased under his false identity and delivered to a PO Box in York that had also been opened using his false name. With a flair for the dramatic, he had dressed in ill-fitting clothes, a wide-brimmed fedora with a black curly wig beneath, sunglasses and a rather fetching Clark Gable moustache. Amazingly enough, the assistant hadn’t even spared him a second glance. He kept his head slightly angled downwards the whole time and ensured he that he never once glanced towards the security camera. The bounty was retrieved without hitch or incident and, once back to his car, he had laughed all the way back home.
The telephone transmitters ran off the power from the phone line, so they would never need replacing. As a result, once in place, the phone bugging would be effortless. Room bugging was a different matter, as room bugs needed an independent power source. Unless you had the resources and contacts of the CIA, adequate technology was pretty restrictive. After a great deal of internet-based research, he finally chose the small black transmitters for their extended battery life (one thousand hours in standby mode or sixty-two hours of continuous transmission). They were the best his funds could reasonably run to, but the batteries would still need recharging from time to time which would be risky.
The Miller’s was easy enough to bug with a transmitter on the phone (a classic red dial job) and one of the battery transmitters in the bar and lounge and both toilets (suckered to the underneath of tables and hand basins). The Post Office, the Co-op, Merlin’s and Little’s were also pretty straightforward for a man with a degree of patience (mainly battery transmitters concealed under a shelf here or behind some loose panelling there). A crawling sensation at having to buy some homemade sausages from the Edward and Tubbs double act was the only difficulty. A haircut at Moe’s allowed the placement of a transmitter under the barber’s chair and a relaxing rest on the Green gave him time to attach one to the underside of the bench.
Even Belmont’s turned out to be simple enough; he just had to wait for Steve to jump into his old red Ford Capri to nip off somewhere (probably an illicit meeting with Janet) and then he just strolled into his unlocked portacabin and popped a transmitter under his shabby desk. He passed Steve’s salesman, James Falkirk and mechanic, Paul Mason, chatting by the open bonnet of an Austin Princess 2200. Orange bodywork and black roof, just like a car his dad used to drive. He stood and stared at it, a bolt of lightning straight out of the dark recesses of his past. Shaking off the weird feeling, he offered the two men a friendly wave and walked on. Neither gave him a second glance.
The Duck & Bucket proved a little more testing. The landlady, Tess Runckle, turned out to be a robust woman with big bleached-blonde hair and even bigger breasts. She dripped more gold than Mr T and laughed like Eddie Murphy, but she had a cunning eye and, without any subtlety at all, gave Han a look of pure suspicion.
With considerable effort and patience, he did eventually manage to plant a transmitter on the phone (a salmon pink push button trimphone) and another in the lounge, bar and gents. It was the ladies toilets that proved to be something of a Stalingrad, as experienced by the Germans in the winter of 1942.
Sitting beneath dozens of framed photographs and paintings, chiefly around the themes of birds and flowers, Han shifted in his seat and rubbed his bristly chin. He was growing impatient and beginning to convince himself that it was starting to show. Under the watchful eyes of grey wagtails, sparrows, thrushes and kestrels, not to mention Miss Marple-meets-Bet Lynch, he downed his third whiskey then stood up in what he hoped was a casual way. He arched his back and let out a resolute sigh. Offering the nosy landlady a sociable smile, which received a pencil-thin one in return, he turned towards the toilets.
His heart was racing as he approached the two doors, marked subtly with ‘Cocks’ and ‘Hens’. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see that the busybody was no longer in view, but his pulse continued to race nonetheless. A nauseating feeling struck him that seemed at once undeniable. If this were a film, his next action would be known as a story decision. This was a major plot choice that would thrust our faithful protagonist/antagonist further on towards his goal. Suddenly, it was as if everything rested on this one task, which he reminded himself immediately was nonsense. As he reached the doors, he dropped his head down and, taking a deep breath, barged headlong into the ladies. Decision made.
Having positioned himself earlier to keep an eye on both conveniences, he knew already that the hens’ were empty. After a cursory examination, revealing two cubicles and a wash area, he wasted no time in slipping a transmitter behind one of the two wash basins, pressing hard so that the adhesive back on the small device stuck firmly to the ceramic surface. With a sigh of relief, he flashed the back of his hand across his hot forehead. Not wishing to linger, he headed straight for the door, only to be confronted by Ms Runckle herself.
“Lost, Mister Whitman?” Her face was set and her tone accusing.
For a couple of very long seconds, Han was dumbstruck. His eyes were wide and staring and his mouth hung open slightly as fireworks exploded inside his mind. Then, recovering quickly, he said, “Little bit disorientated, I’m afraid.” There was a feigned slur to his words. “Missed dinner … I think that last one went straight to my head.”
“Well, you just make sure it doesn’t happen again. I
wouldn’t want you scaring my girls now.” Her arms remained folded across her abundant bosom and her tone sustained an icy curtness, but she stepped aside and allowed him to pass.
Brushing past her, he received an eye-watering whiff of musky roses that reminded Han of something his Gran used to wear. Something from Avon, if his memory served him correctly. He started to walk away from the toilets, and then instantly realised his error. He spun and strode straight into the gents without so much as a glance in the landlady’s direction.
Tess Runckle continued to watch the closed door to the cocks’ for a moment longer, a look of reservation etched in her face that caused the thick foundation to crease around her pursed lips.
Opportunity Knocks.
A run of mild, overcast days slipped by as he persisted with carefully bugging key areas of the village. The incident with Tess Runckle had shaken him, although he was loath to admit it, but it was a stark reminder of the risks he faced. He re-doubled his concentration and maintained patience and vigilance at all times. His only indulgence, to help pass the time, was to build on his earlier successes with Lisa, maintaining a healthy banter between the two of them. He would make a point to chat to her in the street or in the pub, always flirting, but never over-stepping the mark.
Two blurred and eventful weeks had passed since his arrival when an opportunity arose quite out of the blue.
Han was sat at the bar, sipping his fifth drink of the night, and trying to ignore the smell of mould coming from Tam propping up his usual spot. He was staring at the packets of Scampi Flavour Fries on a board behind the bar, but his mind was running through hundreds of details on the residents, searching out the important ones that could be used to his advantage at a later date. The night had been slow, only a handful of patrons drifting in and out.
Lisa appeared at his side, a couple of empty glasses in her hands. She winked as she scooped up an empty tumbler beside him. She was dressed in a thin white blouse that revealed the lines of her bra underneath and the usual shortest of short skirts.