by Jay Stringer
***
“Ground control to Major Tom.”
I lifted my head of the car window. I’d been staring at the scenery as we drove, watching it fly past out of view. Somewhere between Wolverhampton and Bloxwhich I’d drifted off into another world.
I turned to smile at Becker, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove.
He took his eyes off the road long enough to shoot me a look, “You okay?”
I shrugged and looked back out of the window. His car was very new and very blue, and something about that was annoying me. I decided maybe it was the smell. I’d never liked the smell of new.
Or maybe it was his CD player. He was offending me with some jazz shite.
Every few months he’d go through a new phase, trying to prove that he was a middle class white man with a brain. He’d buy some new CDs and learn a few new recipes. A few times he’d dragged me along to some foreign film festivals at the Electric Cinema in the city.
So far he had missed the point of;
Alternative country.
Jazz.
Blues.
Palestinian food.
Italian cinema.
When he’d picked me up that morning he’d asked if I’d ever seen a film called Sholay and I didn’t think the world was ready for his Bollywood phase. He worked so hard at being something that he wasn’t.
Maybe that’s why we were best friends.
“Laura thinks she might be pregnant,” I looked over at him, watching his eyes jump a little. “She told me last night. She’s missed her period.”
“Is she sure? Maybe she’s just-”
“Don’t go there.”
He smiled. “You should be happy, it’s exciting, yeah?”
I turned back to the window. There were smudge marks on the glass from my hair, and just for a moment it gave the car some character.
“You’re not him, you know.” Becker’s eyes were on the road but his voice was on my past. “You don’t have to be your father.”
I smiled thinly and nodded.
I couldn’t think of anything in the world I was less suited for than fatherhood. And, as we pulled onto Fishley Farm, I couldn’t think of anywhere in the world I less wanted to be.
***
I’d gotten to the office early that morning to catch up on paperwork and get first dibs on the newspaper crossword. The in-tray on my desk was a losing battle against official documents that I didn’t really understand, but I wasn’t going to ask for help.
I sat and logged onto the intranet.
The force had attempted to modernize. All paperwork to the Crown Prosecution Service could be handled electronically through a central system. To prove what a token gesture it was, however, the CPS would only handle the information during normal office hours. The guys in uniform usually got shit on; they had to submit the paperwork the old fashioned way out of hours. In our office we had an agreement that whoever was in first would clean up any problems and submit pending files.
Lately, I was always first in.
I sat with my coffee and loaded up the system, looking through the four files that had been left for me to submit. Interviews, evidence, statements. All the fun of the fair. Three messages came through the intranet from Becker, but I ignored them. I turned instead to the messages from the people who shared the CID office with me. Each one was addressed to me with two initials: P.D.
Positive.
Discrimination.
It was a dirty hangover from my days in uniform, when the other guys in the locker room would call me PC PD. A whole culture in the force that said the only reason I had the job was my ethnicity.
Then I opened Becker’s messages. I saw the subject, Fishley Farm, and knew the only reason he was trying to contact me was my ethnicity.
***
I was already waiting for him in the car park when he pulled up, stood in a fine drizzle of rain that felt refreshing that early in the morning. I noticed both the newness and the blueness of his car, and formed an instant dislike.
The other cops who shared my office were huddled in their cars, sucking down one last cigarette before the working day. Our boss was a smoking Nazi, and it was hard to get away with sneaky breaks. They all tried to look like they were not staring at me as I climbed into Becker’s car.
“You got my messages, then?”
“Yup.”
“You’ve been ignoring my phone calls.”
“Yup.”
He nodded, more to himself than me, and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel for a moment, before putting the car in gear and driving us away from the nicotine gallery.
“You read what I put in the message then, I mean, you know what it’s about?”
“You want me to be your token gypsy.”
He drummed his fingers in the wheel again.
I knew this wasn’t his idea. He was not the kind of asshole to cash in on my ethnicity. His boss in the Walsall office, Tony Leek, was exactly that kind of asshole. He would have seen a problem at a traveler camp and decided to call on the force’s token Roma officer.
Fishley Farm was not a Roma camp.
Tony Leek didn’t care about the difference. He didn’t use words like Roma, Romanichal or Irish Traveler. He didn’t even know where the term Gypsy came from. All he knew was that he didn’t like any of us. He was the least of my problems, though.
A Gypsy cop?
I was a traitor. I was the last person anyone at that camp was going to want to see. I leaned my head on the window and watched the scenery drift by. At some point I zoned out.
***
Fishley Farm took its name from the family business that had owned the land until the 1970s. Most of the land was taken up by a modern housing estate, a bland grid of bricks and plaster that had been thrown up a few years before.
Beside the housing estate, pushed into the margins of the old farm boundaries, was the traveler camp.
Becker pulled onto the estate and followed the road as it weaved its way through the maze of houses and side streets. I noticed a theme in the street names as we passed: Gladstone, Pitt, Thatcher. We were diving along Churchill Road. Our arrival sparked the locals into life. Teenagers fell in behind us on their bikes and adults stepped out of their front doors to watch us pass.
Long before we reached our destination I could smell what had happened; the clinging scent of smoke wrapped up in burned plaster and soggy timber.
I knew the smells well.
I’d been burned out of more than one home when I was young.
At the far end of Churchill Road we turned into a cul-de-sac that was named, presumably, after John Major. The tarmac was slick with water but the fire engine was long gone. Two marked police cars were parked either side of the road, and the occupants nodded at us as we drove passed, before coming to a stop in front of the house at the end of the row.
As with the other houses on the estate, this one was built by math. It was square and dull, with symmetrical windows and white plastic doors. When I was young, my father had told me he hated houses because they were prisons. Unmovable monuments made of bricks and mortar. These days it seems like we build houses that look like caravans and caravans that look like houses.
Peaking out above the garden fence was the burned remains of a housing extension. The charred timber beams of the roof were still damp with water. Becker nodded at the burned remains as we climbed out the car, “What you reckon? Library? Science lab? Homeless shelter?”
I smiled and mimed playing pool, “Living the dream. When did the fire happen?”
“Last night.” He mimed a phone call with his thumb and little finger, “All those calls you ignored? That was while the fire crew were here.”
As we walked down the short driveway the homeowner came out to greet us. He was just under six feet tall, with thick skin and a shaved head. He had one of those bellies that English dads feel the need to show off to the world when it’s sunny, but today it was hidden away under a s
tretched Chelsea football shirt.
110 miles from Chelsea.
He offered Becker his hand for a shake and waited for introductions. Becker stumbled then caught up with the moment, “Tom Bennett, this is a colleague of mine, DI Miller.”
Out of habit I showed him my warrant card. My first name caught his eye straight away and he raised his eyebrow, “Quite a name, how do you pronounce that?”
“Eoin.”
“Right, that Irish?”
I shrugged, I wanted to say, does it matter?
His accent was a faded, but there was enough of London in the middle of his words that I stopped being offended by his Chelsea shirt.
Becker filled the silence, “DI Miller’s going to help with the investigation, I thought I’d show him the scene first.”
Bennett nodded and waved at the open front door.
“After you, but you already know who done it. I told you last night.”
We walked through the house in silence. It didn’t matter that Bennett wasn’t leading the way, because it was like every other house of its kind. The front door opened onto the hallway, a door on our left would open onto the living room, and the stairs to our right would lead up to three, maybe four, pastel coloured bedrooms. At the rear of the hallway was a modern fitted kitchen, and a flimsy red wooden door opened out onto the back patio.
The concrete slabs were still dark with absorbed water and muddy boot prints showed where the firemen had gone to work. The extension was still warm, a blackened timber frame filled in with plaster. There were lumps of solid back plastic running around the timber, melted into a shriveled trail. I guessed that the extension hadn’t been finished, with sheets of black plastic covering the spaces that hadn’t been filled in yet.
“How far from finishing were you?”
Bennett paused, wondering how I’d known, then said, “About halfway done.”
“Now it’s well done,” Becker smirked before realizing what he’d said, then rambled to cover it, “So they climbed over this wall here, lit it and climbed back?”
Bennett nodded again. “Like I said last night, yeah.”
I looked at the garden fence. It would have been difficult but not impossible. I’d gotten over higher walls than that when I was garden hopping with my brother. I heard a laugh, and looked up to the first floor window where a child was watching us. Bennett smiled up at his son then waved him away.
“How long you lived here?”
Bennett scratched his chin and shrugged, “About five years. Moved in just before Matty was born.”
“And has anything like this happened before?”
“They torched my car a while back, you know that? Brand new Alfa Romeo, it was. Loved that fucking car. Fucking Gypos.”
“Did you see them?”
“No, didn’t need to. Heard them.”
“Heard them climb over?”
“No, heard them running back to their bit, through the gap in the fence.” I turned back to look at the garden fence, but Bennett shook his head, “Not that one. I’ll show you.”
He lead us back through the house and up the driveway. Across the road, in a gap between two houses, I could see a high metal fence. We walked over to it, and it became more imposing the closer we got. The original fence was made of thin strips of grey metal, rising up about ten or twelve feet off the ground. Sheets of metal had been bolted over that frame, keeping the world beyond hidden from view.
Ten feet further down, where the fence ran behind the garden of another house, the metal had been pulled back, creating a gap to the other side.
“Is there any reason they’d target you? I mean, it would be quicker to burn one of these houses, wouldn’t it?”
“What reason do you want? They’re scum. Don’t pay taxes, don’t have jobs. They just sit there and expect to be treated like the rest of us.”
Becker nodded, a sympathetic touch. “Must be tough. Don’t know how you stick it out, to be honest, I think I’d move away.”
Bennett looked at Becker like he was insane.
“Move? And give in to them? No way, mate. This is our home. I bought this house, and I work 6 days a week to pay the bloody mortgage, which is more than they do.”
We both nodded our thanks and Bennett turned back towards his house. He was still talking as he walked away, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I ran my fingers over the tear in the metal, marveling at the sheer force of will it would have taken to break through.
“We need to put a lid on this one quick,” Becker said. “Once the media comes sniffing? Shit, it’s stoked enough as it is.”
“The camp’s under an eviction notice, right?”
“Yeah. The council haven’t issued the 28 day notice yet because there’s an appeal, but they’ve been told the land isn’t theirs and to prepare to leave.” He made to turn away. “I’ll go get the car, we’ll drive round to the camp.”
“Yeah, you do that.”
I climbed trough the hole in the fence.
***
The other side of the fence was covered in graffiti. At the top of the fence was a coil if barbed wire, which hadn’t been visible from the other side.
On the other side, the fence had said security.
On this side it said, Fuck Off.
The land this side was muddy and uneven. There were signs that the ground beneath me had once been concreted over, but it was smashed and broken, weeds climbing through towards my feet. To my left was a large patch of land that looked like it had once been an allotment, providing the camp with vegetables and berries, but the plants looked like they’d been trampled into the ground and taken over by more weeds.
In front of me was the camp. A loose grid of caravans squashed into a small corner of the old farm land. Each one had a small yard, with low picket fences, and wooden extensions built on to them to provide extra rooms. People were stood in the doorway of every caravan, staring at me, willing me back through the gap in the fence.
I smiled and nodded at them, and started walking deeper into the camp, through the maze of caravans and cars. I figured I didn’t need to look for the man in charge, he’d come looking for me.
The ground got better the further into the camp I walked. The concrete had been left intact and it ran alongside rectangular sections of grass which had washing lines and children’s toys.
The children ran from all around to stare at me, but they kept a distance of around ten feet, forming a circle around me. I hadn’t expected to see any Roma at the camp, but I saw an old man leaning on the gateway to a caravan’s front yard. He had the dark looks of a Cale or Romanichal, and he was eyeing me with contempt.
“Rom?” He said as I drew near. I nodded. He eyed my suit and took a guess at my job. “Bawlo?” Pig. I nodded and he spat in my face.
The children parted to allow a lean and wiry man to walk through. He stepped in close to me and squinted, “I’d say you’re here about the fire?” He had the Irish tilt to his words of someone who had never set foot in Ireland.
“I am, yes.”
Up close he looked to be around the same age as me, but he carried himself like the burdens of the world were bearing down on him. He walked like a man twenty years older.
He looked over my shoulder, back toward the fence, “Other cops come in through the front, with back up.” He smiled as his focus came back to me. “Pretty brave coming in that way on your own.”
“I’ve been in a fair few camps in my time.”
“You’re that gypsy cop I heard about, aren’t ya? The one they wheel out in the local press whenever they want to get away with shitting on a minority group?”
I didn’t know how to answer that, so I just said, “Yes.”
He laughed and offered his hand for a firm shake, “Michael,” he said, “Michael Shannon, my father settled this place. Come on inside, I’ll get you a coffee and we’ll get your face cleaned up.”
***
“This was all ours, once.” Shannon pass
ed me a coffee and settled onto the sofa opposite mine.
His caravan was at the centre of the camp, and was more like a chalet. It was too large to be towed by a car, and had three extensions built into it. The inside was decorated like any other home, pictures, furniture, a fireplace. There was a collection of children’s toys in a pile by the TV, but there were no other signs of a child. Come to think of it, I couldn’t see any signs of a woman either.
“He bought the land from the old farm. All of it. Got planning permission for this place, “ he waved at the walls around him, “and a few of the others around us, then more people came.”
“More Irish?”
“More everything. Yours, mine. A few people who just fancied the lifestyle, burned out hippies who’d taken too many drugs. The whole thing grew.”
“What happened?”
He shook his head and pointed at me, more out of humor than anything else, “You know how it goes. The council wanted us off, wanted the land for themselves. They tried all the tricks, they changed the town’s borders to fall down the middle of the land, they reclassified it as greenbelt, we had homes torched by vandals in masks, all the usual. But we fought them each time, in the courts, like, with suits and ties.”
“That’s the way to do it.”
“That’s what my dad said. Every year he’d get a new hotshot solicitor, someone who wanted column inches, and every year we’d win a few and lose a few. I can tell you, it was taking years off my old man’s life, but he wouldn’t quit.”
“What happened?”
He took a long time to answer. He sat sipping at his coffee and I saw his jaw clenching through his cheeks. When he did answer, it was with a voice that had fought against emotion, “Planning permission. They got us on planning permission. After 30 years of fighting, they finally took a look at all the original paperwork.”
“You said you had planning permission though?”
“Aye. For this house, and for ten others, we did. But all the other settlers who came? Not a chance. There were too many of them too soon and, well, I guess we didn’t think of it.” He paused again, choked up. “They came in with bulldozers and tractors, they tore through most of the camp, wiped it out. Then they put up that fence over there, make sure we knew our place.”