Highbridge

by Phil Redmond

  The current Head of the Comp, Julia Erskine was there, as was the Vicar, Deborah Joynston, known as Dilby after her TV counterpart, talking to Lady Winifred Garstang, or Winnie to the locals. Pushing ninety, now a bit unsure on her feet but still sharp as a razor. She seemed to have been around for ever and been on every committee, and had been a governor on the Comp while Sean was still there. Her title came from her deceased husband, who had been knighted for services to a military charity. Although neither talked about it, he was something of a war hero with the RAF and they had lost two sons to military action during the slow dismantling of the British Empire. The only clue left was the commemorative plaque in the porch of the parish church, a porch paid for by Sir Dennis and Lady Garstang.

  All this was something of an irony as while Winnie was very happy to chat to Dilby she had refused to set foot in the church since her arrival. It wasn’t that she didn’t agree that women should be ordained, but it was ridiculous that any woman would devote herself to the idea that God could have been a man. Men worshipping men was one thing. She could tolerate that. Women did that too. But to see another woman worshipping at the altar of what was nothing more than the creation of a serial adulterer and wife Killing King was too much. Now that Dennis had passed away she had no one else to pacify.

  Hilary’s grin had widened as she looked across at Gill Harkess, in full networking mode, offering her card to the Director of Public Health.

  ‘She’s certainly one of a tribe. Still, I suppose we need them. Get between us and the people we need to reach. Just a pity we seem to spend more time talking to them than doing the day job.’ She paused for a moment, then asked, ‘But what about you, Sean? Why are you doing this?’

  ‘You’re the third woman to ask me that today,’ Sean said.

  ‘Oh dear. And?’

  ‘And … You probably know the answer, Hilary.’

  ‘The Nolan equivalent of the Armalite and the ballot box?’

  Sean turned, genuinely surprised. And irritated by the inference.

  ‘Sorry,’ Hilary said. ‘Too long in counter-terrorism, perhaps. But you favour politics over, I’m guessing, Joey’s and Luke’s desire for direct action?’

  Sean’s irritation was turning to anger. ‘God, Hilary. Talk about two and two make five. If Joey and Luke wanted to take “direct action”, as you term it, do you think they would have waited three years?’

  She went to respond, but Sean could feel his blood pressure rising. ‘No, hang on. And this …’ He waved his arm round. ‘Well, what? My sister gets killed by druggies, so I want to try and do something about the growing problems? Doesn’t take much police work to figure that one out, does it?’

  Hilary was starting to feel uncomfortable. But Sean kept going. ‘So what’s the issue here? I don’t know what Joey’s up to, if anything, but if I don’t support this sort of thing, who will?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sean. I never really meant anything. It’s just …’ She looked and sounded full of regret. ‘OK. Sorry. You heard what happened in the park at the weekend?’

  Sean started to nose-breathe. Calming down. ‘Noah gave me chapter, verse and every social media posting.’ His anger was now displaced by curiosity.

  ‘Oh, I put my foot in it with Joey too,’ Hilary explained. ‘Grilling him about what his friend Luke Carlton is doing home.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Two and two make five. Anyway,’ she added, ‘keep on doing what you are doing. We do need and appreciate it.’ She offered a weak, almost apologetic smile as she moved away.

  Sean watched her go, recognising that it must be difficult policing a community of old friends, but wondering as much about his own reaction as hers. Joey and Luke both had bad reps. He accepted that. And she was, when all was said and done, a copper. But why did it cause him to react so forcefully?

  Joey was still looking up at Benno, cornered on the edge of the scaffolding. Remembering the fall he had had in the past, he turned back to Gustav. ‘OK. Call off the dogs and I’ll sort something out.’

  He stepped back from the window, boiled up the kettle and started making a fresh pot of tea.

  Gustav weighed Joey up and down. He was still not sure how to read him. Most would have buckled a long time ago.

  ‘It’s only ten pounds, Joseph. Not a lot. I offer you five. And you still refuse? What is the point?’

  ‘That is the point, Gus. It doesn’t sound much, but from one hundred blokes?’

  ‘Ah, you jealous?’

  ‘No. I just think you’re a parasite.’

  Gustav laughed. ‘We don’t have to get married.’ Then his voice became more threatening. ‘Just help out your friend.’

  Joey nodded. He could see he didn’t have much choice, dug into his pockets, pulling out a few coins. He counted them before putting them on the table. ‘Two pound forty. All I got on me. Until tomorrow.’

  Gustav looked, gave a smirk of derision, then turned to the window and gestured for the others to let Benno go. ‘That will be twenty pounds tomorrow. For you both. This I keep as interest.’

  Joey glanced out to see that Benno was now safe and coming down the scaffold, before picking up the teapot and then suddenly kicking the edge of the table so it rammed into Gustav’s stomach. Then he reached over and pulled his head down hard on the table. Holding it there, with the teapot hovering just above, he leaned over him.

  ‘Listen, you. I don’t care what you and the others do. But I’m telling you now, once and for all. I’m not interested. And neither is Benno. And if you get any ideas of coming after us again …’

  He poured the tea across Gustav’s neck, causing him to yell in pain. Joey held him down for a moment or two before letting him pull his head up.

  ‘You’re right, these are dangerous places.’

  ‘I kill you.’

  ‘You can try. But first, you’d better get that under a cold tap. Or get to a hospital.’

  Gustav shoved the table aside as he made for the door, pushing a surprised Benno out of his way.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Benno asked.

  ‘Tea?’ Joey said, offering up the teapot.

  Benno looked out to see Gustav being bundled into a car. ‘Looks like he’s off to A&E.’

  Joey glanced up at the clock. ‘Let’s hope the waiting time’s still around four hours, then. We’ll be away by then.’

  ‘And what about tomorrow? You know he’ll be back.’

  ‘I do,’ Joey replied, calmly pouring the tea. ‘And as James Bond said, Benno: tomorrow is another day.’

  4

  Certainty

  THE BUZZ HAD already gone round the site. Joey had put Gustav in hospital. It both enhanced his reputation and increased the chance of retaliation. It was now also one of the key factors Joey was considering while trying to make up his mind about going back home, while, at the same time, figuring out how best to run the 110 V ring main Ivantmoreofich wanted.

  He wondered if it would make it easier if he told Benno he could keep all the stuff they had stashed. Or reclaimed, according to Benno. The idea had been that they would use it for refurbs instead of buying new, and they had around £10,000 worth in a lock-up in Camden. If I let him have that, Joey thought, it would give him a bit of a head start. Or would it? Would it only help ease Joey’s conscience? Initially Benno had been the one who had taken Joey under his wing and found the work, but recently his age had been catching up with him and, as the incident with Gustav had demonstrated, Joey was now his minder.

  Sean was still pondering on what had triggered his anger with Hilary Jardine earlier. He knew everything had been heightened when his niece Tanya was threatened and he had spent a lot of time after that, like Luke, talking Joey out of going hunting with his baseball bat. But it was deeper than that. The attack had tapped into something else. Something deeper.

  A growing desire to try to do something to make things happen. He was getting more and more fed up listening to everyone complaining about why things never go
t done. Whether it was emptying the bins, fixing the street lights or clearing out the druggies from the park. It was always the way. Why can’t the Council do something?

  He was never quite sure what had initially fired him up, but knew it had started with the fight over planning permission. All he and Sandra had wanted to do was expand the business, create more jobs and sort out the parking issues with the neighbours. He couldn’t understand why, when the local paper’s letters pages were constantly full of people moaning about his customers parking on the grass verges, the planners took such an intransigent line. The muddy field, as Sandra constantly referred to it, had suddenly become an important wet meadow, which just happened to be right opposite one of the local councillors’ houses.

  At first Sean had taken the line that that was just local gossip until Sandra came home from tennis one day to tell him that Dorothy Mathis, whoever she was, had confirmed that it was indeed the Executive Member for Tourism and Business who lived directly opposite that muddy field. Not only that, but after googling it on her phone while changing ends, Sandra had galvanised Wendy, who apparently ran what was regarded as the militant wing of the Mums ’n’ Tots Club at the community centre, to organise an online petition while Nicky, who knew the mother of Arthur Young, the local newshound, soon got him on the case. Within a week a perplexed and bemused councillor was in the local paper sweeping aside any misunderstandings or objections to the excellent plan to resolve a long-standing community issue while helping a local business to thrive. That was, after all, why he was elected, the quotes said.

  While it all worked out well in the end and Sean made a point of throwing a Christmas party for the Mums ’n’ Tots militant brigade, he, like many others, was left wondering why it always seemed to be like that. Why was the community always fighting the Council? A lot of it could be put down to the fact that the Council had to do what was for the good of the many over the needs of the few, but Sean sensed it was deeper than that. He’d sensed it as soon as he and Sandra had come home from their global wanderings. Having experienced the ‘why not?’ atmosphere of the greater global emerging economies, even in parts of the USA where ‘why not?’ still trumped ‘why?’, he had found the restrictive, rule-driven, jobsworth psychology of Britain oppressive.

  Had it got worse while they were away? But thinking back he had concluded that there were now more rules because there were now more things to do in life, and therefore to regulate. If you didn’t have anything to do you didn’t need a rulebook. It was a legacy of the aristocratic feudal system that the country had still not quite shaken off. Everyone, as far as officialdom was concerned, was still expected to know their place. That was the trouble with politics. Before they were elected, candidates wanted to be representatives. Once elected, they became leaders. And leaders expected people to, well, follow. Follow their lead. Be told what to do. Didn’t they?

  And to do that they needed a way to control things. Rules. Regs. And the police. Was that what Hilary was querying? Why was he stepping out of his place? Not leaving things to them to sort out. All this was going through his head as he heard the Chairman of the Council thank him for his support and hospitality and ask him to come forward and say a few words.

  ‘Thank, you Mr Chairman,’ Sean began. ‘It’s a pleasure to do whatever I can to help our local community.’ He turned back to the assembled community representatives in front of him only to focus on Glynnis apparently chasing Arthur Young away from the food with a shake of her head as she started to quietly clear the buffet. That was it. No more. She was protecting her profit margin. His eye caught Hilary Jardine’s and he saw she was smiling at him. A supportive smile that would have made Gill Hawkess proud. It was the old friend again. Not the rule enforcer.

  He returned the smile, and then heard himself say, ‘This is the bit I always like. When I find out what I am going to say.’

  ‘Run it past me again.’ Luke was trying to absorb one of Matt’s latest ideas.

  ‘The average smoker costs the NHS about thirty or forty grand over their lifetime, especially at the end when they’re coughing their guts up. OK?’

  ‘So you tell me,’ Luke responded. ‘And this is one for the list, is it?’

  Matt nodded. ‘One hundred and one things to do with a sacked sniper.’ He had started compiling the list when they had heard that they, like many others, were being ‘released to pursue their careers elsewhere’, as some suit had told them at the debriefing. Funnily enough, as Joey had told Benno, they had not found many jobs advertised for their skill sets once they were out of the services.

  ‘I haven’t started ranking them yet. Just, you know, brainstormin’ the ideas and that. But I think stopping smokers beats shooting badgers and foxes.’

  Luke conceded the point with a nod. ‘It certainly takes things up a level or two.’

  ‘OK,’ Matt continued. ‘So how much does a bullet cost?’

  ‘What calibre?’

  ‘It’s supposed to be theoretical, Luke. But, OK, let’s say we’d use a standard H&K PSG1. So, 7.62, right?’

  ‘About three dollars a box or something. Or what was that gear we used on the last job?’

  ‘Er, Tulammo. Yeah. Around 25 cents that Canadian guy said. OK, bulk buy. We’d probably get ’em for less than 15p.’

  ‘So, your argument is, we just shoot smokers and instead of the thirty grand it costs to treat them, it only costs 15p to waste them?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I can see some people voting for it.’

  ‘And I know what you’re going to say next. Win the war, lose the peace, right? How do we win the minds and hearts beforehand?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Luke conceded again.

  ‘OK. The thing that’s always missing. Fairness. Give everyone a chance.’

  ‘What? Arm the smokers so they can shoot back?’

  ‘Now you’re being ridiculous.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ Luke slid back into the hide. Nothing would happen until tonight. He reached for the boiled sweets in one of the ration packs. ‘Go on then. Win my heart and mind.’

  ‘We set up on top of a high building. OK? Good angles. All-round vision. We spot a smoker. Red dot them. Bit of a jiggle until they see it. They get thirty seconds to stub out. Or be taken out. Their choice, isn’t it?’

  ‘If they know what the red dot is.’

  ‘Labels on all ciggy packs. Red dots can kill. Something like that.’

  ‘Education. Always the key. But, that’s it? One chance? What about, I dunno, someone who’s short-sighted or colour-blind? Or am I just being a woolly liberal?’

  ‘No, it’s a perfectly valid democratic argument. Which is where we nick the three strikes rule from the Yanks.’

  ‘“We” do, do “we”?’

  ‘Yeah. So they just get a warning for the first offence, right? Blam. Fleshy bits around the armpit. You know the way smokers hold their arms when they light up.’ He had put the Barrett’s scope on one such target about to light up, watching him raise his arms slightly to shield the lighter from the wind. ‘They get that fixed and, here’s the clever bit …’

  ‘It all sounds very clever to me so far.’

  But Matt was winding up to his really clever bit, so missed the sarcasm. ‘During the patch-up, the medics stick in an RFID implant. Use radio scopes that get a return path from the implant, right? Second-time offender. Blam. Opposing upper body shot.’

  ‘And we fix that. And put in another implant?’ Luke asked and saw Matt nod with a grin of delight. He knew he was being drawn in, but when Matt started on one of his theoreticals, it was like approaching a black hole. Once over the event horizon there was no turning back. ‘So the next time they get tagged. Two return signals. Third offence. Kill shot?’

  ‘But don’t forget the thirty-second warning. It’s their choice to stub out, or –’

  ‘– be taken out,’ Luke finished it off for him.

  ‘Three shots. 45p.’ Matt beamed.

  ‘Er �
�� what about the cost of the operations to patch up their armpits?’

  ‘Less than five grand, on average, apparently. For a straightforward in and exit repair. We’d be using balls, remember. So, on average, three at five is fifteen plus the 45p for the ammo, right? Couple of grand for us and overall it’ll save the NHS between ten to twenty grand. And don’t forget, that’s only for the right stubborn so-and-sos. I reckon most would jack it in after the first shot.’

  ‘Or before. With enough publicity. We could get that Ross Kemp to do a show about it.’

  ‘Right. As you pointed out. Education. Always about educating people. And multiply it all up by the millions of smokers we’d take out of the system. Money that can be better spent on roads and education and other health problems.’ He held out his hands. ‘Simple, yeah? But the best bit is that it gives people like us something to do with the skills the government has spent years giving us, but then doesn’t know what to do with when we’ve finished killing on their behalf. So. We just carry on doing it for them. In a new way, with a renewed sense of purpose, while saving the taxpayer a fortune in the long run.’

  ‘I get it. Stub out or be taken out. It’s catchy. And you have thought it through, haven’t you?

  Matt nodded, as he slid back from the Barrett, while adding, ‘And I’ve got the perfect name for it.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Surgical Strikes.’

  Luke couldn’t suppress a laugh. It was so daft. So macabre. But made so much sense. As much as it did them lying in a hide waiting to take a shot at a fat bloke in a chippy.