by Paul Harris
Bo Billox lost his balance and plunged to the ground head-first, the dog leads wrapped tightly around either wrist, and still his dogs would not relent. I could only wonder at the power of those beasts as they dragged him along behind them, scraping his face against the heat-softened road. “Heel!” I thought I heard him mutter.
My phone vibrated against the wooden surface of the coffee table. I yanked the curtains shut to hide the sorry scene and wondered what Barbara Woodhouse would have made of it all. It was a text message from Buffalo. I grabbed my jacket. Then, realising that I wouldn’t need it today, slung it onto the armchair, and went out to meet him.
The Volunteer
As Cak Lazlo left the Volunteer following his brief encounter with Buffalo and Lola, Rodney Peddle was on his way into that very same establishment to have a drink with his friends who were waiting for him at the bar. Rodney stepped aside to allow the stranger, who appeared to be in some hurry, to pass by him to the door. Lazlo barged through the small gap with complete indifference, nudging Rodney into the wood panelled wall. He hesitated, and turned to face Rodney, but there was no apology on his lips, nor even an acknowledgement. Lazlo’s expression was one of pure malice. Rodney held his stare but felt the man’s dark eyes draining him of his bravado. A slight shudder ran the length of his spine. There was a flash of recognition between them as their eyes met, but only for the smallest fraction of a second. They seemed to be asking questions of one another by means of telepathy. Cak curled his lip, turned away, and left. He walked back into the street and went to find the black SUV that he’d left in the multi-storey car park on the High Street.
Meanwhile, Rodney was still rooted to the spot, following the mean-looking stranger’s progress up the street. This, despite there being a solid brick wall between Rodney and the street and the fact that X-ray spectacles had not yet been invented. He was convinced that he’d seen those eyes before, embedded in a slightly younger face.
Buffalo and Lola were watching Rodney watching after Lazlo. “You know that geezer, Rod?” called Buffalo.
Rodney was still searching his distant memory to recall where he’d seen Lazlo before, but was roused from that fruitless task by Buffalo’s voice.
“I don’t know,” said Rodney, pensively, “there was something about him that looked vaguely familiar but I just can’t place him.”
“There was something about him that was proper strange, if you ask me.”
“I should have give him what for when I had the chance,” said Lola, without even a suggestion of irony.
“What?” chorused Buffalo and Rodney.
“You go into a seizure just taking your hands out of your pockets, you clown!”
Rodney laughed at Buffalo’s assessment of Lola’s martial skills. “Round, boys?” he offered.
Buffalo nodded although he still had half a glass of Ruddles County standing on the bar in front of him, not to mention the mouthful that he was now hurriedly swallowing.
“What was his beef, anyway?” asked Rodney.
“Everything, I think. Still, harmless enough, I suppose. Just a bit tapped, that’s all. I don’t suppose he’d do anyone any harm.”
Rodney winced as three pints of beer were placed on the bar in front of them. “What’s up?” asked Lola. “You still getting them chest pains? You want to be careful, you know.”
“Yeah, Rodney, listen to the Green Goddess over there.”
“No, no! I forgot my wallet. It’s in my jacket pocket.”
“Oh, that old story, is it?” said Lola, reaching into his own pocket and offering Rodney a twenty pound note.
“I’ll give it you back tomorrow.”
“Whenever, Rod.”
Rodney passed Lola a pint of beer and then shook the froth from his fingers that had been running down the outside of the glass. “You had a hotdog?”
“Burger,” Lola replied, examining the head on his beer. “Why?”
“No reason,” said Rodney, peering with some curiosity but with very little surprise at the deep red stains on the front of Lola’s crumpled white t-shirt. “Just a lucky guess.”
Chapter Fourteen
Paint a Pretty Picture
To paint a pretty picture, one needs a pallet that radiates with all the colours of the rainbow, but to paint a darkened picture, one needs only the darkest of materials, a heavy brush, a rough hand, and no deftness of touch at all.
The rain teemed down on the empty streets, drawing continuous lines through the dead of night. It surged in rivers along the gutters and gathered impatiently around blocked drain covers; blocked by the mat of leaves that had lately begun to fall from the trees above. But for the sound of the rain drops crashing down like a barrage of gunfire, there was an uneasy stillness, until a clap of thunder roared amongst the clouds in the sky and a fork of lightning darted across the great expanse, lighting the streets as if somebody had flicked a switch.
A black Range Rover with tinted windows was parked in Ambrose Street outside the convenience store. It was nose to nose with another car. Both engines were running although both vehicles were definitely very stationary. At the entrance to the passageway beside the shop, two dark-suited figures stood as if on sentry duty. One whispered to the other. The other consulted his wrist watch and whispered back. The street light above their heads cast nothing but more darkness. Shattered glass lay on the road beneath it.
Further up the passageway, a CCTV camera hung limply from its bracket on the wall. It hung by a bare cable, its lens smashed, and its functionality destroyed. Also hanging ineffectively, was the door that led from the passageway to Mr Singh’s storeroom at the back of his shop. It had been unceremoniously beaten from its hinges by brute force and an axe, recently purchased from Dave’s Home, Garden & Motor Emporium on Old Park Road by an anonymous, and not very talkative, DIY enthusiast.
Inside the storeroom, the silhouettes of men were barely discernible through the clouds of dust that shrouded the scene, even though a naked light bulb was shining above their heads. As they rapidly felt their way through the room, coughing and spitting, throwing boxes against walls and kicking inanimate objects, yet more dust rose into the air in mushroom shaped clouds. They slipped and staggered as cans of out-of-date lager rolled around beneath their feet, and as they trod rotten fruit into the rotting carpet. Even the rats had taken flight, heading en masse to the café next door.
Some movement, sudden and brief, revealed a man lying prone on the floor among the debris and what was left of his stock. Mr Singh writhed in agony, clutching his shoulder and attempting to stem the bleeding from a recently rendered bullet wound. A cricket bat lay beside him, slightly beyond his reach; a toy designed for nothing more than field games. One of the intruders kicked him, for no apparent reason; perhaps for sport; perhaps out of a psychopathic interest in other people’s pain. They ignored, or were oblivious, to Mr Singh’s tortured groans and his barely coherent pleas for mercy.
Through the dense gloom, they failed to notice another camera that remained intact and undamaged. Standing proudly in the corner above an exhausted fire extinguisher, it continued to transmit blurred images of the developing events, to Mr Singh’s hard drive in his first floor “office”. Although on camera, none of the men smiled as they continued to ransack the storeroom.
Spotting the wall safe, the keys still hanging next to it, one of the robbers began to turn the dial of the combination lock. He turned to his accomplices with a vexed expression as they observed him in his fruitless task. “He gave us the wrong code!” he spat into the dust. “Damn him!”
Another of the men approached, with a crowbar in his hand. He placed the heavy length of steel down on a shelf next to a date stamp, and gently opened the safe door with nothing more than his finger tip. The door swung open to the restrained delight of those gathered in anticipation and, although of apparently little significance, the contents of the safe, and that being nothing more than a sheet of paper, was emptied. It was emptied with great gusto a
nd its contents, the sheet of paper, were securely deposited in a pocket that was then fastened with a zip. The storeroom, likewise, was vacated with comparable enthusiasm, but not so much so that one of the men could deny Mr Singh one final blow to his, already throbbing, head.
When they had left, a woman’s voice could be faintly heard calling through the darkness in quivering tones, uncertain and frightened. She spoke, not in English, but in a clearly comprehendible universal language of dread.
“Call the police!” whispered Singh, and then, almost as an afterthought, “And an ambulance.” He felt wet; drenched; as if he was bathing in his own blood.
“But, if they come back?” she sobbed quietly.
“Why? What would they come back for? They have what they want. They would only come back to finish me, that is all. I have nothing to lose. Quickly! Call the police! Tell them to hurry.” He heard her run into the shop and pick up the telephone receiver, and then consciousness slipped from his grasp.
The intruders marched with an air of purpose about them, and some degree of triumph, back down Mr Singh’s dimly lit passageway and into the street. The two men on sentry duty were glad to see them. It meant that they could finally get out of the pounding rain and into some dry clothes. They nodded at one another satisfactorily but never spoke, and never revealed their flagging enthusiasm for the job in hand.
The hushed whirring of an electric motor drew their attention, as one of the blacked-out windows in the back of the Range Rover disappeared into the door panel. One of the men stepped from the pavement. He hesitated lest he ruin his handmade Italian shoes, before striding across the rainwater that was now running in torrents along the side of the road. He took the contents of the safe, the sheet of paper that bore seemingly random names and addresses, from his pocket and passed it into the vehicle, cradled in his black leather glove. He quickly withdrew his hand as the motor hummed again and the window closed.
The entire party climbed into the two stationary cars and began to complain privately and bitterly about the weather.
On the back seat of the Range Rover, Harry Growler unfolded the sheet of A4 sized paper and examined it with a stony expression. He traced a finger down the list of names and, once satisfied, handed the document, for a document is what this scrap of paper had now become, to Cak Lazlo who was seated next to him. Lazlo perused it for only a moment, not as yet familiar with any of the names nor any of the addresses it contained; not for the time being, at least. He folded it and carefully slid it into his inside jacket pocket. Harry signalled to the driver by nodding into his rear-view mirror at him. The driver engaged first gear.
As both cars sped off into the darkness, Harry Growler’s Range Rover first, followed closely by the other, a cacophony of sirens could be heard approaching from the opposite direction. Shortly, the front of the convenience store was illuminated by a kaleidoscope of dancing blue lights and the still night air was alive with the crackling of shortwave radios. A stretcher was being hauled down the passageway. A sobbing woman was standing in the broken doorway as a WPC attempted to comfort her. A uniformed police officer was erecting barrier tape. A detective attempted to make notes in his sodden notebook.
Giving up, and returning his pocket book to the jacket pocket from whence it came, Detective Inspector Chisholm stealthily approached Mrs Singh, who was now being propped up by the police constable.
Chisholm was, at once, both sympathetic and attentive. His attention was further engaged when he heard the grieving woman utter the words, “There’s a security camera in the storeroom.” He waited and he waited, with patient anticipation, until Mrs Singh removed a handkerchief from her face and, with a faltering voice, furnished him with just the supplementary information that he had been waiting for. “And it works.” He immediately summoned an officer, entered the premises, and climbed the stairs to the first floor “office” that Mr Singh had cleverly disguised as a junk room.
As Harry Growler’s speeding black convoy burst through the city streets, it left in its wake a rainbow of fuel-stained spray. Road markings and traffic signals were deemed extraneous; mere decoration; perhaps the icing on a birthday cake. Tyres squealed as they took the corner into Park Lane without decelerating and passed the imposing wrought iron gates of the park. Although the gates were locked shut for the night, two figures, displaying remarkable agility and athleticism, could be seen scaling them. They leapt into the street as the second car passed by with its windscreen wipers working at full capacity, and were promptly subjected to quite the tsunami.
They shook themselves down, these two devious looking articles of humanity and cursed into the night, spitting toxic fluids from their mouths. A box lay at their feet; a box that they had dropped from the top of the park gates; a box that they had lately liberated from the lock-up at the back of the park keeper’s cottage. The box appeared damaged by its recent adventures. The cardboard soaked by the persistent downfall, it seemed an inevitability that the box would shortly disintegrate and its contents spill out into the street.
“Don’t let the fireworks get wet. They won’t work properly.”
“What do you want me to do about it? It’s pissing down.”
“Dab the water off the box. Look! There! Where it’s running in big streams.”
“What? Dab the water off the box? You’re just pushing it into the cardboard. Let’s just dump them here.”
He poked and prodded in a vain attempt to stop the rainwater damaging the box and, by so doing, punctured a hole in it. “We may as well take them now that we’ve got them. They might dry out on Mum’s radiators.” He carefully collected the box up into his arms. It began to peel like a banana.
“My hair’s soaking, man. I wish I hadn’t left my hoodie in Singh’s shop.”
“It’ll do it good. You ain’t washed it for ages.”
“Of course I have! What are you chatting about? I wash my hair regular!”
“Do you condition?”
“What? Do you?”
A roman candle fell from the box and Finn retrieved it from a puddle, shaking it ineffectually. “Hey, Len?” he said.
“What?”
“Do you think old people have to condition their ear-hole hairs?”
Crufts
The latest refurbishment had overseen the removal of sky television and the demise of the fruit machines. They had been replaced by craft ales and a quiz machine. A coffee machine had been installed behind the bar and a heated smoking shelter with tables and chairs and real carpet had been constructed in the beer garden, or yard, as we, more accurately, referred to it.
Lola sighed as he inserted another pound coin into the quiz machine. Only seconds later, he would bellow a profanity as his money was lost. We all knew the script off by heart.
“What sort of question was that?” he complained.
“You never get past the first question!” Buffalo reminded him. “Why don’t you give it a rest?”
“I’ll give you a rest!” responded Lola with characteristic irascibility as he took another pound coin from his trouser pocket. “It’s just a case of the right questions coming up. These are all about sport and music, politics and things like that, history and geography.” The pound coin dropped into the machine. “Entertainment! I ask you! What’s entertainment got to do with television? Entertainment’s the circus.”
“You don’t know anything about the circus either!”
Lola took another pound coin from his pocket and peered over his shoulder at us. “You’d be surprised what I know. I know plenty of stuff.”
Buffalo ran his fingers pensively through his beard. “Yeah, apart from sport, music, politics, history, geography, and entertainment, you’ve got a huge wealth of knowledge.”
“What would you say your specialist subject is?” asked Amos, grinning in the direction of Lola as he drew yet another pound coin from his pocket.
“Taking no notice of you, you lanky streak of piss, that’s what my specialist subject is!” And
thus, with far too much petulance, Lola turned his back on us and answered a question correctly.
In time, Lola did indeed give it a rest. He joined us at the bar which had been transformed from a dark mahogany to a very light pine. You could still smell the heavy wood varnish several weeks after its application. It mingled with the aroma of the hops and was quite sickly. The bar staff had smart new uniforms with the brewery’s logo stitched into them. But the Pig & Whistle was still the Pig & Whistle, it was just a little bit more expensive; thirty pence a pint more expensive, to be precise, and this was enough to initiate a hugely antagonistic debate in any public house.
“Robbing bastards!” said Buffalo as he paid for his third.
I sighed.
“Well, they are, Rod. Thirty pence!”
“I know but you’ve been saying that every night for the last five weeks now, and you’re still here paying it.”
“Someone’s got to make a stand against big business.”
“You’re not making a stand, you’re just bloody moaning. The breweries don’t care how much moaning you do, just so long as you keep buying their beer.”
“You can’t even watch the football anymore.”
“You don’t like football. You never watched it when it was on in here.”
“Or the cricket.”
“You can’t stand cricket either. You’re just moaning for the sake of it now.”
“I’m just stating my opinion.”
I granted him the last word otherwise there would have been no end to his list of grievances. I looked around the bar at the faces that I no longer recognised. The clientele had become more transient. The hardened drinkers were becoming outnumbered by casual drinkers and couples out on first dates. Married couples sat in corners in silence, making it quite plain that it was a chore to spend time in one another’s company. The dominoes team had gone. Joe Large had gone. He’d gone away for a long time. This, in itself, had somewhat improved the ambience.