The Footprints of the Fiend

by William Stafford

  All for one little bag of skunk?

  I doubted that very much.

  At the far end of this room was an area divided off by MDF walls as office space. Cleon unlocked the door to this office with a key from his pocket and reached around the door frame to slap on the light switch.

  The office looked positively cosy compared to the rest of the place. There was a desk and a plastic chair. There was a laptop and a stack of box files but most noticeable about the room were the banks of machines all stacked high, connected to each other by a snakes’ orgy of cables. Red and green lights glowed and flickered.

  “Your blank discs go in these,” Cleon patted the top of the nearest bank. “Your masters go in these ones over here.” He indicated the other pile.

  I nodded as if it all made perfect sense. In reality, it took me a little longer to cotton on what was happening.

  “All you got to do is keep the blanks topped up and clearly labelled. Don’t want some old dear down the market ending up in a tizzy ‘cause she’s bought German scat porn when she wanted Tinker-fuckin’-bell for her granddaughter. Not that I give a shit, but that kind of mistake can draw the attention of the law. Trading standards, you get me? So, keep the blanks topped up. When they’re done, you take ‘em out and you label ‘em with this marker pen. Then you put them in these little plastic wallets over here, then you boxes ‘em up and you puts the boxes on the shelves out there.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then you keep doing it until I come back for you. What happens to them out there is none of your fuckin’ beeswax, you get me?”

  I nodded.

  “And don’t fuck it up. Get this right and this could be a nice little earner for you. But not a word to the jobcentre, eh?” He laughed, delighted with himself.

  “Mum’s the fuckin’ word,” I assured him. He stopped laughing.

  “Right, well, I’ve got things to do. I’ll be back this afternoon. Tell you what. You could put one on, if you like, and crack one off. Perk of the job. Just don’t take all day about it.”

  Laughing again, he picked up the torch and headed across the storage area towards daylight and the van.

  I heard the shutters rumble and clang and, faintly, the van chugging and belching away.

  So. Now I was involved in DVD piracy.

  It was progress, I supposed. A step in one kind of direction.

  ***

  I soon got the hang of the machines and, opting for the lesser of two evils, made sure to copy more cartoons than porn films. It was piracy of the dullest kind. No Spanish Main, no wooden legs and eye patches, and no swordplay. But just as illegal. I would have to find out where these copies were headed and tip off my contact.

  Cleon returned with a box of fried chicken, which he presented to me as a late lunch. He surveyed my output and nodded, impressed. He picked a freshly-formatted disc from a pile.

  “You have neat writing,” he conceded. “I like to see a man taking pride in his work.”

  The little office fell silent save for the sounds of me devouring salty chips. I thought I’d better play the part of ravening scrounger, despite there being too much grease and too much salt and not enough nutritional content. Cleon appeared to be mulling something over. He waited for me to finish and then perched a buttock on the edge of the desk.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he began, confirming my suspicions. “How would you like to come on board? You’ve obviously got a flair for this line of work. Cash in hand. Minimum wage, if you insist; why the hell not? And it frees me up to...do other things. What do you say?”

  “You’re offering me a job?”

  “I’m offering you a job. But don’t worry; it’s not a job-you-have-to-sign-off-the-dole kind of job. In fact, you can’t even mention it to anybody.”

  “So...”

  “I’m saying you’ll have money in your pocket. You’ll be able to buy more weed than you can handle. Harder stuff too if you want it.”

  I let him see my face light up. He had said the magic word. I jumped up from my seat and pumped his hand vigorously. He grimaced to find my greasy fingers closed around his. He squeezed my hand tight and pulled my face closer to his.

  “One thing clear: you tell nobody. Nobody must know where you go every day. Nobody must know what you’re doing. Or,” his lip curled to reveal a gold-tipped canine, “nobody will be able to find you. Well, not all of you. Not in the same place. You get me?”

  I cast my eyes downwards and nodded abjectly.

  He released my aching hand and slapped my upper arm.

  “Welcome on board!” he grinned. “Good job you said yes. I didn’t fancy killing anybody today.”

  He was laughing but I couldn’t read his expression; I couldn’t see if he was joking.

  ***

  And so I spent the next few weeks working for Cleon. He really went to town on covering our tracks. Every morning he would send me a text message with the name of a tube station. I would then travel to that station, where his van would be waiting to pick me up and take me, via a circuitous route to the industrial estate. Either he was overly paranoid about us being followed or he just enjoyed playing at secret agents.

  I found the work mindless in the extreme. After a fortnight I pestered him to provide a radio. A few days later he produced one, brand new but obviously a knock-off - if the SNOY logo was anything to go by.

  But at least I had Radio 4 for company. Cleon questioned my choice of station, offering to retune so I could hear some ‘banging tunes’. I said I just liked the voices; they were company for me.

  That much was true, at least.

  I was dying to know where Cleon went and what he got up to after he dropped me off every morning. I resolved to do something about finding out.

  I pointed out that the following day I was required to go and sign on, releasing him from giving me a lift. I offered to make up the time but he dismissed this with a magnanimous wave. He said I was so far ahead with the DVDs, they couldn’t shift ‘em fast enough. They could afford to let me take the whole day.

  Such benevolent employers! Whoever they were!

  The following day I set out to sign on. I was only faking it but it remained a degrading experience, no matter how friendly and customer-service pleasant the staff in that place pretended to be.

  “Any changes in your circumstances, Mister Tonkinson?” My personal paper-pusher asked with all the warmth and spontaneity of a robotic parrot.

  “No,” I said, trying to sound apologetic.

  “And how’s your job-searching going on?”

  The answer to this lay in the little booklet I had to fill in each fortnight, detailing jobs I had applied for and steps I was taking. The clerk barely skim-read it before adding her initials to the last entry I’d made and handing me back the booklet. I signed the chit - it was easier each time to remember to use my pseudonym; how I had had to practice that new signature! The clerk didn’t look at it.

  “Thank you, Mister Tonkinson.”

  I was dismissed.

  At the main entrance, several valiant job-seekers were lingering, sharing cigarettes before they went to do their duty. I looked them up and down for fashion tips, taking in the way they held themselves, their expressions. These were the long-term unemployed, those to whom society had denied admittance, by one means or another, and who were now vilified by that society.

  But I don’t wish to be political, I keep saying.

  One thing about Cleon: at least he was providing purpose in what he thought was my life. And that was more than the increasingly cut-back welfare services were doing for these people.

  And it was my job to bring him down and those for whom he was working. We live in a crazy world. Of course, what Cleon and his bosses were doing was illegal, immoral and all the rest of it, bu
t I could see how easily someone like the man I was claiming to be could become involved in dark deeds and nefarious purposes. There really was no alternative.

  I took two tube trains over the river and into deepest Ealing to deliver my real fortnightly report to my contact. I say ‘contact’ - I never saw them. I would hand over a notebook, sealed in a cashbox, locked with a padlock, and wrapped in padded envelopes. I would then send a text message with the combination to the padlock so that my contact could access the notebook. It all may seem extraordinary but there was no other way to protect my cover. The understanding was I was to keep doing what I was doing until I received new instructions. I was sure that with my new-found employment in DVD piracy, I would receive some kind of word this time.

  I spent the rest of the day making the most of my tube ticket. I wondered around the National Gallery until my legs ached, sat on a bench in Regent’s Park, and ‘enjoyed’ an unhappy meal from a fast food franchise. I would have dearly loved to visit a bar on Old Compton Street or pop into the Royal Opera House to see their latest Turandot, but I had to stay in character. It was depressing. I wondered how long it would be before I could enjoy those pleasures again.

  It was dark before I got back to the bedsit. Someone had been ill all over the communal bathroom. I went directly to bed rather than tackle its terrors.

  It is not great being unwashed.

  ***

  A month passed, including two more trips to the ‘dole hole’ and two more drop-offs at the cop shop in Ealing. Nothing changed. No word was forthcoming. No instructions. Nothing.

  What should I do? Continue in this illegal drudgery?

  I decided to try to coax some information from Cleon who, apart from the paper-pusher at the dole hole and the few shop assistants with whom I exchanged ‘thank yous’ along with cash for goods, was the only person I spoke to.

  He remained tight-lipped and evasive. He liked to imply that he was involved in something big and dangerous, but the emphasis was on letting me know how out-of-the-loop I was. I was a tiny cog in a large machine and the way to make me know my place was to keep me in the dark about what the rest of the machine was up to.

  But then something happened.

  ***

  One afternoon Cleon picked me up. We were almost back at Brixton when he announced he needed a piss. Apologising and swearing he pulled the van over to the kerb.

  “Get in the driver’s seat,” he winced. “In case a traffic warden’s on the prowl. You can fuckin’ drive, can’t you?”

  “Of course I can fuckin’ drive,” I told him. This was not the truth. I’d had a few lessons when I was seventeen but hadn’t taken to it. But the chances of a traffic warden happening to come around that very corner at that very moment were remote. I hitched myself over to his seat - it was still warm - while he waddled, stooped and holding his crotch, into the nearest pub.

  He seemed to be taking his time.

  Perhaps he’d been distracted by someone he knew. Perhaps the landlord had taken exception to him using the place as a public convenience and had insisted he purchase a drink... Perhaps...

  My idle contemplations were interrupted when I caught sight of a couple of uniforms in the wing mirror.

  They came to the window and gestured for me to lower it.

  “This your vehicle, sir?” sneered one.

  “Um, ah,” was all I could manage.

  “This is not your vehicle, is it, sir?”

  “Well, um, not exactly...”

  “Licence and registration, sir.”

  “Well, it’s - you see - it’s a friend’s; he...”

  The copper who hadn’t spoken reached in and snatched the ignition key.

  “Step out of the vehicle, sir.”

  I complied. The second copper was unlocking the back doors. He sucked in his breath with a whistle. The van, of course, was loaded with my handiwork.

  “Oh dear oh dear,” the first copper said when he realised what he was dealing with. “Looks like you’re fucking nicked, sir.”

  3.

  The masked gunman kept his barrel trained on the old git and the younger woman on the sofa. The old biddy on the armchair in front of him was not a problem; if she made any kind of move, he’d shoot her in the back. Simple as. The old git was peering at him intently; the gunman didn’t like that. He presumed the old git was the nark’s father and the old biddy the mother. The younger woman was a copper - the gunman knew that much. Well, he’d been following her for weeks. Probably the nark’s bit of skirt.

  “Well, well, well, all of his nearest and dearest in one cosy room!” The gunman’s mask muffled his voice. He knew he should have enlarged the mouth slit. And it didn’t half make your face sweat! Bloody hell. He considered removing it. And why not? None of these bastards would be leaving the room alive so why bother concealing himself a second more?

  It was all about the moment.

  He wanted the nark to come in and see his loved ones blasted to kingdom come in front of him. He wanted to see the look on the nark’s mush when the mask was peeled off to reveal the killer of his parents and his dolly bird.

  And - icing on the fucking cake - he would take great delight in saying that the dolly bird had been dicking around behind the nark’s back. With another copper, no less. And that was the truth!

  You can’t trust anyone these days.

  “Now, listen here,” the old git began in a voice designed to initiate hostage negotiations. “I am sure we can come to an amicable arrangement.”

  “Amicable my fucking arse!” the gunman grumbled. “I arsked you a question. Please don’t make me repeat myself. I hates repeating myself. D’you hear me? I hates repeating myself.”

  That shut the old git up.

  The gunman realised he would have to repeat his question.

  “He’s not here,” the lady copper piped up. “His room’s empty. We just went up there.”

  “For a shag, did you? Knocking off his dad as well as his workmates, are you?”

  The lady copper’s face showed confusion. Her cheeks reddened. Touched a nerve, the gunman congratulated himself.

  “And when will he be back?”

  This question was met by three shrugs.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” The old git. Smarmy old git. He’ll be the first.

  “Looks like we’ve got us another edition of the waiting game then, don’t it?” The gunman sneered. “I ain’t got no other engagements for today.”

  “Listen; if it’s a question of money...”

  “Shut it! Money! I got money, you silly old fuck. I got more money than you have, truth be told. I could buy and sell you ten times over. But don’t try and engage me in chitchat. Keep your trap shut and we’ll wait for your pride and joy to get back. Then it’s blam, blam, blam and goodnight Vienetta.”

  “Oh dear.” The old biddy was trembling.

  Perhaps he ought to shoot her first. Out of kindness.

  ***

  “From the state of you, that lunch was of the fucking liquid variety.” Chief Inspector Karen Wheeler was displeased, to put it mildly. She had that numpty Stevens and his sidekick Woodcock in her office.

  Stevens belched beerily.

  “To be fair, Chief,” Woodcock raised a hand, “we thought we’d knocked off. It’s not like we were on duty or anything.”

  Wheeler conceded the point. She clutched at her close-cropped hair and scratched her scalp.

  “I suppose,” she grumbled. “But you know we’m short-handed. With Brough on long-term sick and Miller swanning off after him.”

  Woodcock reddened and cleared his throat, readying himself to step in to defend his lady’s honour, should the need arise. Thankfully, it didn’t.

  “So why have you called us back in then, boss?”


  “Yeah,” Stevens belched again. At least he had the good sense to appear embarrassed.

  “Seems like your area of expertise, gentlemen, and I use every word of that phrase in the loosest possible sense. The pubs of Dedley are under attack. There’s been a third one.”

  Stevens and Woodcock exchanged a glance. Stevens’s eyebrows dipped as he tried to count in his head.

  “Don’t strain yourselves, gentlemen. The first...” She slapped a photograph on the desk. The men leaned forward to see it. “The Duke of Windsor. Empty for years. Burned down last week. Suspected arson. The second you know about. Having just come from there.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Woodcock.

  Stevens punctuated this remark with a beery fart. Wheeler looked ready to murder him.

  “You said ‘under attack’?” Woodcock prompted, saving his partner’s life.

  “I did, ar.” Wheeler revealed a photograph of the Barge Inn. “See them on the roof?”

  Woodcock peered at the photograph.

  “Hoof prints... We noticed them at the scene, didn’t we?” He nudged Stevens.

  “And now this...” She produced a third photograph. “The Jolly Collier.”

  Woodcock picked up the picture and looked at it. He passed it to Stevens who stared at it, bleary-eyed.

  “More hoofs,” Wheeler nodded. “Or is it hooves?”

  Woodcock shrugged.

  “Hoofs on the roofs. Or is it hooves on the rooves? Any road. You two fine fuckwits am going to look into it.”

  “You’m sending us to the pub?” Stevens couldn’t believe his luck.

  Wheeler directed the rest of her instructions towards Woodcock alone.

  “Speak to the landlord. Talk to the regulars. See if there’s anyone who’s in the habit of frequenting these shitholes.”

  “You think there’s a connection. With the first one too, I mean?”

  “Well, that’s what I want you to fucking find out, sunny Jim.”