Rob Johnson - Lifting the Lid

by Rob Johnson

‘Heads,’ said Jarvis and watched carefully as Coleman revealed the coin. ‘Best of three?’

  ‘On your bike, pal,’ Coleman said as he returned the coin to his pocket. ‘And while you’re at it, see if the site shop’s open yet.’

  Jarvis grunted and opened the driver’s door a few inches. He stopped abruptly and snatched it back towards him when his peripheral vision caught sight of a small white hatchback speeding past from behind.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Not a single car goes by in over an hour, and then Lewis bloody Hamilton comes along and nearly takes the sodding door off.’

  ‘Mirror, signal, manoeuvre,’ muttered Coleman and reached for the newspaper on top of the dashboard.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sandra swerved slightly to avoid hitting the door of the dark blue Mondeo. She glanced in the rear-view mirror as she accelerated away and caught sight of Trevor, who was half lying and half crouching on the back seat with Milly beside him.

  ‘So you’d no idea you were being staked out by the same people who followed us yesterday?’ she said.

  ‘No. They police as well?’

  ‘Maybe. But like I said before, it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys at the moment.’ She looked at Trevor in the mirror again. ‘And I have to say the same applies to you, my friend.’

  Trevor shifted his position and asked if it was safe to sit up yet. Sandra told him it would be better to stay put for a few minutes, and she waited until they got to the junction with the main road before she stopped the car to let him move into the passenger seat. He strapped himself in, and she heard a strange sound that was somewhere between a gurgle and a growl.

  ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘Is that you or the dog?’

  ‘I’ve hardly eaten a thing in two days. I don’t suppose we could—’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose we could.’

  Sandra tightened her grip on the steering wheel. My God but he’d got some nerve. First he dumps you at some crappy little roadside diner – which, by the way, involved you in a shitload of time, trouble and expense to get back to the festival and pick up your car – and now he reckons he can try it on again. Well have I got news for you, Trevor boy.

  ‘The thing I don’t get…’ he began.

  Oh yeah? And what would that be, Mastermind?

  ‘One of the things I don’t get is how you knew where I was. I mean, I know the police have a whole load of technology and stuff, but…’

  Sandra didn’t feel much like answering or getting into technical details about automatic numberplate recognition, but he’d probably just keep on at her till she did. ‘Let’s just say I have some useful contacts. When I called this particular one, there were already two APBs out on you, so I—’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why would the police put out two APBs?’

  ‘I didn’t say the police were behind both of them, now did I?’

  Sandra kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead, but she could sense that Trevor was staring at her, waiting for her to continue with an explanation. She decided to make him work for it.

  ‘Well?’ said Trevor eventually. ‘So who put out the other one?’

  ‘The thing is, this contact of mine is a pal, right? But even he couldn’t tell me the answer to that.’

  ‘Couldn’t or wouldn’t?’

  Sandra shrugged. ‘What’s the difference? It all comes down to the same thing.’

  ‘And what’s that exactly?’

  ‘Think about it. Somebody with the authority – but who’s not the police – puts out an APB, but no-one’s supposed to know who that somebody is. In fact, it’s a big secret,’ she said with heavy emphasis on the last word.

  She looked across at Trevor’s expressionless face and realised the penny still hadn’t dropped.

  ‘Secret Service would be my guess,’ she said and turned her attention back to the road.

  ‘Secret Service?’ Trevor laughed. ‘What, MI5 and all that?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘And why would the Secret Service be interested in me for God’s sake?’

  ‘You were the one who told me your van used to belong to James Bond,’ she said and hummed the first few notes of the 007 theme tune.

  Ever since she’d spoken to her contact and begun to suspect that MI5 might be involved, Sandra had developed serious misgivings about the true significance of the package she’d been hired to collect and deliver. Of course, she’d assumed from the very first that there had to be something not entirely legal about the whole setup. No-one’s going to pay out two thousand pounds when a courier service could do exactly the same thing for a pittance – unless there was something dodgy going on. But operating on the edge of the law – or sometimes just outside it – was often part of the job as far as she was concerned, and the money had been too good to turn down. MI5, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter. Jesus, they only ever got interested if it was something to do with national security or terrorism. That kind of stuff.

  Then there was the issue of the cigarette packets. She had grilled Trevor about those back at the campsite, but he’d been so adamant that they were all he’d found in the Jiffy bag, she’d been inclined to believe him. But even when she’d carried out a pretty thorough search of the van, she couldn’t be a hundred per cent certain he was telling the truth, and she wasn’t about to take any chances. She didn’t know much about her clients, but she’d formed the distinct impression that they weren’t the kind of people who would take failure lightly. If any shit was going to hit the fan when she dropped off the package, she wanted Trevor there as her human shield. Not surprisingly, he’d dug his heels in at first, insisting that he’d simply made a huge mistake and almost pleading with her to just take the Jiffy bag and leave him behind, but Sandra’s gun had soon convinced him that this was not an option.

  She’d also been more than curious to know why the police had picked him up, but she’d decided that her priority was to get the package to Sheffield as instructed. She’d told the guy on the phone it would take her about two hours to get there, and she was already running late. Quizzing Trevor about the police could wait till they were on the road, and now seemed like as good a time as any.

  He was gazing out of the side window, his arms folded tightly across his chest.

  ‘This business with the police,’ she said. ‘You want to tell me what that’s all about?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  Oh great. He’d gone sulky on her again. There was always the gun of course. That would loosen his tongue quick enough, but it’d be tricky to drive and aim at the same time, and stopping the car would waste valuable minutes. Not that she was in the mood right now, but maybe it was worth a crack with the good cop approach, and if push came to shove, she could even cross her fingers and promise him an all-you-can-eat at the next services they came to.

  ‘You never know,’ she said, injecting a caring, agony auntish tone into her voice. ‘I might be able to help. I’ve got some pretty important friends in the Force.’

  Okay, she had one, and he wasn’t that important either, but Trevor didn’t need to know that. Whatever, the little white lie seemed to do the trick, and he launched into his story without any further prompting. Perhaps he was stupid enough to believe she really would help, or perhaps he just wanted to get it off his chest. But she didn’t much care why he opened up so easily. The important thing was that she got the information she wanted.

  He told her how his wife, Imelda, had disappeared more than eighteen months ago and hadn’t been seen since. There’d been an investigation at the time, but it had been abandoned after only a couple of weeks, and he’d heard nothing more about it until the police knocked on his van door at eight o’clock that morning.

  ‘So they’ve re-opened the case?’ said Sandra.

  ‘Because my dear batty old mother told them I’d murdered her.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  He exp
lained how his mother had never made any secret of the fact that his older brother, Derek, was always her blue-eyed boy, and when he’d died in a car accident eight years ago, she’d seemed to blame Trevor for his death even though she hadn’t said it in so many words. Perhaps that was why she’d developed the absurd notion that he’d murdered Imelda – some kind of bizarre transference thing.

  ‘The cops don’t seem to think it’s an absurd notion,’ said Sandra, relieved that the police’s interest in Trevor appeared to have no connection with the job in hand.

  ‘Maybe they have to follow these things up as a matter of… routine. Maybe they don’t realise quite how batty she really is.’

  ‘Well they let you go, so presumably they must think you’re innocent.’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Trevor. ‘We didn’t actually get that far.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He told her how another officer had interrupted the interview to tell one of the detectives there was an urgent message for him, and he’d left the room.

  ‘A few minutes later, he came back and said I could go.’

  ‘Just like that?’ Sandra frowned but kept her eyes on the road ahead. ‘No explanation?’

  Trevor shook his head. ‘He didn’t give me one, and I didn’t ask. All I cared about was getting the hell out of there before he changed his mind.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Sandra’s relief of a few seconds earlier was in danger of spontaneously combusting.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Sounds like MI5 again,’ she said. ‘I can’t think why else the police would go to all that trouble and then suddenly release you for no apparent reason.’

  ‘MI5 told them to?’

  Sandra responded with a shrug and tooted her horn at the back of a battered old truck which was weaving in front of her and spewing out clouds of black smoke from its exhaust. Aroused from her sleep, Milly sat up on the back seat, her eyes darting this way and that as if trying to locate the source of any new stimulus. Trevor twisted round in his seat and stroked the top of her head a few times before resuming his position of staring out of the side window, his face an unhealthy shade of pale grey, rather like the colour of snow as it’s just beginning to turn to slush.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  MacFarland lay on the double bed, propped up with a couple of pillows, reading Guns and Ammo. He held the magazine in his right hand while he flexed the fingers of his left. His face contorted from the occasional stabs of pain, but at least the blood had stopped seeping through the heavy bandage.

  When he realised he had read the same sentence four times, he looked up at the source of his distraction. The voice from the enormous television screen on the opposite wall had reached an almost deafening level of hysteria, and MacFarland watched as three horses galloped towards the finishing line with barely a length between them. Seconds later, the commentator shrieked out the news that Cosmic Dancer had won by a short head.

  ‘Any good?’ said MacFarland without taking his eyes off the screen.

  ‘’Fraid not,’ said the man lying in a similar position on the other double bed. ‘Fourth.’ He dropped his folded newspaper onto the bed and replaced the cap on his pen.

  ‘Ye ever win?’

  ‘I have my moments.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Mostly when I get a tipoff that the race has been rigged.’

  ‘That happen often?’

  ‘Not often enough,’ the other man said and stood up from the bed. ‘You fancy something from the mini-bar?’

  ‘Aye, may as well,’ said MacFarland and turned towards the man that most people knew as Delia.

  He had earned the nickname not just because his surname was Smith but because of his background in accountancy and his reputation as one of the best in the business when it came to cooking the books. He was several years older than MacFarland and, like most of his countrymen, fiercely proud of his Welsh roots. Even so, he spoke without any trace of an accent except on the few occasions when he seriously lost his temper. MacFarland had learned a long time ago that if you ever heard him utter the word “boyo”, it was time to take cover.

  ‘Vodka? Scotch? Gin?’ said Delia, crouching down to examine the contents of the mini-bar.

  ‘Giz a beer,’ said MacFarland. ‘I’d best keep a clear heid in case anyone actually turns up.’

  Delia handed him a can and opened one himself. He looked at his watch and sat down on the edge of his bed. ‘She should be here any time now.’

  ‘Aye, well, the way things have gone the last coupla days, I’ll believe that when I see it.’ MacFarland gulped down half of his can of beer and belched loudly.

  Delia winced. ‘That’s the trouble with you Scots. No finesse.’

  ‘At least we dinnae have sheep-shaggin’ as our national sport.’

  ‘No, just swilling huge amounts of booze and scoffing deep-fried Mars bars till they’re coming out of your ears.’

  MacFarland laughed and was about to come back with a remark about how Offa’s Dyke got its name when there was a loud rattling sound.

  Both men snapped their heads round towards the vibrating door handle. They looked back at each other as the rattling stopped and was replaced by an insistent knocking.

  ‘Right on cue,’ said Delia.

  The knocking was repeated but with an even greater sense of urgency.

  ‘Bit bloody pushy, ain’t she?’ said MacFarland and took up a position to one side of the door so he wouldn’t be seen by their visitor, the butt of his gun clasped between both hands.

  Delia unlocked the door and eased it open a few inches. He peered through the gap and then immediately jumped backwards. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, snatching the door open to its full extent.

  MacFarland tensed both of his elbows and flicked off the gun’s safety catch with his thumb.

  ‘What the fuck is this for?’ Harry Vincent strode into the room, holding out a laminated “Do Not Disturb” sign. ‘You two been at it or what?’

  ‘He’s not my type,’ said Delia and closed the door.

  MacFarland relaxed his stance as soon as he recognised the voice and reset the safety catch on his gun. Harry turned and spotted him.

  ‘Expecting trouble?’ he said.

  ‘Cannae be tae careful, boss,’ said MacFarland, lowering the weapon to his side.

  ‘Yeah? Well I wish you’d been a bit more bloody careful yesterday, ‘cos maybe then I wouldn’t have had to get up at the crack of sparrow fart to fly all the way over from Greece to sort out your fucking cockups.’

  MacFarland tried to explain that it hadn’t been entirely his fault, that Humpty was a useless waste of space, that he’d been expecting a woman to make the pickup, and that he’d had no idea Special Branch – or whoever it was – were going to get in the way. But he knew he was wasting his breath.

  Harry threw his overnight bag onto the nearest bed and flopped down beside it. ‘I s’pose they do room service in a gaff like this? Food on the plane was shite.’

  Delia went over to a small desk in the corner of the room and fetched a menu.

  Harry took it from him and flicked it open. ‘You tried any of this stuff yet?’

  ‘Had breakfast this morning, but we got an Indian takeaway last night.’

  ‘They let you bring a Ruby Murray into a place like this?’

  Delia smiled. ‘We didn’t exactly broadcast the fact.’

  Harry looked up at him and then went back to studying the menu with a slight shake of his head. Delia returned to the desk and sat in the leather covered swivel chair while MacFarland continued to hover near the door.

  ‘’Ello. What’s this then?’ said Harry, bringing the menu a couple of inches closer to his face. ‘Panini? That’s a minge, innit?’

  ‘You’re probably thinking of punani,’ said Delia.

  ‘That’ll do me then. Minge Special with chips and onion rings. They got any decent lager ‘ere?’

  ‘Dunno, boss. There’s these in
the wee fridge there.’ MacFarland picked up his almost empty beer can from the bedside table and held it out for inspection.

  ‘Fuck me,’ said Harry. ‘I ‘ope you two ‘aven’t been layin’ into the mini-bar. Costs a bloody fortune, that does.’

  Delia assured him this was their first today and they’d only had a couple last night to go with the curry. Harry pointed out that all this was coming out of his own pocket and that they’d better not be taking the piss. Then he told MacFarland to make himself useful for a change and fetch him a can while he waited for a proper pint to be sent up with the food. Taking the phone from its mounting on the wall next to the bed, he placed an order for three Panini Specials with chips and onion rings and three pints of Stella.

  ‘Cheers, Jock,’ he said with a leering grin and popped the ring-pull under MacFarland’s nose when he handed him a can of beer.

  Harry knew how much he hated being called Jock – or, for that matter, Scotchboy or Porridge or Haggis-knob – but he apparently got some kind of kick out of humiliating him whenever and wherever possible. Oddly enough, he never once called him Jimmy, but that was probably because Jimmy happened to be his real name.

  Why the man seemed to despise him quite so much had always been a mystery to MacFarland, and he often wondered why Harry had employed him in the first place or why he was still on the payroll after all these years. All right, so yesterday wasn’t the first time he’d cocked up, but he wasn’t the only one. Even Delia – Mr Efficiency himself – had dropped the odd bollock now and again, and as for Humpty Numpty, well, the man was a walking disaster area. But Harry never seemed to get on Humpty’s case like he was always getting on his.

  It wasn’t as if he was particularly anti-Scottish either. There’d been other Scots on the team from time to time, and Harry had never had a problem with any of them. Nor had he ever called them Jock or Mars Bar or Glenfi-dick. Always their real names. Okay, if any of them screwed up, then he’d totally lose it and threaten them with all kinds of stuff – usually involving the removal of some body part or other – but then it’d all be over and there’d be plenty of back slapping and drinks all round.