Call No Man Happy until he’s Dead
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by Peter G Bailey ©
Published by
Peter G Bailey at Smashwords
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First published in Great Britain by PG Publishing 2011
First published electronically in Great Britain by Amazon in 2011.
All characters in this book are fictitious and bear no relationship to any person, alive or dead, known to the author.
A catalogue record for all published eBooks is held in the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-9569875-4-9
Dedicated to Joy There’s nothing half as sweet in life as Joy
Frontispiece:-
If Scott Reeves thought he could carry his rough delinquent school playground ways into adult life he was to discover that grown ups, the Police and the Welsh underworld did not play by the same rules he and his gang did.
Knowing him to be a short-trousered likeable hooligan, more often out of school than in its classrooms, he was treated by teachers and parents more indulgently than was good for his soul and mercurial temperament. As he grew into adulthood fighting against all forms of authority, including the rapidly disenchanted and once tolerant local police, this antipathy quickly centred on Welsh criminals trying to expand into territory Reeves considered his gang’s exclusive fiefdom.
Minor back street skirmishes finally came to a head when Donny Stringer’s Welsh thugs comprehensively destroyed Reeves’ one chance of breaking out of his underprivileged background by attacking him with baseball bats just before an important boxing match.
That attack sets in train some serious repercussions the police have difficulty in controlling. Only when the two gangs decide to combine to peddle drugs does the situation resolve itself and the fighting and murdering stops, although not in the way the police would have wished.
Call No Man Happy until he’s dead
Chapter One
The Lame Tiger
March 1973 -Queen’s Road.
Jennifer Lockyer, looking through the net curtained window of her mother’s second-storey council flat in one of Bristol’s development areas, did not immediately answer the question directed at her by one of the two men sitting at the cluttered dining room table behind her, nor did she seem to hear it until Scott Reeves repeated himself, this time more softly and in a tone she recognised as too dangerous to ignore. Reeves was not a gentle man, nor one who tolerated inattention, least of all from his long-established girlfriend.
She nodded to confirm that she had heard him, but stayed at the window watching a tan coloured Hillman Hunter saloon car that had pulled to a stop on the opposite side of the road to the flat. The two men in the vehicle made no attempt to alight, nor did they seem particularly interested in the grey, debris-strewn poverty spread depressingly in all directions around them. This was not an architecturally inspiring part of Bristol and was never designed to be, although its socialist planners once entertained high hopes of turning the new development into a residential paradise fit for the city’s labouring masses. Their high-flown dreams fell on fallow ground when confused socialist dogma clashed with the reality of their other well-intentioned, but misguided, self-deceiving fantasies. Now it formed a convenient suburban dumping ground where the ill-advised and increasingly desperate Housing Committee could house and forget its less wholesome, and it should be said, less honest and ethically-minded members of the City’s increasing population. Nor did the dour and uncertain humour of its dispirited residents inspire much confidence in any travellers forced by necessity, or circumstance, to transit its grey homogeneously unappealing roads, buildings and open spaces. This part of suburban Bristol was best driven through quickly looking neither right nor left, and if stopping, taking extreme care of any personal property in the vehicle, or carried about one’s person. This was an unforgiving area and one the constabulary had long despaired of bringing under the umbrella of the normally accepted laws of the land.
The car’s occupants seemed to understand the raw nature of their position and even from a distance they looked uncomfortable with the exposure. They were not parked there from choice, or from motives of unexplained personal gratification. The watching Jennifer made the speculative assessment instinctively, as did just about every other curtain-twitcher in the drab grey buildings overlooking the parked car. Remarks were being passed and judgements made in those places, but she said nothing in hers. Scott Reeves had not enquired about anything absorbing her attention outside the flat. He wanted an answer to the question he posed.
‘Why don’t you become Siggy’s manager yourself?’ she responded distractedly.
She never offered suggestions she expected to be taken seriously, or even listened to without mild derision, not at the age of eighteen and with only a passing familiarity of the subject under discussion. She expected a similar reaction now and mentally prepared for the brutal put-down. The response, in whatever form it came, would not worry her, why should it? She was at a take it or leave it stage of life where she allowed nothing to surprise, shake or mould her outward tranquillity. She was Miss Serenity in her mind if not in any one else’s.
Taken aback by the unexpected response Reeves frowned and remained silent for a measurable time as though considering the merits of an unlikely proposition from an unlikely source.
‘Because I’m not a manager,’ he said finally. He looked down at his right hand, weakened and white scarred from the many surgical operations undergone to repair the bones and tissue resulting from the unpleasant attentions of a baseball wielding moron whose name and face remained burned indelibly into a mind almost as badly scarred as the hand. He could hardly bring himself to utter the name that came to his mind as he flexed the fingers and twisted the wrist joint in a repetitive exercise designed to regain the movement and strength that had once been his passport to infamy and financial gains that did not bear scrutiny. ‘Besides, I hear Donny Stringer’s angling to take him on...’
‘Perhaps you should get your offer in first,’ Jennifer suggested diffidently. ‘Siggy will listen to you. You’re a fighter and he knows you’d deck him in, or out of, the ring, but for....’ she nodded at the convalescent hand without amplification. There was no need for further comment on that subject, everyone knew of the incident that lead to the horrific injury, and the two people in the room knew the internal and external anguish suffered by the brooding victim. He thirsted for revenge and they knew, in time, he would get what he wanted. He always did. ‘Why don’t you speak to him privately?’ she concluded.
‘And get his other hand busted,’ her elder brother Sebastian remarked with thinly veiled contempt edging his voice. He resented the distracting influence his sister exercised over his friend, although her acquaintenship with him pre-dated his by many months. ‘Scott would enjoy that. I don’t think!’
Reeves arched his dark eyebrows inquisitively in a facial movement that made his boyish face look even younger than the twenty-two years they had weathered in the worst arena a man could subject his anatomy to – boxing and street fighting. He possessed an impressively muscled physique and exuded an aura of menace that made strong men step aside and in his stultified boxing days made opponents wilt in abject fear of their wellbeing even before blows were exchanged under Marquis of Queensbury rules. Nothing had changed since the baseball bat’s malign attention, especially as he hoped to resurrect his fighting career just as soon as the shattered bones in his hand knitted into a usable whole.
He smiled at Jennifer as she cast a long-suffering look of indifference in her brother’s direction. The critical comment would be added to the others listed in her retentive mind and taken up later when she was in a mood for a really venomous sibling verbal, or physical, scrap and the list was long and the anger seething.
‘I think Jenny might have something there,’ Reeves mused thoughtfully. ‘I doubt that Siggy has any time for Donny Stringer, but Donny has a big mouth, deep pockets and he can be persuasive.’ He expanded the smile into a wide grin that included Sebastian Lockyer. ‘I think we might make a social call on Siggy.’ He paused as an uncertain thought struck him. ‘He lives in Bristol somewhere, doesn’t he? I know he trains at the Whitchurch Sports centre. I’ve seen him there.’
‘I can find out,’ Sebastian Lockyer volunteered. Now Reeves seemed interested in the unlikely subject his scepticism vanished, although it could be quickly reinstated should his friend’s mercurial enthusiasm for his sister’s crazy idea wane, and it probably would. ‘Although Siggy will want his palm greased plenty.’ He paused long enough to let his listeners know that single objection was not the only consideration; a graver one stood in the way. ‘Donny will be well pissed-off if you start fishing in his waters though,’ he added.
Reeves banged the table top sharply with his good fist and smiled grimly.
‘And that’s a big fat plus in my book?’ he growled testily. ‘Anything that makes that bastard’s life difficult has to be uplifting and good in my book. Anyway we’re only going to wish Siggy well in the fight I should have had.’
‘You’d certainly have put Siggy away had you climbed into the ring with him that night,’ Sebastian agreed loyally. ‘No doubt about that.’
Reeves nodded, his assessment wholly agreed with that comment. ‘The fight would have been a formality, just like all his others, and Siggy knew it,’ he grinned thinly at the not too distant memory. ‘He was shitting himself even though he did have the grace to visit me in hospital afterwards.’
‘That’s what I mean. He owes you,’ Jennifer assured him after taking a quick look out the window to make sure the tan car remained in the same place. One of the occupants appeared to be reading something held low down out of sight, a map perhaps, although she was sure nothing was being read. The studious preoccupation gave an appearance of normality while the second occupant was taking a discreet interest in the mean buildings around them. The occupants were scanning the area with a purpose and Jennifer guessed the reason. ‘And if you paint the right picture, he might take you on.’ She stopped speaking as her brother cut in cynically.
‘How come you know so much about what Siggy might think?’ he demanded peevishly. It was a question he felt Reeves ought to know the answer to, although his friend seemed uninterested with his thoughts centred elsewhere. ‘When did you ever meet him, for instance?’
‘You’re right, I’ve never met him,’ Jennifer responded evenly. ‘I know the type though. He’ll play ball if Scott explains the rules.’
‘And they are?’ Sebastian persisted.
‘That he’ll spend less time in intensive care with us looking after his affairs than with Donny pulling the strings and creaming off the profits,’ she explained calmly. ‘Profits that can be ours.’
She knew none of the unspoken rules governing the lives of the men she lived amongst, but she knew people turned pale and visibly trembled after one of Reeve’s confidential talks and they rarely gave trouble after such personal attention. Her boyfriend might not be loquacious and eloquent in his explanations, but his messages were rarely misunderstood, or if they were the consequences of stupidity were dire enough not to be contemplated by sane people.
Reeves nodded and pursed his lips purposefully as he considered the extravagance of Jennifer’s suggestions. The words might sound outrageous in other ears, but to him they came over as nothing more than an exploitable opportunity of the type he wanted to hear more of, although the venture Jennifer suggested extended his field of possible activities into areas previously shunned as well beyond his limited ability to administer and control. He was a small-time villain while Donald Stringer ran an established and efficient criminal organisation that tolerated no outside interference and which looked to extend his shady business wherever profitable possibilities could be found, and that was increasingly into areas Reeves considered his domain since the days when he extended his gratuitous playground thuggery into adulthood and increasingly into the neighbourhood where he lived. The relentless penetration of Stringer’s expansion into his area of interest had resulted in the crushing of Reeves’s right hand when the owner derisively refused to throw the middleweight contender fight with Siggy Oates at the last minute. That callous act forcibly brought home the vicious reality of the pitiless world into which he wanted to move. From a glittering and lucrative boxing career ahead of him he was now a frustrated has-been with a seething grudge growing larger and more ruthless by the day. He wanted revenge, but until now he could not see how that delightful indulgence could be achieved - now he could.
‘I think we should pay Siggy a friendly visit,’ he repeated, this time more firmly as though mentally stiffening an internal resolve. Once made there was no going back on a commitment. Scott Reeves never retreated, nor did he back away from a challenge. Not only was he defiantly courageous, he was foolhardy to the point of stupidity. Jennifer acknowledged that personality frailty more readily than her brother did, but neither would openly oppose a Reeves’ dicta, especially one expressed so firmly and with such conviction. ‘And soon,’ he concluded as if the ominous message was not clear enough as it stood.
‘Are we taking a few lads?’ Sebastian enquired uneasily.
He was not averse to exchanging back street blows with gangland opponents of a known disposition, but he liked the odds weighted heavily in his favour. A bruising confrontation with Stringer’s mob came anywhere near his idea of a fair fight, although he would never admit such an irresolute reservation to Reeves, nor to his credulous sister come to that. She admired strength and steely resolve in her men. Her brother had that admirable characteristic, while Sebastian failed to measure up to that high standard in her eyes, and with good reason. He was her brother and she had shared many defining moments with him over the years, and not all of them noble and repeatable in polite company of which their formative sibling years together had been singularly lacking.
‘Not too many to start with,’ Reeves decided thoughtfully. ‘This has to be set up right and baited properly. Too many hooligans hanging around in the background might attract unwelcome attention we don’t need at the beginning of, shall we say - negotiations? Donny offered me ten grand to throw the Siggy fight so I guess we need to ante up at least that amount.’ He laughed thinly at his companion’s obvious discomfiture and doubt.
‘Can we put our hands on that sort of pony?’ Sebastian asked doubtfully. He knew the sort of money that flowed into the Reeves’ coffers every week and he knew the amount that flowed out in creating the illusion his friend sought to surround himself with, but he did not know what happened to the difference. That was not his concern, although little of the money was spent courting his sister while she lived in a council flat and the three of them did not own a set of motorised wheels between them.
Reeves shrugged nonchalantly aware that Jennifer’s attention had strayed momentarily from the window. She was keen to know the answer to the same question. She dressed well and dined in the best Bristol restaurants when there was something to celebrate. She also enjoyed entertainment in the poshest city nightclubs on most weekends, but there was no classy suburban detached house and no shiny automobile waiting at the kerbside. She sometimes lamented that lack of polish in her girlish dreams while quietly accepting her boyfriend’s not too explicit explanation for their non-appearance, especially as he resented his motives being questioned and looked on impertinent enquiries as showing lack of loyalty in his leadership and the beginnings of insidious doubt in the minds of his associates. He had plans and expected those who shared his unspecified dreams to follow his lead and obey his orders without question and without hesitation. Jennifer knew that and held her peace; a lot could be learnt from watching and listening.
‘What’s money?’ Reeves countered with an unperturbed shrug. Before anyone could answer the rhetorical question with their personal version of the question he supplied his own not too original theory. ‘It’s just lubricant,’ he explained glibly. ‘It’s what makes the world slide right on by. If you don’t have it to smooth life’s path you get a sore arse from the rough ride, but if you grease the highway with pound notes you’ve got it made. Having plenty of grass makes the difference between shit and sugar.’ He glanced distastefully at his inexpensive watch as if he deserved a better timepiece to show that he, at least, knew the difference. ‘Talking of money we’d better see if our share of life’s bounty is flowing where it should; into our pockets.’
He stood up and after flexing the fingers of his injured hand for a moment he pushed the chair he had been using tidily back under the dining table with a shove of his foot. Space was a commodity Bristol Council flats were not noted for providing in great abundance. It was a luxury denied him in the cramped world he sought to break free from. Like Jennifer and Sebastian he was a product of the under-privileged working class and took reluctant and unapologetic advantage of the social housing offered to such deprived people. Unless the inhabitants of such social largesse were unreconstituted slobs, which he definitely was not, tidiness became a defensive way of life rather than an admirable virtue.
‘What are you looking at out there?’ he demanded when Jennifer’s window-gazing obsession finally caught his attention. He liked looking at Jennifer’s exquisite form and he liked her attention to be centred exclusively on him and not on some abstract object situated elsewhere on the planet. He joined her at the window leaving Lockyer to rise from the table and follow.
‘See that car down there?’ she asked, nodding towards the stationary vehicle. ‘Don’t touch the curtain!’ she warned as Sebastian stretched out a hand to move the netting aside for a clearer view. ‘I think they’re wheeled fuzz watching this flat.’
Both men peered through the netting to make their own assessments of the situation.
‘Could be,’ Reeves agreed with an irritated frown. This type of surveillance was not unknown in an area where petty thieving and the conversion of stolen goods into more usable cash formed a profitable way of life, but the unsocial pastime attracted unwanted regulatory interest. If the police had suspicions about his illegal activities, and there was every reason why they should, he was a definite candidate for wasting police funds on. He had form, but none since taking up boxing as a full-time career. That brutal profession needed a clean criminal charge sheet to obtain a licence to legally hit people. He had that, or he had until recently. The appearance of the unmarked car outside the flat could portend police interest in his activities that might become intrusive, unwelcome and incriminating. ‘They must have latched on to the fact that I visit you two low-life’s a lot and want to know why.’ He grinned thinly to himself at some personal joke he did not bother to share with his companions even if they could guess its origins. ‘They’ve turned my place over often enough without finding anything. Perhaps they think it all happens here.’
Jennifer puffed out her cheeks to indicate her personal objections to his uncomplimentary comments without removing her attention from the roadway.
‘Mummy’s not going to like the police knocking on her neighbours’ doors asking questions, even if she no longer lives here,’ she confided grimly. ‘She’ll be worried that the council will find out that she lives upstairs with her sister and let’s us live here without their approval.’
She spoke as though that prospect worried her, but many other things took greater priority than that in her mind. Even if she loved her mother and her aunt the two upstairs women did not care for Scott Reeves. To them he was a wrong ‘un and they never missed the opportunity of telling her and her brother of their distaste for the flash-git they associated with. They both knew him from his unruly school antics, and his later dubious lifestyle appalled them even more. His brief success as a pugnacious ring fighter since those days had done little to endear him to them. To their way of thinking no good could come of Sebastian and Jennifer hitching themselves to his ill-fated wagon, and every passing day they expected to hear bad news and police knocking on local doors asking questions no one wanted to answer. Could the tan car’s appearance mark the beginning of their fears coming home to roost?
Reeves grimaced at her comments without sharing her concern. He had things to hide and police hovering around did nothing for the many cash raising schemes he had running or was putting in place. Crime squad interest delighted his detractors and their presence even emboldened those with a little more community spirit into resisting his menacing monetary donation requests. The Boy’s in Blue had to be discouraged in such a way that they would withdraw without coming down heavily on his nascent criminality.
‘I don’t think police raids are on the cards,’ he decided after a moment’s surveillance and thought. ‘No one’s been tugged for anything we’ve done, or even warned as far as I know. The fact that they’re nosing around means they’ve nothing to hang a charge on. They’re trying to unsettle us and we should do the same to them.’ He grinned tightly and turned to Sebastian standing beside him. ‘This calls for the community cars to be brought into action,’ he informed his friend. ‘One parked at each end should do the trick. You fix that up while I talk to your sister about birds and bees in the bedroom. Don’t hurry back!’
Sebastian looked uneasily between Jennifer and the smiling Reeves.
‘Won’t that give them the ammunition they need for increasing their scrutiny activities?’ he demurred. ‘They only have to check the registration of the blocking vehicles to know they’re stolen and that’ll give them the excuse to come for us mob-handed.’
Reeves shrugged. ‘The police pick up stolen cars from this estate every night,’ he reminded his listeners. ‘Two more won’t make any difference. It’ll give them something to do in their spare time instead of sitting around outside my bedroom while I’m shafting your sister.’
If either man noticed the look of distaste pass briefly over Jennifer’s face they ignored the sign as nothing more than a resetting of features. They had seen it before and it had never affected her meek submission to their sexual demands. Sebastian had ravaged his sister many times in her younger days, but not any longer. She did not allow him the same pleasure now she was older, more worldly-wise and able to defend herself in ways not available in her teen and pre-teen years. Those occasions, not always objectionable to her at the time, were searingly recorded in her memory ready for the day when she could seek revenge. Many of the intimacies had been nothing more than youthful rape, especially when he offered her to his friends in payment for some debt of honour he had incurred with them. Those festering memories lay behind the polite coldness with which she often regarded him. There was no sororal love in the fawn-coloured eyes, only calculation. He had not touched her for three years, but she could see he wanted to and would do so if given the chance, and if he did not fear her protector more than he feared her more modest attempts at female retribution.
‘OK,’ Sebastian agreed unenthusiastically. ‘I’ll get the boys on to it, although I don’t think they’ll be pleased to be eye-balled by the fuzz at close quarters in daylight.’ He stopped speaking as Reeves turned on him with a frown of displeasure.
‘Tell them to borrow some stockings off their grannies and pull those over their heads if they want to look like real criminals,’ he suggested sarcastically. ‘The police can’t remember their own birthdays let alone some mug shots pinned on the walls of their Nick. If anyone gets nabbed tell them I’ll send flowers and a note of commiseration.’
Sebastian shrugged unhappily and looked to his sister for support, but she ignored his unspoken plea. Her brother was not being asked to confront the occupants of the car himself. He only needed to pass on the message that Reeves wanted the police vehicle immobilised to show the occupying forces of law and order that their fiat did not run in Bishopsworth and never would. Not while he lived and breathed there.
Without another word Sebastian left the flat to make the necessary arrangements with gang members running the community car pool. The vehicles changed every day and it was never certain what cars would be available for any particular purpose. The police repossessed the vehicles almost as fast as they were stolen in other parts of Bristol, but there was always something driveable around, some of it high quality metal the owners would regret losing almost as much as the insurance companies would regret paying for the loss.
For the purpose of blocking the surveillance police car two old wrecks would do and plenty of those lay around the estate rusting and looking untidy.
Left alone, the lovers did not take advantage of the bedroom opportunity suggested by the ironic Reeves. There was no need and there was no time. He slept with Jennifer most nights and she never refused his demands no matter how frequent and how imaginative and bizarre. Reeves had an insatiable appetite when in the mood and that was all the time, but at the moment his interest lay elsewhere, notably in what would happen in the street outside when his orders were obeyed.
Sitting behind the steering wheel of the unmarked police car Detective Inspector Bruce Gilmore settled down for a long wait. In his lap lay an action file covering the many unresolved crime cases spreading over that area of South Bristol like a festering sore nothing could heal. Some people considered that other parts of Bristol had worse criminal reputations, but in his opinion, for the sheer number of frustrated and unsolved investigations, no one could beat the Bishopsworth, Hartcliffe and Knowle combination. Those areas were in a class of their own for the sheer volume of petty crimes committed in the course of a full year. A few minor villains were caught and sent to prison or correction establishments, but it was obvious from the statistics available to him, the real criminals were getting away, not with murder, for nothing like that had been reported for many years, but with thefts stretching from Avonmouth docks to break-ins at the many industrial warehouses dotted around Bristol and other South West towns. Someone had to be conducting and orchestrating the thefts and that someone was probably within touching distance of where he now sat. Gilmore and his companion, CID Sergeant Hugo Bryant, had drawn the short straw and landed the unenviable task of trying to get a grip on the seemingly intractable problem. Back at their City centre headquarters, the incident room dealing with the Bristol South area was filled with criminal records dating back to the Ark and most made uncomfortable reading for the senior officers asked by even more senior officers to bring the areas under control and put a few major criminals where they belonged, in Bristol’s Horfield Jail. A task force, of which the two men in the tan Hillman Hunter were but a small part, was formed to identify the villians and bring them to court.
‘Glad I don’t live here,’ Bryant remarked uncharitably. Even the distant green Dundry hills added no enchantment as a backdrop to the spirit-deadening effect of grey concrete and unimaginative architecture.
‘You saying Stapleton’s better than this,’ Gilmore scoffed cynically. He lived outside Bristol and could afford to air his domiciduary superiority.
‘Not too good when Bristol Rovers are playing at home,’ Bryant admitted grudgingly. ‘But at least everyone lives in houses and are not herded into municipal high-rise barrack blocks were punters have nothing better to do than breed and plot what they can steal next.’
‘I’m not sure this lot are any more light-fingered than any other Bristolian miscreant,’ Gilmore objected. ‘In my experience criminally-minded people will lift anything not nailed firmly where it belongs, and even then it has to be guarded. Look how much stuff is lifted from Bridewell and that’s the County Police Headquarters for Christ Sake!’
Bryant expelled a deep breath of bored air. ‘Don’t forget almost as many villians go in and out of there every day as do policemen on duty,’ he reminded his senior officer, ‘and I don’t suppose the civilian employees working in the building are entirely blameless when it comes to half-hitching unclaimed goods left in the dead file records’ office. There’s some tasty stuff in there remember!’
‘Most of it stolen by people living around these parts,’ Gilmore commented sourly. ‘Although that won’t be easy to prove unless we fingerprint everyone over two years old. They start them young here, what with their mothers using pushchairs as hiding places for goods lifted from shops and unlocked cars and then claiming they hadn’t noticed their child pull a pair of denim slacks, exactly the mother’s size, into the pushchair with them.’
‘Does that mean this place is statistically worse than anywhere else in Bristol then?’ Bryant mused. He had listened to the task briefing, but that item of information, if it had any relevance, must have gone over his head. His job was catching criminals not compiling statistics of social trends. That chore fell to officers keen on moving up the next promotion rung and that advancement did not figure very highly on his agenda. He was too bolshie to be considered for that step.
‘It means,’ Gilmore explained patiently. ‘This place has attracted more police attention than the resident wideboys would want to pull down on themselves. They’ve become too greedy, or there’s too many of them operating in too small a pond and they’re treading on each other’s toes.’
‘You mean there’s a mini-turf war going on?’ Bryant asked the same question at the task briefing, but received an inconclusive response. No one in authority seemed to know the answer to that simple question.
Gilmore shrugged. ‘That’s a possibility,’ he admitted, ‘although no big names have been mentioned as wanting to come out of the long grass and take a punt as Mr Big.’
‘What about Mr Stringer?’ Bryant hazarded. ‘I heard he’s feeling constricted in Swansea and wants to stretch his acquisitive paws over to this side of the water where he thinks the pickings are easier.’
‘Yeah! He’s in the frame for anything underhand that one,’ Gilmore agreed grudgingly, ‘but so far there’s nothing positive connecting him to any villianry in our manor, although some known South Welsh hard-cases have been sighted in Bristol without good reason for being there, but none have been sighted around these parts, and I can’t fault them for their lack of good taste in that regard.’
‘So why the high profile interest in this armpit of a place?’ Bryant demanded disgustedly. ‘Surely we’d be better swamping the docks and St Paul’s with a visible presence. That’s where most skulduggery takes place.’
‘We have teams there,’ Gilmore reminded him firmly. ‘And we’re here to remind the residents that law enforcement operates in this fermenting cesspool and we will not tolerate areas being carved up as personal cash streams for any thugs brave enough to use baseball bats and knives to attack small businesses and old age pensioners.’
Bryant looked along the empty road and grimaced disgustedly. ‘Can’t see much of either happening here,’ he objected. ‘Perhaps we should trundle over to the shopping precinct and watch what happens there. That’s where small businesses and old ladies clutching purses filled with cash benefit handouts congregate.’
‘Small fry,’ Gilmore grunted dismissively. ‘We might catch a few teenage hooligans who plead an unhappy childhood and have their case dismissed because no one understands them when we haul them into court. In most respects they mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. They are a distraction that will blow our cover faster than Bristol City is dropping out of their football league. We want the real string-pullers, the people operating protection rackets and peddling drugs. Take them out of the equation, and keep them out and the world suddenly becomes a tidier place for everyone to live, especially old ladies.’
Bryant looked down at his notebook and read a few entries. ‘You really think this Scott Reeves is tied into any of this?’ he asked. ‘I’d have thought he was above that petty lifestyle. He’s well-tasty boxer. Another couple of bouts and he’d be in the ring fighting for the middleweight championship of the world, and he’d win - no doubt about that.’
Gilmore puffed out his cheeks to indicate a contrary opinion and a not very convinced one.
‘You read his pre-teen form?’ he demanded derisively. ‘That kid had Horfield written all over him from the third form at school, although prison would have been the worst place to send him. It would have been like sending him to a criminal’s finishing school, although I doubt the inmates of that prison could have taught him much he didn’t already know about extracting money with menaces. The man’s a natural for becoming a long-term guest at any one of Her Majesty’s places of penal correction.’
‘Is that what they’re still called?’ Bryant asked cynically, and then added quickly in case Gilmore should think he had neglected his background case studies. ‘Yes, I did glance through his files, but most of his demeanours were, as you say, exercises in pushing the social boundaries to their extremes. Once he took up boxing that made hitting people legal, he became model citizen, didn’t he?’
‘There’s not much reported about him that we can feel his shoulder for nowadays,’ Gilmore admitted ruefully, ‘but his name comes up in criminal enquiries rather too many times for my liking. He was a bad news as a kid and in my book, if criminal tendencies show that early in life, they don’t change until a good woman gets hold of them and fucks some sense into their stupid brains.’
Bryant grinned sourly. ‘You suggesting that we turn all our young thugs over to accommodating females to sort their heads out?’ he asked. ‘I’m surprised the Liberal Democrats haven’t come up with that idea. They usually support crackpot ideas like that and let someone else to sort out the muddle when it turns vinegary.’ He paused as though considering the merits of his obtuse suggestion. ‘Although come to think of it women could probably do as good a job as some court judgements seem to manage.’
‘Moving on,’ Gilmore interrupted swiftly. He did not want to enter into a conversational exchange with a junior officer that might find its way into the King’s Head Lane CID staff canteen as a humorous comment to be bandied about over coffee and to reappear as the gospel according to St Bruce Gilmore. Lesser things had blighted a promising police career than that. Taken out of context such comments might well be misinterpreted as criticisms of the courts and of higher police authorities. ‘Just keep you ears open for anything that might point us in his direction.’
‘Him in particular?’ asked Gilmore suspiciously. ‘You can’t have a down this Scott Reeves because he appeared to be a delinquent when he wore short trousers.’
‘When he attended school,’ Gilmore corrected pedantically, ‘or rather when he didn’t, since he spent more time bunking off than he did in the classroom learning what he was there for. He’s bright, but not from anything picked off a chalk dusty blackboard. He learnt all he wanted to know down at the docks and in the dingier back streets around here, and I know which influence moulded his reprobate character the most.’
‘If he picked up his fighting ability from the streets he must have had some good teachers,’ Bryant commented approvingly. ‘You have to admit he’s tasty with both fists and I’ve never seen anyone demolish opponents in the ring quite so comprehensively and without raising a sweat while doing it. The man’s a genius with his fists and I personally wouldn’t like to face him in the ring or outside it.’
‘Better leave that ‘at inside the ring’,’ Gilmore advised sourly. ‘Scott doesn’t know when to stop hitting people even when the end of round bell rings. He’ll kill someone one of these days.’
‘Didn’t I hear he’d injured his hand and has to stop fighting for a while?’ Bryant asked. ‘If it’s true that should dampen his enthusiasm for hitting people inside and outside the ring under control for a while.’
‘I wish,’ Gilmore agreed wearily. ‘He’s got any number of young thugs around here who’ll punch and kick anyone he points them at. Even if he’s done up in bandages like an Egyptian mummy you still can’t rely on not getting duffed up if you cross his interests. I tell you he’s evil, and the quicker we lift him off the streets for good the better.’
‘You seem to have a down on the guy,’ Bryant commented. ‘But then I’ve never met him personally. I guess there might be something about him I don’t like. His aftershave perhaps, although at the moment I’m reserving my loathing for Mr Stringer and his Welsh associates. They’re centred right in the middle of my arrest warrant cross hairs.’
‘You’re in the wrong country to nail him, laddie,’ Gilmore reminded him. ‘He operates mainly from Wales and the Welsh police have plenty to interest them without us poking our truncheons where they’re not needed, or welcome. The Welsh are prickly about most things and that’s one of them. Has no one told you that?’
‘I’ve heard it said,’ Bryant agreed dryly. Then after a few minutes of contemplative silence, he asked: ‘You had any personal dealings with this Scott Reeves?’
Gilmore shrugged dismissively. ‘On and off,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve pulled him in a number of times in my younger days and always for rowdy behaviour and for demanding money with menaces. We could never put him away because no one would testify against him. He seemed to have the area from Withywood to Bedminster tied up tighter than a Nun’s fur purse when the Abbot comes calling, and he still does if my information is correct – Reeves not the Abbot.’
‘Perhaps we need the 7th Cavalry behind us if we need to arrest him then,’ Bryant muttered mockingly.
He knew they did not have that much power behind the local fact finding effort. In fact, since this was an undercover operation where no trouble was expected, he and the inspector had nothing more robust than the local uniformed foot and mobile patrols to call on, and they were purposely being kept away in order not to compromise the present operation.
‘We’ll be all right,’ Gilmore assured his companion confidently. ‘They don’t attack passers-by just for the sake of it and as far as I know the area hasn’t slid that far down the social scale that they’ve resorted to highway robbery.’ He rustled his papers to indicate that the pair should get down to the business they had arrived for. ‘That’s where Reeves lives with his girlfriend and her brother when he’s not in his own shack,’ he informed Bryant without raising his gaze from the papers in his hand and without looking out the car window in the direction of the grey flats behind the tall iron railings separating buildings from the pavement. ‘Don’t look,’ he advised quickly when his companion appeared about to do just that. ‘Someone might be watching. That pastime is a growth industry around these parts. They might not know the date the Corn Laws were repealed, but they know who’s calling on their neighbours and why.’
‘That might be true if anyone’s out of bed at this time of the morning,’ Bryant grunted cynically. ‘The only time this lot get out of bed early is to draw their gyro cheques and housing benefits and this isn’t one of those days.’
‘Don’t stereotype,’ Gilmore told him crossly. ‘Someone will always surprise you by seeing an old lady across the road, or producing a talented golden egg.’
‘Probably one they’ve just pinched and are returning it because they know its rotten inside, or they’ve been rumbled,’ Bryant responded unrepentantly.
‘My son, I think you’ve been around the criminal class too long,’ Gilmore objected. ‘It’s possible that some people living around here are regular churchgoers whose lives are filled with nothing but goodness and love for their fellow man.’
‘Now who’s talking,’ Bryant scoffed with the slight grin of someone scoring an unexpected verbal goal. ‘At least I haven’t selected the victim to fit up before we open the case. I retain an open-mind until convinced otherwise.’
‘I have an open-mind,’ Gilmore assured him virtuously. ‘Unfortunately, I’ve read more of the script than you, and Scott Reeves fills the major villain role to perfection around here and he’ll be in the frame when the credits roll and the prison doors clang shut with him on the inside, believe me.’
If Bryant felt a different conclusion could be drawn from historical evidence he remained silent as a flatbed lorry loaded with long metal scaffold poles overhanging its rear passed them and drew up in front of the car and began reversing towards it. Both car occupants watched warily, momentarily unaware that a second lorry, also carrying overhanging builder’s ladders and scaffold poles had reversed out of a side street and was taking up a position astern of them.
‘What the hell’s that prat trying to do,’ Bryant gasped in increasing panic as the loaded lorry’s intention became clear. The Hillman was about to be trapped like the meat in a sandwich, and neither slice of bread intended to stop. ‘He’s going to kill us…’
Bryant, sitting nearest the pavement grabbed the door handle and threw himself sideways from the vehicle hitting the pavement painfully with his knees, hands and shoulder. He rose to his feet just as the scaffold poles of the front lorry crashed through the Hunter’s windscreen and the tailboard hit the bonnet with an impact that might have thrown the car backwards if the second lorry had not struck the rear at the same instant. The impact seemed choreographed as scaffold poles and ladders from both Lorries crashed through glass and crumpled sheet metal into distorted shapes.
In the road Gilmore had taken the same evasive action as Bryant, and suffered similar damage to hands, knees, arms, clothing and dignity. There was no doubt that both men had escaped with their lives with no thanks to the lorry drivers, and both victims were not too shaken to realise that important fact as they struggled to their feet.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Bryant bellowed at the first lorry driver even before he knew if he were fit enough to adopt such a belligerent attitude, but he did have the open car door between them. He hobbled round it trying to close the gap, but Gilmore, in the road, was closer.
The first lorry driver, face and neck covered in a blue woollen ski mask swung nonchalantly from his cabin foot mounting board and glanced uninterestedly at the wreckage behind him and in particular at the shaken man standing in the road by the car door.
‘Oh dear, looks like you blokes have just had a parking accident,’ he suggested amiably. ‘Sorry about that. My foot must have slipped off the accelerator. I hope you haven’t bent any of my scaffold poles. The boss will go mad if you have.’
‘Sod your boss, come here, you’re under arrest for dangerous driving,’ Bryant raged.
His hobbled gait was not theatrical as blood could be seen pouring from a knee wound and his elbow hurt. The hooded lorry driver, climbing down into the road and slamming his door shut, ignored him. Gilmore seemed in no better shape as he supported himself on one leg by hanging on to the roof gutter of the Hillman.
‘Looks like you both got lucky,’ the second lorry driver, also hooded, observed as he crossed the road to the other pavement. He left his door hanging open and skirted the wincing Gilmore. ‘You could have been killed parking like that.’
‘You’re both maniacs,’ Gilmore raged angrily. ‘And you’ll pay for this. Come here!’
He realised he and Bryant were in no position to face what looked like two healthy young males who had no respect for human life let alone the requirements of the highway code on street side parking. In a struggle to overwhelm them he and Bryant stood no chance. He needed reinforcements fast, but his radio was in the car, he could hear it chuntering softly in the background as though nothing was amiss in its orderly world.
‘Yeah, take our phone number,’ the first lorry driver said dismissively. ‘I’m sure our head office will tell you what to do, and they’ll probably be a little less polite about it than us. Meanwhile we got a job to size up, come on Bert. Is that your real name or one you use after having an accident?’ He walked across the road to join his companion waiting nonchalantly on the pavement. ‘Bloody people with nothing better to do than park inconsiderately in the street all day,’ he muttered with an unrepentant grin.
Both shaken victims of the vehicle shunt watched their unhurried departure as the two lorry drivers disappeared down a common entrance leading to apartment blocks some way from the watching trio at the second storey window.
‘Can you believe that?’ Bryant gasped in astonishment as he joined the discomfited and bruised Gilmore in the road. ‘That was no accident that was a bloody deliberate attempt at murder.’
‘A deliberate attempt at something, I’d say,’ Gilmore agreed ruefully. He rubbed a tender shoulder and regarded three scaffold poles impaled in the seat he had so impetuously abandoned a moment before. They could have pieced his chest for all the escaping drivers cared. ‘Get on the blower and report this to King’s Head Lane control. We got the evidence to nail those two bastards and careless driving does not even figure in the first forty charges I can think of.’
Even before the mechanical clatter of disturbed machinery died in the roadway outside the apartment Reeves pulled Jennifer from the window with a tug at her arm.
‘Let’s go before their mates arrive and start asking questions we can’t answer without killing ourselves laughing,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Someone might have been hurt,’ she objected without much conviction. She could see through the net curtains the two men from the tan Humber staggering unsteadily by the wrecked vehicle as though shocked by the experience just suffered. They looked in need of help, but she was not allowed to offer anything more than mental sympathy. There was no telephone in the apartment and she knew Reeves would never allow her to run to the local telephone to report the accident, if indeed one could be found in working order. Few of those essential services escaped the attention of mindless vandals who thought nothing of making life difficult for their own kind as well as everybody else by visiting wanton destruction on the amenities supplied for public use.
‘Let’s get out of here before we’re invited to give evidence of what we’ve just seen,’ Reeves said with a tight grin. ‘I hate lying to the police, especially with a broad grin on my face.’
Together they hurried from the apartment and made their way to the rear of the building and down some steep communal concrete steps to ground level at the back. Turning left they made their way along a pedestrian route littered by trash and empty beer cans until they could dart down a passageway that brought them onto a parallel road to that where the accident happened.
There they met a grinning Sebastian.
‘What do you think of that boss?’ he demanded gleefully. ‘Did that teach them something, or what?’
Reeves shook his head dolefully as Jennifer stared unbelievingly at her brother. He had been instrumental in nearly killing two people and seemed pleased by the exploit. OK, he used to pull wings off bluebottles when he was young, but was that realistic training for adult life?
‘I was thinking of something less dramatic to annoy the fuzz, but that’ll do for starters,’ Reeves laughed. He did not slacken his pace as Sebastian dropped in beside him forcing Jennifer to fall behind as she hurried to keep up on the narrow roadway. Both men walked faster than her natural pace, and to her that seemed suspiciously fast for three innocent people heading for the nearest shopping precinct, unless they were desperately short of a few essential groceries. Any police observers would surely jot down their hurried movement away from a crime scene in their official notebooks. ‘Did Seth and Stan get away?’ Reeves asked his companion. ‘And where the hell did you get those two Lorries at such short notice?’
Sebastian chuckled. ‘Yeah! Seth and Stan have taken the BMW for a drive in the country. They’ll be back in a couple of hours unless it’s too hot for them, then they’ll scoot off to Birmingham for a few days to let things cool down.’
‘The lorries?’ Reeves prompted. It was nice to know his men were well out of the accusation frame, but that benefit would be instantly negated if they could be traced by sloppy lorry heisting.
‘That part was great,’ Sebastian told him, still smiling with the inner satisfaction of good job done at short notice. ‘They were part of the trading stock of a bankrupt builder over by the Malago. You know, embargoed by the receivers! They were left unlocked in a yard and Seth and Stan borrowed them for a priority job.’ He glanced anxiously at his grim faced friend before adding. ‘They were gloved and masked…’
‘We noticed,’ Reeves assured him, and then more fulsomely. ‘You did well, my son. Whatever the fuzz wanted when they arrived they can now amuse themselves chasing shadows while we get on with the serious business of collecting our rent. You got the books?’
He seemed oblivious of Jennifer struggling in the two men’s wake as they neared the Queen’s Road shopping precinct. She would keep up somehow. She always did.
‘Here,’ Sebastian said, pulling a cheap notebook from his inside coat pocket and handing it to Reeves who took it without a glance and thrust it into his own inside coat pocket. ‘Nick Walters was beefing this morning,’ he went on as they approached an ironmonger’s shop, one of several small businesses fronting on to the road. People and shoppers wandered about with lowered gaze rather than looking at each other straight in the eyes. ‘He says he’s being hit on by another firm and can’t afford to pay twice. I told him, if he could do that that’s what we’d be demanding.’
Reeves paused in his stride and turned to Jennifer. ‘Here, you go and buy something for lunch, darling. Seb and me have some business to see to. We’ll check in with you in the laundrette in about ten minutes.’ He nodded in the direction of a labelled shop front a few yards further on.
‘No rough stuff,’ Jennifer pleaded. ‘Not after what’s just happened.’
‘We’ll need a good alibi, won’t we?’ Reeves grinned without committing himself to the reassuring answer she wanted. ‘We can’t be in two places at once.’ As Jennifer moved away he walked to the kerb and paused to look in the direction they had just left. They were some distance from the scene of the sandwich accident, but he could hear no police sirens, nor see any activity to indicate that the men-in-blue were taking an interest in the fate of their own, if the two occupants were police and Reeves supposed they were, even without knowing their boot sizes. ‘OK! Let’s go,’ he said turning to Sebastian. Both men seemed calm and businesslike as they entered a claustrophobic ironmonger’s shop with its wares tightly packed from floor to ceiling and hanging from every available wall space.
They made their way to the single equally cluttered counter at the rear where a middle-aged shirtsleeved man wearing a dark coloured pullover served a customer from behind it. He glanced up when the two men joined him and immediately looked worried. These were not buyers, far from it.
‘Hello Nick,’ Reeves smiled in syrupy greeting. He elbowed the customer roughly aside, but the displaced man took no offence. Instead, he pushed the dog bowl he had been handling back across the counter as no longer needed than the thick lip, or worse, he might have expected if he wasn’t one of the gang sent ahead to check over the premises. ‘Hello Terry,’ Reeves nodded to him in the amiable manner of a friend greeting another after an absence when they needed to catch up with each other’s news. ‘Hope we didn’t get you up too early, Terry my old son. You see, Nick here’s been talking to some funny people and we’ve called to see if we could share the joke they seem to find so amusing. We like a good laugh, don’t we?’ Turning his attention to the man behind the counter he grabbed one of Walter’s wrists in an iron grip and yanked it across the counter. Reeves was immensely strong even carrying his injury.
‘That’s right, Nick,’ Sebastian breathed ominously in agreement. ‘Stay and be sociable. We like friendly shopkeepers who can tell funny stories.’
He cast a quick glance around the shop to see if he had any witnesses, but the few shoppers inside the premises could feel the menace emanating from the small group by the counter and were remembering other chores they could be doing. The shop rapidly emptied.
‘Look!’ Walter’s croaked through a constricted throat and lips tautened with fear. ‘I don’t make enough money here to pay two insurance policies, why don’t you guys sort out who collects it amongst yourselves…’
Walters, short in stature and on the wrong side of forty, was not the warrior type. He had a spare undernourished frame to support his contention that his small enterprise produced little more than running expenses to keep him and his family in the barest necessities of life. He also wore clothes that looked many years beyond the time when they should have been decently consigned to the rubbish collectors, or to a needy charity shop buyer.
Unimpressed by both arguments and the man’s sartorial inelegance Sebastian Lockyer took the limp wrist from Reeves’ grip and leaned closer until his face pressed close the Walters’ ear.
‘That’s one of the things we want to talk to you about Nick,’ he murmured confidentially. ‘You see, we were disappointed to hear that you’d been talking to a third party about insurance payments, because such discussions are excluded items in our agreement terms.’ He raised Walter’s wrist as though intending to bang the limp hand hard down on the oak topped counter, but when Walters flinched and closed his eyes in anticipation of unbearable pain Lockyer merely held it teasingly aloft.
‘Better watch the door Terry,’ Reeves advised calmly. ‘This could be upsetting for Nick’s customers to watch if they don’t like seeing their local friendly ironmonger bleed.’ He smiled appreciatively as Terry Lench walked to the door and flicked the ‘open’ sign to read ‘closed’. Walters gasped; a closed shop did not bode well for what he might expect from being locked in with three hard-faced visitors who did not look friendly despite their amiable protestations.