Authors: Mike Ripley
‘Any message for me?’
‘No. Oh yes, “Check your fucking messages.” Does that make any sense?’
‘Perfect. Did she say anything about some silver tankards?’
‘No, she didn’t, but a guy called Reuben Sloman rang from something called the Silver Vaults – is that another pub? Anyway, he said there was no way he was lending out his
stock to people like you, but you were always welcome there.’
I squared up to him.
‘Tell me, Tony, do you have an extra truth gene or something which stops you letting people down lightly?’
He pushed his glasses back up his nose with his forefinger.
‘Never thought about that. Shall we kick some perfectly formed butt?’
‘Why not?’
Let’s see how far you get with the three Attitude Queens, I thought.
But he had them under his thumb within seconds, and I shouldn’t have been surprised. He was a photographer, they were models. Mere mortals can’t interrupt that equation.
Once inside the bar with his gear, Tony transformed. He peeled off the grubby dark blue trenchcoat he had been wearing to reveal a vicious pink shirt and a tie which looked as if it had had a
lamb biryani pre-spilled down it. He clapped his hands three times.
‘Come on, girls, get down here. Let Tony see what you’ve got – but you can keep your knickers on for now,’ he shouted.
They trooped in from the back room and stood in a line in front of the bar, Max taking deep breaths and exhaling down her chest so we didn’t get the fumes, Neemoy trying to sponge egg yolk
out of her T-shirt with a damp tissue and Sasha wearing only a bath towel and dripping all over the floor.
Tony put his left hand on his hip and the palm of his right hand across his forehead.
‘
This
is what I have to work with?’
‘You’re on your own, son,’ I said.
‘And what time does this pub open?’
‘Twenty minutes ago,’ said Mel and she smiled up at me, all innocence.
‘Right, get these on.’ He threw the parcel of TALtops at Max. ‘I’ll set up and we’ll concentrate on bar shots. The customers’ll just have to work around me.
There will be some customers, won’t there?’
Max had opened the parcel of TALtops – an experimental batch where Amy had used her interwoven silver thread technique – and selected a black one. She pulled the regular one she had
been wearing yesterday over her head and threw it on the floor, then held the new one out in front of her to examine it before starting to pull it over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
‘I think we’ll get a few,’ I said.
At my side, Mel snorted in disgust the way only women and cats can.
‘Have you thought about the lunch menu?’ I asked her, keeping one eye on Sasha, although she gave no sign of letting her towel slip.
‘Me? Why me? You’re supposed to be in charge.’
‘That’s as may be. You’re the one who knows what they’re doing, though. And remember, you’re doing it for Ivy. Now get into the kitchen. Don’t worry about the
vacuum cleaner, you can put that away later. And if you’ve got a minute, I could go a bacon sandwich myself. I mean, it’s not like I’ve had breakfast or anything. There is some
coffee on, isn’t there?’
By this time I was behind her, pushing her chair into the kitchen.
‘Wait a minute!’ she snarled over her shoulder. ‘You’re expecting me to run the pub while those three play at supermodels, aren’t you?’
‘They
are
supermodels, Mel, that’s why I need you to supervise them and you have to promise to use only small words.’
‘And where will you be when the work’s being done?’
I spun the chair round so I could face her, my sincere expression turned up to 11 for maximum effect.
‘I’ve got things to do, Mel, including a very big favour for your friend Scooter.’
‘Is it something to do with Axeman? I heard he had an accident.’
‘Where did you hear that?’
‘From Sasha. She said she was sorry I had to leave early last night because I missed the magician who disappeared right in front of her eyes.’
‘Yeah, right. Just say I’m helping Scooter out of a big jam, because I feel a little bit responsible and anyway I’m that sort of guy. And I promise I’ll go now and ring
the brewery and tell them to send a relief manager to run things. With a bit of luck they could have one here tomorrow. I’ll go and do that right now. Just as soon as you’ve made my
sandwich. Don’t worry about the coffee, I can manage.’
After a bath, a shave, something to eat and three mugs of coffee, I felt up to the trials ahead.
Upstairs, from Ivy’s private sitting-room window, I could see that the car-park was about half full and they were all quality cars, no tatty pick-ups or vans. The mobile phone networks had
obviously been busy; as mine ought to be.
I dug my mobile out of my bag, noting that I had run out of clean underwear and socks and making a mental note to do something about it, and checked my messages. I had two, the first from
Veronica simply asking how I was doing and would I give her a call sometime.
The second was from Amy telling me that she had a problem with one of her suppliers so she couldn’t make it ‘down to the country’ – as if someone was listening. But she
was sending Tony to take some photographs. ‘He might come across as a raddled old queen, but he does know his aperture from his anus and he won’t take shit from the zombies.’ (Amy
had been known to refer to models as ‘Zombies in frocks’ when the mood took her.) She ended by saying she wanted the girls back in London tomorrow. She didn’t express an opinion
about when, or how, I should return.
I punched in the number of the brewery, which I didn’t have to remember as it was printed on three ashtrays, a calendar and a water jug in that room alone.
‘Seton and Nephew, Seagrave’s Seaside Ales. Good afternoon.’
I remembered the receptionist back at the brewery, Beatrice or something. The one who dressed like something from
The Glenn Miller Story
from the waist up and
The Story of O
from
the waist down.
‘Murdo Seton, please.’
‘May I ask who is calling?’
‘Roy Angel, he knows me.’
‘I’m sorry, but Mr Seton is tied up with the other directors at the moment. Could I give him a message?’
‘Just say I called and that I have almost finished down here in Whitcomb and I should have a full report for him tomorrow. Oh, and tell him he’ll need to get a relief manager for the
Rising Sun.’
‘Is that everything?’
‘That’ll do until I can talk to him, thanks.’
She said goodbye ever so politely and I envied Murdo Seton. He seemed to have no trouble getting decent staff.
I hit the Memory button for where I had filed Nick Lawrence’s number under ‘HMCE’ and then Send. He answered on the second ring and sounded as if he was eating a sandwich
himself. Something in a baguette, I guessed.
‘’Waurence,’ he said, or that was what it sounded like.
‘Roy Angel. You were checking out some car numbers for me.’
‘Oh, them. I might have,’ he said grumpily. I could hear him chewing. Now that’s something they don’t advertise when they try to sell you a mobile phone.
‘And I might have found out something
you’d
be interested in.’
I could play hard to get too. Not often, but I could.
‘Go on then, baffle me with your brilliance.’
‘You show me yours first.’
I heard a deep sigh followed by a rustle of papers.
‘The numbers all check out bar two, M 606 VRR and A 454 THG simply don’t exist. The rest are all legit but they’re registered to people all over the place. There’s no
pattern to it. What did you do, go round collecting numbers in a car-park?’
‘Give me a few examples, especially the R-registered Jeep.’
‘Hang on. Here we are. That’s down to a Brian Anthony Scoular, S-C-O-U-L-A-R, of 23 Regiment Road, Guildford. The others are private cars registered to citizens in Cardiff and
Salford, two in Birmingham, and a couple are company vehicles, both building firms, one in Somerset and one in Suffolk. Nothing stolen, all legit as far as we can tell. Mean anything?’
‘Probably not. I’ve got one more for you, grab a pen.’
I gave him the number of the Mercedes driven by Mel’s boyfriend Christian. I had no particular reason for doing so, but if you had access to that sort of info, why not use it?
‘Okay, got it, see what I can do,’ he said. ‘Now, what you got for me?’
‘The Mothership,’ I said smugly. ‘An amateur ring of bootleggers, very professionally run by a real whiz kid called Scooter, or Brian Anthony Scoular as you have him.
He’s got a couple of dozen students working for him.’
‘Students?’
‘Students. They skip a few lectures, nip over to France on Le Shuttle and bring back a load of beer. He’s got them working almost round the clock, but mostly at night.’
‘Hang on, what sort of quantities are we talking about here? Is this a few students earning pocket money or what?’
‘That’s probably why they’re doing it, but they fill an articulated lorry which gets delivered to London two or maybe three times a week at somewhere around 18,000 litres a
pop. Is that impressive enough for you?’
‘Sounds like it’s organised,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Must be going to someone with contacts at the retail end.’
‘Either that or somebody’s stocking up for one hell of a party,’ I added helpfully.
‘You any idea where it’s going?’
‘Not yet, but I might have something for you tomorrow.’
‘Where’s the base?’
‘Right here in Whitcomb, on an old hop farm. The front is a computer programming company called Soft Sell.’
‘And where are you right now?’
‘You remember that pub I told you about, the Rising Sun?’
‘Yeah, like in the song.’
Well, that dated you, I thought.
‘I’m sort of running it until the brewery –’
‘Have you told Murdo Seton about this?’ he interrupted.
‘Not yet, I haven’t been able to get hold of him.’
‘Leave that to me until I’ve checked things out. I’ll contact you at the pub.’
Then he cut me off. No ‘thank you’, no mentioned-in-dispatches, no nothing. He didn’t even ask for the phone number of the pub. He had no intention of getting back to me. If
there were any Brownie points to be earned from this business, he was going to claim them all.
I dropped the phone and the dictaphone in my bag and wandered down to the bar.
Tony had transformed the girls by toning their make-up down a notch so that they looked like believable barmaids. Every time they pulled a pint or reached for a tankard or served a lunch, he was
there, snapping away.
‘Only doing chest shots, darling,’ he confided, ‘to show off the product.’
He had ringed the bar with lights, hoisting the temperature up way above normal, and the girls took ages serving a drink so he could get his angles right. Half the food they served –
preceded by a very bad-tempered ‘Ready!’ from Mel in the kitchen – must have been stone cold by the time the customers got it as Tony insisted on it being presented to them at
least three different ways. Funnily enough, none of the customers – mostly male – seemed to mind.
‘Tony seems to have everything under control,’ I said to Neemoy. ‘I’m just nipping out to do a bit of shopping. Back in an hour. Don’t tell Mel I’ve gone
until I’ve gone.’
Before she could argue I was out of there.
I drove Axeman’s Mondeo into Folkestone and found a Marks and Spencer’s where I treated myself to underwear, socks, deodorant, a black polo-neck shirt, black leather gloves and a
slice of lemon cheesecake. (I have a weakness.) Then I wandered down the Marine Promenade to take in the sea view, or rather the view of the sea fret and the rain heading inland. As the rain
started in earnest, I bought a stick of Folkestone rock to take back to Amy and some genuine Folkestone fudge for Fenella, then ran for the car.
Back at the Rising Sun the trade had thinned out, leaving only a couple of cars outside and no more than six genuine customers inside.
Tony was packing his lights away, two salesmen in suits were chatting up Sasha at a corner table, Max was nursing a glass of something clear and medicinal and Dan was on his bar stool by the
kitchen door, peering over the bar as Neemoy bent over to steal another packet of crisps from the box on the bottom shelf of the back bar. All seemed right with the world.
‘I’m offski, outa here,’ Tony griped as soon as he saw me. ‘It’s like working in a madhouse. Gawd knows what Amy’ll say when she sees the contacts.’
‘They’ll be brilliant, Tone, relax.’
‘Can we go home now?’ asked Max.
‘Tomorrow. Promise.’
‘Mel’s quit,’ said Neemoy. ‘Went off in a right snit.’
‘Bound to happen. Surprised she stuck it this long.’
‘And they’ve sold off the family silver,’ Dan chipped in.
‘Come again?’
‘This American couple called in for lunch,’ said Neemoy. ‘Really sweet they were. Said they were interested in antiques and silver tankards so I let them have a
look.’
She raised her eyes to the tankards hanging like bats from the beam above her.
‘And they gave you £250 for one, right?’
‘Yeah, how did you know? Dan said it wasn’t anybody’s in particular and we thought the landlady could use the money. I got the cheque made out to the pub.’
‘Show me,’ I said.
Neemoy pulled open the till drawer and handed me an American Express sterling traveller’s cheque. The signatures on it were for a Joseph M. Maron.
‘Did I fuck up?’ she asked me.
‘You’re not alone. I’ve got to ring somebody about this. Listen, if Mel’s not around, Dan here’ll help you get ready for tonight, won’t you, Dan?’ He
nodded enthusiastically. ‘Just hold the fort for one more night and the cavalry will be here in the morning.’
‘It sounds like you won’t be around,’ Max said with only a slight slur.
‘Got a job to do, but I’ll be back before closing time,’ I said confidently.
Tony was snapping the locks on one of his camera boxes and I crouched down to whisper in his ear.
‘You didn’t by any chance get a shot of these two American tourists who bought the silver tankard, did you?’