Bootlegged Angel (20 page)

Everything seemed to be going swimmingly in the pub. It was time to go back to my proper job.

I didn’t even offer to push Mel’s wheelchair down the lane towards the village, just walked alongside her in the road.

‘How about one of your dart-playing boffins?’ I suggested.

‘What about them?’ she replied, staring straight ahead.

‘Would one of them lend me a car for a few hours?’

‘I’m sure they would. Hey fellas, this guy who was hanging around the pub last night, the one you’ve never seen before in your life, just hand over your keys, will
you?’

‘Bit thin, you think?’

‘Just a bit.’

‘How about a lift into Folkestone or Dover, then? Just to do a bit of shopping.’

‘You could ask, I suppose.’

I supposed I could, if she was going to be so selfish that she wouldn’t ask for me. I mean, they were her friends after all.

We were round the bend in the road from the Rising Sun now, approaching the five-bar gate near the thatched cottage where I had gone exploring last night. The main street of Whitcomb was empty
again, not a sign of a car or a pedestrian. I was getting the impression that I had left the Barmaids From Hell running the Pub From Hell in the Village Of The Damned.

‘I haven’t seen any buses round here,’ I wheedled, ‘and I wouldn’t give much for my chances of thumbing a lift. Does anybody actually live in this
village?’

‘Oh yes, a few,’ she said in a prickly sort of way, ‘but they’re mostly retired, like the Major, or they work somewhere else, like Dover or Folkestone or Ashford or even
Canterbury. There’s no work here in Whitcomb any more.’

‘Except your friends the computer boffins.’

‘You seem very interested in them.’

She put her hands on the rims of her wheels to brake herself, then she swung round to face me.

‘I’m just looking for some transport, that’s all. I guess I feel a bit stranded without my wheels.’

Even as I said it, I knew I should be biting my tongue.

‘You should try mine,’ Mel said.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Aw, what the fuck, I’ve heard worse things said when people were trying to be sympathetic. And I suppose I owe you one for offering to run the pub for Ivy last night.’

I remembered her holding my hand when the paramedic had mentioned telling the local police.

‘I didn’t seem to get much say in the matter,’ I said ruefully. ‘Come to think of it, I’ve been running the pub for over twelve hours now and I haven’t pulled
a pint in anger, not for an actual customer, that is. You seem to have done most of it. You should be running the place.’

‘Oh sure, you can just see the brewery letting me run the place. I can’t even get behind the bar in this thing.’ She gripped the arm-rests of her chair and shook them
violently.

‘But you live here, you know Ivy. You’ve worked there before.’

‘Yeah, and you’re a man and you’ve got two good legs. If you’re a man and you can whistle and pee at the same time and you don’t have a criminal record, you can run
a pub.’

I decided not to ask her for details about the ‘criminal record’ bit.

‘Look, can I give you some money? Get some flowers for Ivy and tell her for Christ’s sake to get well soon before I bankrupt her.’

‘I think you did that last night buying drinks for me and Dan.’

‘I did?’

‘Don’t worry, I put an IOU in the till for you. If you ask me, you want to make sure your three barmaids do the same before they eat and drink Ivy out of house and home.’

‘The thought had occurred. I’ll put it on my Things To Do list.’ I took my wallet out of my back pocket and pulled out a £20 note for her. ‘But I really could use a
lift to find some shops. There’s stuff I need, like a toothbrush and a razor and deodorant. I wasn’t planning on an extended stay down here.’

She nodded at that and pushed her chair along. We were now opposite the five-bar gate.

‘Well, you can always ask Scooter. He can only say no.’

She stopped her chair again and pointed at the gate.

‘Soft Sell work out of the old hop farm, over there.’

‘Soft Sell?’

‘That’s the name of Scooter’s company. They do software for computers. Just walk through the paddock and you’ll see the old hop sheds. That’s where they
are.’

I leaned on the gate and looked over the paddock. There wasn’t a sign of a building from this angle, but I already knew they were dog-legged off to the right. From the gate the paddock
sloped up to a wooded hillside which disappeared over the Downs.

‘In here?’ I tried to inject the right note of disbelief into my voice.

‘It’s just a short cut. We let them use our paddock as a short cut to the pub. They’re not supposed to as there’s no right of way but the real entrance is over the hill,
off the old Roman road to Canterbury, miles away.’

‘So this is their back door? The tradesmen’s entrance?’

‘I don’t think they encourage tradesmen,’ said Mel. ‘To be honest, they don’t encourage visitors. I think some of the things they do are sensitive, commercially
sensitive.’

‘Do they export much?’

‘I suppose so, they’re always coming and going at all hours. But that’s why a lot of software companies have moved down here to Kent.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘One or
two of them have always got French beer on hand and duty-free cigarettes, but they don’t let Ivy see them when they’re down the pub.’

I bet they didn’t. The torrent of obscenities would have had them reaching for their dictionaries.

I made a play of crouching and stroking the carpet of Astroturf which peeked out from under the gate.

‘What’s with the artificial grass?’

‘Scooter put it down to stop the gateway getting churned up in winter. Me and Mum thought it was a good idea.’

‘You and Mum?’

‘It’s our paddock, we live here.’ She pointed to the thatched cottage a few feet away. ‘Hop Cottage. But we haven’t used the paddock since I had a pony when I was a
kid, so we don’t mind Soft Sell using it as a short cut.’

And why should they? It wouldn’t have occurred to them that one man’s short cut was another man’s escape route.

I watched Melanie wheel herself up to the front door of Hop Cottage and reach up to push a Yale key into the lock. She waved at me as she pushed herself into the house and out
of sight.

I clambered over the gate and trudged down the paddock for the second time, but this time I could see what I was doing. The hedge to my right must have been the border of Hop Cottage, and once
at the end of it I could see what was left of the hop farm as I approached it from the rear.

The nearest building was the one I had spied on and this afternoon it had the Jeep, two Volvo estate cars and three pickup trucks parked outside. Whoever these students really were, they seemed
to have more vehicles than the average Ford dealer.

There were three other single-storey buildings about a hundred yards away and a large corrugated iron barn, a bit like an aircraft hangar with sliding doors, beyond them. A single track road ran
by the buildings and disappeared into the distance in the wooded hills. To either side of the track were grubbed-up fields gradually filling with grass and weeds and littered with hop poles and
trellis wires, giving the impression of a World War I battlefield.

I didn’t get much time to get my bearings and I was still fifty yards from the first building when the doors opened and out stepped Scooter, flanked by the staring-eyed Axeman and the one
I think Mel had called Painter.

‘Can we help you?’ Scooter called out. ‘You’re not lost, are you?’

‘No, it’s you I was looking for,’ I called back, marching on straight towards them.

I never gave a thought to be frightened of them. It wasn’t just because they were younger than I was; I’d been scared by twelve-year-olds before now. And it wasn’t so much the
setting – broad daylight in a field in Kent just couldn’t hold a candle to 1 a.m. in the Tottenham Court Road for scare factor. (Broad daylight in the Tottentham Court Road come to
think of it.) It was just that these lads didn’t
look
the violent type; they were trying to look cool, not threatening, although I had to give the benefit of the doubt to Axeman. He
did
look like a psychopath, but I put it down to genetics, not malice.

‘You found us,’ said Scooter, leaning casually on the bonnet of the Jeep, waiting for me to make my pitch.

‘I seem to have sort of inherited the pub down the road,’ I started.

‘We heard,’ said Axeman, but I ignored him.

‘Ivy the landlady had an accident last night and was carted off to hospital. Somehow – and I’m not too sure how – I was left in charge and now I’m without a
car.’

‘Somebody’s stolen it?’ Scooter asked without even trying to look interested.

‘No, the car wasn’t mine. It had to go back to London, so I’m kind of stranded and I need to go shopping.’ That sounded a bit lame so I added: ‘Get some provisions
in. For the pub. For Ivy.’

Scooter looked at me, his head tilted so that his shock of blond hair fell over his left eye. He still didn’t look violent but he didn’t half irritate me.

‘And so?’ he drawled slowly, opening the palms of his hands towards me.

‘So I was looking for a lift to the nearest supermarket.’

Axeman let out a giggle which was almost a squeak.

Scooter flicked his head and his hair and dug a hand into his jacket pocket to produce a set of keys.

‘Is that all?’ He patted the windscreen of the Jeep. ‘Jump in.’

I was in the middle of the aisle which had fabric conditioners and washing powders down one side, household cleaners, bleaches and disinfectants down the other when I used my
mobile to ring Nick Lawrence at Customs and Excise in Dover. I reckoned it was the geographical centre of the supermarket Scooter had driven me to. He had said he would wait in the car-park for me,
but just to be sure I picked a spot where there was no way he could see in from the outside.

I switched the phone on and pressed for the memory. When ‘HMCE’ came up, I hit the Send button.

‘Lawrence,’ he came through after three rings.

‘It’s Roy Angel, remember? Working for Murdo Seton’s brewery.’

‘I can remember yesterday, if that’s what you mean. You still on the case?’

‘Up to my neck,’ I said, smiling as a woman with a young child in her shopping trolley glided by. It looked like there was a special offer on lean mince somewhere in the shop.
‘Can you check out car number plates for me?’

‘I can have them checked out,’ his voice crackled in my ear, ‘but whether I’ll tell you is another matter. Where the hell are you?’

Above my head, a tannoy was announcing double saver points on items marked with a red sticker.

‘Never mind. Got a pen? Take these down.’

I pulled a beer mat from my pocket and read out the numbers I had recorded last night and scribbled down before leaving the Rising Sun. I knew the plate of Scooter’s Jeep quite well by
now, having ridden in it, and I added the two Volvos I had seen at the hop farm, hoping I remembered them correctly.

‘You opening a garage or something?’ said Lawrence. ‘I’ll see what I can turn up, but don’t hold your breath.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll call you, don’t you try and ring me.’

‘Why would I?’

‘I might have something for you.’

‘Oh yeah? Well, I won’t hold my breath.’

He hung up but I kept smiling into the phone as another trolley pushed by a vivacious redhead in a very short miniskirt overtook me.

‘Don’t worry, darling,’ I said into the dead phone, ‘I won’t forget the whipped cream. It’s on my list. Yes, the sort in the spray can.’

The redhead didn’t look round, but I saw her ears blush.

Later, in the car-park, she saw Scooter helping me load my carrier bags bulging with bread, frozen pizzas, butter, baking potatoes, family packs of lean mince (I couldn’t resist, it was a
bargain) and tins of non-genetically modified tomatoes into the back of his Jeep.

As she unlocked her VW Golf and packed her own shopping away, I could tell she was thinking:
I knew he was gay
.

Scooter wasn’t gay, or at least I don’t think he was. I never got to to know him that well, but then as he was still short of his twenty-third birthday I suppose
you could say that nobody knew him well.

When he drove me to the supermarket that late afternoon he wasn’t giving anything away. It was as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a complete, or almost complete, stranger
to turn up at his place of work (in the middle of a field in Kent) and ask for a lift to the shops.

He started up the Jeep, waited whilst I clicked in my seat belt and then slipped a Blur CD into the player on the dashboard. Then he reversed the Jeep beyond the edge of the first building and
swung left, changed into first and drove slowly alongside it. He was clearly not going to use the gate I had climbed over even though I knew he had used it last night, and I had a good idea that he
knew I knew. Perhaps he was waiting for me to mention it.

‘This is where you work then?’ I said cleverly, to divert him.

‘For the moment,’ he said, turning the Jeep on to a single track concrete road leading to two smaller one-storey buildings of similar design.

‘Melanie said you were in software.’

‘That’s right. Know anything about computer programming?’

‘Square-root of bugger all.’

‘That’s the way I like it.’

‘Business good, then?’

As I spoke I noticed, now I was nearer, that one of the other buildings was virtually derelict and open to the elements. No way were they programming anything in there.

‘As long as people have computers but know bugger all about programming them, business’ll be good. There’s a lot of work around, it’s just a question of finding
it.’

‘And you found it
here
?’ I gestured to the windscreen. We were passing the large aircraft hangar building and the road was dipping down between the churned-up fields littered
with poles and coils of wire. Ahead, the track turned into a line of trees. It was like a scene from
Dr Zhivago
except somebody had forgotten to order the snow. ‘What is this
place?’