Bootlegged Angel (30 page)

The only sound was the drumming of the rain on the shed’s metal roof as Scooter and then Mel turned to look at her.

‘No, I don’t! All I know is you’re spying on me!’

She was chewing at her lower lip, holding back the tears.

‘Now why on earth would . . .’ I started, then the penny dropped. ‘Because this is the brewery’s old hop farm, that’s it, isn’t it? You’ve rented it out
to Scooter and his boys but nobody knows that back at the brewery, do they?’

Her silence meant I was on the right track.

‘Who thought it up? It’s brilliant. A gang of beer-runners working out of a base which is owned by the brewery that is investigating beer-running. Who would look here? Who suggested
it to Scooter? I bet it was Mel – what, in the student bar one night? At a seminar on marketing and business administration? And who gets the rent? I’m guessing that Murdo Seton
doesn’t.’

‘Some of it,’ Beatrice said sulkily as Mel gave her an over-the shoulder
I don’t believe it
look. ‘There has to be rental income on the books so we could get the
water and electricity connected.’

‘But Murdo doesn’t look at the books too often, huh?’

She nodded.

Mel said: ‘Muuum?’ in the whining voice children reserve for when their parents embarrass them.

‘Quite a scam,’ I said, nodding in admiration, ‘but not the one Murdo asked me to look into.’

‘That was me, huh?’ said Scooter.

‘Only in passing. Everybody knows the stuff is coming in, just nobody knew where it was going. I do, now. Or at least I know one conduit into London. That’s enough for my report to
Mr Seton. These are yours, by the way.’

I held out the briefcase and the sweeper device and he took half a step towards me. It seemed like ages since any of us had moved and I included the barrels of the shotgun in that.

‘You’re giving me the money?’ he said, flicking back his lock of blond hair.

‘It’s not mine, apart from five hundred quid for doing the drop. I take it there won’t be another trip this week now?’

He came towards me holding out my phone for the case and the sweeper and Mel waved the shotgun in my general direction as we exchanged.

‘No tricks,’ she said in her toughest voice. ‘Don’t make me shoot you.’

‘Last thing on my mind,’ I said.

‘It would be,’ she came back with style.

Scooter backed off and went down on one knee to open the case on the floor, flipping through the bundles of notes.

‘It looks like it’s all here,’ he said to the two women.

Beatrice looked at the money open-mouthed. Mel hardly gave it a glance, keeping her eyes on me.

‘Combo took his cut and, like I say, you owe me. In fact you should pay me double for having to deal with Rufus Radabe. Just seeing him brought on Combo’s ulcers.’

Scooter looked up at me but held the lock of hair out of the way to show he wasn’t being coy. In his other hand he held out a thick bundle of notes, much thicker than £500-worth.

‘I’ll pay you double if you take the trailer back to Radabe and dump the tractor unit somewhere far away.’

‘Scooter!’ Melanie was outraged, but unfortunately not angry enough to turn the gun on him. ‘He was going to shop you to the Excise.’

Beatrice put a hand on her shoulder.

‘We have to get rid of the truck, dear,’ she said.

Go on, Mel
, I thought,
listen to Mum
.

‘You’re shutting up shop, then?’ I asked Scooter.

‘Just a day or two early, that’s all.’

‘Leaving these two and your lads to take the rap?’

Now he was glancing towards Melanie, checking to see whether the shotgun barrels were moving in his direction.

‘The guys have all gone, I’ve paid them off. Mrs Gibson and Mel here can say they were duped by a dodgy software company. They didn’t know what was going on and anyway,
there’ll be no evidence.’

‘Except that lot.’ I pointed to the cases of beer.

‘We’ll load it into the trailer. You can sell it to Radabe, or give it to him. I don’t care. It’s an acceptable loss.’

‘But you can’t –’ Mel started, but her mother squeezed her shoulder.

‘It’s the only way, Melanie. I’ll help you load. If we can clear this lot out of here, there’s nothing for the Customs to find and I can handle Mr Seton.’

There was something about the way she said ‘Mr Seton’ that made me wonder whether there had ever been a Mr Gibson and what had happened to him – married to a rock with a hard
place for a daughter.

I reached out and took the money Scooter was offering.

‘I’ll dump the truck
and
the trailer,’ I bluffed. ‘That should buy you a couple of hours.’

‘That’ll do,’ said Scooter and he began to close the case.

‘Wait a minute!’ Mel shouted, the shotgun waving around wildly. ‘This isn’t right. This just isn’t
right
. . .’

She was pissed off because we weren’t taking her and her big gun seriously and she was suddenly very pissed off because neither Scooter nor I were even looking at her.

Scooter had heard it first, over the beat of the rain on the roof.

His head snapped round, looking towards the sliding door behind me at the other end of the shed, and I automatically looked too.

‘Oh,
Christ!
’ he said softly.

He had heard the door being slid open.

The person sliding it was doing so with one hand. In his other he held a giant golfing umbrella to keep the rain from spoiling his white three-piece suit.

Things couldn’t get any worse.

‘Good evening, jive bunnies,’ shouted Rufus Radabe. He nodded his bald head. ‘And ladies too.’

Scooter looked down at the electronic sweeping device on the floor near his knee.

‘Didn’t you sweep the trailer?’ he hissed at me.

‘Combo did. Said it was clean,’ I hissed back.

‘I like to drop in on my suppliers from time to time,’ Radabe was saying loudly. ‘Just to boost morale, keep faith with the troops, that sort of thing. It’s only good
business sense, innit?’

He walked towards us, holding the umbrella in front of him, shaking the rain from it, then he lowered it and flipped his wrist until the fabric wound around the stem and he could fasten it. We
watched in silence, fascinated.

‘And how’s my main man Scooter? Or should I call you Brian?’ His face cracked in a smile. ‘Nah, Brian’s too uncool.’

Scooter rose unsteadily to his feet, leaving the briefcase where it lay. He seemed to be having trouble swallowing.

Radabe pointed his umbrella at me as he approached.

‘And you – I still haven’t placed you yet, but it’ll come. You ladies – I don’t know you at all.’

I took a step back towards the truck, thinking I might have to get under it at any moment.

Melanie tensed herself and held the shotgun as if willing the barrels to grow and hit Rufus in the stomach.

‘Who the fuck are you?’

Rufus put the end of the umbrella to the floor between his red shoes and placed both hands on the handle. It looked like he was preparing to break into ‘Puttin’ On The
Ritz’.

‘I’m your customer, your buyer. I’m the payer-of-rent, the benefactor, the rewarder of honest labour. No, make that mostly dishonest labour. I am a lot of things in the world
of business, but one thing I am not is an equal opportunity employer. I don’t employ fools and I don’t like having to rely on smart-arse white college boys. That’s why I’m
here. I’ve decided I need a better return on my investment and that means cutting out the middle man.’ He nodded towards Scooter. ‘Which is him.’

I took another step backwards.

‘Shoot him,’ croaked Scooter.

And then another.

‘Now that’s downright anti-social,’ said Rufus, still smiling – but not with his eyes – at Scooter. ‘It’s just good business. Well, good business for
me. Is that my money you’re looking after?’

I pushed the wad of notes Scooter had given me deeper into the back pocket of my jeans.

‘How did you find us?’ said Melanie, her voice shrill, her chair shaking slightly, though that may have been her mother’s hands on the pushing handles.

Rufus continued to totally ignore her and the gun, looking casually over her at the stack of beer.

‘Is this my Friday load? Doesn’t seem to be much so far.’

‘Shoot him,’ said Scooter again, and I wished he wouldn’t.

‘You weren’t thinking of short-changing me, this being the last load of our contract, were you? Brian?’

‘Get out of here!’ shouted Mel.

‘No, you wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t dare do something like that, would you, Brian?’

‘Leave us alone!’ she screamed but still he didn’t look at her.

‘Do it, Mel,’ said Scooter, shaking visibly now. ‘Sh –’

He didn’t get to finish.

Rufus Radabe stopped smiling. In one fluid movement he let the umbrella drop to the floor, reached inside his white suit jacket and produced a small silver revolver from his waistband.

He swung his arm up and, with the gun on its side like you see in the movies these days, he fired once, the shot sounding like the crack of doom as it echoed off the metal walls.

Scooter staggered backwards on his heels, two steps, then three. His arms never left his side. There was a hole in his denim jacket but surprisingly little blood. Then his heels went from under
him and his legs buckled and he folded to the floor.

As his head hit the concrete, it bounced and the forelock of blond hair bounced in sympathy.

‘You fucking maniac!’ Mel screamed, throwing the shotgun on to the floor in front of her chair.

The dull clang as it bounced, just like Scooter’s head had, was the only sound in the shed apart from the rain on the roof.

‘It wasn’t even loaded!’ Mel shouted.

‘He didn’t know that,’ said Rufus.

Mel began to sob, great racking, lung-bursting intakes of breath. Beatrice put herself between Mel and Scooter’s body and leaned over her, throwing her arms around her
and pulling her head into her chest. I took another step backwards and found my shoulder blades pressed up against the trailer. Rufus just stood there.

He still had the gun trained on the place where Scooter had been standing. It was a small, shiny, snub-nosed revolver. It looked like a toy, harmless. He began to sway slightly from the hips as
if he had Basie’s saxophone section playing in his head.

‘Now why did he go and make me do that?’ he said, shaking his head.

I had no intention of volunteering an answer but he looked at the two women and knew he wouldn’t get any sense out of them. So he turned on me.

Two rapid steps and he was upfront and in my face and the gun was up against the side of my face and I felt cold steel against my cheek and could smell that Bonfire Night cordite smell.

‘Why did he make me do that?’ he asked me, almost reasonably. ‘Why did he make me do that before he told me where the money was?’

He shook his head gently in disbelief at a world gone mad. Then he pulled back his gun hand and I thought that was it. The stubby barrel was going up against my ear and it would be Goodnight,
Vienna.

But it didn’t happen.

His hand came back and then flashed by the corner of my eye twice as he smacked the canvas side of the trailer with the butt of the gun.

‘Come on, you guys, wake up!’ he shouted in my face. ‘It’s showtime!’

And there was I thinking it couldn’t get any worse.

Rufus brushed past me, walking lightly on the balls of his feet to the back of the trailer. I heard the handles on the door click and then the door creaked open. Two lots of feet thumped down on
to the shed floor. Rufus had brought his Rhythm Section with him.

Or rather, I had driven them here. No wonder there was no tracking device on the rig, Rufus had put a couple of stowaways on board to guide him in. But no, that wasn’t right. How could
they have known where we were going, stuck in the back of the trailer?

Yonk and Fatboy both carried pieces of timber, clean, white four-by-two inch pine about two feet long, weighing them in one hand and slapping them into the palm of the other. It was a sensible
choice of weapon given the circumstances. If we had been stopped for any reason, they couldn’t get out and run for it and two cornered black guys tooled up with guns or knives wouldn’t
have stood much of a chance. Handy pieces of timber, however, were just the sort of thing you’d find rattling around in an old trailer and if they got messed up, say with blood or
fingerprints or anything, you could burn them.

‘That what we heard?’ Yonk asked Rufus, pointing his piece of timber at Scooter’s body. Neither his nor Fatboy’s face betrayed any emotion.

‘Yeah, I guess I kinda lost it there for a minute.’

Rufus sighed, then tucked the gun back into the waistband of his trousers, smoothing down his white jacket in case there were any unsightly bulges.

‘So whadda we do now, Big Boppa?’ Fatboy’s eyes roamed over Beatrice and Mel who were still sobbing in each other’s arms, then they fastened on me. He looked no bigger
than a jockey on a diet next to the body-built Yonk, but his dead eyes scared me more than Yonk’s muscles, almost as much as Radabe scared me.

‘Guess we’d better tell the Man,’ said Rufus, or that was what it sounded like. ‘Get his view on things.’

Using forefinger and thumb he delicately removed a small, fold-out mobile phone from the top pocket of his jacket, flipped it open and pressed one button. As he waited for it to ring he looked
at me and raised his eyebrows as if saying:
Mobile phones, eh? Can’t live with ‘em, can’t manage without ‘em
.

‘You’d better get in here,’ he said into the mouthpiece, ‘we’ve got a bit of a situation.’

He closed the phone and wagged it at me.

‘Still haven’t placed you, but it’ll come, it’ll come.’

‘Maybe it was in a band,’ I said, my mouth so dry I was surprised the words came out.

‘A band?’ He looked interested. ‘What you play?’

‘The horn,’ I said, hoping that he had a thing about not shooting jazz musicians.

‘What sort of unit?’

‘Six or seven piece, mostly Trad jazz – pub jazz, student gigs, nothing fancy.’