One Fight at a Time (5 page)

“Bevan,” Grover said. “Famous name.”

“Which is where the resemblance begins and ends.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s best described as an entrepreneur. He had a very successful war. Did well out of it. If you know what I mean.”

Grover knew about ‘entrepreneurs’. He had met enough ‘entrepreneurs’ to last a lifetime. Americans, Poles, Hungarians, Serbs, Germans. He had yet to encounter the British spiv, but he had seen pictures of the comic Arthur English. Pencil moustache, silver grey suit, with a velvet collar jacket and wide shoulders, kipper tie and cocked hat

“Bevan ran a successful black market operation in south Bristol during the war,” Ellie said. “Probably still does.”

“You mean he’s a racketeer?”

“In his current manifestation, he’s a boxing promoter. And he was transformed into something of a local hero a year back. He bought a row of derelict houses on Cumberland Road and re-built them. Set a challenge to the city council. You see, most of the re-building programmes have stopped. The city’s flat broke. And there are huge rows about where the priorities lie. Homes or city centre businesses. So, enter Roland ‘call me Roly’ Bevan. Posing on the front page of the
Western
Daily
Press
in his hard hat, as the new Bristolian. The man who can get things done.”

Grover watched Ellie closely as she told the tale. Then he gave voice to the concern underscoring it. Choosing his words carefully.

“So... You wonder if Harry has been seduced by the Roly Bevan show?”

Ellie suddenly looked miserable.

“At times. On low days,” she said.

“Then we need to do something about that.”

Ellie looked at him. No words. She just waited.

Grover had just become part of whatever was going on. He knew that. No cause to think about it; no pros, no cons, no deliberations. Nine years ago, the Morrisons had turned a weekend of tragic circumstances into support and kindness without a moment’s hesitation. They were good people.

“I assume Nick’s flat is in this row of houses,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Have you been there?”

“No.”

“So why don’t I take a look? If he is there, he might talk to me.”

Ellie’s body language changed. She straightened up and smiled at Grover.

“He might. Last week he said he was looking forward to your visit.”

Grover looked at the clock on mantelpiece. 12.35.

“What shift is Arthur on? When does he get home?”

“Everybody’s back to pre-war normal. There’s no money for round the clock shifts and overtime. It’s back to civilised hours. Or relatively so. 8 to 6. Arthur won’t be home until this evening.”

“Give me the address of the flat,” Grover said. “And tell me how to find it.”

Chapter Five

It was high noon and Sam Nicholson’s temper had not improved overnight. He was in the driving seat of his Rover. On his way down the A370 towards Weston Super Mare, as pissed off as he could remember. He snarled to himself, for the umpteenth time, then leaned forward and bellowed through the windscreen.

“Where is this fucking lane end?”

Brockley Wood, several square miles of glades, combes and cultivated forest lining the road, had not been accessible for years. The Old Scarlet Fever Isolation Hospital, or rather what was left of it, sat in the middle of the wood. Closed since the summer of 1939, it was now a major embarrassment to Bristol City Council; who had taken over the hospital, after a fire burned most of it to the ground. With its patients re-housed, North Somerset Hospital Company was strapped for cash and only too pleased to be rid of the place. However, the war had wrecked a succession of half-arsed and hurriedly laid plans for the site – even the brand new NHS had no desire to take it on. And now, eleven years, endless meetings, and four buildings sub-committees later, it had become Sam Nicholson’s personal white elephant.

It was this burden which had driven him to listen to Rodney Pride. Well that, and the prospect of making money.

“This must be it,” he said looking ahead to his left. “At fucking last!”

He swung the Rover onto a dirt track with grass growing up the middle. The car bottomed out and something on the track surface wacked the silencer box on the exhaust. He negotiated the bumps and the disintegrating verge for about half a mile, until he saw the old hospital iron gates in front of him. They were open. He drove into the courtyard.

Pride was already there, leaning against the bonnet of his sky blue Pontiac Coupé.

“Fucking poser...” Nicholson muttered and got out of the Rover.

Pride stood up straight. Nicholson did a survey. The place looked like the Messines Ridge had in 1917, except the holes in the ground weren’t so deep.

“So?...” he began.

Pride picked up his cue.

“You have a Projects Finance meeting Tuesday evening. Here’s the offer.” He handed Nicholson a piece of paper with the figure on it. “The Finance Committee will bite your arm off.”

Nicholson stared at the paper. Then looked back at Pride in disbelief.

“Don’t be ridiculous. That’s bugger all for Christ’s sake.”

“Anybody else offering anything?”

“No. But that doesn’t mean we can give the place away.”

“You haven’t been able to do that in eleven years.”

Nicholson took time to sniff, exhale, look around and think.

“Come on Sam, agree in principle,” Pride said. “And I’ll tell you the real deal.”

Ten minutes later, Sam Nicholson was roped.

The two men were standing in the only part of the building to survive the fire. Ward 3 and a couple of single rooms attached to it. The beds were as the last patients had left them. Years of dust and cobwebs apart, the place was all but ready to re-open for business.

Pride pointed to the pocket where Nicholson had stored his paper offer.

“That price buys us all of this. It’s what we intend to do with it, that’s going to make us a small fortune.”

“I didn’t realise they’d left so much stuff behind,” Nicholson said.

“The water and drains still work,” Pride said. “Toilets still flush. No electricity of course, we’ll have to get generators in.” He pointed through the window to his right. “The phone line can be reconnected from that pole there.”

“But it’s a hospital for God’s sake. I mean, you’re not going to run a –”

“Not quite. But the next best thing.”

He offered no more. He was waiting for Nicholson to take the bait. Eventually he did.

“Go on...”

“Babies,” Pride said. “We’re going to turn this into a maternity ward.”

Nicholson stared at him. Pride waited, in no hurry to elaborate. He watched Sam’s face twitch as the idea took hold. Then he went on to explain.

“One of the by-products of the miserable time we now live in, is a platoon of un-married, pregnant women. Thrown out by their families. Living on their own in shithole single rooms. Too terrified to use bottles of gin and the old wire coat hanger; or to visit some backstreet bedroom and hand themselves over to an abortionist. So here we are. The saving grace.”

Nicholson found his voice. “The illegal, saving grace.”

“Well yes. But the right service, at the right time, in the right place.” He opened his arms and spread them wide. “Here...”

“And doctors, and midwives, and nurses?”

“Don’t need that many. Eight beds in here. One of the single rooms back there, will be the birthing room. A dozen members of staff will do the trick. Along with somebody else to run the place.”

“Erm...”

Nicholson looked at Pride, who grinned in response.

“We’re going to make a fortune.”

“How?”

Back in the day, Nicholson had been an accountant whose grasp of double entry book keeping was legendary. And so far, while all this sounded acceptably philanthropic – albeit, in a not entirely legal sort of way – there was no profit he could see. Pride looked straight into his eyes.

“We’re going to sell the babies.”

Nicholson sat down on the bed behind him, unable to say anything. Meanwhile, the man standing next to him was on a roll.

“Midwives are easy,” Pride went on. “We can recruit armfuls of abortionists, give them the right conditions to work in and pay them well. At least, more than they charge for their potions and tubes and dubious efforts in damp bedsits.”

“Nurses?”

“More of the same,” Pride said.

“And doctors?...”

“A couple of struck off GPs. Plenty of them about as well.”

“All of which cost money,” Nicholson said.

“Only a percentage of what we’ll sell the babies for. There are more couples desperate for babies than you can shake a stick at. Infertile newlyweds; forty something year olds who lost their sons in Europe after D Day; women who have already had miscarriages and know they can’t produce... No shortage of customers Sam. And look at the service we can provide here. Five star accommodation, clean beds, experienced staff. And no potions, tubes or coat hangers. You couldn’t get better in the BRI maternity wing.”

“The only difference being, what you propose is against the law.”

Pride grinned at his putative partner.

“We have to think big Sam. Like winners. This decade’s going to be a belter. And we are in a great position to profit by it.” He paused for a beat or two, then wound up. “What do you say?”

“How long will it take to set up?”

“We can have the place cleaned up and working inside a week; including the bathrooms and the kitchen. We don’t have to bother the electricity board. The two generators are in my workshop, ready to be moved here. We can have women in those beds by the end of the month. I admit that the GPO will have to pull its finger out and re-install a phone line, but you ought to be able to exert some pressure there. Tell them the building contractors will need to be able to communicate with suppliers?”

“What building contractors?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Sam. Any fucking pretend labourer...” He pointed through a window. “We’ll put a cabin out there, with a couple of desks in it. Box files, paperwork, filing cabinets. The GPO can run a line to it. Like they do with every other building site.”

Nicholson looked nervous. Which morphed into glum, then back into nervous. “Well yes erm...”

“Look, I know the phone palaver is a bit of a risk. Unfortunately, we do need a phone line. But once the GPO have hooked up our phony business, we’ll be able to disguise this place.”

Nicholson was shaking his head, but Pride was on a roll.

“We’ll put an iron gate and some barbed wire across the entrance from the road. With a big sign
. PRIVATE PROPERTY, KEEP OUT. SITE AQUIRED FOR RE-DEVELOPMENT.
”

“Okay,” Nicholson said. “But what happens when people start to notice vehicles and staff coming through that gate and begin to wonder?”

“We’ll only use it at the beginning, while we’re bringing in the generators and the stuff we need to set everything up. Two visits at most.”

“Cleaners?...”

“Our own blokes. Be a change for them for a couple of days. After that, once the staff are here, they’ll share the chores.”

“And then?...”

“Then we’ll close the place up tight. At the back of the ward, there’s a path through the woods to the road between Cleeve and Wrington. A country lane, with a bus stop about two hundred yards from the end of the path. That’s how everybody will get to work. We will have to use the front gate when we do the turnaround. Women out and in. Once every few weeks.”

Nicholson was trying to like the idea, but he was still struggling a bit. He thought of something else to worry about.

“Surely there’ll come a point when too many people will know about this scheme,” he suggested. “All the once pregnant mothers for a start.”

“They’ll be footloose and fancy free,” Pride said. “Paid off and living miles away. Part of the agreement.”

“Not one that you can enforce.”

“But a situation we keep an eye on. Alright, it’ll end up costing more, but not much.” He paused and watched the clockwork ticking in Nicholson’s head. “Of course this is something we won’t be able to keep going. Maybe only two or three years. By which time, we’ll have enough money to close the place up and figure out something else to do with the site. It’s a win win Sam.”

The clockwork in Nicholson’s head was winding down. Pride summed up.

“Our clients will never know where the babies come from. The business with them will be done in an office somewhere. Your job to find one. Small and simple; no signs on the door. We’ll hand over the kids, complete with birth certificates; the clients will hand over bags full of dosh. Hell Sam, the office could be staffed, occupied and running within days. And within weeks, we could be counting the money.”

Nicholson walked the length of the ward. Turned, paused, then walked back to Pride. Smiling.

   Now he was hooked.

Chapter Six

Grover found Blenheim Villas, Cumberland Road, with more ease then he had imagined. They sat facing a footbridge which crossed the river to Southville. Five small town houses, each of them with three floors, the top one apparently an attic conversion, betrayed by the small dormer windows. Grover stood on the bridge and inspected the row. And found himself considering Roly Bevan’s conception of re-build. Grover knew a thing or two about bombed buildings and fixing them up. And he had seen houses on Zimmerstrasse in better condition than Blenheim Villas. They looked like Bevan had simply put the roofs back on and tarted up the brick and stone work.

Number 5 was at the end of the row, to Grover’s left. He crossed Cumberland Road, opened the wooden gate in front of the house and walked the half a dozen paces to the front door.

There were three bells in an ascending row. The top bell was, to keep everything crystal clear, the Top Flat bell. Grover pressed it. Three times. Eliciting no response from the tenant. He tried the bottom bell. If there was someone in, he or she would have less far to travel to the front door. Again, there was no sound from inside the house. He pressed the middle bell and was rewarded with success. He heard someone descending the stairs. A voice called out “Coming”. Four or five seconds later, a lock clicked and the door was swung open, by a thirty something brunette with long dark hair and glasses on the end of her nose. With the thumb and third finger of her right hand, she pushed them up to the bridge of her nose and looked up into Grover’s eyes.

“Sorry to bother you,” Grover said, “I’m looking for Nick.”

“Top floor flat.” She pointed to the left hand side of the door frame. “It’s the top bell.”

“Yes, I’ve pressed it. There’s no answer.”

The woman looked Grover up and down, impressed by the uniform.

“You’re an American,” she said.

Grover smiled. “You know, I get that all the time,” he said.

She smiled back. “So what do you suggest?”

“May I come in and go upstairs and put a note under his door?”

“I suppose there’s no harm in that.”

She stepped back and allowed him to move past her. He set off up the stairs. She called after him.

“Make sure you shut the front door properly on your way out.”

At the head of the stairs, he turned one hundred and eighty degrees and walked along the landing past the woman’s flat. The door was open. A radio was playing inside the flat – the signature tune for
Worker’s
Playtime
. The sound faded as he reached the next set of stairs and began to climb again. These stairs were narrower and less substantial than those from the hall to the first floor. They had been installed to create access to the original attic space. No oak boards or banister rail. Cheap, planed hardwood from a builder’s merchant. The door at the top of the stairs was small. Panelled pine, sawn along the top and bottom and down each side to fit the space - barely two feet wide and less than six feet high. It looked like somebody had put the door in a vice and squeezed.