Blue Collar (19 page)

‘Pleath let uth throogh,’ Charley then tried, with about as much success as me, until I pointed out that she’d been injured
in the trouble and needed looking at. This finally brought a flicker to the copper’s face, so he told me to step back and
swap places with Charley.

I did as he said, assuming he just wanted to give her the once-over, but the moment she stepped towards him, the shields parted
and Charley was immediately sucked inside.

‘Hold on,’ I said, as the shields closed behind her and I watched in vain as she was passed back through the lines and disappeared
from sight. ‘Wait, we’re with her, can we go too, mate?’ I asked, pointing to Hugo and myself, but the copper was once again
deaf to all requests and back to practising his poker face.

‘Would that be all right?’ Hugo double-checked.

When Hugo didn’t get a response he looked at me and asked me what we were going to do. I didn’t know; join in with ‘Kill the
pigs’ was about all I could think of.

‘Here, I’ll give my dad a ring,’ Hugo then said, pulling his iPhone out of his pocket and making me and the copper look at
each other for the briefest of moments before he remembered his training and snapped back to neutral behind his clear perspex
shield.

‘What’s he got, a tank or something?’ I asked, but Hugo was already busily jabbering on to his old man.

He talked for about five minutes, explaining exactly where we were, what we were doing here, how none of it was our fault
and how we were worried things were going to really kick off in a minute, before pocketing his phone and telling me and the
copper to both hang tight.

‘Seriously, Hugo, who is your dad?’ I asked again.

Hugo didn’t want to say in front of the police, who were now suddenly all ears, so he told me he was no one special and left
it at that.

‘Really? Mine neither,’ I replied, picturing both of our dads coming down here in their vests and slippers to have a go at
everyone and pull us from the crowd.

‘Our bloody tea’s on the table an’ all, you little bastards,’ they’d say, then clip us around the ears and drag us both home
for our fish fingers.

Half an hour passed and I was just starting to believe that Hugo’s dad really was nothing special when a call came up from
the rear and the coppers in front of us shouted back to confirm their numbers.

A few seconds later an inspector poked his head over their shoulders and looked directly at us.

‘Is one of you Hugo Baker?’ the inspector asked, to my complete and utter amazement.

‘Yes, that’s me,’ Hugo confirmed as quietly as he could.

‘Have you got any ID on you?’ the inspector then asked, so Hugo pulled his wallet out of his pocket and held his Oyster photocard
against the clear perspex shield for the inspector to inspect. ‘OK,’ he agreed, giving the coppers either side of him a pat,
before disappearing again.

‘Fuck me, I don’t believe it. Just who the hell is your…’ I started to say, but I was cut short when my po-faced copper mate
told me to step away from the shield and Hugo to step towards it.

‘Just hold your fucking horses, John, I’ve seen this one already,’ I warned them both, grabbing Hugo and hanging on to him
until I’d double-checked something with the copper. ‘Are we both getting out of here or are you just letting him go?’

‘No, it’s both of us,’ Hugo reassured me.

‘Oh yeah? And how d’you know that?’ I asked.

‘Well, I did say, didn’t I? I told my dad we were both in here so I’m sure he told them to get us both out,’ Hugo reasoned.

‘Yeah, that’s right. And I’m sure on my birthday and bank holidays he kisses my picture goodnight at bedtime just before he
kisses yours,’ I agreed, my fingers still tightly wrapped around his arm. ‘But let’s just check first before we go rushing
off anywhere, shall we?’

We looked at the copper behind the perspex shield and put the question to him again, and I have to say his answer didn’t exactly
inspire me.

‘Let go of your mate’s arm and step away from the shield if you please, sir. I won’t tell you again.’

I see.

‘No, wait,’ Hugo said. ‘He’s with me. You’re meant to let us both out.’

‘Look, sir, you can either come out or you can stay where you are. It’s all the same to me,’ the copper replied, fully sympathetic
with Daddy’s little boy and his mate’s plight.

Hugo looked at me and scratched his chin. That’s right, it certainly was a tricky one and no mistake, but miracle of miracles,
Hugo came up with the perfect solution.

‘Terry, let me go through and speak to this inspector and I’ll get him to let you out too.’

‘And what if he says no?’ I asked, on the off-chance the inspector didn’t give two flying fiddlesticks about me.

‘Well then, I’ll just call my dad again and get him to put in a word for you too.’

‘Why don’t you just give him a call now?’ I said, but I already knew it didn’t make any odds. Hugo had been given a green
light, so whatever else came of today, it was pointless us both hanging around here indefinitely. He knew it and I knew it.
Personally, given the choice between being trapped somewhere alone or being trapped somewhere with Hugo, I would’ve happily
taken alone every time, except in circumstances where I needed to use him as food… And when Charley was already out there
somewhere.

‘Come on,’ Hugo tried again, tapping my hand.

I chewed all possible considerations over as he nodded hopefully at me, before reluctantly releasing the fucker. Well, what
else was there to do? Let Charley hear I’d held him back for no good reason? She’d see right through it.

No, it was an unhappy set of circumstances and no mistake. A no-win situation, I believe they call it. All I could do was
act reasonably and hope it caught on. I let go of Hugo and ground my teeth.

‘All right, but you talk to that inspector. Explain the situation to him and get him to let me out too,’ I told him, and Hugo
nodded enthusiastically like it was a done deal.

‘No worries geezer,’ he said, holding out a fist for me to knock knuckles with. I played along just this once, just to get
out of here, but made a mental note to jump in front of a train if I ever found myself playing potatoes or comparing cocks
with Hugo on a regular basis. ‘Wicked, bruv, just you hang tight.’

Hugo turned and told the copper he was ready and I could see from the copper’s face just how choked he was at having to let
this particular one go.

A moment later, the shields parted like a super-fast supermarket doorway, and Hugo was sucked through. They closed right
behind him again and Hugo disappeared from sight, leaving me in the firing line of a dozen pairs of suddenly suspicious eyes.

‘Fucking copper’s narc,’ I heard someone say behind me, while others started to talk loudly behind my back about how they
couldn’t remember seeing me protesting at the pigs at any point during the last half an hour or so.

‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ I groaned, my mind awash with wishes, the most prominent of which was the one where I was wearing
a comedy rucksack stuffed full of spring-loaded boxing gloves.

The coppers in front of me had precious little sympathy either. They now hated me as much as the twats behind did, lumping
me in with Hugo as some spoilt little brat who was born with a silver spoon in his gob and a ‘get out of jail free’ card in
his top pocket.

‘Seriously, mate, I don’t know him. He’s just my girlfriend’s… friend. The one with the bloody lip who you let through earlier.

Remember?’ I explained to the copper, but he didn’t look like he cared much. Like he’d said, it was all the same to him. I
just had to sit tight and wait until he was told by his superiors to let me out.

So that’s what I did. I waited. I waited and waited and waited. And eventually the inspector gave the order and I was let
out.

Six hours later.

Along with everyone else.

21 Done by the pigs

So I went home.

I went home to protect Hugo. I went home to protect Charley. But most of all, I went home to protect myself. I went home.
I had a load of chips. And I murdered a bottle of Scotch.

Again, it didn’t matter to Simone that Clive couldn’t have done anything about her situation, it simply didn’t sit well that
he’d abandoned her to fill his belly while she’d been marooned in the middle of all that mayhem. If you still can’t understand
why me and Simone were so pissed off, let me put it this way. Imagine you were sentenced to hang tomorrow morning. There you
are in your cell, waiting for the priest’s seven o’clock wake-up call, all last-ditch pleas for clemency turned down, with
nothing but a couple of chess-playing screws to keep you company. Your family can’t do anything to save you, and equally they’re
not allowed to be there to see you off, which must be as terrible for them as it is for you. Even knowing all of this, though,
wouldn’t it still knock you in the chops if you subsequently found out that they’d all bought some chicken drumsticks and
gone across to next door’s barbecue for the evening while you’d spent your last few hours on earth wearing out your slippers
and listening to Mr Barrowclough ask which way the horses went again? Well, that’s kind of the way me and Simone felt.

Charley phoned up at lunchtime to see if I wanted to come up and have a traditional Sunday dinner in Signed For! that afternoon,
but I still didn’t feel like seeing her, Hugo or any of the rest of them.

‘You’re not mad at me, are you?’ she asked all indignantly, catching me by surprise and putting me on the spot.

As you can see, there were a number of strands to my thoughts and I spent the day staring across the bar of the Lamb trying
to knit them together into some sort of nonsense.

‘Not with your rich bird today, then, Tel?’ Tony the landlord nosed.

‘No, not today,’ I simply replied, giving him a scowl that stripped the smile clean off his face.

Old Stan in the corner just nodded at that, as if he’d been there forty years earlier and knew the difficulties of crossing
the twain only too well, so I sent him over a half of stout to show him my appreciation and we drank to our own silent thoughts.

On Monday morning, CT made a point of looking me out and asking me how I was doing. I didn’t feel like levelling with him
either so I simply shrugged and asked him if he could do us a favour this particular morning.

‘Sure, what is it?’ he replied, in all seriousness.

‘How many guesses you want?’ I asked, pushing the boom out of my face, before turning my back on Barrie’s camera and taking
to the ladder with my tools on my shoulder.

Naturally, I’d told Jason and Robbie all about my weekend on the ride into work that morning and they’d both agreed I’d been
hard done by.

‘They’re just wankers you get on these things, you get them everywhere,’ Robbie had told us. ‘The football used to be full
of ’em a few years back. Hooligans and firms and them lot, all shouting their mouths off and slinging seats at each other.
None of ’em was ever interested in watching the game, they just used to come for the ruck. Fucking Football Factory twats,
most of ’em. I couldn’t stand ’em.’

Which was all well and good, but it wasn’t the ‘kill the pigs’ brigade I was annoyed at any more. They were just twats. Robbie
was right. That was all they were and that was all they ever would be, certainly as far as I was concerned. I had no other
expectations of them.

No, most of my bitterness had moved on from them and was now swooping in large ambiguous circles around Charley’s shoulders.
Not even Hugo’s, because I’d suspected him all along and hadn’t expected any better of him either – just Charley’s.

I was annoyed at her.

I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, but equally I couldn’t shake it off either. I was annoyed at her. Like the worm who’d
finally turned, or the poodle who’d had one too many silly fucking haircuts, I just felt like having a bark, pissing all over
the furniture and taking a big bite out of the postman’s arse.

I was annoyed at her.

Halfway through the morning Gordon asked me to help him gauge up a footing we were due to move on to that afternoon. In layman’s
terms, gauging up a footing meant running lines off the site engineer’s profiles to mark out where your corners should be
and, most importantly, what height they should be built to. Footings are hardly ever poured flat so there’s usually one corner
that needs building up more than the others or a dip in the middle of a flank that needs building out so that all four corners
and walls are perfectly level with each other by the time the house reaches the DPC (damp course prevention) level. It’s just
a question of adjusting the first few courses of brickwork or blockwork here or there to take into account and overcome any
unevenness in the concrete.

Like most things in life, this unevenness has a name. It’s called a ‘pig’.

Your governor might say to a couple of his blokes who are about to build a footing flank, ‘That wall has a two-to-one pig
in it,’ so that one of them will start at his end with two courses of bricks and slowly shave them away, while the other bloke
will start at his end with one course of bricks and slowly build them up, so that by the time the wall meets in the middle,
it’s at the same height all along. Naturally this is all gauged out and you’ve got marks and lines to work to, but that’s
basically what’s involved in layman’s terms.

And it might not even be a dramatic as a two-to-one pig. It might just be a one-to-one-and-a-half pig or even less than that.
It doesn’t really matter. A pig’s a pig and you can’t build on a pig. If you try, you’re asking for all sorts of trouble.
It might not seem that noticeable way down below in your footings, but by the time you get to your second storey or above,
your house is in serious danger of tumbling over on top of any estate agent who tries to knock a For Sale sign into its front
garden.

But then, this is just what happens when you try to build on a pig.

Which all led me to thinking about the pigs in mine and Charley’s relationship. There were so many that had been there right
from the start, which we’d both tried to ignore. And they weren’t little two-to-one pigs either. They were whopping great
inequities that we had no chance of making up in the joints. And the longer we went on, the more the cracks began to show.

CT and his little camera crew came over to film us running lines between the datum posts and asked us what we were doing,
so Gordon gave them a quick tutorial and pointed around the footing to show them where the various rooms and windows were
going to be before they turned the camera on me.

‘Sounds like a nice house, Terry. Would you like to live here?’ CT asked, presumably to try and prompt some sort of response
out of me before the day was over.

‘This place?’ I said, looking around the various mounds of mud and clay. ‘I couldn’t afford this place on my wages. In fact,
come to think of it, I don’t think I could afford this place as it is now, before we’ve even built the fucker, on my wages.’

I half expected them to put down the camera when confronted with such language, but they just carried on filming, happy to
leave the site’s bad language to whoever worked the bleeper in the cutting room. Blimey, he was going to earn his money on
this programme before this day was out. Perhaps he could buy this fucking house.

‘I sense you’re in a bit of a prickly mood, Terry,’ CT said.

‘Oh, really, Captain Mind-Reader? And what gives you that idea?’ I replied. ‘Did you sense that in the pub on Saturday night
while I was stood around twiddling my thumbs for six fucking hours?’

CT didn’t say anything for about twenty seconds, presumably so that Tom Baker or Tom Hanks or whoever else they were going
to get in to narrate this load of old nonsense could fill in the audience as to why I had the right steaming arsehole this
morning.

‘Do you hold Charley responsible for what happened on Saturday?’ he then asked.

I looked at Gordon, who was winding in his measuring tape with one eyebrow raised my way. I thought for a moment then turned
to CT again.

‘You know what a pig is?’

CT thought for a moment then asked if this was a trick question.

‘Do you mean the animal?’ he asked cautiously.

‘No. And I don’t mean what your mates were shouting at the police on Saturday either. I’m talking about a pig in brickwork.

Do you know what a pig in brickwork is?’

‘No,’ CT replied, so I pointed at the concrete between me and Gordon.

‘This straight has a pig in it. About a two-and-a-half-to-one,’ I told him, which was absolutely terrible, even by our shonky
groundworkers’ standards. They must’ve poured it about five minutes before last knockings to have left a pig that bad in it.
‘A pig is an unevenness in your footing. Have you ever heard of the expression, “to get on an even footing”?’

CT had.

‘Well, this is where that expression comes from,’ I told him, indicating the ditch I was currently standing in. I have no
idea if this is true, to be honest. I doubt it. I think it’s probably more likely a sword-fighting expression from the olden
days. Half the expressions we use these days seem to be, but CT wasn’t to know this. Or if he was, he wasn’t letting on, so
I continued banging on about the importance of getting on even footings and the inherent dangers of building on pigs before
leaving him to pick the bananas out of that bucket of pilchards, which is an expression all of my own, though sadly one that
has yet to catch on with any great effect.

CT nodded, like this was all very interesting, which it clearly wasn’t, even by BBC3 standards, so I upped the ante and talked
him through the merits of brick foundations over concrete block foundations until I finally killed the camera.

‘No, it’s OK, it’s just the tape,’ Barrie told CT, dropping the camera off his shoulder and popping open the side.

CT said nothing while the tape was being changed. He just stood on the edge of the footing and stared down at me with a semi-amused
smile on his face. Likewise, I clammed up during the switch, reluctant to spill a drop of this gold without having some professional
eavesdropper catch it for posterity, and before a minute was out we were up and running again.

‘Of course, things can get tricky once you start piledriving your footings…’ I was in the middle of saying when CT cut right
through my blarney and asked me if I was going to call Charley at all this week.