Bootlegged Angel (27 page)

‘Might have.’ He thought about it. ‘Yeah, think I did, when they were talking to Neemoy. Why?’

‘Can you knock off a print overnight and get it down here for tomorrow morning?’

‘Courier? Cost a bomb.’

‘Amy’s paying.’

‘No problem.’

Upstairs again, I changed my shirt, socks and boxer shorts and tried on my new gloves. I had no intention of leaving my fingerprints on a truckload of illicit booze but if I had worn the yellow
washing-up gloves, I would have been pulled by any passing patrol car on the grounds of weirdness, not to mention being beaten up by real truck drivers for giving them a bad name.

I made two phone calls, one to Reuben Sloman at the Silver Vaults and one, when I had dug out his business card, to Ted Lewis, the landlord of the Old House At Home in Rye.

Then I pulled on my leather jacket, stuffed the gloves in the pockets and went down to the bar again where I changed a £5 note in the till for coins for the cigarette machine. There was so
much money in the till I had trouble closing the drawer, so I decided Ivy wouldn’t miss a box of matches and I picked one off the back bar.

‘That’ll be 10p,’ said Max.

She was sitting in a window seat, her back to me, filing her nails.

‘Put it on my tab,’ I said, trying to work out how she’d known.

‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ she said as I fed coins into the machine.

‘Only in times of extreme stress, or when I’m bored, or after totally successful love-making,’ I said as the coins dropped.

‘That pack should last you then.’

I didn’t dignify that with a reply.

I walked round to Hop Cottage and the paddock leading to the hop farm, leaving Axeman’s car outside the pub on the grounds that it is always best to have one means of
making a rapid getaway up your sleeve.

On a whim, I walked up to the door of Hop Cottage and knocked loudly, just to see if Mel was there and willing to make peace. There was no answer, although I thought I heard a thud from
somewhere inside which made me crouch and peep through the letter box. All I could see was a small hallway and some stairs, which had been fitted with a disabled chair lift.

‘Mel! It’s Roy, from the pub,’ I shouted, but there was no answer.

I gave it up and strolled around the front of the cottage to the five-bar gate where I pulled on my gloves, grasped the top rail and vaulted over in one smooth movement which amazed even me.

Still with a spring in my step, I rounded the corner of the paddock.

There were eight vehicles parked outside the Soft Sell building. I recognised three of them, but none of the number plates. Painter had been busy.

Then I heard an engine and automatically drew back into the hedge. The sound wasn’t behind me, from the village, but from the other side of the hop farm buildings, down across the fields
and the exit road through the woods.

It was Scooter’s Jeep, probably in 4x4 mode, bouncing up the track by the stripping shed where the Mothership was hidden and eventually pulling in alongside the main building next to the
assorted pick-ups and estate cars.

Brian Anthony Scoular, aka Scooter, was alone and I watched him climb out of the Jeep and open up the rear door. He was wearing green Hunter boots, caked in mud, which he proceeded to kick off
and change for a pair of Reebok trainers from the Jeep.

I stepped out from behind the hedge and began to walk towards him. He made no sign that he was aware of me but he did suddenly look up whilst tying the laces of his Reeboks to his right. I
followed his line of sight, over the back garden of Hop Cottage to the back of the cottage but saw no sign of life, just the windows of the kitchen and an upstairs bedroom.

‘You’re early,’ he said, catching me looking where he had been looking.

‘Can’t wait to get to work,’ I said with a smile.

He threw his muddy boots into the back of the Jeep and made to close the door before I got level with him.

I managed one quick glimpse and spotted a small shovel, the folding type which the Army uses, and something which looked like one of those strimmer things for trimming the lawn, what the
Americans call a ‘weed-whacker’. I didn’t think much about it at the time. Maybe Scooter was a closet gardener.

‘We’re ready to roll,’ he said as the Jeep door slammed. ‘You wait here, I’ll get Combo.’

I pulled the collar of my coat up as it began to rain again and shuffled my feet as Scooter pulled open the door to the Soft Sell building. From inside there came the sound of dull cheering and
spattered applause. After a minute, Combo emerged, tucking a folded wedge of banknotes into the back pocket of his jeans.

‘What’s all that about?’ I asked him.

‘Payday. Always popular. Should be a good night for you down the Rising Sun, though it may be the last time for a while. You up for it?’ He produced the keys to the DAF and flipped
them at me.

‘Let’s go,’ I said, catching them and falling into step beside him. ‘What do you mean,
last time
?’

‘A lot of the guys have done their last run today and Scooter’s paying them off. I thought he’d told you there would only be this run and one other.’

‘He did, sort of. I didn’t realise this was the end of the business, though.’

‘Needs must,’ Combo said chattily as we approached the big stripping shed.

‘How come?’

‘Because of Coquelles.’

‘
What?
’ I thought the rain must have got in my ears.

‘Coquelles. It’s the place in Calais where Le Shuttle comes out of the Tunnel, the same as Cheriton is the Folkestone terminal.’

‘And your point is what?’

‘There’s a French Customs post at Cheriton, right?’ he said patiently. ‘But it’s never used ‘cos the French basically don’t give a shit. But
there’s a British Customs post at Coquelles, like a reciprocal deal. But it’s never been manned until now. Well, next week actually. That means the Customs officers have two chances to
get you now, once in France and once here. That’ll scare off the odd day-tripper chancing their arm and make the chances of one of us getting pulled that much higher. Plus they’re going
to confiscate the vehicles if you’re nicked and they can give you a driving ban. Scooter reckons the risks will be unacceptable, so he’s winding things down.’

We were at the far end of the stripping shed by now where there was a large sliding door and padlock just as at the other end. Combo dug a key on a chain out of his pocket and unlocked the door,
then put his shoulder to it and began to slide it open.

‘How do you know all this?’ I said to the back of his head.

‘Scooter told me,’ he said over his left shoulder.

‘Who told Scooter?’

‘Our buyer, the guy we’re delivering to. He’s very well informed.’

‘Sounds like it. Who is it?’

‘A real South London wide boy who fancies himself something rotten as a bit of a gangster. I think he’s a bit of a psycho, myself. A big Jamaican ponce called Rufus
Radabe.’

The door reached the end of its slide, revealing the DAF tractor unit and the trailer next to it up on its dolly wheels. I felt Combo turn to look at me.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah, I’m cool,’ I said.

But I kept my forehead pressed to the wet, cold metal of the shed while I took deep breath after deep breath; in through the nose, hold, one more sniff, hold, then slowly exhaling through the
mouth.

It’s what they tell you to do when you’re having a panic attack.

I didn’t know Rufus Radabe; nobody outside the police’s National Crime Squad
knew
Rufus Radabe, but I knew
of
him. Anyone who had ever had any
dealings in Brixton or Lambeth or Bermondsey or anywhere south of the river knew about Rufus Radabe.

He was said to have a finger in every dodgy pie going, starting from a base of minicab companies and a service for providing pubs with bouncers, or ‘doormen’. There were the
inevitable rumours about drugs and prostitution and protection rackets, most of which were probably legend rather than fact. But when the legend is more interesting than the facts, make an
award-winning British film about the legend.

The one thing everyone who had crossed his path – and I knew a few who had – agreed upon was that if you did cross his path, you kept on walking. Ideally, you never crossed his path.
Preferably, you were on the other side of the street or, even better, on another street in a different town altogether. If Rufus was into bootlegging then he would be just the person to know where
he could retail it and how to lean on the outlets, whether Domino Social Clubs in Brixton or off-licences in Hackney, to ensure they took a regular supply. He would have worked out his profit
margins and risks, realising that the penalties were less for beer-running than for drugs or most of his other businesses. The one thing he wasn’t was stupid. But then again, like most highly
intelligent people with a large IQ, he was also a dangerously violent psychopath.

‘You deal with Radabe himself?’ I asked Combo when I had recovered the power of speech.

‘Most times. He doesn’t trust anyone else with the money.’

‘So we’re going to meet him tonight?’ Combo nodded. ‘Where?’

‘He has a big warehouse near Dartford, behind that big new shopping centre. You can see it from the Dartford Bridge.’

‘So there will be other people around?’

‘Yeah, he employs ten or twenty guys there.’

That, at least, was something.

‘You’ve been before?’

‘Once, with Axeman, when Scooter couldn’t make it. It’s a strange place, man, I’m telling you. He only employs blacks – hey, nothing against that – but he
plays music all the time, through speakers, like all over the warehouse. And it’s not what you’d expect, it’s not like gangsta rap or anything, it’s big band swing. Cab
Calloway, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, stuff like that. He makes them all listen to it.’

‘Basie doesn’t swing,’ I said automatically.

‘Huh?’

‘Nothing. Something we used to argue about after the pubs closed.’

I had heard that story about Rufus before and that he called his most trusted heavies his ‘Rhythm Section’. But there was no point in scaring Combo. I was scared enough for both of
us.

‘Let’s get going,’ I said. ‘I’ll pull the tractor out and you can watch me back up. I might be a bit rusty.’

In fact I did it first time. It must help to have something else on your mind, because without thinking I had the DAF fired up and the tractor unit out of the shed and was reversing it perfectly
so that the ‘fifth wheel’ slid under the trailer.

‘What about plates?’ I shouted over the noise of the engine.

‘Painter’s supposed to have done them,’ Combo yelled back, walking down the length of the trailer to check at the rear.

I jumped down from the cab and went through the motions of connecting the umbilicals from tractor to trailer, locking off the fifth wheel and clipping on the red and yellow air lines and the
Electric Suzy. Then I jogged to the back end of the trailer unit to check that the rear lights were working.

‘Looks good,’ said Combo, but he wasn’t talking about the lights or the plates.

He was looking up at the back doors of the trailer where Painter had been busy with some large stencils and a can of spray paint. The rig I was about to drive was now officially labelled:

There was also a phone number which, for all I knew, was a genuine Salford number.

‘I just hope we’re not followed by anyone thinking of moving house to the North-West,’ I said to Combo. ‘Come on, let’s get it done.’

Stacked up near the door were dozens of cases of French beer which I had not seen from the other end of the shed.

‘What’s that lot?’

‘Mustn’t have been able to get it all in. It’ll go in the next load,’ said Combo.

That made me think of something I should have thought of before now.

‘They have loaded this thing properly, haven’t they?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I mean like somebody’s spread the load evenly along the trailer. In fact, the bulk of the weight should be in the middle, between the axles. Too much weight at the back end and you
could jacknife.’

Combo looked blank.

‘Er . . . I think they just keep loading until they can’t get any more in.’

‘Oh, great,’ I said, ‘just great. Any other surprises coming my way?’

‘Don’t think so,’ he said, but he was wrong.

We climbed into the cab and Combo settled himself in the air cushion passenger seat while I started the engine again, released the handbrake and selected fourth gear for moving off, something
which always mystifies car drivers used to starting in first.

‘Scooter says just stick to the concrete track and you can’t go wrong. Down the field then up through the wood until we get to the road. Music?’

‘He drove me down here yesterday,’ I said, thinking, Was it only yesterday? ‘What’s the music?’

Combo produced a tape from his jacket.

‘Smashing Pumpkins,’ he said with a big grin.

‘If you really must,’ I said, concentrating on piloting the rig down the track and fumbling for the switch to turn on the three windscreen wipers.

In the gloom and the rain, the gutted hop field looked even more like a Flanders battlefield with the old hop poles standing like shattered trees and the disused bales of binding twine which
tied the hop plants to them lying like abandoned coils of barbed wire. From the other side of the Downs the truck must have looked like one of the first tanks trundling up to the front line.

The track was wet and muddy, so I took it easy to test out how the loaded trailer would react, but I saw no need to put on the Differential Lock and the traction got a hold as we reached the end
of the fields and began to climb the slope up towards the wood and the road.

In the giant wing mirror I could see the stripping shed, which we had left with its door open and the lights on, diminishing in the distance. It looked more like an aircraft hangar than ever,
the light splaying out into the rain like a runway beacon.