Give The Devil His Due (23 page)

       By 12.38 a.m. Walters was hurrying through the foyer of De Villiers-Moncourt's London office and into the lift. He pushed the button for the second floor. Ian's CPU was already powered-up and running. He moved the mouse. The screen, lying dormant since shortly after he'd left the office the previous evening, stirred into life. As the monitor slowly illuminated, Ian breathed a sigh of relief.

       ‘Got you, you son of a bitch.’

       There in front of him, like a fingerprint unique to only one person, was a group of dots and digits. Ian had what he wanted: the hacker's IP address. He’d returned expecting another fruitless search; he couldn't believe his luck! He hadn't even had to initiate a trace. The cyberspace night-visitor had been sloppy. Ian picked up the phone and dialled.

***

Katherine Blackwell worked for
Netsource
, D-M's Internet service provider. Ian Walters occasionally slept with Katherine. He liked to think of her as his fuck-buddy; she liked to think there might be a band of gold sometime in the future and would try her level best to get it.

       Walters had other ideas though, and would just keep her dangling. He’d made sure that she got the D-M contract. With offices in London, Capetown and New York, it was a contract worth having. Katherine had done very well from the introducer’s commission she'd earned and, providing D-M kept renewing each year, she would continue to earn from the account.

       ‘Hi, it's me. Did I wake you?’

       ‘No, not at all.’ She was lying.

       ‘I need a big favour. Can I come and see you tonight?’

       ‘You know you can.’

       ‘I'll be there in about twenty minutes.’ He hung up.

       She lived south of the river, but the traffic wouldn't hold him up at this time of night. He made a note of the snooper’s IP address. Within the hour Ian was pleasuring Katherine Blackwell.

       By 10 a.m. the following morning, a fully satisfied and sore Ms Blackwell was emailing a name and address to Ian, now seated back at the desk he'd left in the early hours. Having printed off the newly acquired information, Ian wrote a short but sycophantic note to De Villiers. He stapled it to the printout and put both into an envelope, marking it ‘Private and Confidential’.

       Walters could be sure that if hand-delivered, De Villiers’ PA would not dare open it in front of him. Ian walked over to the lift. Once inside, he selected the button that would take him to the fifth floor;
fat cat territory
. As the lift bell dinged, so the doors opened.

       Pamela Stokes was De Villiers’ PA. As with most PAs, she knew who was to have access to the chairman and who wasn't. Although no-one in DM was indispensable, especially if you crossed swords with the chairman, there were those that were party to some of the less-than-squeaky-clean deals that De Villiers conducted and those that weren't. Ian Walters was one of the former.

       ‘Hi Pam.’

       ‘Good morning Mr Walters.’ She tried to keep things formal.

       ‘Can you see the chairman gets this first thing Monday morning please?’

       ‘What is it?’

       ‘It's something he'll want to see immediately on his return from New York.’ Ian's it's-none-of-your-fucking-business reply left her with nowhere to take the conversation. He'd just let her know that even though she was De Villiers’ PA, there were things that he was trusted with that she wasn't. Pamela looked at him with distaste.

       ‘Yes, I shall put it on his desk straight away.’

       As Ian turned and walked towards the lift, he knew that once he left the office for home that afternoon, she would probably try to steam the envelope open and have a peek. Did he really care? No. His job and the trappings that went with it were secure, for the time being. He’d have a good weekend.

Chapter 18

Friday 10.45 a.m. Bristol
Much to our amazement, nobody had a thick head. Obviously a testament to Vaughan's skills as a winemaker. He was far more accomplished than any of us had imagined.

       As the day wore on, Peach was the first to leave Phil's. He didn't have the worry of being breathalysed because he was on the train. Although Neil didn't have that concern either, he had to wait till I felt safe because he was travelling in my car.

       Peach had arranged an afternoon meet for the following Tuesday. It’d give him any extra time he needed. It looked like he was going back to the drawing board. I sensed that with Vaughan supervising proceedings, Peach felt his new masterplan would have to become that little bit more masterful than the original.

       When Neil and I eventually set off, it was already past 1 p.m. I’d rung Tegan and told her I was sorry for being so absorbed with the quest. She said she forgave me. Upon my return home, a table at a good restaurant would be booked. I was determined to make amends for neglecting her.

Friday 3 p.m. South Wales
We arrived back at the house to find a note had been pushed through the front door. The note was from Martin Sedgely.

       It read: ‘Will, Bryce is holding a drivers’ meeting this Sunday 7 p.m.
The King’s Head
– upstairs function room; no-one knows what it's all about – Mart.'

       I looked at it. I could guess what it was about. Neil looked at it bewildered.

       ‘Will, am I supposed to be there?’

       ‘Are you a driver?’

       ‘Yes.’

       ‘Well there's your answer. Having said that, no-one will force you to go, but if you've never been to one before, it's worth attending – just to see what a drivers’ meeting is like. Besides if it's about an issue you've got an opinion on, you may want to have your say.’

       ‘Are you going to go?’

       ‘Yes.’

       ‘OK then, I'll be there.’ So that was it. Come Sunday, Neil would be properly initiated into the world of cabbies’ meetings.

       Friday evening I took Tegan out. We went to the cinema followed by a fantastic Italian meal. I crawled like my life depended on it. When we got back to her house it was quite late. I nipped out to the car and grabbed a box of Belgian chocolates secreted in the boot. They were part of my soften-her-up strategy.

       I told her all about Vaughan. It was clear she’d have loved to be involved in the whole thing and was missing out on an exciting adventure. We also talked about Neil and Denise. They had become an item.

       Even though she was in denial of having told Denise anything, I knew the two of them were as thick as thieves. Denise had probably had every little detail, if not from her, then from Neil. He was only human after all, and if she was applying pressure, I was sure he’d cave in.

       As long as the information didn't go any further I couldn't see any harm in it. The main thing was that if Peach or Phil came over to stay, they kept their mouths shut – that would be a first!

       Neil and I worked our arses off over the next two days putting some serious hours in. The Saturday night was busy; by the time Sunday afternoon came around we were both pretty exhausted. It was about 6.30 p.m. when we left the house to attend the drivers’ meeting.

Sunday 7 p.m. The King’s Head (Public House)
Bob and Roy Bryce were self-made men. Bob and Roy Bryce were the owners of the cab firm that we rented our radios from. If Bob and Roy Bryce had been French they would have been described as
Les Shuffleurs des Cinq Knuckles
.

       But these five knuckle shufflers weren’t Frenchmen – they were Scots. Over the years, I’d met a lot of nice Scottish people while driving the cab, but the Brothers Bryce didn’t fall into this category, so their descriptions were markedly different. It could be anything from
Lords of the Ker-chings
to
Complete and Total Arrogant Arseholes of the Century
. That included of course anything and everything in between. They had a problem grasping some basic concepts, namely that

(a)   Our cabs didn't belong to them, they belonged to us and

(b)   That we were actually their customers, paying them an absolutely extortionate rate for our radios as opposed to
their employees
who worked in
their
office and were paid an hourly rate by Brothers Grim Inc.

       The employees got paid whether the phone rang or not. Bob and Roy got paid whether the phone rang or not. We got
jack shit
if the phone didn't ring, but come Monday morning Bob and Roy wanted their money from us regardless.

       Their lack of comprehension meant we all got treated like crap, and although it would be easy to say 'If you don't like it why don't you leave?' things weren't exactly as straightforward as that.

       More through luck than judgement, the brothers Bryce had found themselves in an almost unassailable position in our little town. One viewpoint could be: Their actions were that of astute businessmen. But I’ve always believed that in business you don’t have to hold a metaphorical gun to your customers’ heads just because you can. They could’ve still made a nice profit and charged us half the amount we were paying.

       Most of us had bought reasonably new cars on finance – the cabs had to be reliable. We had mortgages, credit cards, loans and were in it up to our necks. Yes we
could
walk away, but at what cost?

       The brothers’ previous office manager was a guy called Graham Philips – a dead ringer for Rolf Harris but without the didgeridoo. Graham had made a couple of shrewd decisions during the time he was on the Bryce payroll.

       He'd managed to persuade the Grims to release the purse strings enough to get the fleet teched up with decent radio equipment when other fleets hadn't. He'd also secured a couple of the big supermarkets by installing freephones inside them. It wasn't until Rolf left did we realise what a good guy he was, and how much of a nightmare it must have been for him to have had the brothers on his back morning, noon and night.

       Bob and Roy were soccer mad. They’d spend most of their time watching it and talking about it. They didn’t like it one bit when someone suggested the Scottish league was of a lower standard than the English. Roy fancied himself as a
could’ve-made-it-big
footballer. If ever you were cornered (excuse the pun) by him he’d tell you about the time he had a trial for Celtic, but had changed his mind about going into football because he had a higher calling. I was sure it was all bullshit. I reckoned the only higher calling he’d had was when he’d been to the bingo to pick up his Missus, decided to play a few lines and had to sit upstairs.

       Roy had a couple of nicknames. Pele was one – he knew people referred to him using this name – and was flattered. What he didn’t realise was that it wasn’t because of his past soccer skills; it was because he had a head the size of a football! And the other name they used, Einstein; the reasoning behind that one’s obvious.

       Although Roy claimed he was Bob’s brother, we all knew this was crap, and that one day his shameful secret would be revealed to all and sundry. Roy was not a human life-form. He was in fact an alien visitor from the planet Cretina. Rumour had it that he was actually King of the Cretins. One could easily believe this. You only had to talk to him for a couple of minutes and you'd soon see he wasn't the 'full metered fare'

       If you had a work-related problem that needed sorting out, his favourite phrase was ‘I hear what you're saying son’ (he called you son, even if you were older than him – maybe it was a football thing). What he really meant to say was ‘I can hear the words you speak, but due to the fact I've only got one active brain cell in my football-sized head, I am unable to offer any reasonable or sensible resolution to the problem.’

       The good book says
God created man in his own image
.

       Our only hope for mankind was that Roy didn't get a similar idea and start proliferating, creating an abundance of baby fuckwits that would one day become adult fuckwits. Carbon copies of Roy the Creator, destroying all forms of intelligent human life, as they interbred with Earth’s citizens. These evolutionary throwbacks would be the direct and catastrophic results of dominant Bryce genes.

       So, Bob and Roy, in spite of everything, had been extremely lucky. When their only serious competitor had a guts-full of the taxi business and decided to pack it in, Bob and Roy absorbed a large portion of that fleet. Compared to any of the other remaining small cab companies
Grim Cabs
was a giant. For two decades it had been the other small firms’ lack of cash to invest and basic ineptitude that had allowed
Grim Inc
to attain and retain their stranglehold on our little town's taxi trade.

       The Brothers suffered greatly from a debilitating illness,
Greedy Bastarditus
. The illness was theirs, and as a consequence the debilitation ours. As the condition worsened over the years, it manifested itself in strange ways. For example Bob’s hand–eye coordination was out of kilter. If you ever saw him drop a pound coin you would notice how that same coin would hit him in the back of the neck as he bent down to pick it up. As far as I was concerned Bob and Roy, the Cretin King, were living on borrowed time.

***

Having arrived at the venue, Neil and I stood at the rear of the room close to the emergency exit. As I looked around, I could see many of the drivers had turned up, but quite a number had stayed away. Some probably felt they'd heard it all before. Some would reckon they could fill their boots while the meeting was taking place because there were fewer cabs out working. And some, because they were at home watching
Songs of Praise
on the telly (not!).

       I for one hated going to these big meetings, especially when they were held in pubs, primarily because most of the guys would get there early and neck a few sherbets while waiting for events to unfold. By the time the meeting started, the beer would be the main speaker. It could then degenerate into an argument, because the job dispatchers had given a handful of favoured drivers the best jobs (a process known as feeding). Bad feeling was not an uncommon outcome.