The Judas Sheep (10 page)

‘Yes, I’ve read about it.’

She went on: ‘If I can take some decent photographs – children smoking, cancer patients, advertising hoardings … that sort of thing – he’ll either use his influence to have them published in one of the heavies, or we’ll produce a booklet on the subject. Isn’t it exciting?’

It was exciting all right, like poking a rattlesnake in the nostril with a cocktail stick.

I said: ‘Annabelle, are you serious?’

‘Serious? Why, what do you mean? she asked hesitantly.

‘It’s called spying!’

‘Spying?’

‘Yes! Spying!’

‘Oh, Charles. I never thought of it like that. I just thought

‘These tobacco manufacturers,’ I interrupted. ‘They might wear blue suits and be quoted on the stock market, but they also bribe governments and cause hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. They won’t let an article by an amateur journalist stand in their way.’

There was a long silence. I heard her say: ‘No,’ very softly, adding: ‘So you think I should refuse to do it?’

I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure about anything any more. I said: ‘Maybe I’m overreacting. I’m pleased for you, Annabelle, honestly I am. But I’m worried, too. Now you know what a selfish old bugger I can be.’

‘Yes.’

‘Look. You’ll be all right. It’s just that … I’m missing you. Can we discuss it at the weekend?’

‘Mmm.’

‘And before you go away, will you promise me one thing?’

‘What’s that?’

‘That I can see you in your white-hunter outfit?’

I pictured her smiling, with that wrinkle-nose way of hers that would soon be making the natives restless.

‘Only if I can see you in your football kit,’ she countered.

As soon as the driver of the Volvo articulated lorry saw the light for the cylinder pre-heaters flicker off he turned the key all the way and the big diesel engine rumbled into life. He watched the display of lights and dials as the air and oil pressures built up, telling him that everything was OK for his long journey to Marseilles.

‘Polish the bike for me,’ he shouted down to his traffic manager, nodding towards the Harley Davidson parked in the corner of the garage.

‘Might take the wife for a run on it tomorrow,’ the comfortably shaped manager yelled back, with more than a hint of yearning in his voice.

‘She’s too fast for you.’

‘Then I’ll take someone else’s wife.’

The driver grinned down at him. It was the fiftieth
time they’d had that exchange. ‘I’ll bring you some fags back.’

‘Don’t bother. Safe journey.’

He pre-selected first gear and eased the accelerator down. There were seven and a half million fags in the container he was towing, and the best part of quarter of a billion stacked nearby. He raised a hand in farewell and spun the steering wheel, easing the lorry forward through the big doors of the bonded warehouse and out into the night.

He stopped again at the gatehouse. The man there double-checked the customs seals on the container, glanced at his paperwork and raised the barrier. He was on his way.

This was the part he liked best: setting off on an overnight run to Dover, with the roads and the weather as clear as his new baby’s complexion. He’d make the ferry before dawn, and the two-hour crossing would qualify as a rest period.

In three miles he’d be on the motorway network that would take him all the way to Folkestone. That was OK in the Volvo rig, but on the Harley he’d have chosen the byways. The bike would have to be sold, now that he was a dad. It was sad, but it was only fair. They’d had some good times on it, but a family meant responsibility, and there were too many nutcases loose on the roads these days.

A motorcycle was waiting at a junction on the left. He looked across at it. Two headlamps, probably
a Suzuki. It pulled out behind him and followed, waiting for an opportunity to pass. They were on a long left-hand curve, so he flashed the lorry’s indicators to signal the road was clear and the motorcycle slipped effortlessly by, the rider raising a hand in acknowledgement.

I wish I were going to the South of France on that, the lorry driver sighed.

Two minutes later he was rounding the junction that would take him up on to the M62. A car was parked on the slip road, hazard lights blinking. He changed down through the sixteen-speed gearbox and eased over on to the hard shoulder, so he could pass the stoppage on the left. A man was standing in the road, directing the traffic that way. He was probably from the red Sierra with its flashers going.

It was the motorcyclist. The bike was laid in the road, with the rider nearby. Another man was trying to remove the stricken rider’s helmet, pulling and twisting at it.

‘Hey! Don’t do that!’ the lorry driver yelled, hitting the brakes. The heavy rig juddered to a standstill and he jumped down from the cab. ‘Don’t do that! You could paralyse him.’

He pushed the man aside and bent over the rider. He lifted the visor, unfastened the chinstrap and loosened the top of his leather jacket.

‘Lie still,’ he said calmly. ‘You’ll be OK.’

There was a metallic click near his right ear, a double
ker-chink that he’d heard a thousand times before in TV thrillers, but never in real life. He turned slightly, and felt the cold metal of the gun barrel press into his neck.

The motorcyclist opened his eyes. ‘I’m OK,’ he said, ‘but you’re in the shit.’

The passing motorists were mildly relieved to see the young man in leathers jump to his feet. They assumed he’d been riding like a madman; how else could one fall off in a slip road? They accelerated away from the scene and promptly forgot all about it. The lorry driver saw that the man who’d been directing the traffic was particularly unpleasant-looking. He wouldn’t be too difficult to describe. The ugly one climbed into the cab of the lorry, and the other, the big one with the gun, ordered him to follow. The driver’s legs felt as if they were made of blancmange as he hauled himself up.

‘Follow the red car,’ the ugly one ordered, ‘and don’t try anything. I can drive this thing, so it makes no difference to me if you’re dead or alive.’ His argument was reinforced by another evil-looking automatic pistol.

They left the bike neatly parked at the side of the road and drove away in convoy. At the next exit they left the motorway, and half an hour later the red Sierra led him up a narrow lane and into a disused farmyard. The farm had been cut off from its fields by the development of the roads, and was now isolated and run-down. Frank Bell had bought it a few years earlier at a knockdown
price. Literally. When the old farmer argued, he was knocked down.

The Volvo rig just fitted in the barn. The driver and Shawn Parrott jumped out and met the other two at the back of the container.

‘Right,’ Bell said. ‘Let’s get it unloaded.’

Parrott attacked the lugs for the padlocks with an oxy-acetylene torch while the ex-motorcyclist, Darren Atkinson, snipped through the seals with a pair of pliers. As the locks fell smoking to the floor Parrott turned, waving the cutting torch, and boasted: ‘Easy as pissing on yer feet, eh?’

Not as easy as using the keys I have in my pocket, the driver thought. How did they expect the customer to get in?

He needed time. He was scheduled to ring in at about six a.m., when he reached Dover. They’d give him an hour, maybe, then start asking questions. The police would be informed, and also Lorry Watch, the informal network that circulated the number of a stolen vehicle to nearly every driver on the road. But it would all take time. He knew exactly where he was, would have no difficulty coming here again, and that was a worry. They couldn’t let him go until the load was well away from this place, and them with it. Unless they didn’t intend to let him go …

‘C’mon, you,’ the big one growled at him. ‘Start lifting boxes out.’

They toiled through the night, and it was well after dawn
when they finished. The driver worked inside the container, passing the boxes to the other three. Slowly he mined his way into the solid wall of brown cardboard, easing each carton out and carrying it to the tail of the lorry.

The other three took them from him and stacked them somewhere round the front of the vehicle. Each one would wait until his colleague returned
empty-handed
before staggering off under his load, making sure that the driver was watched all the time. After the first hour they all stripped to the waist.

At one point Darren was waiting for the Skipper to replace him. As the driver dropped the heavy carton into his arms he said: ‘You ride a motorcycle well.’

Next trip he said: ‘I have a Harley Davidson.’

‘I know,’ Atkinson replied.

When there were only about six cartons left the ugly one dropped out of the sequence, leaving them to the Skipper and Atkinson. The driver didn’t know it, but he’d gone to fetch his beloved Kalashnikov.

‘Last one,’ he declared as he carried it from the far end of the container. He’d expected Darren to be waiting, but it was the ugly one. He couldn’t see the gun over the top of the carton he held in his arms.

‘Put it down,’ the ugly one said ominously.

The driver stopped, and as he lowered the box he saw the Russian-made assault rifle, favoured weapon of a thousand armies and a million terrorists, pointing at him. Now he knew, with a clarity denied to most of us, what his fate was to be.

He hurled the box, containing thirteen thousand cigarettes, at the face he knew he could never forget.

Parrott moved his head sideways, like a boxer slipping a punch, and the carton flew over his shoulder. He pressed the trigger and gave the driver a burst of three bullets, SAS-style. The impact carried the driver’s body backwards. He hit the far wall of the container and turned as he pitched forwards, landing on his back. His right knee bent and straightened three times, then he lay still. Outside, the birds stopped their singing at this sudden intrusion of noise, cocked their heads quizzically for a moment, and resumed saluting the new day.

The following evening Parrott drove the rig fifty miles down the M6, with Atkinson following in the car. He parked at a services, between a Texaco tanker and one carrying an indeterminate, but probably highly toxic, load. He lit a cigarette and took a couple of long drags, making sure it was well alight. He emptied a box of matches on the passenger seat and formed most of them into a bundle, held by a rubber band, with the lighted cigarette passing through the middle.

‘Now for the tricky bit,’ he mumbled to himself.

Every motor mechanic will tell you that a lighted cigarette will not ignite petrol vapour, but only the foolish ones make a habit of putting it to the test. Parrott unscrewed the stopper from a two-gallon can and doused a rag. He placed it on the floor of the cab
and carefully rested the improvised fuse in a fold of the sodden cloth. The can was left upturned, gurgling the remainder of its contents over the high-quality upholstery of the
£
100,000 Volvo. Parrott climbed down and calmly walked round the back of the rig, as if checking his load. Darren was waiting at the other side, in the Sierra.

Eleven minutes and fourteen miles later the cigarette burnt down to the match-heads and the lorry exploded. The fire brigade managed to save the Texaco tanker, but they couldn’t help the poor chap who’d been resting in the Volvo’s sleeping quarters. The overworked pathologist found the bullets the following day, and said a little prayer of thanks that he hadn’t jumped to the obvious conclusion.

I decided that I’d drive home to Heckley straight from the football match. I loaded the car, went through the checklist for locking up the cottage – windows shut, thermostat down low, that sort of thing – and set off to look for the Grammar School playing fields.

The match was well under way when I arrived. I’d seen some sports fields during my travels around town, but they were the wrong ones, and I had to ask directions. About twenty spectators were down one side of the pitch, and a little solitary figure stood apart from them, near the goal where Guy was bobbing up and down to keep warm, as if he were suspended by a spring from the cross-bar.

‘Good morning, Diane,’ I announced briskly as I approached her. She was submerged in a big navy-blue coat that nearly reached the ground, its collar up over her ears.

‘Good morning,’ she mumbled, without enthusiasm.

‘What’s the score?’

‘Nil nil, I think.’

‘How long have they been playing?’

‘About two hours.’

‘A game of soccer only lasts ninety minutes,’ I informed her.

‘Does it? Well, they must have been playing for nearly that long.’

‘So they’ve had half-time?’

‘Half-time?’

‘You’re not really a fan, are you?’ I chuckled.

‘No. This is the first time I’ve been to a game. Probably be the last, too.’

I turned away from her, as if to watch the play, but really it was to hide the self-satisfied grin on my face. If Diane Dooley hadn’t come to see the football, what, or who, had she really come to see?

Guy’s team were on the attack, with every player in their opponents’ half. It was typical schoolboy kick-and-rush, but no less passionate for that. Their goalkeeper gathered the ball and punted it downfield. It went to their centre-forward who booted it towards Guy’s goal, and the chase was on.

Their player was a big lad. One of those genetic
freaks who has a five o’clock shadow at seven. Seven years old, that is. He streaked towards Guy, kicking the ball well forward to keep his speed up. Big kids like him have it easy at school, but when the others catch up they fade away. Then it’s the little tough ones, who know what it’s like to struggle, who make the grade.

Guy saw him coming and moved off his line. He was nervous, and so was I. The centre-forward came charging towards the goal, and Guy wasn’t sure how to tackle him. At the last second the ball ran away from their player, and his shot was feeble. Guy stuck out a leg and deflected the ball round the post. He’d saved it, but it wasn’t a move he’d read about in a textbook.

‘Well saved, goalie,’ I shouted, and Diane applauded with her gloved hands. The referee gave a long blast on his whistle and waved a hand in the air – the signal for the teams to change ends.

‘That’s half-time,’ I told Diane, who looked less than enthusiastic at the news. ‘Only another forty-five minutes to go.’

Guy came running over to us. ‘Morning, Charlie,’ he greeted me, smiling happily.

‘Morning, Guy. That was a rather unorthodox save, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘Clean sheet, so far,’ he responded.

‘Fair enough.’ I nodded towards the other players, who were gathered around their games master. ‘Go see what the coach has to say,’ I told him. ‘Then I want a quick word with you.’

Guy trotted off towards the others, Diane and I following him at a more leisurely pace. ‘Guy’s a smashing boy,’ I told her. ‘You must be proud of him.’

‘I am,’ she answered.

‘I’m surprised you haven’t watched him play before.’

‘Is that meant to be a reprimand?’ she demanded.

‘No. I’m sorry, is that how it sounded?’

I was receiving mixed signals from Mrs Dooley. Maybe I was wrong in my assumption that her motive for coming to the match was to see me. I chuckled to myself as I remembered our first conversation in her office, ‘specially the bit where I’d said …

Oh shit! Oh shit and corruption! With great big spikes on and wired up to ten million volts! How stupid could I get?

‘Aw God!’ I exclaimed, clapping my hands to my head.

She looked at me, without saying anything.

I let out a big sigh. ‘I’ve just remembered what I said,’ I told her.

‘Said? When?’

‘In your office. When I came for a consultation. The bit about choosing a counsellor. I told you that I was worried that I might fall in love with my counsellor, and I said … you said …’