Face Down Read online

  He drained the lukewarm dregs of his railway station crappuccino, and watched Womble concocting his morning glass of Fangocur, a revolting volcanic clay mix said to combat halitosis. Shaw cringed.

  “Anything in my paper?”

  “Justin Lee Collins found guilty,” said Wattsie.

  “Don’t tell me, crimes against comedy?”

  “Ta-da! You want your paper, guv? Only, I’d advise you to swerve Broadwick’s Broadside on page eleven.”

  “What’s that cock written now?”

  13

  Two hours earlier, Woking, Surrey.

  William Broadwick beamed as his read his own column. This in itself was not unusual, but today’s tour de force berating the national menace of ‘travellers who never travel’ tickled him more than normal. It was a comprehensive demolition job aimed at the ‘tinker plague’ and the wishy-washy liberal nitwits who ‘seek to make them a protected species’ and who ‘would have us subsidise their feckless lifestyles indefinitely.’ It rounded on the cops who ‘fail to protect the honest citizens’ and who ‘allow camps of petty criminals to fester like a cankerous boil on what’s left of our once grand way of life.’ And then it worked up into a tub-thumping climax worthy of James Whale at his most populist. ‘It is not racist to point out that gypsy camps go hand in hand with rising crime and spiralling mess. It is not racist to acknowledge that the growing subculture of tinkers, tarmac-layers and tax-dodging cheats and spongers is absurdly romanticised by urban intellectuals with absolutely no experience of the real world outside of their privileged enclaves. It is not racist to be moved to tears at the plight of innocent villagers who find their fields despoiled and their lives blighted by this cancerous plague.

  ‘I do not suggest that all gypsies are dishonest,’ he continued, building to a rousing climax. ‘But we must address the problem of those who are, the worthless scum who flout the law and prey on their neighbours secure in the knowledge that their criminality will be protected by the ’uman rights brigade.

  ‘They are not an endangered ethnic minority; they are not a romantic throw-back to a lost golden world. They are a plague of professional piss-takers with their heads in a trough of benefits provided by you and me and all the other poor mugs who actually work for a living, and if the courts and authorities refuse to deal with them, then we should not condemn anyone who does.’

  Get in! Broadwick was so pleased with his words that he read them again. Take that, Littlejohn, he thought. I’m the Daddy now.

  If William was happy at 7am, he was ecstatic by 10am, when the column was ranked at Number One on UK Twitter and Number Six worldwide. The Twitter storm continued to build throughout the day, with thousands of concerned bleeding heart tweeters – bleaters? – demanding that he be sacked from his job. But a poll privately commissioned by the Express showed that his views had a 91 per cent approval rating among their own readers, and equally strong support among those who identified themselves as regular Daily Mail readers.

  Aware of her husband’s rare good humour, Fiona asked again about the reunion and was pleasantly surprised when he said yes.

  14

  Eight hours later, Blackpool, Lancashire.

  The setting sun was splitting slowly across the sky like a lap-dancer’s legs at a brokers’ stag do. Through the hotel net curtains I watched a seagull steal a chip from a toddler’s hand. The birds up here were as brazen as the local conmen. I once watched a geezer selling seagulls by the South Pier for £20 a pop. He’d taken a couple’s cash, pointed at a gull and said “Take that one.” The dozy husband had only run along the beach trying to grab hold of it. Still, you can’t spell gullible without gull...

  I took a swig of ice cold Birra Moretti and smiled. Katie was in the shower singing Pink’s ‘Blow Me’, which was ironic as just a few minutes ago my head had been stuck between her legs, the good old George Young going like clockwork on her clit. She certainly seemed to appreciate it – she’d gone from nought to hip bucking in about ninety seconds flat. Boris Johnson may have stormed the Tory conference today but I’d like to think that I went down better.

  I’d come up here to get shot of 75 knocked-off Barbour jackets and a cotchell of porn DVDs, which was a dying game – the internet had killed that market stone dead. Some of the London boys were making more from recycling cast-off clobber to Eastern Europe than from Johnny Vaughan these days. But I didn’t bother Katie with the business side. The jackets went in the car-park of the Viking while she was unpacking; the DVDs were in Jiffy bags down at reception for Kidder, an old mate to pick up later. I’d told her we were coming to the seaside for fish and chips. As it happened, I could still taste the fish, the chips would come at the casino after a couple of nice hours in La Fontana and a few bottles of Gavi di Gavi and no doubt I’d be reaching the vinegar about an hour after that. Nothing could possibly spoil a night like this.

  I opened the wardrobe and laid out fresh schmutter for the evening. Smart casual I think; a simple black Hackett pullover, CK boxers, Levi red-tag jeans. No need for a whistle up here. And to round it off O’Keefe leather brogues – I love me trainers but you can’t go to a casino in Kegler supers.

  Katie came out of the bathroom wearing just a towel and a smile, and pecked me on the cheek. “You know, I’d love you to meet me Dad,” she said. Oh shit. Then she stepped away and dropped the towel, and I didn’t give her old man another thought.

  15

  Thursday, October 11.

  A day after publication, Broadwick’s Broadside was front page news in five of Britain’s national newspapers. Not only had he scandalised the chattering classes, he’d also managed to provoke violent protests outside the Express’s office in Lower Thames Street. Traveller numbers were swollen by students, anarchists, squatters, professional agitators and various Labour activists, including two members of the London Assembly. The London Travellers’ Unit had already got on to the Press Complaints Commission to register their anger. Their plummy-voiced brief insisted that Broadwick’s column was “abusive, probably racist and certainly likely to inflame prejudice.” The solicitor, whose membership of the Socialist Workers Party was not mentioned by the BBC News, called on Lord Leveson to demand “stringent state regulation” of the press in his forthcoming report, to be enforced with £1million fines. While the Radio 4 comedian, Jocelyn Tardy, a crotchety IRA apologist, remarked that Broadwick should be “muzzled like a rogue Rottweiler” and “put down like any other dangerous animal would be.”

  It was tremendous news for William Broadwick, who found himself being whisked by a succession of luxury cars from the Radio 4 Today programme to ITV’s This Morning, and then on to BBC2’s The Daily Politics, by which time he’d already been booked for the next night’s Question Time and a high profile interview for the Independent on Sunday.

  16

  Paddock Wood, Kent. Midnight

  To the casual observer, it looked as if the man in the muddy Land Rover Freelander was waiting for something. The driver wore a flat cap, a heavy navy Barbour Morris utility jacket and a dark Sullen Burnt flannel shirt. They would have seen the figure sit immobile and in silence for the best part of hour, they would not have seen that the driver was cradling a Browning Maxus. It was quite a gun. Its Power Drive Gas System was designed to perform under harsh hunting conditions; the Maxus delivered 18 per cent less felt recoil than its predecessor, and 44 per cent less muzzle jump for more accurate follow-up shots which instantly translated into more birds in your bag, if birds were your prey. Tonight, though, pheasants were off the menu. Instead it was peasants for starters. The driver’s intention was to put the wind-up the inhabitants of an illegal traveller camp which Tunbridge Wells Borough Council seemed powerless to deal with.

  It was one of the largest unauthorised sites in Europe. Stinking rubbish was strewn in splitting bags around the gate leading to the neighbouring site that they had been evicted from, where the council had bulldozed the old plots exposing former landfill that had been capped in the
1990s. It had cost £8.5million to clear the lot of them 100 yards down the road and make the situation worse. Rats abounded, as did stomach complaints and impetigo. Something had to be done.

  At 12.30am, when the last caravan light had finally gone out, the driver went into action and was pleased to find that the manufacturer’s claims about the Maxus were correct. The Lightning Trigger probably was the finest fire control system most shooters would ever encounter in an auto-loading shotgun. With lock-times averaging .0052 seconds, it was around 25 per cent faster than the nearest competing autoloader, making every pull perfect.

  No fortune teller had seen this coming. The three and a half minute rampage burst every tyre and shattered every caravan window in range – so much for lucky heather. There were no serious casualties.

  Eyewitnesses reported seeing just what the driver had wanted them to see: a burly head-case in a flat cap and Barbour wax jacket wearing olive green army surplus trousers and Doctor Marten boots going to town with a shotgun. Job done. Within minutes of the assault ending, the Press Association received a phone call from someone using a voice distorter, calling themselves “Cam O’Dolland of the English Liberation Front.” The caller claimed responsibility and demanded that the Coalition Government take “immediate” action against “the lawless gypsy plague.”

  17

  October 12. Blackpool, six hours later

  I snapped awake at 06.30am as usual, fully alert. Katie was dead to the world, snoring softly beside me like a contented kitten. I swung my legs out of bed, did thirty press-ups in the bathroom, dressed and went for a run along the new prom. I was back by 7.15, and picked up the package of cash that Kidder had left at reception in exchange for the DVDs. They’d be on sale at the local CIU clubs by dinner time. Two pints of lager, a pickled egg and a copy of Womb Raider IV please...

  I was showered, shaved, eating toast and reading the paper by the time Katie surfaced.

  “Why do you get the piggin’ Daily Telegraph?” she moaned, a monstrous hangover taking the shine off her normally cheerful disposition.

  “‘Good morning wonderful’ would have been a better way to start.”

  “Good morning wonderful,” she smiled. “Thank you for blessing my day.”

  “Do you funny old Northern people really use the word ‘pigging’ in everyday conversation? I thought that was just in ITV sitcoms and Cannon and Ball scripts.”

  “Do you Southern folk really say, ‘Gor-blimey, guv’nor, up the apples and pears mate’?”

  “Only when we’ve got a cloth cap to doff. I suppose you like the Sport up here, all that ‘I gave birth to a fish finger and now my fanny’s got freezer burn’ malarkey.”

  “I like the Mail,” she said, a little sulkily.

  “Yeah? Well, it’s a woman’s paper, that’s why it’s so spiteful.”

  “Why do you always buy the frigging Telegraph?”

  “Force of habit...and I like the Matt cartoons.”

  “You always look at the Announcements, are you waiting for someone posh to have your baby?”

  “Nah. Pippa Middleton wanted me, but I’m holding out for Ella Windsor, a bit more class don’tcha know?”

  “Pippa! What’s the fuss about her arse anyway?”

  “Beats me, people just need to...get a grip...” I mimed a couple of thrusts.

  “Harry!”

  SO10 often used coded messages in the Telegraph to communicate with officers who were deep undercover. So it genuinely was force of habit, mixed with curiosity that made me peruse the small print of Britain’s last surviving broadsheet every day. But civilians didn’t need to know any of that. I flipped back to the front page. The main story was all about the attack on the gypsy camp. MPs were calling for the English Liberation Front, which I hadn’t even heard of, to be classified as a proscribed terrorist group.

  “Are we going for breakfast or what?”

  “What.”

  “I’ve got a throat like a junkie’s carpet.”

  “Thank you Countess Violet, how on earth is Downton Abbey coping without you?”

  She tweaked my left nipple. “Come on, I need me sausage.”

  Her hand slide slowly down my body until it reached its target.

  “What’s this?” she asked coquettishly. “Cumberland?”

  “Horse meat.”

  “You wish! You are quite a handful though.”

  “I think I’m starting to rub off on you.”

  “Don’t you dare waste it!”

  “I meant my sense of humour.”

  “I know! Nowt wrong with that. And where better for a bit of seaside postcard filth than Blackpool?”

  “I thought you’d come here to ride the Big One?”

  “I did. And after that I’ll get up and go t’Pleasure Beach.” She gurgled like a happy child.

  “My last wife used to say that being with me was like living in a Carry On film,” I said. “In the good weeks...”

  “That’s crackin’, I love the Carry Ons...except for Carry On Behind, before you ask.”

  “How else are you going to brown the sausage?”

  “Urgh. You spooner.”

  “Northern slang, does not compute.”

  Her Blackberry buzzed. “It’s Dad,” she said, releasing her grip. “He’s still okay to meet us on Saturday, but he’s going on a demo first.”

  “What demo?”

  “Supporting William Broadwick.”

  18

  Tonbridge, Kent. 11.15am

  DC Woodward had first remarked upon a possible link between the recent spate of murder and crime on their manor and the Broadwick column. Timothy Brown berated, Timothy Brown killed; gypsies berated, a camp shot up...

  Woodward, known as Don because of his history degree, spelt out the theory hesitantly, adding “It could be coincidence...” But DI Shaw’s instincts told him it was worth a shot. Don and Wattsie had gone online and diligently uncovered a string of similar links, ranging from the murder of Simon Loewy to more trivial crimes, all committed within days of a Broadwick column connection.

  The first obvious one occurred in January 2012, when William had hit out at ‘the greedy bankers who wrecked our economy’, suggesting they were pirates who deserved to receive jail sentences rather than hefty bonuses. The next day, the manager of the RBS bank in Maidstone had been kidnapped, drugged, dressed up as a buccaneer and deposited outside of his own building in stocks next to a box of fresh eggs and a poster saying ‘Robber Banker, Egg Me At Will’, signed by one Miles Farger. All six eggs had been used with unnecessary enthusiasm in the ten minutes before he was liberated.

  Other cases included a shock rock band called the Orgasm Guerrillas who had scandalised the authorities at the University of Kent by punching and kicking apig’s head on stage before showering the student audience with fresh butchers’ offal. Broadwick took the “infantile middle-aged rebels” to task, and, six days later, the band’s next gig at the Dome in Tuffnell Park, North London, had five tons of pig shit deposited on the venue’s doorstep. Locals joked that it had improved the smell.

  In total, there were thirteen examples of possible Boardwick-inspired vigilante actions.

  “If they are all related, he’s gone from silly, almost surreal protests to serious crime,” noted Womble. “Starting locally and moving out of the county...”

  “Cam O’Dolland,” added Wattsie thinking aloud. “Cameron is Scottish, O’Dolland sounds Irish...and he’s saying he is English.”

  “Must have one of those multiple personalities,” said Don.

  “Or he’s just a mixed-up fuck,” grunted Gary Shaw.

  “Here’s the thing though, before 2012 Cam O’Dolland was a Googlewhack,” Wattsie added.

  “A what?” said Womble.

  “Something that if you’d typed it in Google and hit search would result in absolutely nothing results being found,” explained Don, as Wattsie absent-mindedly wrote the name down on her note-pad. “There is no Cam O’Dolland on police, revenu
e or NHS records either, which would suggest that either he’s foreign or it’s an alias. The only mention Rhona could find of an English Liberation Front was on a David Icke website – some chap called Gullick talking about starting a peaceful protest and an ‘activists’ group called the ELF focusing on, and I quote ‘the destruction of our civil liberties and raising awareness about the London bombings’.”

  “Could be a nutter,” replied Womble.

  “What? On a David Icke website?” laughed Shaw. “Seems unlikely, Wom. Check out this Gullick character, please. Unlikely, but have a sniff around. This is good work though, guys. If there is a real link between William Broadwick’s column and O’Dolland’s statements, as there appears to be, then we can use it to flush out his groupie.”

  “So what will you do next, guv?” asked Wattsie.

  “Speak to the boss,” he replied. “I think I’ve got a plan.”

  19

  Paddock Wood, Kent. Midday.

  Gulliver Stevens sat at his desk trying to compose a letter to William Broadwick. He knew the word he wanted, it was on the tip of his tongue but it just wouldn’t come. The desk was a cluttered mess of largely unopened bills. He picked up the imitation Mauser blade with SS markings that he used as a paperweight, and pulled it from its scabbard. He’d known exactly what he had wanted to say a moment ago, and now it had gone. He’d re-read the column, that was it, and then it would all come back to him. He took a sip of coffee from his mug and then realised it was not only cold but possibly a day or two old. At that moment he was also aware that he stunk. It was the same body odour he had smelt on his father and uncles back in the days before deodorants; an honest odour, redolent of hard work, but even so.