Face Down Page 5

  Where was the girl? The girl would put everything right. Where was she?

  A noise in the yard disturbed him. He rushed out of the office, grabbing his shotgun from the kitchen and ran out of the back door to confront the intruder who was over by the barn in between the Land Rover and the old Ford Transit van.

  “Who the fuck is that?” Gulliver shouted. “Put yer hands up you pikey bastard!”

  Mick Neale took a step back and turned to face him. “It’s me, Mr Stevens. It’s Mick. I’ve come to do the chores.”

  “Mick?”

  “Yes. Mick Neale. Look, you know me.”

  Mick stepped forward. The old farmer peered at him, his freakishly large ears accentuated by a severe haircut.

  “Michael!” said Gulliver; his ruddy face lightened into a smile. “Good to see you, chum. Did I tell you we’ve had pikies robbing us? I saw off two of them the other day.”

  “Yes, you told me Mr Stevens.”

  “Lazy, thieving, gypsy bastards, preying on honest people. It’s a bloody disgrace.”

  “That it is. I was going to clean out the barn for you. Where do you want the propane gas cylinders putting?”

  Stevens looked blank. “Propane gas?” he repeated vaguely.

  “Yes, there are a couple of cylinders in here, next to all the chemicals.”

  “Chemicals?”

  “Yes you’ve got potassium chlorate in there, fertiliser, sulphur.”

  “Sulphur?”

  “Are you okay, Mr Stevens? Gulliver?”

  “Yes, yes. Did I tell you we’ve had pikies robbing us? I saw off two of them the other day.”

  A Honda Civic drove into the yard, parking between the transit van and Mick’s old RAV4. The driver, a stunning brunette, got out, looking puzzled.

  “Charlie!” said Mick with relief. “Thank God you’re here, I think your Dad’s having a funny turn.”

  She was wearing a smart, knee-length, Isabel de Pedro one-piece, business-like, but still incredibly sexy. She had dancer’s legs, sturdy but sexy.

  “Are you okay, Dad?” she said, putting her arm around the clearly befuddled farmer. “Let’s get you inside, and run you a nice bath. Thanks Mick, I had to go into London for a business meeting. Dad’s been a bit out of sorts lately. Nothing to worry about.”

  “What would you like me to do, sort out the small barn?”

  “No,” she said sharply, adding: “No, no thanks. I’ve got some of my cousin’s stuff in there, nowhere else to put it really. But you would be doing me a huge favour if you could clear out the cellar. All the old tat that’s in there can go in the small barn too, if that’s okay. Probably only take you an hour. £30 cash in hand okay?”

  “Lovely job. And Mr Stevens?”

  “He’ll be okay, he’s just forgotten his medication again.”

  Mick watched her walk the old man indoors. Her lipstick was so vivid he could practically taste it. Stevens stopped by the back door and waved at him. “Cheerio Michael,” he said loudly. “We’ll go fly-fishing again soon, my boy.”

  “Pip pip, Mr Stevens.”

  Mick Neale shook his head. They had never gone fly-fishing together, ever. Poor old Gulliver. Mick decided that if the time ever came, he’d rather be whacked to death with a shovel than end up like this.

  Mick followed them into the house and walked towards the cellar, wary of Myrtle, the farmer’s malignant cat. He had first encountered the semi-feral Burmese the previous summer. It had been a swelteringly hot day and as Mick was working outside, he’d taken his shirt off. Myrtle had very kindly dropped onto his head from the barn roof and slid down his bare back with her claws extended. The scars were still visible. They’d had a hate-hate relationship ever since, with Myrtle generally coming out on top.

  After he’d finished clearing the cellar, Mick took his envelope of cash from the kitchen table and drove over to the fields at the back of the cow-sheds, just to clear his head. He lit a roll-up and watched a weasel tease a much larger rat, running rings around the paralysed rodent until it finally sunk its teeth into the critter’s neck. For a crazy moment Mick wondered if nature had been acting out a metaphor on his behalf, a metaphor so arcane that he couldn’t quite decipher it.

  20

  Blackpool, Lancashire. 10pm.

  I told her it was a mistake to go to a gay club, not because I don’t like irons but because the music was shit, the compere was a Northern Premier League version of Lily Savage and it was a fucking trannie night. So the place was full of big geezers in drag, and I mean geezers. These were blokes so pig ugly they made Twisted Sister look like the Saturdays. We had one drink and did the offski, but were followed out to the car park by two men in frocks.

  The older one was trying to seem menacing, which is difficult when you look like a fatter, butcher version of Les Dawson done up as his less than alluring Ada character. I wanted to laugh, but now probably wasn’t the time. His big, morose face stretched into a smile that didn’t look anything like genuine happiness. He spoke in a low, comically incongruous growl.

  “Are you Harry?”

  I nodded cautiously.

  “Harry Tyler?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m John Finlay. I know an old friend of yours.”

  I knew the name and a shufti at his hands told me the rest. Sausage Fingers Finlay, a local heavy...probably not often seen in black nail varnish though.

  “Oh yeah?”

  The smile had gone. “Yeah, Douglas Richards.”

  Dougie The Dog!

  Baring his teeth, Finlay came straight at me, brandishing a cosh. Katie screamed. Before he could swing it, I sent a shuddering right to his gut. The tool went flying. The big man roared and threw a wild left which I swerved, catching him off balance with the return punch. Another sharp right sent him straight to the floor. I got in a kick that knocked him sparko when his pal threw a left to the side of my jaw. It was a good one, I felt it. But it wasn’t good enough. I spun round, fists up ready to take him too only to see Katie blast him square on with a Taser X26. Ho! Resourceful girl! Have it!

  I grabbed her hand and we headed straight for the taxi rank in Talbot Road, about 200 yards away. We were in the sherbet and heading back to the South Pier before either of the two goons was fully conscious.

  Katie spoke first. “I didn’t fancy yours much.”

  “Ha. Talk about handbags at dawn. How long have you been packing a Taser then?”

  “Since after the kebab shop incident.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “One good turn deserves another.”

  We sat in silence for thirty seconds. “So come on then, action man,” she said. “What was all that about? Explain.”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t know either of them.”

  “Douglas Richards?”

  “An arsehole from way back...sex-case. Loudmouth. Bully.”

  “How does this Finlay know you, then?”

  “I really ain’t got a clue.”

  She smiled. “The sins of the past cast a long shadow, Harry, as I’m sure you know. I’ll tell you what though, petal. It sure as hell knocked spots off the cabaret.”

  “So you’re not angry then?”

  “Angry? No. More...turned on...”

  Her hand found my thigh. Here we go! Some guys have all the luck.

  21

  Maidstone, Kent. Midnight.

  William Broadwick sat on the hotel bed, head in his hands, groaning like a wounded bison. Jackie Sutton bent over and kissed his forehead gently. “It wasn’t that bad, Willie. You did well, in the circumstances.”

  Ah, the weasel disclaimer. The circumstances being his righteous sentiments about the traveller problem had been sabotaged by the deranged gun-happy maniac going completely over the top. It was a miracle no one had died. Naturally this had made his Question Time appearance somewhat less of a triumph than he’d been hoping.

  “You are not to blame for a random psychopath,” Jackie went on, soothingly. “Judges
and corrupt politicians are, for allowing the injustice to fester. Besides, you were lucky. The Labour Party guy tonight was as camp as Christmas, the ‘fashionable comedy booking’ wasn’t remotely funny, the Lib-Dim woman was a waste of space and the Tory was as wet as fresh cement and just as grey. Most of the studio audience were on your side, and so would the viewers at home have been.”

  “Do you think?”

  “I know, silly.”

  “I felt like a human spittoon, talk about shot by both sides. Dimbleby was a disgrace.”

  “Well, what else would you expect from Dimblebore? You handled yourself well, and that’s what matters. Twitter is split 50/50 but a) we know that’s top-heavy with envious leftie trolls and b) there is enough real drama out there tonight to bury the gypsies way down tomorrow’s news lists.”

  “Like what?”

  “Seven Royal Marines arrested, more on Savile, Andrew Mitchell, gas power stations...”

  “Good, good.”

  “Listen to me. This is all great for your profile. You are becoming the voice of the common man – nobody in the real world gives a crap about what the Guardianistas think except other Guardianistas. You could be our generation’s Enoch Powell – forthright and principled, the politician who speaks his mind and tells it like it is. You could be Boris without the bumbling, Farage with a real prospect of actually getting elected. We can get you a safe Tory seat, Willie. Trust me, this is just the beginning for you. When is the interview with the Independent?”

  “Tomorrow, 12.30 at Rules.”

  “Nice. Now, listen I know I’m teaching my grandmother to suck eggs here – but remember, she will be as nice as pie to your face, but will be looking to trip you up at each and every pass. So you have to be aware of that, at all times, even when her tape recorder is off. I wouldn’t put it past the bitch to have another one on the go out of sight somewhere. She’ll want you to portray you as cold, posh and pompous. Your job is to be polite, warm and charming, to show your human side.”

  “So big up the missus.”

  “Absolutely, and the charity work. And it wouldn’t hurt to mention that school reunion you told me about. That makes you seem down to earth, you’re a big successful media star but you’ve still got time for the kids you went to school with, those lifelong friends in crappy old jobs.”

  “Yes, yes. I get that.”

  “You’re a winner who has still got time for the losers...but don’t say that, obviously.”

  “Of course not, but that’s the conclusion people will draw.”

  “Exactly,” she smiled. “And look what else you’ve won...”

  She stepped back, and lifted her dress to display her garter belt and the tops of her cream silk stockings. Broadwick’s smile turned into a leer. He stood up expectantly.

  “Hold on, Romeo. Are you feeling thirsty? Want me to order room service champagne?”

  “Yes,” said Broadwick, suddenly brighter. “Better get two or three bottles and a few cold beers. This could be a long night.”

  On past experience, Jackie doubted it.

  “Just let me come first, big boy,” she said, adding the “for once” in her head.

  22

  Eleven Hours Later.

  William Broadwick woke up with a jolt when the Estonian maid tried to get into the hotel room to clean it for the third time. His right hand was still strapped to the bedside table with his own belt. He had a vague memory of Jackie waking him before she left, and a head that felt like Thor had been using his brain for a lengthy session of thunder practice. Shit. He was supposed to be meeting the blasted woman from the Independent On Sunday in Rules in about 90 minutes’ time. He’d never make it by train now. Shit, shit and double shit.

  The mini-cab to Covent Garden set Broadwick back a painful £65, rounded up to £70. If that left him ratty, it was nothing to the look of exasperated irritation on the face of legendary feature writer Nell Butcher when he finally arrived 35 minutes late. William turned on the charm, apologising profusely, blaming a burst water main at New Cross and generously buying his interviewer a bottle of the dearest claret on the menu all for herself. He stuck to London Pride, as he was pretty sure he was still over the limit from last night.

  Butcher, known as the hatchet woman of Fleet Street and more memorably ‘the velociraptor with mascara’, visibly cheered as she rattled through the bottle of Bordeaux’s finest. She had the mutton broth and grilled Dover Sole, he went for the man of the people option – battered haddock with chips and mushy peas.

  The conversation was sparky to begin with. Butcher pulled no punches as she hit him with rumours and smears, even trotting out what Broadwick called “the old canard” of him being tapped up to run as a candidate for the British National Party – it was entirely true but the one-to-one meeting with a senior party official had been entirely private, so there was no way for any journalist to stand it up. William laughed it all off, even the whispers that he’d once shared a mistress with London Mayor Boris Johnson.

  “Who’d want BoJo’s sloppy seconds?” he’d asked. “I’m far too old for a Boris Bike! Can you imagine the big oaf frolicking between the sheets like a wet otter? No thank you. No, no, no.

  “Seriously, Nell,” he went on with a disarming smile. “I’ve stopped reading about myself on the internet. I’ve had to! It’s like the wilder realms of science fiction out there. If you believe Wikipedia, I played rugby for the All-Blacks and have three nipples and a Prince Albert piercing. No, I was a Marxist at 15 but I’ve been a Tory all my adult life, and I’m not apologetic about it. It’s like Denis Healey said, ‘If you’re not a Commie at eighteen you have no heart, and if you’re still one at 30, you have no blinking brain.”

  Nell visibly relaxed as she demolished her second bottle of claret. She had a hard, unfeminine face, more lived-in than a Camden squat, but the laughter lines hinted at the softer, more-rounded person behind the ferocious public image. The conversation turned to the journey, and Broadwick made the old trout laugh out loud with his account of being driven through Peckham “watching the late morning ASBO yobs sharing fags and spliffs and cans of strong breakfast lager while listening to crap-rap on no doubt stolen iPods...”

  “And the boys were just as bad,” interjected Nell.

  He laughed enthusiastically. “Touché! The girls, though! Let me tell you about the girls. Half of them are pushing prams, all of them are chewing gum as vacantly as cows chewing cud, all of them are showing off their midriffs – in this weather! I haven’t seen that many piercings this side of a hospital ward in a war zone.”

  “And who do you blame?”

  “New Labour! The welfare system! Dozy parents! Trendy teachers! Lax schools! The permissive society! Agony aunts! The BBC! MTV and its deluge of culture-wrecking filth! Most of these girls should be at bloody school. They are sixteen, fifteen;, maybe fourteen. They’ve been caked in make-up since they were eight and sexually active since before they had pubic hair. They know nothing, do nothing and aspire to nothing, a lost generation sacrificed on the altar of progressive education and the socialist hatred of self-improvement and aspiration.”

  She smiled wryly. “You really are the Express’s ‘Call Me Old-Fashioned...’ columnist, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yes and no. It’s true that you won’t be catching me dancing to ‘Gangnam Style’ any time soon, or bopping away at a One Direction concert but I’m not exactly advocating a return to feudalism.”

  Nell gave a throaty, whisky laugh. “But you are a dyed in the wool old time hang-’em and flog-’em Conservative.”

  “I am, and very proudly so – which is why I dislike the political Titanic we call the Coalition, why I abhor the EU and why I don’t need to lie about the last time I ate a Cornish pasty. I’m certainly not in favour of 80 pence in the pound taxation or squeezing successful businessmen until they’ve all fled the country. I don’t want to drive us back to the bad old Britain of the late 70s like some of your readers would like to do, but I’d
settle for the tax-cutting free market days of Maggie’s booming Britain.”

  Butcher decided to swerve a tedious full-on Thatcher debate and instead got him to open up about Fiona, their pain at being childless, their home lives, and their friends. Broadwick mentioned the reunion – with his “dear dear pals from school, we’ve kept in touch for more than thirty years.”

  “What do they do?” she asked, almost catching him on the hop.

  “Let’s see. Mark is a teacher, Peter is a civil servant, Chris is a builder, Paul, ah, well until recently Paul worked in an office at BBC TV Centrebut, please don’t print this, he had a nervous breakdown quite recently and I’m not sure if he’s back at work.”

  “So none of them have done as well as you?”

  “No,” he agreed too readily, but recovered by quickly throwing in “but so what? They’re as happy with their career achievements as I am with mine.” He changed the subject, niftily he felt, to a joke his friend Paul had told him about the BBC having a rowing contest with a Japanese TV company back in the Nineties, which the Corporation had lost.

  “John Birt set up a working party to try and find out why,” he said. “They found that while the Japanese had eight people who were rowing and one steering, the BBC team had one rowing and eight steering. The working party decided to employ consultants to come up with a solution. They decided that the BBC needed three steering managers, three deputy steering managers and a director of steering services. The rower, meanwhile, should be made to row harder. When they took on the Japs and lost again, the director of steering services decided to sack the rower, sell the boat and give himself a pay rise.”

  There were tears of laughter rolling down the hatchet face of the hatchet woman of Fleet Street. William beamed. They ordered sticky toffee pudding and a cheese board and he told her outrageous off the record stories about the Editor’s temper, the feature editor’s string of married lovers, the explosive and quite unprintable identity of Cameron’s former communication director’s seven year bit on the side, and how violent the Picture Editor got in drink, which happened pretty much any day with a ‘D’ in its name. The interview had turned into a classic hack bitch fest, which was far more fun, and after they’d drained their brandies they tottered around admiring the pictures that covered every square inch of wall before bursting out onto Maiden Lane, hugging like reunited lovers, and sailing off in taxis.