Rob Johnson - Lifting the Lid (14 page)

Just then, Milly came bounding over and almost knocked the table flying. Trevor let go of the package to save the table and swore at her. He glared at the dog and noticed she had something in her mouth – something that looked a lot like a string of half a dozen sausages. The words ‘Oh shit’ had barely left his mouth when he heard a man shouting, and the shouting was getting rapidly nearer.

‘Oh shit,’ he said again but with greater emphasis when he looked round to see a very large bearded man in a grubby grey T-shirt and faded denim cutoffs bearing down on him at speed.

‘That your dog?’ The man stabbed a nicotine-stained finger in Milly’s direction as she disappeared inside the van with her prize.

By the colour of his face, Trevor thought the guy either had a serious blood pressure problem or he was very very angry. However, circumstantial evidence tended to suggest the latter might prove to be the better but far less welcome bet.

‘Well is it?’ The man was now standing directly in front of him on the opposite side of the table, his hands on his hips and his considerable bulk almost entirely eclipsing the setting sun behind him.

Besides being so hungry he could almost have eaten a string of raw sausages himself, Trevor was physically and mentally shattered and not at all in the best of moods. He was also getting rather irritated by the number of times he could be asked the “Is that your dog?” question during the course of a single day. It wasn’t bravery but some form of exhaustion-induced hysteria which prompted him to respond in a way he wouldn’t normally have dared. He looked up at the man’s crimson, bushy features.

‘Er, no,’ he said and drained his glass of beer.

The man’s enormous tattooed hands left his hips and clenched at his sides. ‘Don’t mess with
me
, shithead, or I’ll bloody clatter you. If that’s not your dog, then what the fuck’s it doing in your van?’

Trevor shrugged and poured the rest of the can of beer into his glass. ‘Visiting?’

The man’s face turned an even deeper shade of scarlet, and his knuckles grew white with the increased force of the clenching. ‘Listen, you. That mangy mutt of yours has just nicked a buncha sausages from my barbecue, and I wanna know what you’re gonna do about it.’

Trevor was aware of chomping sounds coming from inside the van as he said, ‘What? You want them back?’

‘Course I don’t want ‘em back. Not after your bloody mutt’s been slobbering all over ‘em.’

‘Well I’m sorry, but I really don’t know what you want me to do about it. In any case, I didn’t see her with any sausages.’

‘Okay, so how about we ‘ave a little look then, eh?’

With that, he marched round the table and gawped in through the sliding door of the van. Trevor, who could no longer hear any chomping noises, got to his feet at the same time and also looked inside. Milly was lying on the back seat and licking her lips, but there wasn’t a single sausage in sight.

‘See? No sausages,’ said Trevor with a wry grin.

‘You calling me a liar?’ The man squared up to him, clenching and unclenching his fists.

‘No, but if there aren’t any sausages, I can’t give them back to you, and if there were any sausages, you wouldn’t want them anyway. So what exactly
do
you want?’

‘You can bloody well pay for ‘em for starters.’

Trevor sighed and pulled out some change from his pocket. ‘Okay, okay. How much?’

It was obviously a much trickier question than he’d realised because there was a pause while the man seemed to be wrestling with an especially complex calculation.

‘Fiver.’

‘What? Five quid for half a dozen sausages?’

The man’s face brightened as if he’d scored some major victory. ‘Ah, so you did see ‘em then.’

Trevor sighed once again but decided it was worth every penny just to get rid of the knuckle scraping headcase. ‘All right, Poirot, you’ve got me bang to rights,’ he said, counting out five one-pound coins and dropping them into the man’s dinner plate of a palm.

The knuckle scraper studied the coins for a moment as if to satisfy himself that they were genuine and then thrust them into his pocket. ‘You wanna keep that mutt on a lead.’

‘Good idea,’ said Trevor with heavy sarcasm.

‘You wanna watch out I don’t bloody report you.’ He wagged a finger in Trevor’s face, then turned on his heel and stomped off across the grass.

‘Dickhead,’ muttered Trevor, making sure he spoke quietly enough so the man wouldn’t hear. ‘Sod off back to your hog roast and your fat ugly wife and your eighteen fat ugly kids.’

He climbed into the van and saw that Milly was in the same position on the back seat and still licking her lips. She seemed more than a little pleased with herself and was apparently oblivious to the fact that her master had come within an inch of having the living shit kicked out of him by a Neanderthal with fists the size of bowling balls.

Trevor gave her the most withering look he could muster. ‘Right, young lady, you obviously can’t be trusted, so you’ll have to stay tied up from now on.’

He took a length of rope from one of the cupboards and tied one end to Milly’s collar and the other to the handle of the sliding door. She now looked considerably less pleased with herself, and she watched Trevor with doleful eyes as he grabbed another beer from the fridge and stepped back outside.

Sitting down at the picnic table and filling his glass, he took a drink and gazed at the Jiffy bag. After a few moments, he picked it up as tentatively as before and turned it over in his hands. There were no markings of any kind on either side. He eased his finger under one end of the flap and took some time in sliding it along until the flap was completely free. He paused and took three large gulps of his drink, looking up and all around him to check that no-one was watching. Setting his glass down on the table, he opened the neck of the envelope by little more than half an inch. He peered inside, aware that his heartbeat was setting the rhythm for some unseen marching band.

‘Eh?’ he said aloud and immediately opened the Jiffy bag to its fullest extent. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

He tipped the contents out onto the table. Six packets of Silk Cut cigarettes. All this cloak and dagger stuff for half a dozen packets of fags? It didn’t make sense. Picking one up, he examined every side for some indication that they might not be what they seemed. Although he’d never smoked in his life, he’d been around enough people who did to recognise a fag packet when he saw one, and that was exactly what this was. A perfectly ordinary packet of cigarettes.

He scanned the other packs on the table. All were exactly the same, and all of them were cellophane sealed, so they couldn’t have been tampered with. Each bore the same health warning: “Smoking seriously harms you and others around you”.

Yeah right, thought Trevor, and apparently it can get you chased by the police and mad people with guns too. What could be worse for your health than that?

He stuffed the cigarette packets back into the Jiffy bag and resealed it as best he could. Clutching it to his chest, he took a long drink and wondered why anyone would want to make so much fuss over a few fags. He’d no idea how much a packet cost these days, but it couldn’t have been much more than six or seven quid, and thirty-odd quid’s worth hardly amounted to tobacco smuggling.

Milly’s whimpering from inside the van interrupted his ponderings. Despite her substantial sausage snack, she was making it clear to Trevor that it was way past time for her evening meal. He returned the Jiffy bag to the locker above the sink and opened a tin of dog food. Spooning the chunks of meat into her bowl, his rumbling belly tried to persuade him to save some for himself and only narrowly failed.

He spent the next hour sitting outside, drinking beer and trying to figure out a rational explanation for the contents of the Jiffy bag and what his next course of action should be. Eventually, however, he realised his brain was far too tired and addled to come up with anything even remotely coherent and decided that his best option now was some much-needed sleep.

Promising himself he’d get up early and head straight for the nearest café and a slap-up breakfast, he left the picnic table and chair where they were and set up the bed in the van. He grabbed a pillow and a duvet from a shallow cupboard above the cab, and although his mind and grumbling stomach seemed intent on preventing it, he was asleep within seconds with Milly curled up beside him, snoring softly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Trevor had no idea how long he had been asleep when he was awoken by a tapping noise. It took him a few moments to reconfigure his brain cells into consciousness, and then he heard the sound again. Someone seemed to be knocking on the side of the van. The events of the previous day came flooding back to him, and his immediate instinct was to panic. He glanced at his watch. It was just after eight o’clock.

‘Mr Hawkins?’

He didn’t recognise the man’s voice, but that didn’t mean a thing. He knew of at least three people who were after him, and quite likely there were others.

‘Mr Hawkins?’ The voice was louder this time.

‘Er… yes?’ Pulling the duvet around him, he sat upright and wriggled himself towards the foot of the bed.

‘I wonder if we could have a word.’

Oh God, thought Trevor. That sounds like police talk. Surely the fat slob with the sausages hadn’t really reported him. But even if he’d gone to the campsite manager, there’s no way they’d call in the—

‘Mr Hawkins.’ It was more of a statement than a question now, and whoever was speaking was getting impatient.

He pulled back the curtain on the side door and slid back the window. The broad chinned face of a man with slicked back dark hair was smiling in at him and holding up some kind of identity card. ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir. I’m Detective Sergeant Logan from the Metropolitan Police and this is Detective Constable Swann.’

Trevor peered over Logan’s shoulder at the face of the woman who was standing behind him. She too was smiling.

‘I’d like to ask you a few questions,’ said Logan.

‘What about?’

‘I’ll explain at the station.’

‘Station?’

‘The local police station, sir. Now if you wouldn’t mind getting dressed…’

Milly’s face appeared next to Trevor’s at the open window, and she surveyed their early morning visitors as if trying to decide whether they presented a sufficient threat to merit the effort of barking. She apparently concluded that they didn’t and contented herself with panting and dribbling.

‘This your dog, sir?’ said Logan.

Trevor scowled. ‘Yes.’

‘Cute,’ said the woman detective.

‘It’ll take me a few minutes to pack up the van if you want me to follow you.’

‘That won’t be necessary, sir. We’ll give you a lift and drop you back here afterwards,’ said Logan and almost inaudibly added, ‘All being well.’

Trevor closed the curtain and threw on his clothes. The marching band had taken up residence in his chest again, and his brain was turning somersaults. This has got to be about that bloody Jiffy bag, he thought, and he looked up at the locker above the sink. Perhaps he should just hand it over right now and have done with it. No, said another voice in his head. Find out if that’s what they’re really after first. Anyway, they might think you’re trying to bribe them. – What, with half a dozen packets of fags?

‘You nearly ready, sir?’ Logan’s voice sounded weary.

Trevor was sitting on the end of the bed, tying his boot laces. ‘Two seconds,’ he said and noticed that Milly was standing on her hind legs with her front paws up against the door, her head under the curtain, staring out at the detectives. ‘What about the dog?’

‘Can’t you leave it here?’

He took Milly by the collar and slid open the door. ‘Depends how long for.’

‘Hard to say,’ Logan said with a shrug.

DC Swann stepped forward and stroked Milly’s head. ‘Maybe we should take her with us. Most nicks have some kind of facilities for animals.’

‘Okay, okay,’ said Logan. ‘Bring the dog, but can we please get going?’

Trevor and Milly sat in the back of the Volvo with Logan driving and Swann beside him in the passenger seat. The detectives refused to answer any of his questions, and they spent the rest of the journey in total silence.

Once inside the police station, Swann spoke to a uniformed officer at the front desk, and he took Milly’s lead from Trevor and began to walk away with her – or rather, he walked and she slid as the officer half dragged her across the tiled floor.

Logan and Swann led the way along a brightly lit corridor and into a small windowless room that was furnished only with a table, which was set at right-angles halfway along one wall, and two chairs on each side of it. On top of the table and against the wall was some kind of black box that Trevor assumed was a recording device. Logan motioned him to one of the two nearest chairs, and he and Swann sat down opposite him. The latter tossed a buff coloured folder onto the table but left it unopened.

Logan leaned forward and clasped his hands together. ‘So, Mr Hawkins. You want to know what this is all about.’

‘Hang on a sec, sarge,’ said Swann.