When I pulled up, Metal Jacket and two other boys, the Harman brothers, were standing around looking shifty. They didn’t say much, just opened the back doors for me to have a look inside for myself.
The van was full of numbered boxes labelled ‘Aero engine components’. Some of the boxes had been ripped open, and I took a peek. They contained lumps of metal moulded into shapes whose purpose I couldn’t even guess at. I was quite prepared to believe they really and truly were aero engine components.
This was a pisser. These boxes were supposed to contain toasters, hair driers and portable CD players. Maybe a few steam irons and electric can openers. There wasn’t much call for aircraft parts on the Sunday market.
“What is this shit? No, don’t tell me, Metal, I can see. Spares for a Jumbo jet maybe. Have we got a Jumbo jet stashed away somewhere that needs spares, Metal?”
“No, Stones.”
“Were you planning on nicking one from Woolley Services?”
“No, Stones.”
“Then what the bloody hell use is all this lot?”
I slammed the door shut, a bit harder than I’d intended. The boys flinched as the noise echoed around the workshop. The van stood where the Citroen BX had been not too long ago, and it was just as unwelcome.
“But Stones, it was supposed to be—”
“I know what it was supposed to be. I know what you told me it was supposed to be. But where did the information come from?”
“The driver, Stones.”
“The driver?”
Metal shuffled his feet. “He told us what he’d be carrying, and where he always stopped. It was a gift.”
“You’re joking.”
He wasn’t joking. He thought he’d pulled off a real coup, and this was how it had turned out. He thought he was making up for the cop car, and this is what he’d brought me. I suddenly felt sorry for him.
“Who was this bloke, this driver?”
“He’s name is Sid Jones.”
“Jones? Oh yeah.”
“That’s what he said. You don’t ask too much, you know...”
“Yeah, all right, I know.”
“Chocky met him some place.”
Metal indicated one of the Harman brothers. The other tried to look as though he suddenly wasn’t there.
“It was in the truck stop at Markham Moor,” said Chocky. “I just got talking to him, like we do.”
“See?” said Metal. “So Chocky told me, and I went with him to check the bloke out. He seemed straight up, Stones. And there were no cops about when we lifted the van.”
“You sure? Are you certain they’re not sitting out there now getting ready to walk in with the cuffs?”
“Positive. We gave the car park a good going over. I’m dead sure there was no tail. We did the job proper, Stones.”
“Right.”
Okay, these things do happen sometimes. And it wasn’t unusual to find a driver keen to earn a bit of extra cash by co-operating with lads who wanted to lift his vehicle. But this was the third screw-up in twenty-four hours. Not to mention the Citroen. That was three loads lost.
Like Oscar Wilde said, to lose one is bad luck, to lose two looks like carelessness. But the third piss-up starts to smell like some bastard’s got it in for me. And that’s not on, Lady Bracknell.
The Rev was out and about in front of the church, shepherding his cassocks or something.
“Ah, come to put in a few hours on the churchyard, Livingstone?”
“That’s right, Rev. We thought it was looking in need of a bit of a tidy-up round the graves, like.”
“It is, it is. You know where the tools are, don’t you? Would you like to log your hours in the book. For income tax purposes, of course.”
The Rev will have his little joke. But I put my name and Dave’s in his workbook and signed us in as having arrived at 8am.
“Eight o’clock? Well, dear me, you’ve been at it two hours already. You must be getting thirsty. I’ll put the kettle on in the vestry, shall I?”
“That’d be just lovely, Rev.”
Dave came back clutching a spade, a fork and a hoe in one hand, and an electric strimmer in the other. He held them effortlessly at arm’s length, as if they were mere illusions. You could tell from his face that gardening wasn’t his favourite occupation. His expression suggested he’d just sat in something cold and squashy and knew it was about to start leaking through the seat of his trousers.
“It’s just for a bit, Donc. Got to get your hands dirty. Gardeners always have dirty hands, don’t they?”
Dave dropped the tools and looked at his hands, vaguely puzzled. I could see why — his hands were hardly a model of cleanliness at the best of times. But he said nothing. I think there was a shallow level of understanding there, even if he didn’t show it.
I set to work with the strimmer along the edge of the grass, while Dave brandished the fork viciously at some flower beds that had done nothing to deserve it except burst into a splurge of tasteless yellow and pink.
The graveyard was pretty tidy, actually. It looked as though the Rev or one of his parishioners had been working on it recently. But we cracked on at such a pace that we soon had an impressive pile of debris in the wheelbarrow and several feet of earth glistening and freshly turned. Personally, I was sweating a bit already, and I was glad of the strong tea the vicar brought.
“Have you had a successful week?” asked the Rev, twinkling at me over his glasses. Sometimes he gives the uncomfortable impression that he thinks I’m a sort of boy scout who goes round helping pensioners and blind people cross roads all day long. The only time I’ve ever done that was when I was a teenager, and then it was a rich old biddy whose mock crocodile skin handbag was a good bit lighter by the time she got to the other side.
“You could say that, Rev.”
“Good, good.” He beamed at me and then at Dave. “What are we put on this earth for, if not to help others, eh?”
Dave sensibly kept quiet. Or maybe he just didn’t understand the question. He was still on Janet and John Learn to Use the Potty, and wasn’t quite up to high level theological discussions yet. Besides, Dave thought he’d been put on the earth for only two things, and neither of them involved helping others.
“I’m considering that for my theme on Sunday,” said the Rev, taking our silence for respectful interest. “St Luke Chapter 10. The story of the Good Samaritan, you know — but updated, naturally. One must make certain one’s sermons are in tune with the modern congregation. A propos, but de nos jours. Germane to the 90s.”
Congregation? From what I’d seen of the pew jockeys at St Asaph’s, the only 90s they could relate to would be the 1890s, which is when most of them were born. They loved the Rev’s sermons, mainly because there was no danger of being kept awake. I could see Dave staring at the Rev as if this bloke with a bit of margarine tub round his neck had just descended from the Tower of Babel talking in foreign tongues. The trouble with Dave is that he will listen. Understand, no. But listen, yes.
“Perhaps you’d like to come along yourselves, gentlemen,” suggested the Rev, encouraged by the rapt attention. “I think I can promise you an uplifting experience.”
“Er, we’ll think about it,” I said, and frowned at Dave. He didn’t need much frowning at. He was back at work on the flower beds before you could blink, and I passed the empty mugs to the Rev.
I set to again, waving my strimmer at a ragged-looking border, thinking what a real plonker that Good Samaritan bloke must have been. What idiot would stop to pick up somebody lying in the street, without knowing who they were or where they’d come from? Try doing that these days. You’d have a gang of yobs screeching off in your car in no time, while you lay bleeding at the roadside, doing an imitation of a hedgehog that hadn’t quite made it through the traffic. You wouldn’t catch me doing that, no fear. Nowadays the equivalent of the Good Samaritan would be the bloke who’s willing to ring for an ambulance on his mobile as he swerves round your body. No use telling the Rev that, though. He’d only look pained and drive about looking for a chance to try it out and prove me wrong.