ELEVEN
Before Stone and Linda left, Megan used her digital camera to take their pictures. Ten minutes later, she gave them two very creditable Inland Revenue identification cards. They spent a few minutes rubbing, scratching, and bending the laminate, to make the cards look suitably worn and scruffy. As they were so inexperienced at the ‘undercover stuff’, as Carter put it, he had insisted that they stick with their real identities. To avoid the amateurish mistake of turning up in the same clothes that they were wearing in their photographs, he told them to buy some business suits, before they headed to Ipswich later that evening.
Linda drove them north on the M11 and then east on the A14 towards Ipswich. All the time Stone kept a lookout for a tail, but he saw nothing. A few miles to the east, the roadside trees gave way to fields. Soon they were passing huge flat expanses of well-cut grass, ringed with miles of white picket fencing. They were approaching Newmarket, an area renowned for racehorse training, and top quality stud farms. Shortly after parking in the town center, they found a Red Cross charity store that sold second-hand clothes.
For the princely sum of £45, Stone bought a smart, but slightly worn business suit, black shoes, a blue shirt, and a clip-on tie. Linda opted for a black woolen dress with sensible shoes. With the addition of a briefcase, her spend was just £60. They changed into their ‘disguises’ in the cramped changing room at the rear of the store, and packed their regular clothes into a shopping bag which they left in the trunk of Linda’s car, while they went in search of somewhere to eat.
Linda and Stone wondered hand-in-hand for twenty minutes, taking several random turns, before the delicious smell of garlic and fresh pasta led them to a small Italian restaurant, with an impressively comprehensive vegetarian menu. After some deliberation and several false starts, they ordered a stone baked pizza-to-share, with a couple of side salads and some water. As they waited, they admired each other’s disguises. Stone’s suit had a slightly musty smell, and the shoes were a little too large, but Linda thought that he looked just like a tax inspector. The woolen dress fitted Linda like a snakeskin, further accentuating her athletic figure. Stone thought that she look spectacular, and he told her so, although he also admitted that she would have looked every bit as desirable in a potato sack.
Over coffee, they refined their strategy for meeting with the bar’s landlord. The plan was to suggest that ‘Second Chance’ was being investigated to confirm if it truly qualified for its charitable status, and deserved the tax breaks that such a designation brought. They decided that Linda should do the talking on the basis that she would be less intimidating, and therefore more likely to get some information. Stone would remain visible but silent in the background — the implied threat of the ‘bad cop’ waiting to be called in, if answers were not forthcoming.
Their target was Stanley “Scud” Fletcher. He was the landlord of a bar in one of the seedier parts of Ipswich. As they turned off the main road and entered the rundown housing project that led towards the bar, it became apparent that Megan’s description of ‘seedy’ was her attempt at an amusing understatement.
Almost every house they passed had an unwanted couch, or some faulty white goods, on the front lawn. They saw the remains of several derelict cars sitting on bricks, and two that were just burned out shells. Most of the stores they saw had been boarded up for many years and regularly defaced with multi-coloured swathes of unintelligible graffiti. It seemed to Stone that every available vertical surface was marked with gang tags. Every wall and every bus shelter that they saw carried Cyrillic style swirls and indelible loops of black felt pen. Like some secret alien language, these territorial warnings were meaningless to all but the gang members.
Along the way, they passed several small groups of apparently feckless youths, who made no effort to hide their contempt for the suited professionals who were invading their turf.
“My God, this is so sad. It’s just so depressing. How can people live like this?” Linda asked as she looked around.
“No chance of sneaking in here unseen,” Stone commented. “Perhaps they think we’re with the police.”
He gave a friendly wave to one group of lads as they drove slowly by, and were rewarded with an immediate chorus of middle fingers.
Linda returned the gesture.
“No — they definitely think we’re from the Inland Revenue!”
The bar, known locally as ‘The Tavern’, was every bit as shabby as the area it served. Obviously little effort had been made to clean or maintain the exterior in the thirty years since the property was constructed. As they pulled into the parking lot, Stone wondered aloud how such a place could conceivably remain in business. Linda pointed to a row of motorcycles lined up at the side of the bar, and offered an answer.
“Drugs and bikers.”
“Well we knew the first, and can see the second, so I presume you are right.”
“Do you think they are above lynching tax inspectors?” Linda asked ironically.
“Gallows humor?” Stone received a punch for the pun. “Anyway — we’d best remain vigilant.”
As they sat silently listening to the soft tick of the exhaust pipe cooling, Stone looked at Linda for any sign of reluctance for what was to follow. She looked stern but determined.
“You ok?” he asked.
She nodded.
He checked again.
“You sure?”
She nodded silently.
“Right — let’s do this!”
After carefully locking the car, they took a moment to study the front of the bar. Four large floodlights harshly illuminated the featureless façade. Stone could see three doors. Two doors were close together near the center; the third was off to the left. Other than the inevitable gang tags, there was nothing to guide new visitors to the correct entrance. The door on the left bore a hefty security bar and several padlocks, whereas the two center doors were protected with roll down shutters, sturdy enough to deter a determined tank attack. Luckily, both shutters were up.
Linda nodded towards the two center doors. “I’m betting the left will be the lounge bar and the right will house a pool table. We should go to the left.”
“Ok,” Stone said, “I’ll go in first and stay by the door while you do the business. Any sign of trouble, let me handle it — just try and stay out of the way.”
She gave him a slightly nervous smile.
“Don’t worry, I will!”
Stone opened the left hand door and walked in. As Linda had predicted, it was the lounge bar. He stopped just inside and took in his surroundings. The room was thirty feet long and twenty wide, with basic wooden seating and tables on the left, and a bar to the right. At the far end, there was an aging gaming machine, and high on the wall a television flickered silently as a rock band played to its adoring fans. There were just four customers. Nearest to the front was an elderly couple. They had probably been coming to the bar since it had opened, back when the housing development was a desirable place to live. Stone had to admire their tenacity — desperately out of place in a biker bar, but stubbornly refusing to drink elsewhere. Near the back were two lads who glared openly at Eric for daring to enter their territory. Stone stared back, stern faced and unblinking, until they looked away. Satisfied that there was no immediate threat, he moved aside and allowed Linda to enter the bar.
She paused for a moment, to assess the situation. Then she marched confidently to the bar and tapped loudly on the countertop with her car keys. A gruff voice shouted impatiently from the doorway that connected to the other bar.