Aggressor

2
I went over and shook his hand. ‘What the f*ck did you do to yourself?’
Crazy Dave wheeled his way round in front of me, in a very high-tech aluminium go-faster chair. ‘Not what you think. Got bounced off my Suzuki on the M4 by a truck driver from Estonia and took the scenic route. Did a tour of the central reservation, then checked out a fair amount of the opposite carriageway. Six months in Stoke Mandeville. My legs are f*cked. I’m still in and out of hospital like a bleeding yo-yo. Plates in, plates out; they don’t know what the f*ck they’re doing.’ He looked me up and down. ‘F*ck me, you don’t look too good yourself. Fancy a brew?’
Not waiting for my answer, he spun the wheels past the sink and towards the kettle in the corner. ‘So that was me out of the Regiment. Too handicapped even to be a Rupert. I get disability pension, but it hardly keeps me in haircuts. Then this landed on my plate. Madness not to.’
There had always been a broker knocking around Hereford. He had to be ex-Regiment because he had to know the people – who was in, who was getting out – and if he didn’t, he had to know a man who did.
There was a clink of mugs. ‘Had to turn the garage into a fortress, of course. The doors have drop-down steel shutters. Got to be firearm secure because of all that gear.’ He nodded at the desk. All he had was a phone, a notebook, and two boxes of plain postcards, but to people wanting to know which companies were doing which jobs, they’d have been worth more than a whole truckload of AK47s.
‘How’s it all work, Dave? I’ve never been to a broker.’
‘Guys come in, or phone me and say they’re looking for work. I bang their details down on a card and put them into the box marked “Standby”. See the other box? That’s for “Bayonets”. They’re the boys who are actually working.’
I hoped the kettle was going to boil soon. Admin stuff might be fascinating to Dave, but I now knew all I needed to.
No such luck. A light started to burn in his eyes. Maybe he was crazy after all. He was like a trainspotter who’d just been asked to give a guided tour of the Orient Express. ‘The system’s simple. A company calls and asks for four medics, say, and a demolitions guy. I go into the Standby box and shuffle through the cards from the front, until I’ve got the requirement. They get a call. If they want the work they get moved from Standby to Bayonets. If they don’t, their card goes to the back of the box. Once they’ve finished that job, if they still want to be on the books, they go into the back of the Standby box.’
What could I say? I gave him the sort of look that I hoped he’d mistake for total fascination.
The kettle finally rescued me. Crazy Dave busily squashed teabags as I settled in the chair the other side of his desk. He wheeled himself across to me with two mugs in one hand.
The choice was Smarties Easter Egg or Thunderbird 4. I settled for Smarties; it wasn’t quite so chipped and stained.
‘So, what do you want to know about Charlie?’
‘He’s a dinosaur, Dave; he’s far too old to be f*cking about. Hazel wants him home.’
He manoeuvred his way back to his side of the desk. ‘She still putting up with the old f*cker then?’
I nodded. ‘Talking of which, your kids OK?’
He sat back in his wheelchair and had a sip of the brew. ‘Married and gone, mate. The boy’s in London, f*cking about with some Polish model, and the daughter’s married a pointy-head. Got a nice place in town.’
Dave had lived here for over thirty years now, but he still called everyone a pointy-head, as if he’d just turned up.
I took a sip of my own tea and nearly choked. It was three parts sugar.
He grinned from ear to ear. ‘Even the exmissus has married a pointy-head. One of the local coppers. What about you, Nick? Married? Divorced? Kids? The whole catastrophe, I shouldn’t wonder . . .’
I shook my head and smiled. ‘I think I may still have a German girlfriend back in Australia, but I had to leave her in a hurry because of you. She isn’t going to be impressed.’
He grinned again. ‘Them box-heads have always got the hump about something or other.’
We could have waffled on. I could have told him about Kelly – he’d known her dad, Kev. But we’d done the social bit, and I was here to find Charlie.
‘Can you give me some idea where the old f*cker’s gone? I promised Hazel I’d give him the lecture. You know how it is.’
Dave gave a smile that told me he did, and he’d heard it a hundred times. ‘You know I can’t tell you anything, mate. It’s the deal with the companies: they don’t want anybody knowing what jobs they’ve got going on. And if everybody went home as soon as their wives started honking, there’d be hardly any f*cker working.’
He put down his mug and gripped the arms of his wheelchair. He lifted himself a couple of inches out of the seat and held himself there; maybe something to do with circulation, or to stop pressure sores developing on his arse.
‘What about yourself, Nick? I haven’t heard your name mentioned on the circuit; what you doing?’
‘Oh, you know . . . Stuff.’ I shrugged and smiled. ‘Look, Dave, I don’t need to know what Charlie’s up to. I just want to be able to phone up Hazel and say I spoke to him.’
He put his tea down and wheeled himself back alongside me. ‘Sorry, mate, but you’re f*cked. Apart from security, what if you convinced him to head back for the pipe and cocoa? I’d have to find a replacement. And anyway, he was gagging for a job. I didn’t make him come to me, did I?’
He swivelled the chair and headed off towards the door. ‘Tell you what, I’m going for a dump. I’ve been trying to put a toilet in here, but planning won’t let me, the bastards.’ He whistled through the French windows and down the ramp.
‘Hey, Nick, watch this!’
I got up and went to the door just as he lifted his front wheels and did a 360. ‘I’ve got to close up, mate. Want to wait in the front room and finish your brew? What about a pint, later?’
I followed him outside and watched as he locked the garage doors with one of a bunch of about half a dozen keys.
We went into the living room and he carried on to the bottom of the stairs. As I sat down he transferred himself onto the lift. Then he selected another key from the bunch, pushed it into a control box on the wall, and gave it a turn. The chair glided slowly upwards.
‘You need a hand, Dave?’
‘Nah, it’s rigged up like a monkey’s climbing frame up here.’
The moment I heard the bathroom door close, I was on my feet and heading for the kitchen. No sign of the fuse box. I tried the cupboard under the stairs. There were two rows of cutout switches encased in a neat rectangle of plastic, but not one of them was labelled. F*ck it; I turned the whole lot off at the master switch.
I went to the control box, grabbed the bunch of keys, and headed for the garage.
Charlie’s card was right at the front of the Bayonets box. It didn’t say who for, where, or what the job was, just that Dave had booked him a hotel room in Istanbul.
I locked up and went back to the living room.
‘Nick! The f*cking power’s gone. Nick, you there?’
‘Coming, what’s up?’
I got the key back in the box just as Dave eased himself off another wheelchair at the top of the stairs and onto the lift. He hammered away at the down button like a lunatic.
‘See? I can’t even have a f*cking dump in peace. Try a light for us, see if the power’s gone.’
I hit the hall switch. ‘Where’s the fuse box?’
Dave told me and I headed for it. A few moments later the microwave in the kitchen buzzed a power-cut warning and he started to make his way back down.
‘Dave – sorry, mate, but I can’t stay for that pint. If Charlie’s in touch, tell him to phone home – Hazel’s lost something and he’s the only one who knows where it is.’