Chapter 10
Manchester, England, November 1997
From Manchester Central Doolan took a taxi to the address of Piggy Hogge's house, making sure that it dropped him right at the end of the road. Hogge lived in a mean and seedy street where very few of the faces were white and the houses were all built from the same cheap red brick. Two bed roomed terraced affairs, some of them brightly painted, but in the main scruffy and dirty. Doolan would have bet that not more than one in twenty of the occupants had any legal form of income other than the dole and it seemed like a place where any hope of a better way of life had been abandoned.
He had been circumspect in his approach to the house as he wasn't sure if the local police might not be watching Piggy when he first came out of prison and he didn't want to get his own collar felt by not taking a few basic precautions. However, now he had seen the place he stopped worrying. Any policeman in this road would have been spotted for what he was in less than five seconds. He walked along the street past the rusting and derelict cars, many with piles of bricks where wheels should have been, until he found number eighty-six. It was one of the scruffier houses. The paint was peeling from what had once been a green front door and it had long since gone from the window frames. The windows themselves were evenly filthy and hung with dirty net curtains. He wondered how a man who had been revered in prison as a master craftsman could have fallen so low. If he had ever had any inclination to take up forgery for a living this sight would have killed it stone dead.
He thought about walking away again, but as he stood there hesitating the door opened and a woman came out of it backwards. She was very skinny and very dirty and for a couple of seconds he could hardly breathe for the waft of rank body and stale cooking odours that came through the door with her. She wore a greasy kitchen overall over an equally greasy dress, both of which had once sported floral patterns. The overall had at some time lost Its tie-ups and was now held to the dress with safety pins. The woman inside the dress looked well past middle age, but her appearance was so neglected it was impossible to tell with any accuracy. Her hair had the remains of a ginger rinse although it was grey/black at the roots. Her wrists and neck were grimed with dirt and her ankles probably were as well, but it was impossible to see as she was wearing men's ankle socks. The legs above the socks were the colour of half cooked liver, as was her face.
She was out of the door now and pulling it shut she locked and turned to face him. She removed a wet cigarette butt from between her lips and squinted at him through eyes made small by the clouds of smoke around them. There was an air of meanness about her that was almost tangible. She carelessly blew the smoke she had been holding in her lungs into his face.
"Want somfing then, do you?" She said aggressively, leaning forward to threaten Doolan. "If Its money your after then your bleedin unlucky cocker. E' ain't given me enough to fill this."
She waved a dirty string shopping bag that had once been cream coloured in his face. Her accent was definitely not of Manchester, probably nearer to Bow or Stepney in London. Doolan stepped smartly backwards away from the smell of rank body odour that followed the lifting of her arm and gave her his most winning smile and his best BBC voice.
"Actually, it was Mr Hogge I was looking for."
The woman was not impressed.
"Actually," she mimicked him, waving her large arms about to emphasise the point, "E ain’t bleedin' well ere."
Doolan backed away another step as a fresh wave of body odour hit him.
"Well do you know where I can find him,” he had an inspiration, "I've got some money for him."
This did not get the response he had hoped for.
"Oh Yeah? Well you can piss right off then you little weed. I've had enough of his crooked little friends coming around here and I ain't having' no more of it because its me wot suffers when he's banged up. Go on, on your bike."
Doolan's first reaction was to smash his fist into her ugly mouth. Who was this dirty slag calling a bloody weed? Only his desire not to attract unwanted attention and his need of Piggy Hogge's services kept him reasonable and his temper under some kind of control. He looked around desperately for inspiration and saw that by this time a little crowd of grinning West Indians were gathering to watch the fun, so much for not drawing any attention. Doolan knew when he was at a disadvantage and turned away back up the street, inwardly fuming. Her voice, full of triumph at her easy victory, followed him.
"And don't bleedin come back."
As he walked back down the street thinking that he would have to find someone else to help him, he realised that a young black youth in bright red jeans, a flowered yellow shirt and an old leather biker's jacket, was walking beside him. The youth was grinning from ear to ear showing two rows of perfect white teeth.
"Hell man," he chuckled, "that Hilda sure sent you off on the run". He was openly laughing now. "Why man, at one time I thought you was gonna faint, you turned so pale?"
His accent was pure Brummie despite his West Indian style of street talk. Doolan was about to tell him to piss off when an idea struck him. He turned to the youth and grinned back.
"That wasn't fear, brother, that was the smell. I thought I was going to faint for a minute there."
The youth howled with delight.
"Right on man, right on."
Doolan broached the subject on his mind.
"I don't suppose you know where I can find Terry Hogge do you?"
The youth gave another chuckle.
"Course I do. That's why I'm talking to you, friend."
Doolan stopped dead.
"Great, where is he?"
The youth tapped the side of his nose.
"I can take you straight to him." He grinned a big toothy smile. "For five pound."
Doolan sighed and reached in his pocket. He took out his wallet and carefully letting the youth see inside, extracted the only five-pound note it contained. He never kept more than five pounds in his wallet and the rest of his cash was sewn into the front of his under shorts. It would have to be a bloody good pickpocket that could get it from there without him noticing. He smiled at the youth.
"Now you didn't believe that little story I told Hilda about having some money for old Piggy, did you? Its the other way round, friend. However, you take me to him and I'll give you this for your trouble." He moved it away from the reaching fingers.
"When we get there."
Ten minutes later he was sat opposite Piggy in a seedy pub nursing half a pint of beer. Piggy was overjoyed to see him and when he found out that Doolan was avoiding the law, offered to put him up for a couple of days while he got the passport altered. Hilda wouldn't mind. Doolan did not tell him he had already met the lovely Hilda. He just refused to put his good friend Piggy in any unnecessary danger and asked the name of a small hotel where he could stay.
Two days later he was three hundred pounds poorer, but it was his face looking up at him from over the name Graham King. He paid his hotel bill and caught the train for London. He had learned some valuable lessons. After years at his chosen profession, of which fourteen of them had been spent in jail, Piggy had no money to his name and no regular income, except what he could talk out of the DHSS. He was also forced to live in a shitty little house in one of the poorest areas of Manchester, with a wife who looked, and smelt, like a very old corpse. And he was the best in the business? Doolan vowed there and then that when he got to London and looked up the contacts he had been given in prison, whatever he was offered had to pay off fast and big. He wasn't going to end up like Piggy. Not Wayne Doolan.
In the orthopaedic hospital just outside London, Jack Ropell had visitors. The last time he, Commander Peter Romsey and Jamie Hambrowe had been together it had been two hours before he and Jamie had left to search the barge. He knew there was a specific reason for their visit and he waited patiently throughout the small talk about his health for them to broach the real reason for the visit. He had now spent six months in hospital, going under the kn
ife some eight times so far and he still had the promise of another set of operations. This time to insert into his left leg the strengthening plates that surgeon had said was necessary before he could walk properly without pain. Walk without pain maybe, but he would never be a first class athlete again. He tired of the small talk.
"Look, Sir. It's good of you and James to come and see me, but I would appreciate it if we got to the heart of the matter. You two didn't come all the way up from Southampton together just to see if I am still alive and bring me some fruit, so what's it about?"
For a few seconds Romsey looked a little peeved at his bluntness, but then he relaxed. The man had been through a lot in the last six months and it wasn't over for him yet. Probably had another year of this to go. No wonder his patience wore a bit thin some times. He came to the point, his voice and manner mild.
"You reckon you will still be interested in staying in the service when they have finished putting you back together, Jack?"
Ropell felt his neck go cold. They were going to give him the push from the unit. No longer fit enough for active duty. They would probably transfer him and stick him in some dingy little office sorting out VAT returns or maybe even invalid him out all together. Hardly surprising though, he would hardly be able to call himself A1 again. He swallowed hard and replied in a carefully neutral voice
"Not my decision, is it, sir?"
Romsey looked surprised.
"Why not? I don't know who the hell else is going to make it for you."
He stopped as awareness came to him and then laughed outright.
"I see. You thought that Hambrowe and I were the execution squad coming to give you the bad news, did you? Mob handed for moral support, is that the way you’re thinking?"
The other's face was like stone.
"It wouldn't have entirely surprised me."
The Canadian accent got stronger with his emotion. Romsey shrugged.
"I won't say it hasn't been discussed, but the consensus of opinion is that you can still do a good job for us without running around in the middle of the night with a gun strapped under your arm. I don't want to give too much away right here," he waved his hand around to indicate the hospital in general, "but we are looking at a new unit to be set up between us and the police to work in tandem. This unit will have international connections, in particular with the Yanks who are much closer than we are to the source of our problems."
He was referring to South America.
"There will be a lot of information gathering and exchanging and your accent won't be any disadvantage. I will be sending you regular information packages over the next few months and by the time this lot sign you off, I want you completely up to date with the current situation and ready to step straight back into harness. So get your finger out, Jack. That means doing some hard work instead of lying around with the time to feel sorry for yourself, but I am sure you will soon get back to the feel of it."
He stood up all brisk and business like and went to the door. He opened it and a beautiful titan haired woman followed him back into the room. She was quite tall at about five feet eight and had a slim body that filled out in all the right places. Her complexion was not the freckles and fair skin that usually went with red hair. There was more of the dark Irish colleen about her than anything. Her eyes were a definite green and as they focussed on Ropell he was suddenly acutely aware that he was not looking his best in his pyjamas, an old college dressing gown and with several days stubble on his chin. The woman gave him a brief smile.
"This is Anne. Her husband used to work for the service. She will be your liaison with me. Anne will bring you all the up to date material on at least a twice a week basis and will act as your secretarial assistant when you need one. She doesn't actually work for us, more of a freelance, so treat her with a bit of respect if you want to keep her. Goodbye for now. We will see you outside in five minutes, Jamie."
He and the woman turned and walked out without another word leaving Ropell staring after them, open-mouthed. He could not see the grin on Romsey's face as he strode down the corridor or know that he was enjoying the firework he had placed under the other's backside. That should get him on the move instead of moping about all day feeling sorry for himself.
Back in his hospital room Ropell looked at Jamie Hambrowe's laughing face and slowly shook his head to make sure he hadn't been hearing things. Then he sobered.
"I know that woman from somewhere."
Hambrowe stopped smiling and became serious.
"She is Romsey's daughter in law. She does some work for us now and then. One of her little jobs for him was to sit by your bedside in the early days and tell him when it looked as if you were going to make it, or not. That is where you have seen her before, but was probably in no fit state to remember it clearly. She was there ten days before they were willing to state you were definitely going to stay with us for a bit longer."
Ropell nodded, the woman with her hair on fire. The vision had stayed with him although up until now he had thought it was a hallucination brought on by the drugs.
"She must have a bloody understanding husband."
Hambrowe didn't smile. He normally cheerful face went serious.
"Had a husband, Jack. David Romsey died about a year ago. It was one of those strange things where one moment he was as fit as a butcher's dog and twenty-four hours later he was dead. Some infection he had picked up on South America. It had lain dormant for months before it struck. He would have survived if he had seen his doctor the moment he started to feel ill, but he thought all he had wrong with him was a touch of flue. Collapsed at work and died soon after."
Ropell remembered.
"He was in the job, wasn't he?"
"Not quite. He was an inspector in the docklands police. Had quite a future ahead of him by all accounts. Left Anne and a seven year old kid behind.
"Poor bloody woman."
Even as he said it Ropell was aware that some secret part of him was fiercely glad Anne Romsey was a free agent. For the first time since the explosion on the barge he actually began to look forwards. If James Hambrowe noticed his sudden interest he didn't show it and after a few minutes more of small talk he took his leave and left his friend and colleague to his own thoughts. These were far more positive than an hour ago now he knew he wasn't definitely going to be shunted of to some poky office somewhere or forcibly retired. That alone would help him through the months ahead. He also pondered on the coincidence that had placed another red haired woman in his life and realised that Gussie was a Mother and a married woman by now.