‘No can do,’ said Cobweb Tattoo. ‘Once the clamp goes on, it doesn’t come off until you pay.’
‘How much?’
Cobweb Tattoo pointed at the sign. ‘Same as it says over there. Two hundred quid.’
‘Two hundred pounds? Are you having a laugh?’
Cobweb Tattoo folded his arms. ‘Up to you, pal,’ he said. ‘The car stays where it is until you pay.’
‘And if I don’t pay?’
‘Then we’ll have the car towed away and you’ll have to pay five hundred.’
‘Now you’re definitely having a laugh,’ said Richards.
‘Do we look like we’re having a laugh?’ growled Broken Nose.
‘No,’ said Richards. ‘You don’t. And does everyone pay?’
Cobweb Tattoo nodded. ‘They moan and they whine and sometimes they threaten us but at the end of the day, yeah, everyone pays.’
Richards took out a roll of banknotes from his pocket and peeled off four fifties. He handed them to Cobweb Tattoo. The man grinned and pocketed the cash. Broken Nose took a set of keys from a pouch on his belt and knelt down by the clamp.
Richards took a step back and took out his phone. He took a photograph of Cobweb Tattoo. ‘Here, you can’t take our picture,’ he said. Broken Nose looked up and Richards snapped a picture of his face. ‘Won’t do you any good anyway, mate. We’re totally legal. The cops won’t do anything. You’re on private property.’
Richards turned around and took a photograph of the Range Rover’s number plate. ‘I don’t give a toss about the cops, mate,’ he said, and put the phone away.
Broken Nose lifted up the clamp and carried it over to the Range Rover.
‘Do you want a receipt, then?’ asked Cobweb Tattoo.
Richards smiled. Let me explain to you what’s going to happen, whatever your name is,’ he said. ‘Then you can decide whether or not I get a receipt.’
Broken Nose raised the tailgate of the Range Rover and put the clamp away.
‘See now, what I’m going to do is give the pictures to a good friend of mine, and he’ll know everything there is to know about you and your mate within a few hours. Soon as he knows where you live, you and your ugly mate are gonna get bricks through your windows and your tyres are going to be slashed.’ Richards sucked on his cigar. ‘I know, you’re thinking that a brick through your window and a slashed tyre is no big thing, but my mate and his pals will be doing that just so you know what’s coming next. You got kids?’ Richards grinned. ‘Yeah, I can see from the look on your face that you’ve got kids. Well, your kids are going to need a lot of very expensive dental work because my mate will make sure they get smashed in the mouth with a monkey wrench. Now, if they’re really young, they’ll have their second teeth to look forward to, but if not…’ Richards shrugged and blew smoke at the man.
‘Hey, Darren, are you coming or what?’ shouted Broken Nose. Cobweb Tattoo ignored him.
‘Then your wife, she’s going to get battery acid thrown in her face. Might blind her. Might not. But however it works out, Darren, she’s not going to be pretty to look at.’ Richards grinned. ‘And you? Well, Darren old mate, they’ll probably leave you alone. But you can spend the rest of your life knowing what I did to your wife and kids. All because of two hundred fucking quid.’
‘Darren, come on!’ shouted Broken Nose.
‘Fuck off!’ yelled Cobweb Tattoo.
‘So the question you’ve got to ask yourself, Darren, is do you want to give me a receipt for that two hundred quid, or do you want to give me the money back and be on your way? No pressure, Darren, you can decide. I don’t give a fuck either way. My mate owes me a favour. It won’t cost me a thing.’
Richards took another pull on his cigar and shrugged carelessly. He turned towards his car but stopped when Cobweb Tattoo thrust the notes at him. Richards took the money and got into his car. As he drove away, Broken Nose was shouting at Cobweb Tattoo and jabbing his finger at his face. Richards took a last look in his driving mirror just in time to see Cobweb Tattoo rear back and head-butt his colleague.
CHAPTER 43
There was a lot Carolyn Castle didn’t know about Maxwell Dunbar. She didn’t know he’d been in prison, for instance. He’d served three and a half years of a seven year sentence for GBH, which the police referred to as Grievous Bodily Harm but which Dunbar described as a Good Bloody Hiding. That was when he was much younger and, ever since, he’d made sure that if and when he did get physical with someone there were no witnesses, no CCTV and, ideally, a cast-iron alibi already prepared. She also didn’t know he paid policemen for information. Dunbar liked to give the impression he was once a police officer, a Flying Squad detective no less, but, in fact, he’d never been able to pass the medical. Ever since he had been a teenager he’d struggled with Type 2 diabetes and his doctor was now threatening to start him on insulin injections. But he did have friends on several police forces, though when it came to providing him with information they were friends who needed cash in a brown envelope before they’d come up with the goods. Carolyn also didn’t know the truth about how Dunbar had dealt with her stalker. A detective friend of Dunbar’s had printed off the man’s Police National Computer file and, after reading, it Dunbar had realised a softly-softly approach wasn’t going to work. The stalker’s name was Thomas Bale and he’d been in and out of mental institutions for most of his adult life. He was thirty-seven, had an IQ of borderline retarded, and had schizophrenia that was just about controlled by medication. Carolyn wasn’t the first actress he’d fixated on. One of the stars of Emmerdale had taken out a restraining order against him after he’d turned up on her doorstep with a bunch of roses.
Carolyn had made it clear she didn’t want to take legal action against Bale because of the publicity it would create. And until Bale actually physically threatened or assaulted her, the police wouldn’t do anything. Dunbar went around to see Bale to see if he could talk some sense into him but it was clear within the first few minutes that wasn’t going to happen. He was a small weasely man with no chin and an annoying stammer and he kept insisting his human rights meant he was free to talk to whoever he wanted and there was no law against him writing to her or even standing outside her house. Bale spent a lot of time on the internet and he was able to quote his rights at length, so Dunbar had just nodded and listened. When Bale had finished speaking, Dunbar had slipped a set of brass knuckledusters onto his right hand and then punched Bale where most men had a chin, breaking his jaw and splintering his teeth. Dunbar had then grabbed Bale by the throat and told him if he ever contacted Carolyn Castle again, he would come back with a gun. Then he’d hit him in the groin, hard. He’d left Bale curled up in a ball on the floor and the next day he’d billed Carolyn for two grand.
Dunbar was sitting in his front room with a glass of whisky and Coke and his mobile phone on the coffee table in front of him, considering his options. He knew Warwick Richards, or at least knew of him. And one thing he knew for sure was that Warwick Richards wouldn’t be warned off with a knuckle duster. The honest thing to do would be to draw up a brief report on Richards and tell Carolyn not to go near him with or without a bargepole. But if he did that, he’d only be able to bill her for a few hundred. If he was lucky, he might get to keep the five hundred she’d given him. He’d paid the cheque into his bank first thing on Monday morning and it was now Wednesday and it had cleared. The last thing he wanted to do was to start handing back money. Besides, Carolyn Castle had more money than she could shake a stick at.