Dave had been stuffing himself with sandwiches and cakes in Sally’s at my expense. Well, it’s better than having him sit in the car with me. He gets twitchy when there’s food nearby, and he’d probably enjoy the phone-in programme and laugh at the DJ’s jokes. And then I’d have to kill him.
“Come on, Donc. Come on.”
Dave was starting to go into the monkey squat necessary for him to manoeuvre his way into the passenger seat, when the door of the cafe flew open and a second figure came out. This one was dressed in blue overalls, and he was gesticulating and shouting. The sight of the lorry pulling onto the A1 seemed to infuriate him, and he ran a few yards down the layby, yelling. Then he turned and ran back again, still yelling. This was far too much noise for my liking. And definitely too much arm waving. Even on the A1, he might attract attention.
I put my foot on the brake. The bloke came eagerly towards me, and I sighed as I wound down the window.
“Mon camion,” he said. “My truck. It is being stolen.”
“Let him in, Donc, why not?” I said.
So Dave opened the back door of the Escort without a word. The Frenchman climbed in, and Dave squeezed into the front. The breeze block in his hand turned out to be the biggest sausage and egg butty you’ve ever seen, dripping with tomato sauce. The car filled with a greasy aroma that would linger for days. It didn’t go too well with the stale beer either.
The Iveco was already a few hundred yards away by now, and the Frenchman began bouncing angrily.
“What’s up, monsieur?” I said, as I indicated carefully before pulling out. I was waiting until I spotted some slow-moving caravans to sneak in front of. Getting onto the A1 from a layby is a bit dicey sometimes — you can end up with a snap-on tools salesman right up your backside, doing ninety miles an hour in his company Cavalier.
“We must follow the thieves. They steal my truck.”
“Dear, oh dear. It happens all the time, you know. You can’t leave anything unattended round here.”
“Hurry, hurry! You are too slow.”
I shook my head sadly. Well, there you go. You give somebody a lift, do them a favour, and the first thing out of their mouths is criticism of your driving ability. The world is so unfair.
“It’s always been like this,” I said helpfully. “This bit of the A1 was the Great North Road. You know, where Dick Turpin used to hang out? You’ve heard of Dick Turpin, have you, monsieur?”
“Comment? What?”
“Highwayman, you know. Thief.”
This is straight up, too. Well, the original Great North Road is a bit to the east, but it’s well and truly bypassed now. Some of it has deteriorated to a track, fit only for horses and trail bikes. But make no mistake. This whole area is still bandit country.
“Then there was Robin Hood,” I said. “Robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Oh, and we had Mrs Thatcher, of course, who got it the wrong way round.”
The Frenchman wasn’t listening to my tour guide spiel. He was gesturing towards the bottom of the fascia, where my mobile phone sat under a pile of music cassettes and the world’s worst in-car stereo system.
“Yeah, you’re right, it’s crap, this local radio. Le crap, eh? I don’t know why I listen to it. What do you fancy then, mate? Some Sacha Distel maybe?”
I poked among the cassettes as if I was actually looking for Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head. It wasn’t likely to be there. Not unless there was a cover version by Enya or UB40. Whoever normally drove this Escort had different tastes from mine. No doubt about it.
“How about this? This is French.” I held up a Chris Rea tape. “Auberge. That’s French, right?”
I slipped the cassette into the deck, and Rea began to sing about there being only one place to go. It’s funny how you can always find Chris Rea tapes in sales reps’ cars. I reckon they have them so they can play The Road to Hell and feel all ironic.
“No, no. You must call for help,” the trucker shouted in my ear over the music. “Police. Stop the truck.”
And then he reached forward, trying to make a grab for the phone. Dave barely moved. He gave the Frenchman a little flip and the bloke hit the back of his seat like he’d bounced off a brick wall.
“Sorry, mate, but the signal’s terrible round here,” I said. “It’s all the trees. Sherwood Forest, this is.”
The lorry driver called me a cochon. I failed French ‘O’ level, but even I know that isn’t polite.
“Look, I’m really sorry it’s not Sacha Distel, but I’m doing my best, right?”
As we approached the big roundabout at Markham Moor, the Iveco was already halfway up the long hill heading south, growling past the McDonald’s drive-thru and the Shell petrol station. I could catch up with the lorry easily. No need for lights and sirens — which was lucky, because we didn’t have any.
But the sight of those yellow arches by the carriageway put me in mind of something.
“Hey, it’s a bit like a scene in that film, what’s it called? You know, with John Travolta and the black bloke in a frizzy wig? What do they call a Big Mac with cheese in France?”
Dave’s ears pricked up at the Big Mac, but he didn’t know the answer. He has no culture, see.
The Escort’s steering juddered and the suspension groaned as I twisted the wheel to the right and we swerved into the roundabout, across the A1 and towards a little B road that leads past the Markham Moor truck stop. As we passed, I couldn’t resist a glance for professional reasons. On the tarmac stood two orange and white Tesco lorries, a flatbed from Hanson Bricks, and a Euromax Mercedes diesel, all backed up against a couple of Cho Yang container trucks. There was a load of NorCor corrugated boarding, and even a Scania full of Weetabix. To be honest, though, I couldn’t see anyone shifting fifty tons of breakfast cereal too easily. Not in these parts.
The Frenchman started gibbering again and pointing to the main road, where the back of his lorry had just vanished over the hill.
“Non, non. Turn round. That way. The thieves go that way.”
“It’s a short cut, mate. What do they call a Big Mac with cheese in France?”
“Merde!”
Then he began to poke his finger at Dave’s shoulder. Well, that was a mistake. Dave stared at him, amazed, like a Rottweiler that finds a cat pulling its whiskers. His immense jaws opened and his teeth came down on the round, stubby thing in front of his face. It disappeared into his mouth with a little spurt of red, and he began to chew. The Frenchman pulled back his finger fast, in case it went the same way as that sausage.
We passed through a couple of villages before I turned onto a road that was more mud than tarmac. A track led us over the River Maun, past a few derelict buildings, through some woods, over another river and into more woods. The trees closed all around us now, dark conifers that wiped out any hope of a view.
But in the middle of the trees a space suddenly opened up. It was a vast expanse of wasteland — acres and acres of black slurry and weed-covered concrete. There were old wheel tracks in that slurry, and some of them were two feet deep. This was one of our dead coal mines, whose rotting bodies lie all over Nottinghamshire these days — a memory of the time when thousands of blokes and their families lived for the seam of coal they called Top Hard.
Finally we ran out of road and pulled up by a series of lagoons. These lagoons are pretty deep too, and I wouldn’t like to say what the stuff is that swirls about down there.