“Okay, Monsieur Merde. Out.”
The Frenchman looked from me to Dave, who helpfully leaned back to unfasten his seat belt. The trucker flinched a bit, but looked relieved when the belt clicked open. He got out and looked at the devastation around him, baffled.
Well, this bit of Nottinghamshire is no picnic site, that’s for sure. We were on the remains of an old pit road, where British Coal lorries once trundled backwards and forwards all day long. In some places, wagons have been dragged off the underground trains, filled with concrete and upended to stop gypsies setting up camp in the woods. But there are always ways in, if you know how. Up ahead was a bridge where you could look down on the railway line that carried the coal trains. The lines are rusted now, but the coal is still there, way below ground. Top Hard, the best coking and steam coal in the country. It made a lot of the old mine owners very rich.
Yes, this was once the site of the area’s proudest superpit. A few years back, when it was still open, a report came up with the idea of making it a Coal Theme Park, preserving the glory days of the 1960s. There would have been visits to the coal face, a ride underground on a paddy train, and maybe a trip to the canteen for a mug of sweet tea. They had a dry ski slope planned for the spoil heap. I kid you not.
But you’d need a heck of an imagination to picture this theme park now. The buildings have been demolished, and the fences are a futile gesture. There’s just the black slag everywhere and a few churned up roadways where they came to cart away the debris.
The Frenchman stared at the lagoons, then turned and looked across the black wasteland behind him. It would be suicide to try walking through that lot. He shrugged his shoulders and waited, his eyebrows lifted like a supercilious customs man at Calais. Suddenly, his complacency was starting to annoy me.
“Take a look at this then, mate. What do you think? Pretty, isn’t it? This is what’s left of our mining industry. Coal mining, yeah? It may not mean much to you. You grow grapes and make cheese in France, right? But coal was our livelihood here in Nottinghamshire, once. Blokes went down into a bloody great black hole every day and got their lungs full of coal dust just so that we could buy food after the war. You remember the war, do you? When we kicked the krauts out of your country?”
Of course he didn’t remember the war. He wasn’t old enough. Nor am I, but I’ve read a history book or two. I know we bankrupted ourselves fighting the Germans, and it was the miners like my granddad who worked their bollocks off to get this country out of the mess afterwards. Their sons and grandsons carried on going down those holes day after day to dig out the coal. Decades and decades of it, with blokes getting crushed in roof falls and burnt to death in fires, and coughing their guts out with lung disease for the rest of their lives.
And this is the thanks they got, places like this and a score of other derelict sites around Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire. Maggie Thatcher betrayed us, the whole country let us down. Workmates stabbed each other in the back. That was 1984. Write it on my gravestone.
Somewhere north of Newark, the French truck would be picking up speed on the flat right now. In a few minutes it should it hit the bypass and turn off on the A46. Within the hour it would be in a warehouse on an industrial estate outside town, and that would be nothing to do with me at all. All thanks to Slow Kid Thompson.
Oh, I forget to mention Slow Kid, didn’t I? He’s one of my best boys. He has a lot of talents, but his number one skill is driving. If Slow can’t drive it, it hasn’t got wheels. Today, he’d just delivered our first big load, a job worth quite a few grand to me and my mates. After years of doing small-scale business, shifting dodgy goods and re-plating nicked motors, we were finally moving into the big time. That Iveco represented the start of a new life of a crime, and goodbye to a past I wanted to forget.
“You’re lucky, monsieur. I’m feeling in a good mood today.”
By now the Frenchman had gone as quiet as Doncaster Dave. I guess it had finally dawned on him that we weren’t going to help him catch his stolen lorry after all. Maybe he’d realised there would be no nice British bobbies rushing up to arrest the villains who’d ruined his day. No high-speed pursuit, no rolling road blocks, no one to pull him out of the brown stuff.
Oh yeah, that’s the main thing I forgot to mention — you can’t trust anyone these days. I call it the Stones McClure Top Hard Rule.
2
It would take the trucker a while to find his way out through these woods. There was a farm half a mile away, but I happened to know that the bloke there was a sheep farmer who exported lamb. He was more likely to welcome a French lorry driver with a shotgun than with an invitation to step in and use his phone.
I spun the Escort round and headed away again. But after a few yards I jammed on the brakes and reversed back to the Frenchman. I wound down the window and handed him out a Mega Mac Meal. Then we drove off. In my mirror, I saw the trucker stare at the bag for a second before dropping it on the floor and jumping on it. What a waste. I know it was probably a statement of his national culinary superiority, but that Mega Mac Meal cost me £3.89.
Heading south now on the A1, I put my foot down for a few miles. Just before Newark we caught up with the French truck. It was going well and picking up speed on the flat. We tailed it as it hit the Newark bypass and turned off westwards on the A46. After a few minutes it disappeared into a lorry park at the back of the cattle market.
Dave and I sat in the car by the junction for a bit, checking out the traffic. Then we turned round, eased our way back onto the bypass and pulled straight into the forecourt of one of the fast food places, where we sat and ate our Mega Macs. Dave was ready for another snack after all that effort.
I checked my boots and scraped off a bit of mud from the pit site. It wouldn’t make much difference to the floor of the Escort. I’m not exactly a snappy dresser, as anyone will tell you who’s ever seen me coming. A pair of old Levis and a leather jacket suit me fine. But I’ve got a soft spot for these boots. They’re Dan Post tan Gamblers, with snip toes and cowboy heels, and a nice bit of fancy stitching in the leather on the sides. I reckon they must have cost a few hundred dollars, these things. I got them as a present years ago from some American bird with too much money. You don’t see many of those round these parts, so she’s worth remembering, if only for the boots.
A few minutes later, a young bloke walked out of the bushes near the back of the cattle market and dodged and jinked his way across the road to the cafe. He was medium height, with hair cropped so short he looked bald from a distance. He was wearing a grubby t-shirt and carrying a red ski jacket, and a woollen hat was shoved into the pocket of his jeans. I eyed him in the mirror as he slipped into the back seat of the Escort.
“All right, Slow?”
He pulled out a fag before he answered, adding to the stink in the Escort. Then his eyes met mine in the mirror, bright with excitement, and he grinned suddenly, looking like a little kid who’s just come down from a ride on the Corkscrew Rollercoaster at Alton Towers. He gestured at me with a sharp jab of his index finger.
“All right, Stones. All right.”
I left Dave to finish off the extra large fries while I went outside with Slow Kid. There was another bit of business to see to that Slow had set up, but we had a few minutes to wait. The roar of engines and the screech of air brakes from the heavy traffic approaching the roundabout didn’t help conversation, but you don’t expect the car park of a microwave mecca to be scenic.
“Good job that, Stones, don’t you reckon?”
“Sure, Slow. Let’s hope there’ll be lots more of them. What are you going to spend your share on?”