“Was there a radio in this one, Metal?”
He sniffed and shuffled his feet uneasily at the tone of my voice. “We took it out, Stones.”
That was normal, but the feeling in my guts didn’t shift. “Show it to me.”
Reluctantly, Metal disappeared into the cupboard he called an office and came back with a small cardboard box trailing wires. It was a radio all right, but not a cheap Motorola that had been pre-tuned to Radio 4 and Classic FM, as you might expect. It was a short wave two-way set, with a hand mike on a coil of cable and a tuner no doubt locked onto the Nottinghamshire Constabulary waveband. It looked to me like Alpha Bravo Charlie had just gone off the air for good.
“Where did you say you got this motor, Metal?”
“Car park at Trowell Services. Dead easy. No alarms, nothing.”
So some plain clothes cop on the M1 had made the mistake of stopping for a piss, or a plate of chips at the Granada restaurant. Served him right for being careless. And I don’t just mean for leaving his car where Metal might find it. You see, some of us aren’t totally ignorant round here. We know a thing or two that’s useful — like, for example, that the letters ‘PF’ stand for Police Federation, the coppers’ trade union. The PF is one of those rare beasts these days — a union that fights tooth and nail for its members, and it doesn’t care who it takes on. Criticise a copper and the Pf’s solicitors will be after you. Sometimes you might think the police are more likely to sue you than bang you up for a crime.
“Don’t you recognise this, Metal?”
“Just a radio, in’t it?”
“No, it isn’t. Haven’t you ever sat in a police car?” Stupid question. I realised it when Metal stared at me as if I was gone out. “Yeah, course you have. But only in the back seat, eh? With the cuffs on.”
He shrugged. He had no idea what I was talking about. “Last time they done me was for that bit of bother at the races, Stones. It was a whatsit...”
“...a misunderstanding. Yeah, I know. Your solicitor said so.”
“You want the radio, Stones?”
“No, no. Get rid of it, Metal. Chuck it in the river, bury it at the refuse dump. But wherever you ditch it, make it somewhere safe. Unless you want the owners round here turning you over. You’ve nicked one of the plods’ little toys.”
“What? You mean the motor’s a pig wagon?”
“That’s about it. You’re hot, boy. You need to cool off quick, before they decide to put you on ice somewhere.”
I shoved the radio back into his hands, watching him swallow his gum. Metal’s day had turned runny already. I should have taken it as a warning.
Twelve o’clock already. I got back in the Impreza with Slow Kid. From Medensworth it was about twenty minutes to the hall.
“Where do you want dropping, Slow?”
“I got to see a few boys down the Welfare, Stones.”
“Business, is it?”
“Well, you know... a few games of pool, a bit of chat, a drink or two.”
I looked at him, but said nothing. He’d got rid of the ski jacket and the woolly hat and was wearing a Chicago Bulls baseball cap.
“Yeah... and probably a bit of business,” he said.
“That’s good, Slow. Let’s keep it up. That load was only the start. We need to keep our eyes open for some more like that.”
“Sure thing. Trust me, Stones.”
“We ought to get confirmation on that load soon, shouldn’t we?”
“They’ve got your mobile number, yeah?”
I dropped Slow Kid off at the top of Medensworth, near the old Miners’ Welfare, and picked up an onion bhaji and a couple of Danish pastries at the deli on the corner. There’d be crumbs in my car, but it was a small price to pay.
Then I carried on through the village, passing under the railway viaduct that carries the old mineral line to Warsop. From here, the line goes on east past Tuxford to the power stations in the Trent Valley. Those power stations were the biggest customers for local coal for years, and at one time the mineral line was the only way coal could get to them from the pits. Then they started switching loads onto the roads, and the result was thousands of lorries trundling through the villages every day.
But the viaduct is still there. Five hundred feet long, with five stone arches standing over the River Meden like swan’s necks, full of power and grace. To me, it’s the best sight in Medensworth, not excepting the old church. Funny, though, that it took Lisa to point the viaduct out to me. Until then I hadn’t noticed it much. It was just part of the scenery, like the street lights or the back wall of the Welfare. How had I missed that craftsmanship? It was built in 1819, said Lisa, out of the local stone. Wagons originally carried stone from local quarries to a canal wharf, and brought coal back from the pits in the other direction.
The amazing thing is that this was before the invention of steam railways, and the wagons were pulled by bullocks, and later by horses. Yet here the damn thing is, still standing, a monument in its own right, totally ignored by people passing it in their cars day after day. And totally ignored by me, too, until I had my eyes opened.
Some folk sneer at stuff like this. Pit headstocks, Victorian pumping stations, the framework knitters’ cottages, canals, windmills, lace mills. Industrial archaeology, they call it. But it’s all part of our heritage, isn’t it? Just the same as Sherwood is, or Hardwick Hall or Creswell Crags. And so is what’s left of the pits. Even the godforsaken housing estates like the Forest, built for long-gone miners. Because this is how people lived, you see.
That’s what heritage is all about, right? It’s not just about the dukes and mill owners, not just about the rich gits who lived at Welbeck Abbey and Clumber Park. It’s about the ordinary folk too. The poor buggers who got chopped to bits fighting for King Edwin of Northumbria against the Mercians and were chucked into a big hole at Cuckney. The poor bloody women who went blind straining their eyes to make lace by candlelight in dingy hovels. All those Victorian mill workers and brewers and bicycle makers. And, of course, the bolshie sods who spent the whole of their working lives underground digging out coal until they got kicked onto the spoilheap like the rest of the unwanted rubbish. They’re all part of our heritage, and they’ve all left their mark on this landscape.
When I stop and think about it in some of the places round here, I can practically see and hear and smell them still. I haven’t got the right words for it, but I think what I mean is that they’re the people who really make a place. Aren’t I right? You see a bridge over the road as you’re driving along. Who built that? Was it erected personally by Sir Robert McAlpine? Did Mr Taylor and Mr Woodrow heave those slabs of concrete into place with their own hands and ring up Mr McAdam to come out with his tip-up truck and put the surface on? Or was it really built by a gang of sweaty, beer-bellied labourers with Guinness hangovers, holes in their socks and handkerchiefs on their heads, who had to work as much overtime as possible because they each had six kids at home eating tons of fish fingers a week, peeing on the carpet and kicking the telly in? You know which it was. I rest my case.
When the phone rang again I expected it to be the call telling me that the load had arrived safely at its destination. But the voice at the other end sounded upset, despite the terseness of the message.
“Delivery lost.”
“Lost?”
There was the pause of somebody being careful. “It attracted a bit of attention at a truck stop. Driver safe.”
“Right.”
This was bad news. There was a good load in that trailer. But it sounded like a bit of bad luck. It does happen sometimes. I know that as well as anyone. I didn’t know my luck was about to get even worse.