'What the f.u.c.k are you doin'? It's Colin,' he said again. He laughed. 'Look at you!'

'How did you get in?' I managed to say.

'Are you joking? Have you seen these locks? Get dressed. I need some help.'

He stood up and moved towards the door as if to give me room. Slowly my heart rate came back to normal. My legs trembled. I felt I had no choice but to do exactly what he said. I pulled on my jeans and my denim shirt and my trainers. Colin flicked his head in the direction of the door and went out. I followed. I looked down at the lock to my door and it was hanging off its fittings.

'Fix that later,' he said.

A malfunctioning strip light fizzed at the end of the corridor. No one else was around. The whole unit snoozed. I wanted to bang on someone's door and shout for help, but I couldn't. Colin stopped under the light and turned to me. 'I'm not allowed on the camp so this was the only way to get to you.'

'Right,' I said. It was all so normalised. I felt like I was being marched to the electric chair by someone whose job it was to throw the switch at the end of the walk.

We pa.s.sed through the shadows between the chalets and he led me to a low wire fence behind a privet hedge. It was a way into the camp I'd never even seen before. He c.o.c.ked a leg over the fence without looking back to see if I followed. A path between the camp and a caravan park led out onto the road and there Colin's Hillman Imp was parked.

Without a word he unlocked the driver door and got in. It didn't seem to have occurred to him that I might bolt. Everything was telling me to run, but another voice in my head was asking me to stay calm. I thought that if Colin was going to attack me he would have done so in my room. After a couple of seconds Colin leaned across the seats to pop the b.u.t.ton lock on the pa.s.senger door. This was my last moment to make a run for it.

I opened the pa.s.senger door and I got in. Colin started up the engine and pulled away from the kerb. The car didn't smell good. Something was 'off'.

'Where are we going?'

'You'll see.'

It was after one a.m. and the roads were deserted. We drove in complete silence. After we got out of town Colin said, 'Open the glove compartment.'

I popped open the glove compartment. In it was a folded map. 'You can navigate,' he said. 'There's a torch.'

I got the torch out of the glove compartment and I unfolded the map. A clumsy X had been marked on the map with black biro. It was a place just across the Lincolnshire border into Nottinghamshire, near a town or village called Barlston. 'What is it?' I asked.

'We stay on the A158 for a while. Keep your eyes peeled.'

Progress was slow. The road was single carriageway pretty much all of the route to Lincoln. More than once oncoming drivers blared their horns at Colin, angry that he hadn't dimmed his headlights for them. Even in the dark some of the route looked familiar to me, and just before we reached Horncastle we approached a pub that I knew. It had a thatched roof and there wasn't a breath of wind to stir the union jack on its smartly painted pole. It was The Fighting c.o.c.ks.

I said nothing. I thought: this is it; he's brought me here so that he and his National Front cronies can have some fun with me.

But the car swished by without Colin even acknowledging the place.

It was a long journey in silence and the car still smelled bad. It was a smell that seemed familiar yet I couldn't identify it. Eventually, Colin alerted me to look for a turn-off. We found Barlston easy enough. It was a Nottinghamshire mining village.

'We're looking for a place called Black Bank,' Colin said.

We'd been driving for maybe an hour and after crawling through the village we found Black Bank. About half a mile from the village a field on the embankment of a hill had an area fenced off with steel mesh wire. A sign hung lop-sided from a single screw: Danger Deep Shaft No Admittance. Colin parked up and switched off the car lights.

'What is this place?'

'Old coal mine. They're capping it over. If anyone comes,' he said, 'we just pretend we're queers.'

'What?'

'There's two bags in the back behind you. And there's another three bags in the boot.'

'What's in the bags?'

'We're slinging 'em down that shaft.'

'Why?'

He looked at me like I was simple, a half-smile on his face. 'Jus' f.u.c.kin' do it, all right?' He opened his door and got out.

My mouth was dry. I got out of the car and looked out across the field. Someone had already peeled back the steel wire mesh to get to the shaft. I don't know what had been dumped down the shaft but there was a pile of hardcore rubble outside the protected area, and a lot of building materials sand and gravel plus industrial drums inside the fence. There was a five-bar farmer's gate leading onto the land. Colin went up to the gate and gave it a shake. It was padlocked.

'We have to carry it. I'll help you wiv it over the gate. If anyone comes while you're up there I'll drive away, turn around and come back. You just keep low.'

Colin went back to the car and opened the back door. He started wrestling with a black bin liner that was in the foot-well. It looked heavy. 'Come on.'

I went over to help him. The bin-liner was tied at the top so I couldn't see what was in it, but I could smell it. It was the source of the odour that had been bothering me. I noticed he was still wearing his driving gloves. When we got the first heavy bin liner out I knew what was inside. 'Look, what's in it?' I said again, pointedly.

'Condemned meat,' he said matter-of-factly. 'We're dumping it.'

'Why?'

'Questions f.u.c.kin' questions. Get it over the gate.'

The bags were heavy. We dumped two from the back of the car over the gate, and then we carried the other three from the boot, and dropped those over the gate.

'You're gonna have to take them up there and drop 'em over the edge. I'll sit 'ere.'

'Why can't you help me?'

'Told you. I'll drive away if anyone comes. Get on with it.'

Carrying the bags on my own was difficult. I started shaking again and the strength drained out of me. But I half-dragged the first bag along the parched and baked clay, stirring up dust. I managed to manoeuvre it through the broken fence and right up to the edge of the shaft.

There were over a dozen metal drums near the shaft, all stamped with biohazard symbols. The shaft was no more than a shadow in the ground. It had been sh.o.r.ed up with wooden planking on three sides and it had a rough derrick structure straddled across it. I dropped the bag on the dry earth and looked back at Colin in the car. He was some distance away and he had the courtesy light on and appeared to be studying the map. I was sure he couldn't see me in the dark. While I could see his shape behind the wheel I knew that at least he wasn't planning to shove me down the shaft. Not until I'd disposed of the bags, at least.

I tore open the bag and sure enough I found raw meat. I had no way of knowing what kind of meat it was. It smelled worse now that I'd opened the bag. I thought about the other four bags. I was trying to calculate how much meat there was in each bag. More than would comprise one human being, I was certain. More like two people, at least.

I put the toe of my trainer against the bag and tried to push it in but I couldn't put enough force behind my foot. I was also afraid of getting too close to the edge, maybe losing my footing and going down with it. I needed Colin to help me but there was no way I was going to invite him up there with me. I found a plank of wood and I managed to lever the bag of meat closer to the edge. At last it went tumbling over the edge and into the gaping black hole. I didn't hear it hit the bottom.

I stared after it. My shoulders were shaking. I looked down at the car. Colin had got out to see what was holding me up so I made my way back down to collect a second bag.

'Wha.s.sup?' he said.

'Heavy.'

'p.u.s.s.y.'

I took the second bag up to the shaft. This time I dropped it on the end of the plank of wood, so that all I had to do was to lever the plank. The second bag dropped without a sound. I took a deep breath and went back for the third bag. Colin saw me coming and got back into the car. I dumped the third bag and by the time I got the fourth up to the shaft I saw headlights coming towards me along the unlit country lane. Colin moved off in the Hillman Minx. I left the bag next to the shaft, slipped through the mesh fence and ran to the edge of the field, keeping in amongst the shadows. The car approached and cruised by. After it had gone I went back to the shaft.

Colin hadn't yet returned. Something sharp was pressuring the black plastic of the fourth bin liner. I had a moment or two before Colin came back so I tried to see what it was. In the darkness I was pretty certain it was the longish fingernails of a human hand. I tried to tear open the plastic, but it was very thick, durable stuff. Colin still hadn't come back.

I found a rusty nail in a piece of sc.r.a.p wood and with shaking hands I worked it out so that I could use the nail to tear at the black vinyl. I was hyperventilating trying to get it open. When it did pop the sharp thing I'd taken to be human fingers popped through the plastic.

It was a pig's trotter.

I was drenched in sweat. My breath started to come back. I staggered out through the mesh, went down to the gate and fetched the final bag. I dragged it along the dust, took it up to the shaft and placed it on the end of my plank-lever. As I levered the bag down the shaft Colin cruised back into position by the gate and killed his lights. I tossed the plank down the shaft after the bags and made my way back to the car.

'All done and dusted?' Colin said when I got in be- side him.

'Done.'

He started up the engine and flicked his headlights on again. 'Look at the state of you! Worked up a bit of a sweat, son.'

'Yeah.'

He smiled. 'f.u.c.kin' schtoodents.'

On the way back he told me 'they' and he didn't say who 'they' were had been caught selling condemned meat. It was slaughterhouse waste they were repackaging. When I asked him why he couldn't dump it anywhere, like in the sea, he said that it was legal evidence. It had been confiscated by the authorities, stamped and frozen to be exhibited in a court of law.

'They' had had to steal it back. Colin said he wanted to dump it where no one could find it. If there was no evidence there was no case.

I sat in the car feeling cold and with my sweat chilling on my skin, wondering whether to believe him. I tried to speak a few times and then finally got up the courage to say, 'By the way, I haven't seen Terri for a while.'

His jaw set. He fixed his eyes on the road ahead.

'You still want me to keep an eye on her, right?'

'You know what?' he said. 'I was wrong about that f.u.c.king Italian geezer.'

'Oh?'

'It wasn't him.'

'Oh?'

'Don't you worry about Terri no more.'

'Why is that?'

'I told you: don't you worry about Terri no more.'

That was his last word on the matter.

When we got back to the camp he shoved something in my breast pocket. 'What's that?'

'I'm looking arter you 'ain't I?'

It was about 3.30 a.m. when I got out of the car. He drove off. I pulled three ten-pound notes out of my breast pocket.

16.

Zen and the art of ignoring archery Next morning I was a.s.signed to archery on the football field. Whereas I was hoping to work with Nikki again I was given n.o.bby instead. I understood that n.o.bby had the previous week c.o.c.ked up the whist drive, resulting in a silver-haired uprising, so Nikki had been drafted in to pacify the octogenarian rebels and run it instead. n.o.bby, along with me, was presumably trusted not to cause too much upset with a bow and arrow.

We walked together from the theatre and he was in high spirits already, even though he'd been given a formal warning that if he didn't buck up his ideas he'd be out of a job. He claimed no one would tell him why.

'But I know why,' he said as we approached the white-painted shed where the straw clouts and archery equipment were locked away. 'I know f.u.c.kin' well why; someone busted Sheik-Ben-Gaza's sword cabinet, that's f.u.c.kin' why and then cleverly got the finger pointed at me.'

I unlocked the shed and I started the job of carrying out the target stands and the clouts. They were heavy and n.o.bby showed no signs of helping, though he did keep pace with me to keep up his cheerful prattle. As I was setting the first clout in the middle of the field he told me, 'They won't say that's what it is; but it is what it is; and I know what it is. Do you know what it is? Do you know anything about it?'

I shook my head and pretended to look puzzled by the unfolding of the A-stands for the straw clouts. I'd got my own, other mysteries to figure out. My sleep-deprived brain was clacking like beads back and forth on an abacus but without ever adding up to anything. I was running events over and over in my mind. Like the fact that Colin had worn a pair of gloves while we were dumping the meat. Which of course meant that were there any fingerprints on those plastic bags, they would be all mine.

I was a bit short with him. 'I've got my own problems, n.o.bby.'

n.o.bby wrinkled his brow at that, and followed me back to the shed in a unique silence. When we got to the shed he pushed me inside, and closed the door behind him.

'Sit down,' he said. 'Go on, sit down.' I sat on one of the straw clouts and so did he. He whisked a tobacco tin from his jacket pocket and from it he withdrew three cigarettes papers. 'Now listen to your Uncle n.o.bby, because he understands and he has what you need and what we all need and what everyone needs; and in fact he's not here just to be a figure of fun oh no he's here to help and that's n.o.bby's mantra if you can be of help be of help, right, this is the answer which comes from the ting-ting!' During the course of this prattle he licked the gummed edge of the papers; rapidly skinned up a joint; took from his other pocket a bag of gra.s.s; crumbled it into the tobacco; rolled it; lit up; and blew a big cloud of smoke into my face. It took him maybe seven seconds. Then he took another drag and pa.s.sed the joint to me.

I looked at it. 'I don't,' I said.

'Ah, resistance! The mind is moving. But you must still the mind before the mind can move. This is the answer that comes to us from the ting-ting!'

When he said ting-ting he floated a finger towards heaven. 'What?' I said.

'Just f.u.c.kin' smoke it and your problem will be as smoke. Trust old Uncle n.o.bby, who is here to help.'

Well, I needed something. I accepted the joint, took a drag and inhaled. As a non-smoker I was determined not to let it make me cough. I held the smoke back in my lungs and immediately felt light-headed, probably from the effects of the tobacco rather than from the gra.s.s.

He nodded encouragement for me to take another drag. 'Which is a medicament of oriental persuasion, yes, a beneficial herb, derived from the many-splendoured alternatives to a reality-check; now be a good chap and let n.o.bby have the joint back because what you're doing is called bogarting the joint in hipster terminology otherwise known in Manchester as please pa.s.s the f.u.c.kin' Duchy.'

I took this to mean he wanted me to give the thing back to him, which I did and he received it magnanimously, as if I'd been the one to provide it in the first place. We shared the joint until it was finished, then tumbled out of the shed, probably along with a great belch of smoke. Meanwhile, the children waited patiently, with their mums and dads, for us to finish setting up.

When the set-up was complete I ordered n.o.bby to stand at the side of the targets to make sure no one wandered behind. Still talking, he did as instructed, mainly because it required no effort. Then I flung myself into advising and helping the campers, offering the bit of technique that had been shown to me. I even tossed in a joke about not aiming an arrow at n.o.bby unless they were certain they could hit him. I got distracted for a moment when I was rather taken by the depth of hue of the brilliant red, white and blue targets; but largely the gra.s.s had done its job of relaxing me. Meanwhile, a little girl decided she wanted to stand next to me and hold my hand throughout the event.

After a while I called a halt to collect arrows and n.o.bby used this opportunity to wander over and tell me how he planned to give Sheik-Ben-Gaza which of course was his name for Abdul-Shazam aka Tony a piece of his mind if anything else was said. 'You know why they don't like me, don't you? You know that? Eh? Eh?'

'Cos you don't do any work?'

'No, you lout. It's because I'm the only one who has called them on their evil politics, that's why. It's like history didn't happen with this mob, they've got collective amnesia; they all wanna get dressed up in buckles and boots and eagles and leather and the whole n.a.z.i regalia and if you have anything to say about it you're stuffed. What if we were to tell all these holidaymakers their entertainment programme was being run by the n.a.z.i party? Eh? Eh? What would they make of that? How about that? Ladies and gentlemen, the Junior Bathing Belle is brought to you today courtesy of the Panzer Division of the Skegness Reich? Eh?' Then he laughed. Quite seamlessly and with no pause for breath in the middle of this tirade he said to me, 'Are you tapping that Nikki?'

I nodded at the little girl who'd held my hand throughout most of the proceedings, indicating that n.o.bby might be a little more careful in what he had to say. It was a pointless gesture.

'You are, aren't you?'