Empire Dock, where he picked up the M.O. and in less than ten minutes was in the heart of unreclaimed Liverpool, threading his way through a maze of back-to-backs. As he drew to a halt, a grimy urchin approached.
“Mind yer car, mister?” The lad was carrying half a brick in his hand, a clue to the fate which might befall a vehicle whose owner omitted to invest in local security. Harry said, “You know where Mr. Evison lives?”
“Yer mean Froggy?”
“Yes.”
The small rat-like face assumed a cunning expression. “Might do.”
Harry extracted his wallet and, when satisfied with the display of cash on offer, the juvenile hoodlum said, “Number eleven.”
Harry handed over the money and, waving a hand at the M.G., said, “Guard it with your life.” But the lad vanished even as Harry walked up the front door to which he had been directed. Froggy’s home wasn’t one of those terraced gems with gleaming window panes and a freshly scrubbed doorstep. Torn and dirty netting curtained the windows and cobwebs canopied the door. Harry pressed the bell three times before realising that it didn’t work. He rapped instead, until his knuckles hurt.
A prune-faced woman, laden with shopping, passed by. He called to ask if she knew where Evison might be. She scowled and asked, “You the man from the credit company?”
“No. But I need to speak to Froggy right away.”
She sniffed. “His missus will be out at the shops, spending money they haven’t got, as usual. As for him…”
“Yes?”
“Probably down at the tip. Some folk have no pride.”
“Which tip, love?”
“Pasture Moss, of course. Where people dump their rubbish. He’ll be on the root, if I know anything.”
One small mystery resolved itself in Harry’s mind as he thanked her. So Froggy Evison was a totter, one of those who skulked around refuse heaps, scavenging. That explained the smell that always seemed to cling to him. It was the stink of rotten debris.
Chapter Twenty One
Hunched figures were spread across the uneven slopes of the waste heap. They wore ancient anoraks or duffel coats, bending double as they sifted through the rubbish that other people had no use for. Most of them wore hoods, one or two had donned balaclavas. They were not merely, Harry realised, seeking protection against the February wind, but also aiming to avoid recognition if a social security snooper came here to check on those claiming benefits from the state. Through the high wire fence, Harry watched the totters at work. He might have been observing a scene from the Third World on the television screen. But this was his home town.
Overhead, seagulls whirled, wings flapping as if in contempt for human degradation. For Harry, the sight of the filthy surface of Pasture Moss being slowly stripped held an almost pornographic fascination. He had heard of those who lived literally on and off the scrap heap, of course, but had never before seen their activities at close hand.
He walked slowly along the perimeter between the fence and the electric railway line. A teenager had died here twelve months back, he recalled, making a false move and touching the live wire. Scavenging had its risks. Soon he discovered a beaten track which led in the direction of a hole in the fence evidently made by wire cutters. Treading carefully, he crossed the line. Glad that he had taken the precaution of changing into his car-repairing gear in the hope of blending in with the landscape, he crawled through the muddy hole.
Scrambling up the side of the tip was harder than it looked.
Harry slithered in all directions, the rubber soles of his shoes unequal to the sogginess of the terrain. He was soon up to his ankles in cardboard and old newspapers, shrivelled apple cores and potato peelings. The stench made him gasp for breath, draining him more than the physical effort of keeping his foothold on the slime beneath his shoes. One or two of the rooters already had their eyes on him, assessing his progress, noting his unfamiliarity with the geography of the place. Others, busy with their work, ignored him. Finally, he made it to the brow of the heap and, putting one foot gingerly before the other, waded towards the nearest of the hooded men.
He called out, “Seen Froggy Evison today?”
“No names here, pal.” The speaker had a lidless electric kettle in his hand. He wielded it like a weapon.
Harry opened his mouth again, but before he could utter another word, he was interrupted by the noise of a vehicle engine and the incoherent shouts of several of the scavengers. A council waste lorry was drawing near. He stood back as it approached and then turned in a circle fifteen or twenty yards away. As its back lifted, preparatory to dumping, a dozen men converged upon it, as if acting out a pagan ritual. The driver ignored them.
Rubbish poured from the rear end of the lorry. The wind caught fragments of it. Some landed on the eager rooters as they ran forward to claim their trophies. Bits of old food, slivers of plastic, were brushed off heads and shoulders as the hunt continued for better pickings: copper wire, transistor radios, trinkets of jewellery perhaps.
The lorry rumbled off into the distance and Harry stumbled towards the hooded men. He decided to try again. “Know where Froggy is?”
“What’s it to you?” asked a freckled youth on the fringe of the group. He had been examining the intestines of a de-gutted settee. At first sight he seemed the youngest of the scavengers; perhaps he should have been at school.
Honesty wouldn’t be the best policy here. Harry made a quick guess about the kind of lie that might achieve results.
“His missus has been took ill,” he said in a congested Scouse accent, shamelessly stealing Froggy’s own lie to the barmaid at the Ferry.
“Myra?” scoffed the lad. “She’s built like an ox. He probably poisoned her with that tin of salmon he found here yesterday.” He addressed a grizzled older man beside him, whose smoker’s cough rasped incessantly. “Wasn’t Froggy here earlier on?”
“Search me, kid.”
“Reckon I saw him an hour or more ago. Before dinner.”
Harry didn’t ask what dinner on the tip consisted of. “Where was he?”
The freckled youth jerked a thumb. “Down by the skips.” He gazed for a moment at a couple of soggy paperbacks that he had retrieved from the mess deposited by the lorry. Novels by Harold Robbins and Mickey Spillane, their gaudy covers smeared with what might have been excrement. Wrinkling his nose, he threw them back into the mire. “What use are books? Come on. I’m headed down there now meself.”
Harry followed as his guide traced a path through the tin cans and the slush of wet paper. “Glad to gerraway, actually” confided the lad. “That cough. Honest, it makes me want to puke.”
Harry couldn’t ignore the fetid smell all around. “Doesn’t everything here?”
The lad glanced back over his shoulder, grinning. “Got to you, has it? Yer first time?” When Harry nodded, he went on, “It’s not so bad after a while. You stop noticing it. Me name’s Geoff, by the way.”
“Harry.”
“Pleased to meet you. Won’t shake hands, mine are a bit mussed up, know what I mean? Can’t be too fussy about what you touch round here.”
By now they were within fifty yards of a row of yellow-painted skips, each marked domestic only. “Keep yer eyes skinned,” advised Geoff. He seemed to be relishing his veteran’s role, giving the benefit of his experience to a newcomer. “The fellers on the compactors are all right, but you have to watch that foreman, he’s a tight- arse.”
With a quick look to right and left, Geoff approached the skips and clambered up to inspect their contents. Harry gazed round. The place was quiet. A handful of the men who worked at the site were having a cup of tea in a Portakabin. The rest of the totters were back on the waste mound, scrabbling through heavy duty debris which bore a disconcerting resemblance to stuff Harry had seen exhibited at the Tate. He wandered towards the corrugated iron sheds which stood below the iron bulk of the incinerator and the crusher.
