There was also the question of the safe. Although the combination would have defied Harry Houdini on a good day, he always felt uneasy about having anyone around if he need to be away from the garage to get spares and new parts from Barnstable; sometimes he had to be away for a whole day searching around some of the scrap yards at Taunton.
The room was a mess and he knew it. He filled the kettle and sat down and waited for it to boil. He remembered the half bottle of whisky in the cupboard. He poured a good shot into a dirty mug and downed it in one gulp; the raw spirit made him choke. “Damn it,” he shouted to the empty room as he wiped the watery spittle from his mouth and nose. He busied himself with making tea; it gave him time to think. If it was a prank, then tomorrow morning he would find out when no one turned up. He thought about it. If someone had found out, then 2000 was not a big sum compared to what he had in the safe and the bank. And there was a lot more once he concluded the deal with Lord Farleigh’s friend. This was Joe’s first run-in with blackmail, although he had seen it on TV dramas and read about it. He thought he could handle it. He would just bully whoever was behind all of this until they gave up.
The kettle’s shrill whistle made him jump. He yanked it off the cooker and stood there holding it in his hand while he tried to figure out who was behind it all. It could be a young couple after some pin money, or even someone who needed to buy drugs; he knew that a lot of that went on in the local villages, especially amongst the youths who had no job and no prospects. He flipped the lid of the half empty bottle of milk and sniffed it, it was a bit off. He cursed. He put three heaped spoonsful of sugar and the half soured milk in his tea and stirred it slowly. He held the warm mug in his hands and savoured the comfort it gave him and began to feel better.
He rummaged around in the drawer for a biscuit. He finally settled for a small fancy cake covered in icing and little pieces of lemon peel that had got tucked behind a roll of cling film. ‘I’ve got to think this through’, he muttered. The first person who came to mind was Jack Mason over at Barnstaple who had fenced some silver spoons and a gold bracelet for him. But he thought Mason was a spineless sod and would not have the gumption. Besides that, Joe figured that he had enough on Jack to get him 10 years, and on top of that, he had young kids and he wouldn’t want Joe to tell his wife about the girl in the shop he’d been fooling around with. He discarded the notion that it could be Jack.
His mind wandered back to the girl who worked in Jack’s shop. Maybe he might ask her out for a drink or a meal himself, he mused. Years before he had been fond of a girl that worked at the car place where he was an apprentice. He had almost asked her to marry him, but she had gone off with his best mate. Since then he had been wary of getting involved with anyone. The pin-ups in his office were the sort he wanted to meet, always smiling and not wanting much back.
He starred at the grey wall and sought an answer. Bruce might have told one of his friends. That’s it. Bloody Bruce and his big mouth, I’ll bloody murder the sod when I see him, he thought. He finished his tea. Stop worrying, Joe, he told himself. Then he hesitated. Lately he had noticed that he had begun to think aloud. Going bloody stir crazy, he had thought when he had first noticed it. He shrugged his shoulders.
“So bloody what,” he said out loud. “It’s my bloody life; I’ll do what I bloody well want.” Then he had another idea. It must be a couple of small time crooks, he mused. A big syndicate gang would have come to the garage and worked him over. No I’m being buggered about by a pair of shysters, he decided.
He paced around the garage kicking at anything that got in his way. He decided to go over to the bank and get some cash just in case someone really did turn up. ‘Sod it’, he muttered as he threw a spanner against the garage wall. As the metallic clang faded away, suddenly he felt a wave of loneliness. For a few seconds he just stood still and wished that Bruce was there, and for a split second, he thought he was going to cry. This was not how he had expected things to turn out. It had all been going so good. He had that bitter taste in his mouth again. He spat into an oil drum that he used to dump the empty tomato soup cans and other metal waste.
Then it struck him. He still had that revolver he’d stolen from one of the officers when he quit the Territorial reserves. All that weekend warrior stuff had seemed like a good way to get some extra money and go boozing with a bunch of his mates, but he had soon got tired of being told what to do. He searched in the drawer where he kept his tax returns. There it was in a box at the back. He fingered the Enfield Mk I Revolver and checked that it was loaded. The weight was perfect; he held it out as though fending off an intruder. If his tormentor played up, then he would soon change his mind
