NATIONAL TREASURE Barry Faulkner (the little red hen ebook .txt) 📖

The doors closed as I got back into the van and made my way back round to the gates, which swung open as I approached and closed behind me when I’d left. I stopped a couple of hundred metres up the road, got out and looked back. The whisp of smoke from the crematorium chimney turned slowly into a small plume; the twins were working their magic. There wouldn’t be much smoke, as the filters used by crematoriums these days to stay within the clean air laws strip out all the harmful bits. Job done.

I made my way back home and left the van in Gold’s parking spot, before going up to my apartment, taking a shower and saying goodnight to the world.

     CHAPTER 12

In the morning my stomach reminded me I hadn’t eaten for some time. I looked in the kitchen cupboard at my usual bran flakes, raisins and walnuts and wasn’t impressed, so I took a stroll out to the local greasy spoon and had a full English with a giant mug of tea. Mistake. Why do you always regret the loss of willpower? I regretted the full English as I trudged back to the apartment feeling bloated. I took a half hour session on my multi-gym and felt a bit better physically, but still my lack of willpower was annoying me. I needed to get stronger in that department. Gold’s the same with chocolate; tells me she’s never going to eat another bar and the next week her dashboard is a veritable hoard of Mars bars, Snickers and Milky Way wrappers.

I had work to do, so a quick shower and some fresh clothes and I felt better. I took the stairs down to the apartment foyer and gave the security guard the ‘25% off your next full English’ voucher the greasy spoon had given me when I’d paid; looking at the guard’s girth, I reckoned he was a regular. We exchanged a few pleasantries and I crossed to the door leading to the stairs down to the garage, with the guard’s ‘Have a nice day, Mr Hadlow’ getting a smile, and a ‘You too’ from me.

The West London Cleaning Company van was still there, and I wondered if the Bogdans had missed it yet; they must have. I drove it to Deptford, nice and easy; stopping for people waiting at crossings, not pushing through amber lights. The last thing I wanted was a police stop and trying to explain the bloodstains in the back. I pulled into the yard of ‘Deptford Scrap, Ferrous and Non Ferrous Metal Bought’. It was busy; two metallic cranes were lifting from piles of scrap and dumping it into a crusher, a line of written-off car crash vehicles stripped of anything saleable waiting for the same treatment. The crusher’s jaws would render them into a five-foot square metal cube. I pulled up in front of a portacabin, gave a tap on the door and went inside.

‘Ben Nevis, haven’t seen you for ages.’

Annie Greggs was a chain-smoking Cockney, the epitome of mutton dressed as lamb. Pushing seventy-five, she had a blonde wig, make-up she must put on with a trowel, duck lips, Botox cheeks, breast implants to shame Dolly Parton, and wore miniskirts, fishnet stockings and high heel boots. She’d inherited the yard from her father who somehow ended up in his own crusher. She’d always maintained he’d slipped on the edge when a gear got stuck and was releasing it; others say he welshed on a debt to somebody he shouldn’t have and paid the price. I don’t know the truth. But I do know that Annie is good at what she does; she doesn’t suffer fools and has been known to lay out a heavy docker who ridiculed her appearance with one right-hander.

She was stood behind the counter looking out of the window to the yard. ‘You got yourself a proper job at last have you, Ben – cleaning?’

I ignored that remark. ‘How are you, Annie? You look busy.’

‘Always busy, Ben. Great demand for steel these days, can’t complain. What brings you here?’

‘Well, my new job as a cleaner didn’t work out – can’t sell the van because of the sign writing, so I want it crushed.’

She smiled at me, not believing a word I’d said. ‘Of course you do – and you’ve misplaced the registration documents too, haven’t you Ben?’

‘You know me so well, Annie.’

‘Too well, Ben, too well. Urgent, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Five hundred notes urgent?’

Seems five hundred pounds is the going rate for everything. I’d stopped at an ATM on the way and refilled my ankle wallet. I knelt and pulled out eleven fifties and passed them over.

‘You’re a star, Annie. Take your latest toyboy for a decent meal.’

She laughed. ‘You know me so well, Ben.’

‘Too well, Annie, too well.’

‘Come on then, let’s get it done. Cash is king.’

She led the way outside and crossed to one of the magnetic cranes and shouted up to the driver and pointed to the van. He nodded, dropped his load of scrap back on the heap and swung the jib round over the van, switched on the magnet and dropped it onto the roof with bang. The van was lifted up, over the other cars and held waiting, swinging slowly above the crusher as the last heap of metal slid out in box form onto the conveyor belt from the jaws as they opened like a hungry shark, and the hydraulic shaft pushed it out. The magnet was turned off and West London Cleaning Company’s van fell into the jaws. The power of them closing on and squashing the van was quite frightening; if Annie’s dad had been alive inside the pit as they closed, he probably died of fright before they ate him. The van came out as a box