The Dock Road, running out from the city centre towards Bootle, has seen better days. Warehouses, shabby and careworn, faced the sea with an unbroken high wall on the other side of the road, above which a forest of cranes and ship hoists flourished. The pubs were still there; some of them were even open.
I walked through the doors of the Eagle, unsure of what to expect, never been here before. I never got to choose the venue for a meet, a sore point on occasions, but this seemed okay.
Half a dozen drooling mouth-breathers with excessively long arms looked up as I entered without discernible interest. Charles Darwin would have had a field day. There was clear evidence of a separate species right here with Homo Sapiens having negligible input into a very shallow gene pool. Were they all related, I wondered? Perhaps very closely related indeed. Through successive generations. In-breeding didn’t do much for the crowned heads of Europe and this particular group appeared to have had very little choice in the physical or mental capacity of their antecedents.
I put my ungracious thoughts to one side as I reached the bar.
“Yeah?’ The barman was tall and unkempt, his yellow teeth partly explained by the un-tipped cigarette he was smoking. News of a ban on smoking in public places had yet to reach the Dock Road. I thought it unlikely that anyone in here would be making a complaint. Six pairs of eyes swiveled as one to await my response.
‘Pint,’ I said, tapping the porcelain tap in front of me. My fellow drinkers lost interest. A single word had been enough. A Scouser, a beer drinker, not given to much chat, looked like I’d passed the test. I took my drink and sat at a table at the side, facing the door.
I looked up as the door swung open, relaxed as a middle-aged man shambled in. Not here for me. His complexion was the colour of wallpaper paste that had been allowed to stand in the bucket overnight. Complete with lumps. He stood in the doorway as if carrying a heavy rucksack, slightly stooped over and a pained expression fixed to his face with an air of permanence. His clothes were dark and faintly musty, hanging in loose fold with random creases at inappropriate points. My first impression was of a sepia photograph depicting some unknown ancestor long since departed discovered while searching through a shabby trunk in the attic. People watching, putting people into boxes, was an inevitable part of my trade. Sorting out the harmless from the potentially dangerous. This man was harmless, to me at least. He ordered a pint of mild, dark and thick, sat at a table next to three other hard drinkers, clutching their pints obsessively. Nods were exchanged, nobody spoke. This wasn’t a debating society.
The landlord shouted a name I didn’t catch into the curtain behind the bar and a woman poked her head out. He waved a hand at the room and she came from behind the curtain, surly expression rooted in place. Her legs were as thin as the excuses of a serial adulterer and a bruise stood out like the damaged skin of a windfall apple on her left cheek. None of the drinkers even glanced at her as she collected the debris from the tables, empty glasses, crisp papers, her expression bleak enough to curdle milk.
As she returned behind the curtain the door opened once more and a man in worn overalls entered. He looked around, eyes flitting past me without interest, and walked to the bar. He ordered a drink, walked to the table next to mine and sat down. The room settled again, each of us engrossed in our common purpose. The new arrival reached across, indicating the Echo I’d left on the table.
‘Any chance of a quick look at your paper, mate?’ He asked.
‘Help yourself, I’ve finished with it.’
He nodded, opened the paper and was instantly engrossed in the contents. So he should have been – I’d laboriously transferred three pages of notes to the inside margins of each page. He read for ten minutes, whistling softly at one point, never glancing in my direction. I sat and sipped my beer, hoping to forestall buying another. It wasn’t a contender for an award from CAMRA.
The other man folded the paper, stood up and tucked it under his arm. He nodded once and walked away, returning his empty glass to the bar on the way out.
I took another sip of my beer, almost finished now. All done for another week. I’d need to make a point at the next meeting – the overalls were right for the venue, but taking glasses back to the bar was the sort of thing that got you noticed. This wasn’t one of the poncey wine bars he was used to. Actions that were commonplace in the City Centre bars, even simple politeness, marked you out as an outsider here.
Got you noticed. I didn’t like that.
It wasn’t much, but I had self-interest to consider.
Being noticed wasn’t part of my brief.
Being noticed could result in a kicking, or worse.
I had a lot at stake here. One five-minute meeting a week with my support was all I’d been prepared to risk and only then on condition we never actually spoke. My predecessor had been a bit more chatty, perhaps slightly more in need of support from his back-up squad. I didn’t like to think ill of a man who’d never walk again, never be able to dress or feed himself without help, but I’d no intention of repeating his mistakes.
I left my glass on the table, walked to the door without acknowledging anyone. Safer that way. Another weekly report safely dispatched. How many more? I was closer now, gaining the confidence of the man who kept the supply of class A drugs ticking over, maintaining that delicate balance of supply and demand. He was a cautious man. One of the reasons he’d been at the top of his profession for ten years or more was his ability to spot any threat to his liberty and deal with it.
I was a threat.
A very serious threat.
I had to hope he didn’t know it yet.
