The New Collected Short Stories Read online

  As Doug had just begun a six-year sentence and was back to earning £12.50 a week as the prison librarian, he was hardly in a position to offer an opinion. However, even he was impressed when, the following year, Sally declared an income of £37,000, which included her added sales bonuses. This time, the accountant advised her to purchase a third lorry.

  Doug was eventually released from prison having only served half his sentence (three years). Sally was parked outside the prison gates in her Vauxhall, waiting to drive her husband home. His nine-year-old daughter, Kelly, was strapped into the back, next to her three-year-old sister Sam. Sally had not allowed either of the children to visit their father in prison, so when Doug took the little girl in his arms for the first time, Sam burst into tears. Sally explained to her that the strange man was her father.

  Over a welcome breakfast of bacon and eggs, Sally was able to report that she had been advised by her accountant to form a limited company. Haslett Haulage had declared a profit of £21,600 in its first year, and she had added two more lorries to their growing fleet. Sally told her husband that she was thinking of giving up her job at the estate agent’s to become full-time chair of the new company.

  ‘Chair?’ said Doug. ‘What’s that?’

  Doug was only too pleased to leave Sally to run the company, as long as he was allowed to take his place behind the wheel as one of her drivers. This state of affairs would have continued quite happily, if Doug had not once again been approached by the man from Marseilles – who never seemed to end up in jail – with what he confidently assured him was a fool-proof plan with no risks attached and, more important, this time his wife need never find out.

  Doug resisted the Frenchman’s advances for several months, but after losing a rather large sum in a poker game, finally succumbed. Just one trip, he promised himself. The man from Marseilles smiled, as he handed over an envelope containing £12,500 in cash.

  Under Sally’s chairmanship, the Haslett Haulage Company continued to grow, in both reputation and below the bottom line. Meanwhile, Doug once again became used to having cash in hand; money which did not rely on a balance sheet, and was not subject to a tax return.

  Someone else was continuing to keep a close eye on the Haslett Haulage Company, and Doug in particular. Regular as clockwork, Doug could be seen driving his lorry through the Dover terminal, with a full load of sprouts and peas, destined for Marseilles. But Mark Cainen, now an anti-smuggling officer working as part of the Law Enforcement Unit, never once saw Doug make the return journey. This worried him.

  The officer checked his records, to find that Haslett Haulage was now running nine lorries a week to different parts of Europe. Their chairman, Sally Haslett, had a spotless reputation – not unlike her vehicles – with everyone she dealt with, from customs to customers. But Mr Cainen was still curious to find out why Doug was no longer driving back through his port. He took it personally.

  A few discreet enquiries revealed that Doug could still be seen in Marseilles unloading his sprouts and peas, and later loading up with crates of bananas. However, there was one slight variation. He was now driving back via Newhaven, which Cainen estimated must have added at least a couple of hours to Doug’s journey.

  All customs officers have the option of serving one month a year at another port of entry, to further their promotion prospects. The previous year Mr Cainen had selected Heathrow airport; that year he opted for a month in Newhaven.

  Officer Cainen waited patiently for Doug’s lorry to appear on the dockside, but it wasn’t until the end of his second week that he spotted his old adversary waiting in line to disembark from an Olsen’s ferry. The moment Doug’s lorry drove onto the dock, Mr Cainen disappeared upstairs into the staffroom and poured himself a cup of coffee. He walked across to the window and watched Doug’s vehicle came to a halt at the front of the line. He was waved quickly through by the two officers on duty. Mr Cainen made no attempt to intervene as Doug drove out onto the road to continue his journey back to Sleaford. He had to wait another ten days before Doug’s lorry reappeared, and this time he noted that only one thing hadn’t changed. Mr Cainen didn’t think it was a coincidence.

  When Doug returned via Newhaven five days later, the same two officers gave his vehicle no more than a cursory glance, before waving him through. The officer now knew that it wasn’t a coincidence. Mr Cainen reported his observations to his boss in Newhaven and, as his month was up, made his way back to Dover.

  Doug completed three more journeys from Marseilles via Newhaven before the two customs officers were arrested. When Doug saw five officers heading towards his truck, he knew that his new impossible-to-be-caught system had been sussed.

  Doug didn’t waste the court’s time pleading not guilty, because one of the customs officers with whom he had been splitting the take had made a deal to have his sentence reduced if he named names. He named Douglas Arthur Haslett.

  The judge sent Doug down for eight years, with no remission for good behaviour, unless he agreed to pay a fine of £750,000. Doug didn’t have £750,000 and begged Sally to help out, as he couldn’t face the thought of another eight years behind bars. Sally had to sell everything, including the cottage, the carpark, nine lorries and even her engagement ring, so that her husband could comply with the court order.

  After serving a year at Wayland Category C prison in Norfolk, Doug was transferred back to North Sea Camp. Once again, he was appointed as librarian, which was where I first met him.

  I was impressed that Sally and his two – now grown-up – daughters came to visit Doug every weekend. He told me that they didn’t discuss business, even though he’d sworn on his mother’s grave never, ever again.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Sally had warned him. ‘I’ve already sent your lorry to the scrapyard.’

  ‘Can’t blame the woman, after all I’ve put her through,’ said Doug when I next visited the library. ‘But if they won’t let me get behind a wheel once I’m released, what am I going to do for the rest of my life?’

  I was released a couple of years before Doug, and if I hadn’t been addressing a literary festival in Lincoln some years later, I might never have discovered what had become of the chief librarian.

  As I stared down into the audience during questions, I thought I recognized three vaguely familiar faces looking up at me from the third row. I racked that part of my brain that is meant to store names, but it didn’t respond. That was, until I had a question about the difficulties of writing while in prison. Then it all came flooding back. I had last seen Sally some three years before, when she was visiting Doug accompanied by her two daughters, Kelly and, and . . . Sam.

  After I’d taken the final question, we broke for coffee, and the three of them came across to join me.

  ‘Hi, Sally. How’s Doug?’ I asked even before they could introduce themselves. An old political ploy, and they looked suitably impressed.

  ‘Retired,’ said Sally without explanation.

  ‘But he was younger than me,’ I protested, ‘and never stopped telling everyone what he planned to do once he was released.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Sally, ‘but I can assure you he’s retired. Haslett Haulage is now run by me and my two daughters, with a backroom staff of twenty-one, not including the drivers.’

  ‘So you’re obviously doing well,’ I said, fishing.

  ‘You clearly don’t read the financial pages,’ she teased.

  ‘I’m like the Japanese,’ I countered, ‘I always read my papers from back to front. So what have I missed?’

  ‘We went public last year,’ chipped in Kelly. ‘Mum’s chair, I’m in charge of new accounts and Sam is responsible for the drivers.’

  ‘And if I remember correctly, you had about nine lorries?’

  ‘We now have forty-one,’ said Sally, ‘and our turnover last year was just under five million.’

  ‘And Doug doesn’t play any role?’

  ‘Doug plays golf,’ said Sally, ‘which doesn’