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An evening at the pub.

A quiet night out

By Peter RosePublished 3 years ago 8 min read
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An evening at the pub.

A quiet night out.

It was not a dark and stormy night, may be it should have been. We, that is Jim and myself, decided that we wanted a quiet pint at the local, “The Bull” in Braintree. Since it was a Thursday in mid November which is always cold and miserable, the weather should be keeping the crowds at home with their catch up TV specials. So it could be expected to be a slow night, a peaceful night and this suited our mood. There were only three other customers in the bar when we arrived. We settled in a gloomy corner with our pints of best bitter. The bar room TV was on the sports channel with the sound off, as always in this pub. The pub sign outside still shows a bull and the place is so old they measure its age in centuries, it is thought to have been originally built about 1450 and it those days it was the main farmers meeting and dealing place, for the livestock market. The cattle market is now a supermarket and the place has undergone a few changes in the last five hundred and fifty, or more, years, but it is still a pub selling “real ale.” Attempts have been made to move with the times and increase the money coming in. The old cellar, believed to once have been the headquarters of a smuggling gang, is now a weekend nightclub, best avoided by anyone over the age of thirty. Modern safety laws dictate that emergency exits have had to be built into what once were lathe and plaster walls, otherwise the basic room is much as it has always been, the bar is now an upgrade from planks resting on beer barrels and now they also sell lager and wine; but the concept is still the same. Food is available but to be honest I prefer the fish and chips from the Greek owned place across the road.

So it was dark and cold outside, but warm and cozy but dimly lit inside. We sat in silence watching the ever changing screen, content to have nothing to report, no drama, no plans to be made. The door to the entrance passage opened slowly, as though the person about to come in was cautious, a face hidden under a hat and scarf looked round the edge of the door then disappeared. A few moments later the door opened again and a figure walked in, glanced around went back out then two figures came in. Both male and both about six feet tall, well built, well dressed and around forty years old. They took over stools at the bar just under the TV set. We could not hear what they ordered but both were served in shot glasses. We could see their faces in the mirror that was behind the bar, it was placed to magnify the appearance of the spirit range on offer but it provided us with sight of faces we recognized. Faces that should not have been out of jail, let alone drinking in a public place. Jim used his cell phone and we received very unwelcome news. The two people in our pub, had walked free when witnesses failed to turn up at the trail. All our undercover work had been washed away. Since we were still working undercover we had not been at the court, our bosses keeping us well out of the way of any risk that some stupid reporter would be blowing our cover. We stayed well in the gloom since both the guys at the bar would know us as mid level gangsters, sort of middle management with attitude. Violent attitude, that was our cover. The two guys were Alf Brown and Chris Jones and together they controlled just all the drug and people trafficking east of London and south of the Humber river. They would normally have plenty of muscle around as protection and they would not normally enter a pub without it being very carefully checked out first but this evening they seemed to want privacy even from their own people and were so elated at the collapse of the court case they forgot some of their own rules. The original quick check had been done by their driver, an ace at high speed but obviously not so good in the gloom of the pub, he had not “made” us. We stayed quiet and still. Alf and Chris talked a while then both got up and left. We followed as discretely as we could. Their car was waiting outside and left as soon as they settled in, heading out of town towards the west. We waited until they went out of sight then used my car to follow. Not much traffic about so we soon picked up their tail lights. I made sure we never got within a quarter of a mile of their rear bumper, Occasional I would put main beam lights on then pull into a lay by. Count to ten then drive on on dipped lights. As we got further out into the countryside I dropped further and further back. We saw their stop lights come on and I immediately turned our lights off and stopped. We saw their head lights turn sharply away from the road and bounce around a little, obviously they had pulled onto a rough track. We waited, thirty seconds seem like forever in these situations but these are normally very cautious guys. We followed with me driving just on side lights, scary on a dark night just as well no other traffic around as I veered across the road a few times,. We found the track they had gone down and parked our car in woodland on the opposite side of the road and a hundred yards further on. Not knowing if they had others on watch we walked carefully along the side of the track stopping and crouching down every few yards. We did not know of any real country people in the gangs who were all very urban and so unused to open dark windswept locations. So it was a good bet any people keeping watch would be using torches rather than allowing their eyes to adjust to the dark. No lights showed. We found three more cars parked by an old barn. Off to one side was a JCB digger.

Pain was begin caused to someone inside the barn, we could hear that. Jim went to the left and I to the right we met at the other side of the barn, no one on watch. A scream from inside and laughter. A wooden shutter had split allowing us the see inside part of the barn. Two men were hanging from the roof beams, their arms stretched above their heads and their feet a few inches clear of the ground. They were naked and blood was seeping from numerous small cuts to their bodies. Around them stood the six most dangerous crooks in the east of England, guys who made the Kray twins look like choir boys. We heard Chris Jones say “someone told the filth who to talk to and you two are the only ones who both knew who and are stupid enough to grass; We need to be sure we have all those you mentioned, then you can be cut down.” This caused general mirth among both the 5 other gang leaders and the three muscle men who were both guards and torturers. By shifting around we gained a view further down the barn, it seemed to be almost empty but at the far end was a mound of freshly dug earth. The earth was from a large hole big enough for two bodies to be buried very deep. Jim was using the video system on his cell phone to try and get evidence of the scene but the lighting was poor and we could only hope something could be made out from it. We backed off slowly and carefully until we could talk and still be certain no one in the barn would hear us. What to do? If we phone this in it will take at least twenty minutes for squad cars to reach this far from the station and telling uniform to approach silently is to waste your breath, they will come in all lights and sirens, the bad guys will not miss that and be gone before the first police boot hits the dirt. So what to do? do we wait and try to film as they leave then follow or do we seal up the doors to the barn shutting them all inside and call for back up then? Or shut the buggers in and set fire to the barn and hope to save the nation the costs of court cases and prisons?

The muffled screams that we had been hearing has stopped, we needed to decide what to do very quickly, no time for risk assessment or to consider how the forces publicity department could be involved. We had to act and act fast. We had the bosses of all our local criminal activity, shut in a wooden old barn; they were all men who had murdered and tortured others, they all made big profits from the absolute misery they inflicted on the girls forced into prostitution, the young children they sold to pedophile rings and the drugs they sold to anyone and everyone. no one not even our bosses knew where we were. We ran back to the front of the barn, the door was still closed. Some old but heavy logs lay close by. We heaved one into position that held the doors closed, The doors opened outwards and the log would probably not hold if the men inside made concerted and repeated efforts to force the door open. I ran to the JCB, the keys were still in it and the engine still warm. The villains inside the barn must have heard the log settle into position for they started to yell, shots were fired but they did not know where we were. I backed the digger up to the barn and stopped it wedged up against the doors, no way they could open this. Jim was already at the back of the building piling straw and scrap timber against the wall. We set this on fire and quickly set up more fires against all the sides of the barn. Once the whole barn was blazing, we ran back to our car, Returned to “The Bull” and settled in for a quiet evening at the pub.

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About the Creator

Peter Rose

Collections of "my" vocal essays with additions, are available as printed books ASIN 197680615 and 1980878536 also some fictional works and some e books available at Amazon;-

amazon.com/author/healthandfunpeterrose

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