Chapter One


“Just the Echo, please, Connie …. Ta! How long’s that lot been diggin’ up outside your shop, then?”
“Thanks, Phil! They’ve been there nearly three days now. Suppose we’re lucky, we must be ‘upstream’ of the problem, so to speak: but next door’s had no water for three days, and there’s the two flats above him as well! It’s a disgrace, I think! People gotta right to expect basics like water, an’ we pay enough to United Utilities fer th’ privilege!”
“Three days, you say?!  D’you know what, I’m not surprised, and I’ll tell you why! When I just walked past them, I counted ten o’ them, all in all. One of ’em – the foreman, I suppose, or the ‘ganger’ or whatever they call themselves nowadays – anyway, he’s on the mobile phone an’ all the others are standing around in their hi-vis bibs, gazing into the hole they’ve dug and yattering on in some foreign language I ain’t never ’eard before: now, if they don’t speak English, how can they be expected to understand what they’re s’posed t’ be doin’?!”
“Really? I didn’t realise – there’s none of them been in for a drink or a packet of fags, though, and I was beginning to think that was a bit unusual. 'cos whenever there’s been any work done on the road before there’s always been someone come in for something during the day ….. still, they don’t ….. look foreign, do they?”
As Phil and Connie gazed at the workers huddled together for what scant protection this afforded them from the driving rain, Phil caught a glimpse of a flag on the back of the two hard hats nearest the shop window, the upper half white, the lower half red.
“I know that flag!” he said, slowly, frowning as his mind raced to plumb deep into his peripheral memories. He’d seen it recently, at a football match …..
“Poland! That’s the Polish flag!” He said triumphantly, after a few seconds thought.
A few disjointed scraps of current news clicked into place.
“That’s right! Poland’s just become the latest country to join the EU: there was something on Newsnight about expecting, what was it, about ten thou immigrants during the first year – though where they get their numbers from’s beyond me! Who can say with any certainty how many are going to up sticks and go for it?.”
“About the only thing I know about Poland is, you can get direct flights from Liverpool John Lennon – though why anyone would want to go there from choice is another matter!” sniffed Connie. She thought of Yorkshire (and even North Wales, which was closer) as “forrinparts” and made the term sound just like one word when she used it.
“Yeah, well: they play football, though, so they can’t be completely uncivilised!” Phil protested. Connie rounded on him in a flash.
“No? P’raps I should remind you o’ that next time Man U. are in town …. !”
“Ah, now, that’s another matter: their fans aren’t even ’uman, they’re nowt but animals anyway!” Phil riposted. “ …. and I never saw any o’ them play, but me Da says Poland had some real world-class players in the past, an’ he should know!”
Phil picked up his Echo and prepared to leave. Having quoted his father as if he were an infallible reference source (which in Phil’s opinion Mr. P. Freeman [snr] undoubtedly was) he bade the shopkeeper an ‘over-the-top’ elaborately executed adieu worthy of any commedia dell’arte courtesan, and strolled home, passing the Polish navigators on his way. He glanced at his watch, noting that there was barely an hour of full daylight before the road crew would be obliged to stop for the day: it seemed inevitable that the job was going to drag into at least one more day. He shrugged: for him as a newspaper reporter, the prospect of a full weekend off was an attractive proposition, and he had no intention of letting his curiosity and ‘nose’ for a possible story distract him.
As he set his coffee on to “perk”, he continued to think about the sober, unsmiling but not unhappy faces of the Polish workers. There was something teasing the edge of his memory, something he’d ‘seen’ without really paying much attention on some earlier occasion over the last few days….
The clouds parted, and suddenly he knew what it was. He sprinted upstairs. From his bedroom window it was just possible to catch a glimpse of Connie’s shop – he’d done it more than once when he’d wanted to be sure she was still open rather than waste a trip of several hundred yards to the nearest street corner before he could see if her lights were still on.
From the bedroom he could see that the navvies were still there. The street lamps were just beginning to build towards their full glaring neon efficiency, and the crew seemed to be starting to tidy equipment away. He snatched his mobile from the night table and speed-dialled a frequent contact.
“Brian? You still got that Honda? Good! No, I don’t want to buy it, but I want you to do me a favour. I want you to follow someone, but make sure they don’t cotton on …..  no, nothing illegal – at least not on my part, and as for the ‘other party’, well! That’s why I want you to follow them! It should be easy enough, as long as you get here sharpish!
 I want you to follow a bright yellow Tranny, no logo or name on it but a typical builder’s van, dinks, dents and scuffs, y’know? It’s due to pick up a road crew outside Connie’s … the newsagent down the road? And I don’t think he’ll be going far, I just want to know where he drops them, what they do when they get where they’re going, okay?”
“That was easy enough!”
Brian peeled off his gauntlets and jacket, tossing them on the table next to his helmet. He followed Phil into the kitchen and accepted a mug of coffee as he sat down.
“And you’re sure he didn’t ‘make’ you?”
“Never gave any sign of even looking round: he must feel pretty confident, maybe he’s been doing it for a while?”
“Could be.” Phil tried to sound non-committal, as if it was unimportant, but spoilt the illusion by asking just a millisecond too eagerly:
“Where d’you end up, then?”
Brian looked his friend thoughtfully.
“You’re on to something here, Phil: I know you too well for you to blag me! Come on, out with it – I’m willing to bet it’s too big for you to handle on your own anyway!”
“Brian, I promise: if there’s anything – anything at all! – in this, you’ll be the first one I rope in. But I need to know what you found out, first. Where did you finish up? You weren’t very long, so it couldn’t have been too far away!”
Brian fished a piece of paper out of his pocket.
“I walked up the road after they’d all gone inside. This is the address: it’s one of those little side roads off Kensington, big old three-storey Victorian properties. I had to wait until the van had pulled away, then I went past on the other side of the road and came back down the next street. But you said there were – how many? Nine plus a foreman on the navvy team? Thought so: there were sixteen men got out of the van and went into the house. I suppose it’s been stripped down to make room for as many mattresses as possible.”
“And one single bathroom for everyone to use, I guess – maybe an extra khazi in the back yard, since it’s an old house – and a poky little kitchen if they’re lucky!”
“Tell you what” said Brian, thoughtfully. “That Tranny came back just before I left – it was almost full dark by then, so there’s no chance he spotted me. But the driver got out with half a dozen shopping bags: it smelt like they were full of fish and chips.”
“Sounds as if the …. What shall we call him, Landlord? Gangmaster? ….”
“Slave trader?” suggested Brian, not entirely facetiously
“Probably not too far from the mark!” agreed Phil “But for the moment let’s be generous and call him ‘Landlord’. It seems to me he’s not taking any chances of anyone doing a runner: he isn’t even allowing them to go out and buy food and drinks!”
“D’you think he’s …. “managing” their pay for them, too?” Brian asked “ …. because it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard of that sort of thing happening, either! Remember the way the shit hit the fan when those cockle-pickers drowned up in Morecombe Bay last year? The Triad gangmaster had been ‘administering’ their wages, too – and keeping most of it for himself, if I remember right!”
“That’s a good point – wonder how we might go about finding out?” Phil mused.  
“The first thing to do is, find out who owns the property they’re living in, because it’s a stone certain guaranteed fact they don’t own it themselves! Therefore, they have to be paying rent of some sort to someone or other.”
“…….. and Big Bossman is almost certainly making ‘direct debit’ stoppages from their pay packets, meaning that they’re paying over the odds!”
“Brian, your cynicism is starting to get the upper hand!” Phil warned. Privately, he was prepared to concede that his friend was quite possibly right, but he was loath to admit it.
“Can you access any info from the Echo archives, Phil? I mean, statistics and stuff, anything I couldn’t find on a  Public Domain website or with a standard search engine?”
“I can log on from my PC at home, I suppose: d’you realise, this was supposed to be my first weekend off for months, and I won’t see another one until about February?”
“Come off it, Phil: you know you’ve always fancied your chances of grabbing a, what’s its name, a Pulitzer prize?”
“I think they’re only given in the States: there’s something called the Fulbright Prize in the UK, though: one of the Top Guns at the Echo won that last year.”
“Right, then!”
Brian eased himself to his feet and began replacing his riding leathers.
“You’ve got that look in your eye, Phil: I know you, you’re just too polite to throw me out so you can settle down with your PC and start digging the dirt ……….!”
Though he’d long since managed to learn the trick of not blushing furiously when he was found out, Phil at least had the good grace to acknowledge that Brian had hit extremely close to the mark, and made no attempt to persuade his friend to stay. He followed Brian to the door, with sincere thanks for his assistance. By the time Brian’s Honda roared its throaty challenge, ricocheting off the walls and houses on either side of the narrow road, he was scurrying back to his PC. It looked as if it was going to be a long night ………..