Somebody's Doodle Read online

  Somebody’s Doodle

  NIKKI AND RICHARD ATTREE

  Copyright © 2016 Nikki and Richard Attree

  All rights reserved.

  www.somebodysdoodle.com

  ISBN-13:978-1523212293

  ISBN:10:1523212292

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1: When Jack met Harry

  Chapter 2: Elizabeth’s Grand Designs

  Chapter 3: Pauline Delivers

  Chapter 4: Annie’s Tale

  Chapter 5: Somebody’s Doodle

  Chapter 6: Wags, the Hilton for Hounds

  Chapter 7: Canine Co-stars

  Chapter 8: Which One Do We Nick?

  Chapter 9: Hostages at Harry’s

  Chapter 10: The Bucket of Blood

  Chapter 11: A Taxi to Stoke Newington

  Chapter 12: The Ransom Note Copywriter

  Chapter 13: Star Crossed Lovers

  Chapter 14: Denouement in Wembley

  Chapter 15: A Turn Up for the Book

  Chapter 16: See You in Court

  Chapter 17: A Dog is for Life

  Chapter 18: Truth and Reconciliation

  Chapter 19: Hampstead Heath Revisited

  Extras 1: How (and why) we wrote ‘Somebody’s Doodle’

  Extras 2: About the Authors

  Extras 3: About ‘Nobody’s Poodle’

  Extras 4: List of websites, contacts, acknowledgements etc

  We dedicate Somebody’s Doodle to our readers (without them it’s all a bit pointless, eh?). We hope they have as much enjoyment reading it as we had writing it.

  “I am Nobody's Poodle

  But I'm Somebody's Doodle,

  And I Woof ... therefore I Am!”

  Gizmo

  "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." Groucho Marx

  1 WHEN JACK MET HARRY

  The van door slams shut, and there’s a yelp from inside. Whoever, or whatever, is in the back of Harry’s battered old rust-bucket is not happy to be there.

  "Oi 'Arry, careful mate! You almost chopped the mutt’s nuts off.”

  “Shut the feck up Jack! Just get yer arse in, before she clocks that we’ve nicked ‘er dog.”

  Jack jumps in the passenger side, and Harry slams the van into gear. With an impressive squeal of tyres they force their way into the gridlocked traffic of the morning school run. There’s a blast of horns, and an irate woman in a Range Rover sticks one impeccably manicured finger up at them.

  "Er 'Arry, maybe it wasn't such a good idea to steal a dog when half the women in Hampstead are dropping off their kids at school? We’re not exactly making what you’d call a speedy getaway, mate. I mean, this has to be one of the most leisurely getaways in the history of getaways."

  "The most leisurely getaway in the history of getaways?" repeats Harry, in the whining, mock-posh voice that passes for sarcasm with him. “Sometimes you really sound like a poncey git Jack, and it doesn’t ‘alf get on my nerves. You know bleedin well it’s the only time of day when the dog’s on the ‘eath.”

  The van crawls a quarter of a mile in the next forty-five minutes, while the dog in the back barks manically.

  "Shut that feckin dog up, Jack!”

  “And how am I meant to do that mate?"

  “I don't know. Use your bleedin imagination ... mate” Harry spits back. Stress, and a hint of menace in his voice now.

  Jack undoes his seat belt, crawls into the back of the van, and attempts to calm the dog down. “Good boy Angus” he whispers soothingly, noticing the name tag on the Highland Terrier’s collar. “You’re OK with us ...”

  Angus isn’t convinced. He bears his teeth and growls, in that surprisingly aggressive way that Terriers have made their own. As he prepares to sink his teeth into Jack’s crotch, he’s thinking: “I might not look like a Rottweiler laddie, but you come any nearer, and I guarantee you won't be having any wee bairns calling you papa."1

  He launches a pre-emptive strike. Jack falls backwards, hits his head on the wheel arch, and moans.

  “What the ‘ell’s 'appenin now?" Harry yells. "Can't you keep that bleedin mutt under control? It's only a small dog for Christ sake!”

  Jack rubs his throbbing head. "Yeah right mate, but you haven't seen it’s teeth."

  "Give it something to eat, mate” Harry snarls, irritated as ever by the suggestion that he is Jack’s mate.

  “Er, like what exactly? Did you get any dog food?" his partner asks, sensibly.

  “There’s a packet of crisps in my jacket pocket. Give it that. For God's sake Jack, do I ‘ave to think of everything?"

  “Think of everything? That’s a joke” Jack mutters under his breath. When there’s thinking to be done, Harry is not the first choice to do it.

  * * *

  ‘Flash Harry’ Smith and Jack (‘The Lad’) Jones were hardly what you’d call criminal masterminds. Nicking wheels from cars, a bit of shoplifting, petty burglaries ... they knew they were small fry, but they had ambitions.

  Harry’s nickname was meant to be ironic, although of course this escaped him. He actually thought himself quite flash, but nothing could be further from the truth. Crime was always his first choice of career, but to label him a ‘career criminal’ would be to gild the lily. Truth was, he was never going to be clever enough to make much of a career of it, and had in fact spent a lot of time taking career breaks ‘at Her Majesty’s pleasure'.

  He was born into a large family, and from an early age forced to compete with his many siblings. This encouraged his natural tendency to be a bully. The family were also, to use the current terminology: ‘dysfunctional’. They functioned mainly by dissing everyone else on their estate.

  His parents weren’t around much when Harry was growing up. His dad disappeared when he was still a toddler, leaving his mum, Pauline, with a succession of low-life partners. She spent so much time in Holloway prison that she called it her “‘ome-from-’ome”. The family were often evicted after a few months of terrorising the neighbours, but she always made sure that wherever they ended up was within walking distance of the prison.

  Pauline's favourite pastime was shoplifting. She was well known to the security guards in the local shopping centre, but most would turn a blind eye. It was more than their job was worth to tackle a twenty-five stone woman prepared to use all her body mass in the tackle. She could throw a mean punch, and the guard usually came off worse. It usually took several beefy police officers to send her back to her ‘ome-from-‘ome.

  Harry progressed through a succession of institutions (care homes, Borstal, Young Offender centres) acquiring new and nastier skills in each one. Eventually he was old enough to do time in a real prison. There he was surrounded by fellow bullies, misfits, and failures, but failed to put two-and-two together (a skill that had so far eluded him, along with reading and writing). He never really figured out that the petty criminals he met in the nick were the stupid ones that had got caught. The clever ones were still out there profiting from crime. So his teachers were hardly great role models, and the lessons he was learning were flawed. Consequently he also spent a lot of time behind bars, and like his mum, was almost getting to like it.

  Now he was rather more seedy than flash, with an ever expanding repertoire of mildly disgusting habits (farting effusively, picking his nose and eating the pickings, torturing small animals). He still fancied himself as a tough guy, but as with most bullies he crumpled as soon as he was challenged by a genuine hard man. His one saving grace was to recognise talent, and team up with Jack.

  ‘The Lad’ was indeed somewhat younger than Harry. Not only in actual years, but his quick wits, open mind, and baby face were responsible for his nickname among the
criminal community. Unlike Harry he’d inherited a luckier start in life, and crime wasn’t his first choice of career.

  Jack was an only child, and his parents had worked hard to claw their way out of the gutter and make a better life for him. His father, Reg, was an accomplished wheeler-dealer with the gift of the gab, and tapped into the property market just as it was becoming a bubble. Success and money brought aspirations for their son to be a doctor, lawyer, astronaut, some kind of celebrity on the telly ... So they sent him to a private school, where he was taught to speak posh, defer to his superiors, and lord it over his inferiors.

  Sadly, his parents’ dreams of fame and fortune were shattered when the property bubble burst. Facing bankruptcy, Reg’s deals turned from desperate to downright dodgy. Eventually he was convicted of fraud and found himself in Wormwood Scrubs. The Lad was plucked out of the posh school and catapulted into a tough comprehensive in Hackney.

  He adapted quickly to his new life. Survival meant that he had to really. It was a case of adapt or be adapted forcibly. First out of the window was the posh accent. Disguising it was a fairly straightforward acting skill. Method acting you could say, and Jack had a good ear for imitating accents. In fact, if he hadn’t been so abruptly snatched from his first school perhaps he would have ended up as a successful actor (instead of an extra in a real-life soap opera of North London low-lives). He was quite good-looking in a mischievous Jack-the-Lad kind of way, and he could always ‘look the part’.

  However hard he tried though, occasionally the aspirational programming would overpower the method acting, and the posh accent would sneak through his disguise. These lapses led to him being mercilessly mocked or worse. Despite his best efforts to be in with the in-crowd, he was always a favourite target for the school bullies because of his boyish good looks and posh lapses.

  He hated school and spent as little time there as possible, bunking off whenever he could to spend hours in the local library. Books were his escape from the harsh reality that his life had become. He immersed himself in them: crime novels, detective stories, political thrillers ... He longed to be a working class hero: a Robin Hood style gangster, a James Dean daredevil, or a Che Guevara revolutionary. In private he practised acting tough, trying out various well ‘ard poses in his bedroom mirror, but in public he always did his best to blend in and be as ordinary as possible.

  Jack left school as soon as he could, to look after his mum. After his dad went to prison she folded, drinking heavily, and becoming increasingly depressed and reclusive. He was forced to grow up quickly. A series of dead-end jobs lead nowhere, but his ambitions never deserted him. All those hours in the library immersed in convoluted plots had given him a cunning plan.

  He knew that to move on he would have to leave home someday soon, and start to build a life for himself. But he also knew that he couldn’t just abandon his mum. He needed to make enough money to support them both, and he’d seen how his dad had nearly made crime pay. All he had to do was to avoid prison. That should be easy enough for someone with his wits and talents. I mean: how hard could this crime game really be? It wasn’t rocket science, surely? OK, his dad had screwed it up, but then he’d never read all the books that his son had. After all, Jack was a mastermind of criminal literature and a working class hero in the making. He knew how to act tough ... in theory anyway. Now all he needed was a genuine hardened criminal to show him the ropes and put theory into practice.

  * * *

  The two of them met in Harry’s local: the ‘Bucket of Blood’ in Stoke Newington High Street. Jack’s cunning plan had progressed as far as his first burglary, but he had no idea what to do with the loot, so he was trying to flog some of it in the local boozer.

  They got chatting and it turned out that Harry had come across Jack’s dad in The Scrubbs. Reg had told him what a clever lad Jack was, and how gutted he was to have robbed his son of the chance to make something of his life. Now here was: The Lad himself, attempting to flog a load of nicked gear to a pub full of punters, most of whom were crooks themselves (the ‘Bucket of Blood’ was usually referred to by it’s nickname: ‘The Den of Thieves’).

  Jack let slip that he’d only recently taken his first steps on this new career ladder, and could do with a bit of advice from a seasoned pro. Harry happened to be on the lookout for a new 'business partner' as his regular accomplice had just been nicked, and was starting a three year stretch. He thought Jack was a bit green, but he definitely had potential. The Lad looked smart, and sounded like he could put on a posh accent - two talents that Harry knew he would never manage, but realised might one day come in useful.

  He also recognised, albeit reluctantly, that Jack might well have a few more brain cells than him. Harry might have portrayed himself as Flash ‘Arry, but deep down he knew his limitations. He’d been around long enough to realise that he’d never make it out of the petty crime minor league without more brainpower. So he offered to take The Lad on as his apprentice.

  From Jack’s point of view this was his chance to learn the ropes, move on, and make enough dosh to support his mum. Harry liked the fact that Jack looked after his mother. The one soft spot that he still had left in him was for his own dear old mum. Pauline was hardly what you’d call a sweet old lady, but Harry wouldn’t hear a bad word about her. In fact, even mildly negative words usually resulted in the perpetrator missing some vital part of their anatomy.

  So Jack moved out of his mum’s place into a room in Harry’s house, and they became partners in crime. Although a bit of an odd couple, they just about managed to make it work. Jack supplied the brains and Harry the brawn ... in theory anyway.

  They’d been working together for a few months with limited returns from a series of petty thefts, and Jack was trying his best to come up with a scheme that might move them slightly higher up the criminal ladder. One day he was watching the news and there was a story about a well known actress who had just offered a six figure reward for a dog that had gone missing from her Hollywood mansion. It got him thinking: perhaps this was their chance to be criminal trend setters and get ahead of the competition; a chance to become masters of a modern crime before it became too popular; and a chance to outmanoeuvre the police while dognapping was still more of a news story than a real threat to society.

  Initially Harry had wanted to steal dogs for fighting, but Jack wasn't too keen on that idea. He persuaded Harry that a pack of Pitbulls and Rottweilers in their back yard would be bound to attract attention. The truth was that The Lad didn’t want to have anything to do with dog fighting. He thought it was barbaric, but he knew that Harry would just think he was being soft if he took a moral stance against it. So he came up with the idea of stealing posh pooches from the Heath instead.

  Jack's cunning plan was:

  •Stake out a likely looking dog walker on Hampstead Heath.

  •Wait until the pooch was off the lead, having a sniff. Jack would then distract the dog walker. Speaking in a posh voice and dressed in a suit, he’d gain their trust and ask them for directions.

  •Harry would then tempt the pooch with some doggy treats, grab the mutt, and skidaddle.

  •When the owner realised that their dog had been stolen and started panicking, Jack would launch into superhero mode (maybe not literally - The Lad wasn’t too keen on stripping down to a lycra one-piece). He’d run like crazy after Harry, shouting reassuring stuff back at the dog walker, until he disappeared around the corner where the van was parked, and they’d make a speedy getaway (or more probably, another of their leisurely getaways, given the usual North London traffic).

  •Once the dog had been nabbed, they‘d wait for the owner to put up missing posters on the Heath, and send Harry's mum with the pooch to pick up the reward money.

  Of course it would also involve a bit of background research between steps one and two: checking whether the dog owner lived in a posh enough house, finding out when the dog went for his walkies ... Jack was actually more enthusiastic about the rese
arch aspect of the plan than the action stuff. He thought that if he called it “stalking” then Harry would buy it, and he knew his partner would enjoy all the fast driving and swearing.

  The Lad reckoned they could probably get away with a couple of dog nabs from the Heath before the cops got wise to them. Just enough to set them up with a nice wodge.

  “It’ll be easy money” he announced, feeling well chuffed with the plan. “Before you can say 'wag a tail' we’ll be a couple of grand up.”

  Harry took a bit of persuading. He still thought that the dog fighting scam would make more money, plus he was quite looking forward to watching the dogs tear each other to pieces, but he could see Jack's point of view. One of those poncey do-gooders would be sure to tip off The Filth if they heard about a load of well ‘ard dogs on the premises, but a nice little posh doggie wouldn’t cause any grief. So, reluctantly he agreed to give Jack’s plan a go.

  * * *

  After a stressful few hours crawling through the rush-hour traffic, the dognappers finally arrive back in Stoke Newington. By then Angus has discovered Jack's shopping in the back of the van and worked his way steadily through a packet of biscuits, a box of cornflakes, a pint of milk, and a loaf of bread. Once he’s demolished the contents, he moves on to the packaging designed to protect these products, and not surprisingly he is now throwing up.

  “Oi, for feck’s sake, mind my bleedin van!” Harry shouts. “It's gonna stink of dog puke for ever. ‘Ow am I gonna get that bird from the boozer in the back now?”

  Jack grabs the pooch and does his best to mop up some of the mess with an old towel.

  “Don’t worry mate, you’ll be buying a spanking new van once we hit the jackpot with my plan. Then you’ll have no problem getting ‘er in the back” he says, although he’s thinking to himself that even a brand new luxury ‘shag wagon’ wouldn’t be enough to improve Harry’s chances with the ladies - at least not those that come free of charge. Anyway, the glass will soon be half full, and he’ll have the funds to hire one of the professionals.