Double Yellow Lines

By Robert William Saul Harvey

Margaret was thrilled at finally landing a job.
Okay,
So, it’s not a job everyone would want to do, but it suited her. Being a Traffic Warden, or Traffic Control Officer as they were now called, suited her just fine. Out in the fresh air, taking her own sweet time and, best of all; being able to slap parking tickets on those cars belonging to a bunch of total assholes, who thought they could park their heaps wherever they wanted, without regard for the law, or anyone else.
Well,
Stuff them.
Now,
She was on a one-woman mission.
And,
This, as she saw it, was the first day of the rest of her life.
Little did she know, but no—it was actually her last...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert William Saul Harvey
• Release date: Mar 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005454357

Robert William Saul Harvey

Robert was born in 1949 in the small Scottish hamlet of Douglas West, Douglas in Lanarkshire, but moved to England when his father, a miner, had to move south for a job.Having left school at the age of fifteen, without any qualifications whatsoever, he started work in a small engineering firm. He soon got fed up coming home covered in dirty grease and having a spotty face so, after six months, decided that engineering was not for him. With nothing to lose, he ran away to sea, so to speak. He joined the Merchant Navy and happily spent three and a half years travelling the world and getting paid for it!Meeting his future wife at the age of nineteen convinced Robert to leave the sea and settle down. There were not many jobs around for a nineteen-year-old and he ended up doing bar/cellar work until deciding to get married at the age of twenty. That was when he joined the Royal Air Force, in which he spent nine years as a Clerk Secretarial, attaining the rank of Corporal before leaving in 1979.After applying for various jobs, Robert finally got one with the National Coal Board in a colliery Stores Department. Ok, this would do him for a while, whilst he looked around for something better. Thirty years later, as a Supply and Contracts Manager, he retired from the Coal Industry at the age of fifty-nine and now has an allotment where he plays at growing vegetables (very nice they are too), and spends his spare time dabbling on his laptop; bliss.Now, with seven books on Smashwords, an eighth under construction, and number nine in the pipeline, who knows where it will stop?Second in the series, Beryl's Pup is now also available.

Book preview

Chapter 1

As sphincter-tightening fear grabbed hold of him, every muscle in Sir Roland DeWit-Faulkner’s body froze. He stared straight ahead, his eyes wide, increasing in sensitivity and widening his field of vision in response to the perceived threat when, without warning, the nose of the twin engine Piper-44 Seminole aircraft, powered by two 180hp Lycoming TO-360-E1A6D engines, dipped down toward the tree-covered hillside five-hundred feet below, to the west of the city of Sheffield and slightly north of the A57 highway.

Cowering in his seat, he emitted a frightened whimper, hardly audible above the noise of the small airplane’s engines.

With his heart in his mouth and his eyes almost popping out of their sockets at the sight of the small forest rushing up toward them, his past life flashed through his mind, both the good and the bad of it.

He somehow found the strength to cry out, What the hell’s happening, Smith? His voice high and trembling, like that of a frightened young girl.

Think: Wimp.

Toby Smith, a strapping six-foot, ginger-haired, forty-three-year-old, ex Royal Air Force Wing Commander, Sir Roland’s pilot on this private charter flight from Manchester International Airport en route to a small airfield a short distance outside the town of Boston, Lincolnshire, bared his teeth in a cruel grin and made a low grunt by way of reply.

He was enjoying this.

Think: Sadist.

Sir Roland gripped the edges of his seat so tight his knuckles turned white. He pushed his feet hard against the bulkhead of the foot-well, as if this might slow their descent in some way, and gritted his teeth in anticipation of—what?

Oblivion?

‘Shit!’

The scream on the verge of escaping from the depths of his airless lungs caught in his throat when his stomach contracted in a feeble attempt to expel the mix of fried bacon, scrambled eggs and grilled tomatoes he had gobbled down at breakfast, washed down with two cups of strong black coffee, without which he never considered himself to be fully awake.

With nothing but the sight of green-leafed trees filling the windshield in front of him, he felt the urgent need to evacuate his bowels and might have done so had the aircraft’s engines not suddenly surged in power and volume and the airplane lifted its nose, to swoop up in a graceful arc, lifting it safely out of harm’s way. The tops of trees appeared much too close for comfort as they disappeared beneath the aircraft for Sir Roland’s liking, but, to his intense relief, the sky beckoned…

Chapter 2

The urgency in his bowels eased as a wave of euphoria swept through his whole body, the same kind of euphoria Sir Roland had felt when a drug-raved mugger, trying to rob him at knife point in a dingy side street in Bridgetown, Barbados, had suddenly crumpled in a heap at his feet when hit in the back by a bullet from a ruthless cop’s sidearm.

He loved it whenever the bad guy got what was coming to him!

Toby made a satisfied, laconic laugh as he pulled back on the yolk to lift the nose of the small aircraft and point it up toward the blue, beckoning, peaceful, sky with no more than a handful of small lazy white clouds drifting aimless in the light breeze

‘Brill,’ he thought, chuckling to himself. ‘Got the bastard!’

Bugger! cried Sir Roland, shaking with a mix of relief, fear and anger.

He gasped for air as the aircraft soared skywards, comfortably clearing the lumpy tops of the Peak District at the lower end of the Pennines, the line of hills stretching from the North West to the North East and Yorkshire and the Humber river on the East, from the Peak District at the Southern end to the Tyne Gap, which separates the Pennines from the Cheviot Hills across the Anglo-Scots Border, forming the spine of northern England.

The aircraft’s engine noise returned to normal as the plane leveled out and resumed its original course, as if nothing untoward had happened.

Sir Roland turned his head and stared at the pilot, his face a mix of horror and disbelief.

What the…? he cried.

Toby made relaxed, a wide, knowing smile on his lips.

Brown trousers? he asked, his voice calm and unconcerned.

Sir Roland made goggle eyes, full of surprise at Toby’s casual acceptance of the incident, and his voice squeaked when he finally managed suck in enough air to enable him to shout, What the fuck was that all about!?

Toby’s smile morphed into a wide grin.

He executed a few small automatic adjustments to the airplane trim with some deft footwork on the pedals and a couple of pulls and pushes on the yolk.

And, what would you have done, Sir, if that were a for-real emergency? he asked, his everyday Cockney drawl grating on Sir Roland’s refined English nerves.

Ugh? Sir Roland, incredulous, made like a rabbit caught in the bright beam of a car’s headlights, not quite believing what this stupid shit was saying. You crazy shit-head! he shouted. You mean to tell me, you fucking did that on purpose? You fucking mad idiot! You could have killed me!

Uh-huh, Toby made a brief, sardonic laugh. Scares the shit outta most people when I do that.

Sir Roland blew air and made threatening.

I’ll scare the shit outta you if you try that stunt again, you fucking halfwit! What the hell did you think you were playing at? What if the bloody plane hadn’t responded and we plowed into the fucking ground!?

Toby made no response to Sir Roland’s threat, other than making a brief shake of his head, having heard it all before.

‘What do you think would’ve happened, you tight-assed twat?’ he thought. ‘Get stuffed.’

Most people tended to accept the joke, being relieved to still be alive. Some even congratulated him on his skill as a pilot. Even the Eighty-Nine-Year-Old lady who had pissed her pants had thought it was hilarious, apologized for wetting the seat and offered to pay for it to be cleaned. Only a few tight-ass fuckers like this stuck up shite took it the wrong way.

This was not the first time he had flown such arrogant twats across country from Manchester International Airport, this time heading for the small strip outside Sir Roland’s home town of Boston, Lincolnshire, but it was the first time he had played the stunt with this particular sour-faced ass-wipe on board.

Tough.

He half-hoped the rich bastard had shit in his pants, as long as it did not leave any marks on the upholstered cream colored seats—he would need to remember to add an extra cleaning cost to the final bill just in case.

Serve him right, eh?

He made a satisfied smile at the thought of Sir Roland making like John Wayne as he hurried across the airfield to the nearest rest room, with liquid shit dripping from the bottom of his pants.

Nice.

He turned the airplane in a wide left-hand arc, to skirt round to the north of Sheffield before pointing it across-country toward the east coast of Lincolnshire.

Whistling quietly to himself, he nodded his head in time with the out-of-tune so-called music.

Still furious with Toby for being such a stupid-assed fuck-wit, over-tense and more than a little queasy, Sir Roland maintained his tight grip on the arm rests of his seat, afraid to let go in case this excuse for a so-called fucking pilot should take it into his head to try the stupid stunt again, or the aircraft took it into its own mind (do aircraft have minds?) to…

‘Daft bastard!’ he fumed.

He had come across many stupid people in his travels, including careless drivers, a drunken yacht owner and a near-suicidal coach driver navigating a narrow, twisting excuse for a road over the South American Andes, but never anyone as mad as this perverted idiot.

Enough was enough!

He was not paying a small fortune to be made a laughing stock for the amusement of some derelict, has-been, wannabe Top Gun.

‘Last time I’ll climb into an airplane with you. I’ll make sure you never fly a plane again, you sodding imbecile!’

Having mentally chastised Toby and decided to have a word with the company’s CEO, to get the daft prick fired, Sir Roland allowed himself to relax a fraction, eventually releasing his grip on the plush upholstery of the comfortable seat. His heartbeat returned to near normal and his breathing eased somewhat, although there was still a certain tenseness in his body.

To him, flying in these small planes was never something he looked forward to, much preferring the opulent comfort of the first class section in larger commercial aircraft as befitting his perceived status.

But, on this occasion, needs must.

The long flight from Bridgetown, Barbados to Manchester had been tiring and uncomfortable owing to a strong headwind bouncing the damn aircraft all over the place. It had been more like riding one of those stupid mad-mouse fairground rides instead of relaxing in the manner to which he had become accustomed. All he wanted now, was to get home as quick as possible and flying was a lot quicker than traveling by road and far more comfortable—usually.

Having landed at Manchester at stupid o’clock in the morning, five-thirty am, on September Third, he was tired and more than a little grumpy. All he wanted to do was, get home as quick as possible, in one piece. The first thing he would do upon reaching home was, pour himself a very large Scotch Malt Whisky, or two, before stripping off and jumping into a hot shower to get rid of the ‘travel stink’, as he called it.

Bliss.

Well, after that little episode, he thought he deserved a treat and what better treat than savoring his favorite tipple? After reveling in a hot shower, he would dress and head into Boston, to a small Italian restaurant he frequented, in a discreet location down a narrow side street, where they knew how to look after a discerning diner. Following this, he would visit a certain young lady residing in the penthouse apartment of the swankiest hotel in town.

Yum…

Chapter 3

Bouncing over a few less-than-gentle rising thermals above the Pennines annoyed Sir Roland somewhat and the threatened nosedive into the top of a tree-lined mountain had irked him even more than the uncomfortable flight across the Atlantic.

Now, undulating gently in the breeze above the flatter landscape to the south of Lincoln proved more comfortable than the disturbing flight across the Atlantic and far more scenic than the featureless expanse of an empty ocean.

With his heartbeat returning to something near normal and the effects of adrenaline wearing off enough to allow him to relax his aching sphincter muscle, he lounged back in his seat in relative comfort, and tried to distract himself by peering out the side window.

At least, he now had something interesting to look at, other than endless sea; small forests, plowed fields, farmhouses, roads, and rocky outcrops with small lakes and rivers. In commercial airliners the terrain below always appeared to move at less than a snail’s pace, but in a small aircraft, flying closer to the ground, everything appeared to speed by at a faster rate of knots giving the impression of reaching its destination quicker.

Sir Roland eventually allowed himself to relax a little further and settled back into his seat, satisfied the pilot now knew he was not one to be played with and he now appeared calm, comfortable and in full control of his aircraft.

‘Hmmm.’

He allowed himself a brief smile.

Yes.

Thinking about it, now the worst of it was all over, perhaps it had been rather amusing, in a stupid kind of way. Standing at the bar of the Lord Nelson Public House, with his friends gathered round, in the telling of it, he would exaggerate the whole episode and make it sound more hilarious than it was.

‘Must be worth a free drink, or two off the guys.’ he mused, envisaging even the stuck-up prude, Lady Marjory Chesworth, the President of the local Women’s Institute, might actually offer a smile, something she rarely did.

Now, there’s a thought to ponder on.

Sir Roland had only recently received his knighthood from Her Majesty the Queen for Services to Industry, whatever that meant. He was on the board of three large corporations and five lesser distribution companies, each being a paid position, natch. He was not a person who would go out of his way for anyone unless he was suitably remunerated for doing so. With a sharp brain and the quick wits of a true businessman, he had quickly worked his way up in the world after leaving an unnamed posh college under a cloud of his own making—something about acquiring certain hallucinogenic substances and supplying them to other students. A suitable donation to the college funds from his rich father had helped to sweep the incident into the ether, as long as Roland’s departure was prompt and silent.

It was.

He had been escorted from the building by two large musclebound ‘Janitors’ and whisked away in his father’s light-blue Rolls Royce Phantom, something Sir Roland had got rid off within weeks of his father dying of a heart-attack at the age of sixty-eight.

Tough.

He never had liked that car. Too staid for his taste. Nowadays, he much preferred his beautiful black Bentley Continental GT.

Cute.

Meanwhile,

Toby had taken his bollocking with a pinch of salt—he had suffered worse. It had almost annoyed him as much as a fly buzzing round his ear might disturb him, so he mentally swatted it aside.

He made professional, concentrating on turning the plane in another long sweeping arc, losing height slowly as he aimed for the small airfield lying to the north side of the A1121 highway, no more than a fifteen minute taxi ride from the center of Boston, on a good day. He would normally give a verbal running commentary to his passengers on the final approach, but decided, on this occasion, the miserable stuck-up lump of shit sitting in the co-pilot’s seat could go fuck himself.

Sir Roland should have been sitting further back, in one of the two passenger seats, like any normal passenger, but, no, the pompous asshole had insisted on sitting up front where he could watch their progress and enjoy an all-round view of the surrounding countryside sweeping beneath them on such a beautiful summer’s day.

Okay.

So.

Toby had thought to give him the best view possible when he sent the airplane into the steep dive, just to teach the stuck-up prick a lesson.

Of course, the arrogant bastard had to take it the wrong way.

Tough!

No big deal.

The old duffer might be fairly affluent, with quite a few quid (British Pounds) in the bank and one of the companies employing him was paying for the flight, but, to Toby, it did not give the condescending pig the right to tear a strip off him, just because the asshole had his humor gland surgically removed before boarding the plane.

‘Stuff him!’

Sir Roland, for his part, still lounging back in his seat, relaxed, sulked in silence, like a petulant boy child who had suffered humiliation at the hands of a smaller girl child in front of a whole school-full of children.

In truth, he enjoyed a joke as much as anyone, but not when he was the butt of said joke and this idiot of a so-called pilot had gone too far.

Showing off, playing dangerous games whilst flying a plane was just plain—stupid…!

Chapter 4

Sir Roland was still silently fuming to himself when, less than three hundred feet above the Lincolnshire countryside, the aircraft rapidly descending to the approaching runway below, Toby made a brief groan and slumped head down in his seat, pushing the yoke forward with the weight of his body.

The aircraft’s nose made another alarming dip, pointing down at a steep angle toward the rapidly advancing patchwork of grass and plowed fields in line with the grass runway of Boston Airfield.

Although Sir Roland tried to remain calm, assuming the shitty pilot was trying to scare him again, he could not help but feel rather uncomfortable as the ground raced up to meet them at an increasing rate of knots.

‘This is too fucking much!’

And,

This time, Toby made no attempt to retake control of the plane.

In a wild, uncontrolled panic, Sir Roland turned his head to hurl another mouthful of terrified, angry abuse at the pilot and urge him to get a grip, but froze in terror when he saw the spider cracks surrounding and spreading out from a not-so-neat hole in the aircraft’s windshield.

Now he understood why Toby did nothing to try to halt the aircraft’s fall.

The only thing the pilot could do was drape his body over the yoke and rest his forehead on the instrument panel because—it is impossible for someone with the back of his head and most of his brain splattered across the rear bulkhead to control an aircraft.

Fact!

Sir Roland released an ear-splitting, horrific scream and finally lost control of his sphincter muscle, allowing his bowel to void its contents a few brief seconds before the nose and right wing-tip of the aircraft hit the runway.

The plane suddenly flipped ass-over-nose and made a crazy slide sideways, smashing almost side-on into the back of a black Bentley Continental GT parked to one side of the grass runway, awaiting the plane’s arrival.

At six-forty-three am, both airplane and immaculately polished vehicle exploded in a huge fireball, sending a pillar of acrid black smoke spiraling skyward…

Chapter 5

Still overweight by more than a few pounds, something she had never quite come to terms with, Margaret Brewster made more than pleased with the results of her latest diet, even though she had to forgo her favorite chocolate treats and cut down on the amount of food she put on her plate at mealtimes for the past two months.

With a twinkle in her eyes, she regarded her reflection in the mirrored door of her wardrobe and made soft cooing noises.

‘Not too bad, even if I do say so myself. The diet is bloody murder, but it’s working.’

Resplendent in her brand new uniform, she allowed herself a gentle smile of satisfaction. At last, after more than ten months scraping by on minimum benefits, having to rely on her husband Donald’s low wage from the car body repair shop where he worked a ten-hour six-day week to keep their heads above water, she had finally managed to land herself a job.

A real job, with a reasonable wage.

Okay.

So.

It was not the kind of job everyone would be proud to do, but she was above being proud nowadays. At her time of life, thirty-eight years old, she could not afford to be proud. Proud was for the young, the stupid, or the very rich, not for the likes of her, which is why, today she was so happy. This was the first day she would go out to patrol the streets of the small seaside town of Carmington-on-Sea alone as a fully-trained, Bona Fide Traffic Control Officer, a new position recently created by the local Council when the Boston Police Department had decided to decriminalize parking in the town in an attempt to ease the pressure on the local, much depleted excuse for a Police Station.

She had set her alarm for five am, to enable her the luxury of taking her time to get showered, breakfast, and dressed without the need to hurry. She intended to start her day early, Seven am, when those who worked in the town would be arriving for work and early-morning holidaymakers would be stirring. With an hour-and-a-half for lunch, her shift would finish at five pm, which she considered quite reasonable, especially at this time of year.

The very words, Traffic Warden, an old term for this job, usually brought derision and contempt from members of the general public, but to hell with them. What did she care what anyone else thought?

Stuff them!

She had told a few of her close friends, the few she could call close, about her new job and received a few finely veiled comments about ‘Going over to the enemy’ and the likes.

Well, tough.

She had decided to try for the job when she saw the ad in the local rag. The fact she had been the only applicant did not put her off and she eagerly accepted the position. She was more than strong enough to take any snide comments thrown her way. As far as she was concerned, anyone who did not like it could go fuck themselves.

Margaret wanted little to do with most people in this shitty little town, anyway.

In the five years she and Donald had lived here, in the small town of Carmington-on-Sea, they had mainly kept themselves to themselves and both wanted to leave the confines of the town at the earliest opportunity. Her desire, and therefore Donald’s desire, was to move to one of the small villages nearby. She had her heart set on a certain small bungalow, in the nearby hamlet of Salby Le Fen, three miles from Carmington, or failing that, somewhere similar. That way, both she and Donald would be able to keep their jobs here, commuting on a daily basis, without actually living in the run-down dump.

Nice.

No hurry, though, because Margaret’s mother—the mardy-assed cow—had done them all a favor by dying after suffering a devastating stroke three-and-a-half months before, although she had done them less of a favor by leaving her three bedroom bungalow and all its contents, plus three thousand pounds in cash, to some Donkey Sanctuary she had once visited as a child, somewhere way down south.

Typical.

This had cut Margaret to her core and, as soon as Probate was granted, she approached the charity and offered to purchase the bungalow. To her relief, the charity had been only too happy to agree and at a fair price, too. The CEO of the charity also agreed to wait until Margaret and Donald had accrued enough of a deposit to secure a mortgage via the local Bank.

Her mother had always been a nasty, spiteful bitch, to put it politely, because Margaret had been an unplanned baby and her unmarried mother had blamed baby Margaret for her having to give up the job she loved to look after what she called, Her shitty little bastard, a name that stuck with Margaret throughout her formative years.

Margaret was under no illusion: her mother had always meant to leave her with nothing—a final act of revenge—whilst always telling her she would inherit everything.

Well, Margaret showed the old witch exactly how much she loved her—zilch. Only she and Donald had attended the cremation and, a couple of weeks later, she got her hands on the cheap cardboard urn full of the mean old bitch’s ashes. Without ceremony, she dropped the urn and its contents into the garbage bin at the bungalow, among the rest of the unwanted rubbish, and walked away without a backward glance.

Serve her right.

May the miserable bitch rot in Hell.

To his credit, Donald never queried what had happened to his Mother-in-Law’s ashes. Like Margaret, he did not give a shit. He assumed she had simply buried it in some appropriate, secluded spot her mother had requested and left it at that.

Margaret and Donald, lovely, meek, mild-mannered Donald, had managed, with difficulty, to save a few thousand pounds when Margaret used to work in a large supermarket in Boston, until the owners went bankrupt and closed the place down over a year ago.

The two of them had deliberately left the money sitting untouched in the bank with the idea it would go toward a deposit on this bungalow. A little more and they would be in a position to go for it, fingers crossed.

‘This is most definitely the first day of the rest of my life. With mother safely out of the way, and if we can persuade the bank manager to give us a mortgage, the bungalow will soon be ours. The first thing I will do is remove everything and anything that reminds me of the mad old cow. Hope she likes her new forever home.’

Margaret tended to take most things in her stride and had tried to shrug off her mother’s deceit, but something in the back of her mind told her there was some kind of Inheritance Act which would ensure she received a fair share of her mother’s estate, no matter what. With luck, it would mean she would get a fair share of the bungalow at least, meaning they would need to secure a smaller mortgage. All