Read Online Rob Johnson - Lifting the Lid by Rob Johnson - Free Book Online

with Milly trotting contentedly at his heels.
    ‘Oi! You with the dog! Get back ‘ere!’
    Trevor didn’t need to look round to know who was yelling at him, and he quickened his pace until he had merged into the thick of the crowd.
     

 
     
     
    CHAPTER THIRTEEN
     
    She was well aware that a hundred and twenty quid for a one day ticket was extortionate, but Sandra didn’t have time to shop around. Her only priority was to get into the festival and catch up with the bastard who’d nicked the envelope before he screwed up her job completely. What was the name the hotel manager had given her? Terry…? No, Trevor. Trevor Hawkins. That was it.
    ‘So how do I know it’s genuine?’ she asked the first tout she had come across outside the main entrance.
    ‘Trust me, lady,’ he said in a heavy Cockney accent.
    ‘And why should I do that exactly?’
    ‘Listen, love, everybody’ll tell yer I’m honest as the day is long.’
    ‘In Finland in December maybe.’
    The tout bristled, his jaws visibly clenching and unclenching beneath the taut, suntanned skin. ‘Look, d’you want it or not?’
    ‘Hundred quid.’
    ‘Leave it out. I’ve already come down from one-thirty.’
    Sandra grunted and took her purse from the pocket of her cream cotton jacket. ‘It better had be genuine for your sake. Because if it isn’t, I shall come and find you and cut off both your nuts with a pair of very rusty and very blunt garden shears.’
    ‘Oh yeah?’
    She paused in the middle of counting out the banknotes and looked up to see the tout grinning at her. He was missing two of his front teeth, and those that remained were clearly in need of some serious dental attention. She fixed him with a penetrating and emotionless stare, and the tout’s grin subsided as he shuffled from one foot to the other.
    ‘Okay, lady, keep yer ‘air on. I’m only tryin’ to make a livin’.’
    After a few more seconds of watching him squirm, she released him from her gaze and finished counting the money. ‘Here.’
    The tout reached for the cash but stopped when Sandra quickly withdrew it from his grasp.
    ‘Ticket first, I think,’ she said, raising a menacing eyebrow.
    He mumbled something under his breath and pulled a ticket from a bundle of about a dozen. Sandra snatched it from him and examined it closely before giving him the money.
    Placing the ticket in her pocket alongside her purse, she began to walk in the direction of the main entrance and then suddenly turned.
    ‘Don’t forget,’ she called out and mimed the action of opening and closing a pair of garden shears.
     
    * * *
     
    Trevor’s senses were being battered from every direction as he walked towards the bright yellow marquee. There was the pounding rock music from the main outdoor stage, which morphed into the thundering rhythms of a group of Japanese drummers he glimpsed through the open sides of the marquee as he passed.
    There were the vivid and clashing colours, not just of the clothes the people were wearing as they scurried this way and that, but of the numerous stalls selling all kinds of goods ranging from garishly painted wooden toys to outrageously flamboyant hats and plastic angel wings.
    Beyond the marquee, his nose was bombarded with a bizarre blend of cooking smells emanating from the impressive range of mobile kitchens arranged on three sides of a large square. Each scent vied with the other to attract his attention but merely succeeded in creating a distinctly unappetising stink involving curry, hot dogs, garlic, roasting chicken, candyfloss, chip fat, onions, barbecued sweetcorn, frying bacon and other odours which were impossible to identify from the mix.
    Ravenous though he still was from having eaten nothing but a handful of biscuits since yesterday lunchtime, Trevor found it surprisingly easy to resist temptation. Milly, on the other hand, was evidently much more impressed with the aroma, particularly when she discovered the drool-inducing assortment of