Border Princes

Knifed by the same pain that had killed him, Toshiko fell to her knees, wincing.

‘He lost the Amok,’ a voice behind her said.

Toshiko looked around.

The tramp stood in the beating rain, watching her. He seemed huge, but that was because he was wearing too many old coats. His filthy beard was strung with rainwater droplets like a Christmas tree’s decorations. He reeked of mud and factory waste. His arms were weighed down by two heavy carrier bags. Sainsbury’s.

‘He lost the what?’ Toshiko asked, rising.

‘The Amok,’ the tramp replied. There was no way of telling how old he was. Thirty? Sixty? Life had run him down without stopping.

He set his bulging carrier bags down at his feet. ‘Huw had the Amok, but he lost. Donny had it before him, and he lost too. Before Donny, Terry. Before Terry, Malcolm. Before Malcolm, Bob. Before Bob, Ash’ahvath.’

‘Before Bob who?’

‘Ash’ahvath,’ the tramp said.

‘As in the Middlesex Ash’ahvath’s?’

The tramp sniggered and shook his head so hard raindrops flew out of his beard, like a dog shaking itself after bath-time. ‘You’re funny. I don’t know no Ash’ahvath. It was just the last name on the list.’

‘I see,’ said Toshiko, slowly rising to her feet. ‘Do you have the Amok now? What’s your name?’

‘John Norris,’ replied the tramp, crouching down to sort through his carrier bags. ‘John Norris. I was all right once, you know.’

‘You’re all right now, John,’ she said.

‘I’m not. I’m not. I had a good job. A company car. It was a Rover. GL. I had my own parking space. They called me Mr Norris.’

‘What happened?’

‘Workforce rationalisation. The wife moved to her sister’s place. I haven’t seen my boy in five years.’

The tramp began to weep.

‘Mr Norris, we can sort this all out,’ Toshiko said, stepping towards him. Her head was throbbing. ‘Please, do you have the Amok?’

He nodded, sniffling, and rifled around in one of his carrier bags.

‘It’s in here somewhere.’ He glanced up at her. ‘Big big big,’ he added. Emphasis on the middle ‘big’.

‘Just show it to me. The Amok.’

‘Oh, right, here it is,’ he said. He drew something out of the carrier bag. It was a ten-by-eight clip frame in which were pressed three photographs. A woman. A boy. A woman and a boy.

‘Mr Norris, that’s not the Amok, is it?’ Toshiko said gently.

The tramp shuddered. He shook his head, shoulders hunched. ‘No,’ he whimpered. He struck the clip frame against the path and shattered it.

‘Mr Norris?’

When he turned to face her, he was holding a sliver of the clip frame glass in his hand. The broken edges were so sharp, and his grip on it so tight, blood dribbled out between his dirty fingers.

‘Oh shit,’ said Toshiko, backing away abruptly.

The tramp lunged.

TWO

Fat radials hissed as the SUV came to a halt. Jack and Owen got out into the rain. Jack tried his mobile.

‘No signal,’ he said to Owen.

Jack looked around. ‘Tosh? James?’ he yelled. There was no answer.

‘Let’s try in there,’ said Owen, making off towards the nearby pub. It looked bright and inviting, the frosted glass oblongs of its windows warmed from within by yellow light.

Jack followed him. Owen had gone a few steps when he paused and lowered his head.

‘What?’

‘Bastard of a headache I’ve got, all of a sudden,’ Owen groaned, his hand raised to his temple.

‘I thought you were going to have a quiet one last night,’ Jack said sourly, pushing past Owen towards the door of the public bar.

‘It’s not that kind of headache,’ Owen complained, his thin mouth more of a downward curve than usual. ‘Buggering Christ, can’t you feel that?’

‘Your headache?’ replied Jack. ‘Funnily enough, no.’ He hesitated. ‘But I know what you mean. I can feel something.’

He opened the pub door and went inside. Owen followed. It was as cheerfully grotty as any of Cardiff’s arse- end public houses, marinated in a smell of fags and malt. An aimless clatter-ping rang from the pinball machine and ‘If You Don’t Know Me By Now’ issued from the jukebox.

‘So where is everyone?’ Owen asked.

The public bar was empty. So was the saloon. Empty chairs loitered around Formica-topped tables on which a few half-empty glasses and the occasional open packet of nuts waited. There was no sign of disarray, and no sign of any bar staff. The drawer of the public bar’s cash register was open.

‘Not a robbery,’ said Jack, going behind the bar and lifting each of the drawer’s spring clips in turn. ‘There’s a couple of hundred in here.’

‘This is very wrong,’ said Owen. He pointed. Two full pints of lager sat side by side on the counter’s plastic drip tray. The glasses were sheened with condensation. ‘These have just been pulled. No one walks away from a fresh pint in a pub like this.’

‘Not in welsh Wales they don’t,’ Jack agreed.

They went back outside. The buildings beyond the pub and the little late shop formed an ominous silhouette against the lights of Cardiff Bay over the river.

They both heard the cry. Distant, robbed out by the heavy rain, but distinct. Not a scream, but a cry of alarm.

They both broke into a run.

Toshiko sprang back to avoid the slashing glass. The tramp was mumbling and blinking.

‘Mr Norris,’ she warned. ‘Put that down. You’re hurting yourself, and-’

The tramp stabbed at her again, and forced her to retreat further down the riverside path. Toshiko looked around for options. The overgrown embankment and the high chain-link fence against which Huw had died was on her right. To her left, a glistening black edge of curb-stones showed where the river wall dropped way. She could hear the river, and smell it, but it was invisible below her. It sounded a long way down.

‘Mr Norris…’

‘You can’t have it!’ he cried. ‘It’s not your go! It’s my go!’

He came at her for the third time, moving with alarming speed for such a dishevelled, unhealthy soul. The makeshift blade glittered as he swung it, and the motion whipped out a fan of blood from his lacerated fingers.

This time, despite the pain in her head, Toshiko managed to do more than evade. She side-stepped, pirouetted on one foot, and planted a heavy side-kick into the tramp’s sternum.

He woofed and jerked backwards, but the multiple layers of clothing he was wearing insulated against the bite of the kick. He surged back at her with a strangled cry, and drove the tip of the glass blade at her throat.

Toshiko ducked it, turned, and grabbed the extending forearm with both of her leather-gloved hands as it came over her. Hauling on his arm, she slammed her shoulder up into his armpit, and threw him right over her onto his back.

He landed with winding force, and lay twitching, face up in the rain, his mouth moving slackly behind his beard.

She kicked the shard of broken glass away.

‘Right then,’ she said.