'Good. Good. Well, I think we're done for now. We'll speak to you again, Mr Bellini. Get well soon.'
Cromwell stood, and both he and Valentine gave Cheshire cat grins that didn't sit comfortably on their faces, particularly Valentine's, before they walked out of the ward.
Michael was released from the hospital the following day. There was nobody to meet him at the door. His sister was working at the cigarette factory and his brother-in-law, Rhodri, was at the docks. Though his legs still ached, he walked all the way back to Butetown in the plain, drab and ill-fitting clothes that the hospital had given him.
By the time he reached the narrow and canyon-like streets of Butetown that surrounded Tiger Bay, it was late afternoon, and already he could hear piano music spilling out of the pubs. He heard the raucous laughter of the Irishmen playing cards, and the incomprehensible chattering of the Chinese women in the laundries. Children played in the streets where sailors sauntered toward brothels, while the occasional policeman turned a blind eye to anything that wasn't threatening to turn into a brawl.
These sights were familiar to him by now, of course. He'd lived in the shadowy and smoke-filled confines of Butetown since his mother died. Their father had brought them down here to be closer to his work at the docks, when he was still working. Soon enough, of course, he'd lost his job; a short while after, he started drinking. They'd lived together, his father, his sister and Michael, in the downstairs of a terraced house, beneath a first-generation Italian family that argued and fought at all hours.
Michael knew Butetown like the back of his hand and yet, walking back into it that afternoon, it felt as if something had changed. The buildings looked different, somehow, as if they'd been remade from a different stone. Everything seemed more real.
The tiny house on Fitzhamon Terrace that he shared with his sister's family embraced him with the smell of a leg of lamb roasting slowly in the oven. He sat alone in the kitchen, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes until his sister came home, carrying his baby nephew over the threshold.
'Oh, you're home!' she said excitedly. 'Let me just put Robert in his cot. Food won't be long, and Rhodri's home soon.'
Rhodri was a little older than Michael and his sister, a surly and sardonic man who Michael had always found strangely intimidating. He'd never been sure what Maria saw in him, but she had always been quick to point out that without Rhodri they'd be homeless. Once he'd finished his shift at the docks, and spent the best part of half an hour soaking in the bath in the lean-to, the family sat around the table, with baby Robert in his high chair, playing with a plastic rattle and a teething ring.
Rhodri was helping himself to roast potatoes when he finally spoke. 'Funny thing, that explosion,' he said, in his usual, gruff tone.
'What do you mean, 'funny'?' said Michael, barely able to mask his resentment.
'Well, they've closed off the whole dock, and that ship's still there. There were people all over it this morning. No crew. Just people, and jeeps. Like army jeeps. Funny thing. They reckon it was a bomb.'
Michael pretended not to listen, spooning carrots and then peas onto his plate before reaching across the table for the gravy boat.
'No police, mind,' said Rhodri, 'which is the
When Michael looked up from his plate, he saw Rhodri, staring at him with an expression that bordered on amusement. It was too much to hope that his brother-in-law might realise quite how much this had all meant to him; seeing his friends killed like that. Frank and Wilf. Hassan.
When the meal was over, Michael went to his room, barely saying another word to either Maria or Rhodri, and only managing to muster a moment's baby talk with his nephew. Lying back on his bed, he turned on the radio.
They were playing that song again, that Frankie Lane song they were playing all the time. He'd thought it was the most romantic song he'd ever heard before; before all this. Now just listening to it was painful. Why did they have to keep playing it?
He put his shoes back on and left the house in a flurry. His sister ran to the front door, and called after him, 'Michael! Where are you going?'
'Out,' he called back, sullenly. 'I won't be late.'
The Ship and Pilot was a typical Butetown pub, filled with the usual Butetown patrons: a mixture of dockers, sailors and waifs and strays from every corner of the globe. Gruff old men with stories to tell sat quietly nursing their pints and playing dominos while Michael's peers took part in all the rituals of youth, knocking back their pints of Brains bitter, telling jokes, or challenging anyone within earshot to an arm wrestle.
People were looking at him strangely, he could sense that much. They must have heard about what had happened, but nobody said anything. It was just the way they looked at him.
In the far corner of the pub, they were setting up the stage for Shirley, the resident singer, and her band, but the noisy chatter of the pub carried on unabated.
'What happened?'
Michael looked up. It was Frank's son, Pete. He was a little older than Michael, but built like his father, a natural born scrapper with forearms like Popeye's. The curious thing was, he didn't really look angry, and Pete almost always looked angry, like he was on the lookout for a fight. Now he just looked sad, like something inside of him had been crushed out of existence. Michael said nothing.
'What happened?' Pete asked again. 'You were there with him when it happened.
'I don't know,' said Michael. 'I can't remember.'
'You can't remember? I…' Pete looked up into one corner of the room, breathed in deep, and closed his eyes.
'Honestly, Pete,' said Michael, 'I can't remember anything. There was an explosion, and then I woke up in hospital. That's all I can remember.'
'But what were you doing there at that time of night?'
'I don't know,' said Michael. 'I don't know.'
The rest of the pub had fallen quiet now, as Shirley took to the stage and opened her set with 'Stormy Weather'. Pete stared down at Michael with an intensity that scared him, signs of the Pete he knew, the angry, violent Pete, returning. Michael stood, leaving his pint glass half-full.
'I'm sorry, Pete,' he said, walking out of the pub. 'Really. I'm so sorry.'
He was halfway up the narrow, Victorian gully of West Bute Street, at the corner of the Coal Exchange, when he saw them.
Cromwell and Valentine.
They were standing in the shadows, but he could see them both. It was as if they weren't even trying to hide. He knew then for certain that they weren't from the Union.
He carried on walking, gathering pace, and somewhere behind him he could hear the sound of two men running, then sounds of a car engine grumbling into life, its wheels spinning against wet cobbles.
Michael started to run.
He was caught in the headlights, but he didn't dare look back. Why were they chasing him?
It was then that he felt it; a strange sensation starting in his feet and then creeping up his body until it reached his scalp, almost like static electric shocks. The streets around him were lit up with a brilliant light, impossible at this time of night, and everything was silent. He turned to face the oncoming car and saw that it had stopped in the middle of the street, its headlamps still glaring. Behind it, Cromwell and Valentine too had frozen on the spot, feet off the ground, as if suspended there on invisible strings. It was as if the world itself had stopped turning, just for him.
Then there was the pain. A terrible pain that surged through him, throbbing and pounding him into submission until he fell to the ground, his eyes clenched shut in agony. A few seconds passed, and with it a feeling of nausea, and then he realised that he was on his hands and knees, that the ground beneath him was hard, and cold, and wet, and that he could hear the sound of bombs.
'Cromwell and Valentine?' said Gwen. 'The names of the two men were Cromwell and Valentine?'
Michael nodded.
'And all this happened in
