I stood up and from the air vent at the other end of the caravan came Tadpole’s voice, slightly warbled and distorted as if she too were under water.
‘Loooooouie!’
‘Look here, you!’ I shouted up at the vent.
‘You shouldn’t have done that. I’m angry now. You shouldn’t have made me angry, Louie.’
‘Get off my roof.’
‘Or you’ll do what?’
‘I’ll come out and drag you off.’
‘I’d like to see you try.’
‘If I come out there I’ll break your goddamned neck.’
‘I’d soon sort you out. I’ve been trained by the Soldiers for Jesus.’
‘We’ll see about that.’
‘Send Myfanwy home and I promise to forget what you did.’
‘Are you nuts?’
‘Don’t upset me any more. I’m plenty mad now, Louie. Send her home and I promise no one will get hurt.’
‘You can spend the whole night on the roof, for all I care.’
Don’t make me do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Don’t make me use my Soldiers for Jesus techniques.’
I paused and looked around. Lying on top of the cupboard above the stove was a spray can of oven cleaner. I picked it up, aimed at the vent and squirted. There was a squeal, followed by a backward clumping sound on the roof towards the edge. Then a second or so’s silence, because even Tadpole doesn’t make much sound when falling through the air. There was a thud and more silence. Myfanwy watched me wide-eyed with terror.
‘It’s OK,’ I said, trying to sound like I thought it was.
I walked to the door, gingerly opened it, and peered outside. Tadpole was slumped on the ground at the other end of the caravan. I walked over to check. Her head was wedged awkwardly against a concrete gatepost. It was slicked with her blood but she was still breathing. I went to the kiosk on the main road to call an ambulance.
Chapter 15
I SPENT THREE MORE days drinking before going back to the office, late in the afternoon. The car with the Swansea plates was parked outside when I arrived. Erw Watcyns, the out-of-town cop who hated people to crack wise, was sitting placidly in the driver’s seat, a copy of the sporting newspaper spread across the wheel, a half- eaten sticky bun in his hand. It was not a heart-warming sight and my instinct told me to run, but he probably wanted me to do that, and where would I run to? I walked across to the driver’s window. It wound down with a smooth electric purr.
Erw Watcyns looked up at me. ‘We found the Moth Brothers, Snooper. They weren’t looking too good. Care to come down the station and have a chat?’
‘Not really.’
‘It wasn’t a request.’
I walked round and climbed in the passenger side. Erw scrumpled up the newspaper and thrust it in the well between the two seats, then eased the nose of the car out into the traffic stream. He steered with one hand, the one holding the bun. As he drove he took bites from the bun and steadied the wheel with his elbow.
‘They were face down in the harbour. Know anything about that?’
‘No.’
‘Tyre-iron marks on their heads. Know anything about that?’
‘No.’
‘Witnesses saw them come out of your office a few days ago. Know anything about that?’
‘No.’
‘I didn’t think you would.’
The stone steps that led down to the basement of the police station had that same old gritty sound: that oh so familiar rhythmic, plodding, forlorn scraping like a steam train chuffing sadly on its way to the wreckers’ yard. The walls glistened with the same municipal cream paint, applied to the same uneven brickwork, wet with the same saline condensation and the same all-pervading rheumatic dampness. The air was laden with the same stale cooking smells, from a canteen where food is assembled from kits. There were dull thumps of things being moved around, a few floors up; and the awareness of a presence: inaudible, odourless, below the threshold of any sensation; but there, somehow, all the same. A far-off susurration . . . it was the subliminal register of the sea coming in and going out. It seemed to me I had been making this journey all my life, like those people who take their vacation in the same spot every year. The ones who book the same caravan and come not because they want a change but because they don’t. Life is too hard if you have to think about it. Aberystwyth police station: our cell is marked with an X. The food is a bit greasy, but the weather has been nice. We get regularly beaten. Please send a lawyer. Wish you were here. The light was as yellow as egg yolk.
We turned left at the bottom of the stairs, into D section: a short corridor with four cells up one side and wall-to-ceiling bars like in the cowboy films. The deputy showed me to my room. There was someone already in it. Miss Evangeline. She was sitting on the bed, staring ahead with the fixity of purpose that rabbits in headlights are said to display. She flinched when the door slammed and the key went clickety-click like the bolt being pulled back on a rifle. Tadpole had been kept in the hospital overnight with mild concussion and released next morning. That was two days ago. She’d been busy in the meantime: this was her revenge.
‘Miss Evangeline, what are you doing here?’
‘I’ve been arrested. Oh dear Lord above!’
‘For what?’
‘The charity disabled boy outside the Pier, the one made of fibreglass, someone broke his box open and took the money. They say it was me. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t. It must be a mistake.’
‘They found some money in my handbag. But I don’t have any money.’
‘What were you doing at the Pier?’
‘I was with that nurse.’
‘Tadpole?’
‘Yes. She took me for a walk along the Prom, it was so nice of her – normally she never bothers. When we got to the Pier I lost her and the next thing I knew there was a consternation and they were accusing me of stealing. Oh Lord!’
Erw appeared in the corridor. I walked over to the bars, we stood face to face.
‘Let her go.’
‘Can’t do that, Peeper, she’s a felon. Damaging council property, theft, can’t let her go.’
‘She’s blind, for God’s sake!’
‘So is the law, Shamus, so is the law.’
‘She didn’t do anything and you know it.’
‘Do I know that?’
‘She was set up.’
‘Who by?’
‘Tadpole.’
He pretended to consider, then shook his head with incredulity. ‘No, not Tadpole. She’d never do a thing like that. She loves those old codgers up there.’
‘Like hell she does.’
