Last Train to Gloryhole (80 page)

‘Why? Well, because your father did it, that’s why,’ said Chris.

‘My father!’ exclaimed Rhiannon.

‘That’s right,’ Chris told her. ‘You see, when he discovered that Tom had died he dumped everything that was up there to save the family from any grief. The lights, the transformers, the timing-unit and filters for the hydroponics, and of course all the pots of weed that were growing.’

‘My dad did all that!’ exclaimed Rhiannon, her eyes wide.

‘Yes, he did,’ Chris told her. ‘I wasn’t at home that day, you see, and he and my mother did it to - well, to cover up for me.’

‘You know, I guess it’s pretty clear now my dad happens to like you, Chris,’ said Rhiannon.

‘Well, yes, it seems he does,’ Chris told her, smiling thinly.

Rhiannon suddenly looked away. ‘But, you know, I’m not at all sure I can put up with all this - all this crap,’ she told him, then looking back into his eyes again. ‘Because that’s what it is, right? And anyway, why should I? You know, Chris, I always believed you were a lot better than that.’

A helicopter could be heard flying towards them from the mountain peaks to the north. The two young people turned and gazed up at the whirring, black-and-yellow craft, that seemed to Rhiannon to resemble a very noisy wasp on the rampage through a country picnic. It approached at speed, its four rotor-blades spinning at such a velocity that they might have been the spin-cycle of her mother’s washing-machine. At the last moment the craft veered away from them to the right, to the east, and flew at low altitude through the high pass of Torpantau, then, with a markedly decreasing volume, disappeared down the widening valley in the direction of Talybont Reservoir, the village, and the verdant Usk Valley that lay beyond that.

His police-radio blaring madly, and his brawny, shirt-sleeved arms full of bulging, white paper-bags, Constable Llewellyn emerged from
Nice Baps
and walked slowly into the main road, causing traffic on both sides to halt and wait for him to cross. He suddenly turned and glared at the driver of the one solitary car that dared sound its horn at him.

‘I’m a copper on a double-shift, mate, O.K.?’ he told the fuming driver, staring at him with a sadistic smirk through the man’s passenger-window. ‘And that there’s a bakery. Do you get it? Good. Have a nice day now.’

Llew stood and watched the man drive away, then turned and approached the two cars his colleagues were sitting in, parked behind one another in the lay-by of the bus-stop just across from the shop, each officer patiently awaiting his return.

‘Cheeky bugger! I’m surprised you didn’t hurl a jam-doughnut in his chops,’ said Sergeant Foley, chuckling. ‘Yours, of course.’

‘In his cake-hole, yeah?’ said Ben, smiling benignly from the driver-seat.

‘I felt sorry for the bloke, actually,’ Llew replied, handing all the bags he was carrying to his bottle-blond, fellow constable to distribute.

‘Oh? Why was that?’ asked Ben, climbing out of the car to make the task easier.

‘Well, his road-tax was more than six months out of date, and he works in the garage opposite mine,’ Llew told him. ‘So tomorrow the short-arsed Celt should be getting a little visit from me, know what I mean? And you never know, if all goes well I might soon be getting a free quote for my next service and M.O.T.’

‘You scratch my back,’ said Sergeant Foley, licking his lips as he opened up his paper-bag of treats.

‘Exactly,’ said Llew, smiling. ‘And those tinted windows he was sporting could be worth a nice soft hand-wash or two, don’t you reckon?’

‘And there’s me thinking you had a wife who did all that,’ Ben told him, trying hard to contain a laugh, as he moved on to serve the officers in the second car with their savoury brunch.

Llew turned and glared at his colleague’s fast-retreating back. ‘For my Volvo, dip-stick,’ he told him. The burly constable got into the passenger-seat of the car, and wasted not a second in biting deeply into his steaming-hot pasty. ‘God! What I’d give for some ketchup right now, Sarge,’ he announced. ‘How’s yours?’

‘Beautiful, boy bach,’ Foley told his bulkier colleague. ‘You can’t beat a piping hot sausage-roll, I reckon. What did you get the cockneys, by the way? Jellied eels?’ Foley laughed merrily.

‘Two meat-pies,’ said Llew. ‘They’re not going to be happy, I’m afraid. They weren’t half as hot, see. And I hope to God there’s no pork in them.’

‘Mind you, our pies are probably not half as bad as you get up in that London,’ said Foley.

D.C. Shah approached the window of their car. Leaning on it, a bag of crisps in his other hand, he began to address them. ‘I was just telling Ben, we managed to find out from the station where that
Candice Fatm
actually is.’

‘But
I
could have told you that,’ Foley told him. ‘Why did you want to know anyway?’

‘Well, I know it’s a long shot, Sergeant,’ said Shah, ‘but the D.I. and I reckon that’s where Carla Steel might be. Ironical, you might say, but a possibility, yeah? Say - would you know how to get there, Sergeant?’

‘But of course,’ said Foley. ‘Tell Mister Dawson I’d be glad to take him up there. Just let us finish our grub first, there’s a good boy. And, you know lads, I do believe I’m going to need something to wash this lot down with, too. Hey Llew - pop in the pub for a couple of bottles of stout for me, would you? Look, I know they’re not open yet, but just tell Jean who it’s for, O.K., and have her put it on the tab.’

Pasty already eaten, Constable Llewellyn climbed out of the car and disappeared into the nearest building to the bus-stop, where the delivery men from the brewery had already pulled up the cellar-cover, and were busy with ropes, dropping large barrels below ground.

‘I can see
those chaps
have already had a pint, see, Ben,’ Foley told his uniformed colleague sitting in front of him. ‘So a couple of bottles shouldn’t be a problem, right? Hey, I hope you’re picking all this up, by the way, Ben, because I won’t be here next year to teach you, you know.’

‘Where do you plan to be next summer, then, Sarge?’ asked the bleach-blond constable, chewing the last remnants of his brunch.

‘Where? Me and the missus will hopefully be sunning ourselves down the Gower Peninsula, by then, lad. Yes, weather permitting, I intend to be lying on a sea-facing slope in my khaki shorts and vest, slapping masses of sun-cream on
The Worm’s Head
.’

P.C. Thomas looked at his sergeant in the rear-view mirror. ‘That’s a damn funny name to be calling the wife, ‘innit Sarge?’he said, swiftly ducking to avoid the heavy clout to the back of his head that he knew full well would be coming his way. Thankfully the older man’s aim wasn’t true, but the second swipe, which Ben wasn’t at all expecting, caught him smartly in the ear, and rendered him helpless, bent double, and impotent, beneath the car’s steering-wheel.

After circling the village of Talybont (where Tom had told me his family had lived decades earlier), and seeing nothing remotely of interest, I drove my van back westwards past the great, serpentine Talybont Reservoir, then sped along the remaining section of the relatively straight road that ran west, right up to the foot of the steep, zig-zag section that wound its way right up to the high pass through the Beacons at Torpantau. The steep gradient of this tricky climb meant that I took each and every one of its double-bends in first-gear, dodging numerous families of dozy, newly-sheered sheep at each and every turn.

As I drove past the site of the old station-halt, and slid down alongside the mountain stream, I suddenly saw someone who looked remarkably like my daughter sitting amongst the conifers that grew upon the steep, grassy slope to my left. I slowed the vehicle down and peered across to see more clearly, and saw that it was indeed her, and that she had by now stood up and seemed to be furiously waving me on, as was an even more excited Chris Cillick, who was standing behind her. Despite still feeling I must stop, I drove on slowly, and soon rose up the hill to the junction with the Roman Road, that took off right, and made its way deep into the heart of the peaks. Not knowing what best to do, I waited at the signpost for fully half a minute, then turned off left onto the road that went south towards Pontsticill, Merthyr, and my home.

I soon parked up in the first lay-by I encountered, and then decided to get out of the van and walk back a few hundred yards or so to peer back through the trees towards the site where I had just seen the two young people standing. But, unsurprisingly, I discovered that the pair now appeared to be completely out of sight, and so I turned and walked briskly back along the road towards my vehicle, picked up my mobile-phone, and rang Merthyr police. The lady who answered my call told me that two of their cars were fast approaching along the road where I was parked, and so I climbed back into the van and waited for them to arrive at the scene, which, minutes later, they did.

The two cars slowed and halted in the middle of the carriageway. In the marked car sat the corpulent Sergeant Foley, and it was he who told me that they had arrived to check out a local farm called
Cwm Scwt
, which lay some short distance away, and he suggested that, rather than follow after them, I remain where I was, and wait for them to get back to me.

But when the two police-cars drove off, I nevertheless decided to make a turn in the road and shadow them. Defying police instructions wasn’t normally a course of action I would take, naturally, but I told myself that my daughter’s safety was involved here, and so my decision seemed quite a straightforward one.

Reaching the road-junction again, and its sign-post for Talybont, our entourage suddenly halted. I looked across the narrow valley once more and could see that the young couple were definitely no longer in the location in which they had been when I saw them. Then I suddenly remembered that perhaps the police up ahead of me hadn’t been told about the presence of Rhiannon and Chris, and so I climbed out of my van to approach them and let them know. But as I edged along the carriageway towards the junction, it was precisely then that something rather extraordinary happened.

Approaching us up the steep slope, its iconic rattling and whistling sound heralding its arrival, came Jack Belt’s old, green camper-van, with Jack himself seated in it at the wheel. Seemingly oblivious to the three cars halted at the junction, he indicated, and slowly turned left, then, without making eye-contact with anyone, drove straight past us in the direction from which we had all just arrived. Unsurprisingly, and almost immediately, the two police-cars ahead of me circled the mini-roundabout and, accelerating fast, headed southwards straight after him.

Thinking about Rhiannon and Chris, and especially the fact that I hadn’t informed Foley and his colleagues of their presence, I decided it might be best to remain where I was and await their return. But, after sitting in the road for some time, I began to think that this could take forever, and so, largely out of boredom, I stepped out of the van, and walked slowly along the road that ran downhill into the shallow vale, and towards the spot in the trees where I had earlier seen the young pair standing.

‘You know, I bet you probably can’t remember the first time you met me, can you, Carla?’ said Volver, looking up from the wheel to the rear-view mirror, and staring directly through it into the singer’s drawn and weary looking face, cramped and scared as she clearly was from sitting between two males in the back seat of his brand-new, and scarily silent-running, Range Rover.

Rather than reply to his question, the diminutive, curly-headed singer sighed, and then closed her tired eyes, and rubbed the sleep from them with her short, ringless fingers. At a second glance the South African told himself that she must be screaming back at him under her breath, ‘Why the hell would I want to remember when that event happened?’ But being the man, and unquestionably being the one in total charge right now, Volver decided to make her anyway.

‘Those were the days, eh, girl?’ he remarked, ‘as that Mary Hopkin bird once sang out from some valley hereabouts.’ The two boys turned and glanced uncomprehendingly at each other across the face of Carla, and in the front-seat Leone turned sideways to look at him, being every bit as clueless on the subject. ‘You know, when boys were clearly boys, and girls looked more like women than rag-dolls. And when the powder-room really was a room for actually powdering in, if you know what I mean.’ Volver chuckled at his ingenuity. ‘In those days they certainly wouldn’t have let you sit in there for hours on end with your daddling mates, missy.’

Carla huffed at his comment. ‘And when girls often loved their boys enough to be willing to keep their criminal activities under wraps for them, you mean,’ she said, looking to her side at the sign they sped past which she was shocked to see now announce ‘
Cwm Scwt’
when she had fully expected it to still read ‘
Candice Farm,
’ as it had done in days gone by, and would continue to say for all time in her dreams, and in the song-book of her creative mind.

Miffed at Carla’s sharp response, Volver turned his proud head and sniffed the air that blew in from the spruce trees that rushed by his window, rather than encounter her dark, accusing eyes again in the small, convex glass, and so acknowlege the truth the singer spoke. ‘And when, I well recall, some girls loved other girls a lot more than they did their own boyfriends,’ he told her, smiling at her the kind of forced grin it pained the muscles of his jaw to hold in place. ‘And enough, I recall, to get a young black one to take the fucking rap for one more famous one, yes?’

‘Jackie did it to save you, you liar,’ retorted Carla. ‘And Sarah and I had to step in to save her Leila from being taken away. Yes, we did it for
your
daughter, Abram,’ she added. ‘Because Leila is your child, as you certainly must know by now. And Jackie would never have got locked up at all if you’d had the balls to admit to the cops what it was that you and your pals were up to. But bravery was something you clearly left behind you in Durban, along with your twelve-bore and your saddle-bag. Around the time you proudly told us all how you ran a scam there escorting English and American tourists, with more money than sense, on shooting safaris round a one-lion enclosure you fraudulently set up with miles of chicken-wire, on a farm you bought from - stole from, more like - a poor, black family, whose crop that year had failed in the drought.’