Ewart Hutton - Wild People

In the end he obliged me on both counts.

The night had cooled down to chilly, but he still appeared in just a tight white T-shirt and cinched black jeans to showcase his pumped physique. He got in his car, gunned the motor and headed down the road in my direction.

KLANG! KLANG! KLANG!

I had tied the tin cans to a four-metre-long piece of string, so by the time they started rattling, and he had reacted to what sounded like his straight-through exhaust trailing the ground, he was a couple of car lengths short of me when he stopped. As I had anticipated, he left his door wide open and the engine still running when he jumped out and ran to the rear to investigate his mechanical prolapse.

I glided up, switched off the engine and took the car keys out.

He was still snarled up in the confusion of the moment. He had found the cans. He heard his engine stop. There was too much happening here, and it took him a beat to react. When he did turn, I could tell that he hadn’t recognized me in the dark.

‘What the fuck …?’ he growled threateningly, trying to make sense of this.

‘Shouldn’t leave your engine running like that, Ryan, it fucks up the atmosphere.’

Curtains were twitching all around like Aldis lamps. He stared at me malevolently. I could almost hear the tumblers in his brain clicking through the recognition process.

‘You!’ He pointed at me. ‘You’re fucked! You were warned off after the last time you tried to mess with me.’

‘This is just between you and me, Ryan.’

‘Says who?’

‘If I thought you were going to report me, I wouldn’t help you.’

He chuckled nastily. ‘And how are you going to fucking help me?’

I dangled his car keys. ‘You’re going to have a hard time finding these otherwise.’

‘That’s fucking theft,’ he whined indignantly.

‘Which is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.’

‘Are you trying to fit me up?’ he asked suspiciously, his mind shifting into another gear.

‘No, I want your professional advice, that’s all. You talk to me nicely, and I give you your keys back, and walk away.’

He digested it. Probably wondering what particular branch of his profession I was talking about. He nodded his head carefully. ‘Okay. I’m not promising anything, mind.’

‘Did you know Jessie Bullock?’

‘Never heard of her.’

‘Oh, come on, Ryan,’ I snorted impatiently, ‘she was only the biggest piece of fucking news around here since the glaciers retreated.’

He shrugged, unconcerned about being caught out in the lie. ‘Okay, I might have heard the name.’

‘Did she or any of her friends ever give you something to try and sell for them?’

He looked at me calculatingly. ‘Like what?’ He was trying to work out what I knew.

‘Something valuable.’

He couldn’t help himself. It was embedded in his nature to brag. It was only the tiniest twitch, but I caught it. He smothered it with a big faux doubtful frown and a shake of the head. ‘Not that I remember.’

The bastard knew what I was talking about. I had my first small open chink into this thing. But what leverage was I going to be able to use on this guy to open it wider?

‘Thanks, Ryan.’ I tossed him the keys. ‘Remember the deal.’

‘Yeah. Thanks for nothing. And you can untie those fucking cans before you go.’

I complied. No point in upsetting him any further. Because, if I had my way, I was going to have a lot worse in store for him in the near future.

I even waved sweetly as he roared off.

As half expected, he finked on me.

Talk about honour among fucking thieves, I thought, as I listened to Inspector Morgan tearing me off a strip down the telephone line. But Morgan I could tune out. He had the whingeing drone of an ineffectual schoolteacher which whisked me in spirit back to the non-attentive zone at the rear of the classroom.

Jack Galbraith wasn’t quite so easy to sideline.

‘Sergeant Lazarus, I presume?’

‘Sorry, Sir?’ He also was on the phone, so I couldn’t use his expression to gauge what was coming.

‘Am I speaking to the man who miraculously got up off his sickbed and went out into the world to fool around with one of Inspector Morgan’s stoolies?’

‘I think Lazarus was raised from the dead, Sir.’

‘Don’t give me fucking ideas, Capaldi,’ he growled. ‘I detest talking to Morgan at the best of times, so having to listen through another rant from him about your transgressions is nudging my patience and tolerance into the red sector. What the fuck were you doing?’

‘I’ve just been talking to local people who might have known Jessie Bullock, Sir. I think Sergeant Hughes misunderstood and over-reacted when he reported it to Inspector Morgan.’

‘Hughes? Is that that idiot sergeant up there? The one that looks like a wax museum’s take on Stalin, with the personality to match?’

Who was I to speak ill of a colleague? ‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Fucking prat.’ He came back to me after a pause with a new note of reservation in his voice. ‘This nosing around about the Bullock girl sounds a bit unhealthy to me.’

‘It’s helping me to come to terms with it, Sir. Rounding her out into a real person.’

‘That helps?’ He sounded sceptical.

‘Yes, Sir.’

He gave it a reflective pause. ‘If you’re going to step on Hughes’s toes, do it subtly for Christ’s sake. Don’t give him any excuse to run bleating to Morgan again. Just make sure you keep me out of that particular loop.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘And don’t let your interest in the girl get obsessional.’

I promised that I wouldn’t and decided it was time to put my head down and be a good boy for a couple of days.

Until Jessie’s funeral service, to be exact.

Mackay turned up in the morning as we had arranged. Not very happy about it, but resigned to my intransigence. I knew he was trying to ease me through to the sunny side of a morbid phase he thought I was caught up in. So, while it was all about me, I had decided to take advantage.

He held the camera I had provided limply, and listened sulkily while I went over it again.

‘Isn’t it a bit sick, taking photographs at someone’s funeral?’ he complained.

‘Come on, Mac,’ I protested. ‘One way or another, I’m the guy who made this thing happen, so it would be a lot fucking sicker if I was seen filming it.’ He was still morose, so I tried a tactful approach. ‘And people record funerals now, they’re up there with weddings, christenings, Bar Mitzvahs and …’ I couldn’t think of another example.

‘Stasi mementos?’ he suggested cynically.

‘Just photograph the mourners …’ I had almost called them guests. ‘I need a record of her friends. Something I can use later to identify individuals. And I want to see who groups with who.’

He shook his head dismally. ‘I don’t know where you’re fucking going with this.’

‘Trust me. I’ve got my reasons.’

The fine weather was holding. The hawthorn blossom was finally out in the hedgerows, tiny red flowers were fighting a losing battle with docks and nettles in the verges, and the lambs were getting a little plumper and sadly a little less manic.

It was a good day for her funeral. It was an even nicer day to be alive, I reflected guiltily.

We drove up the hill from Llandewi and joined the tail-end of the queue of cars shortly after we crossed the cattle grid at the start of the boundary wall of the Plas Coch estate. Mackay got out at one point while we were waiting and started listing: ‘BMW, Jaguar, Audi, Audi, Mercedes. And I can make out at least one Bentley up near the front. What kind of fucking playground is this, Capaldi?’