Cynan Jones - Everything I Found on the Beach

“Freedom is a funny thing,” thought Stringer. “We’re all in prison, some way or another. Just you don’t see it.” He thought of the books he’d read. “There’s four walls round all of us, and some screw who pushes a tray through your door. That’s it. Even the top guys have got it that way.”

He looked out and watched as a guy walked past the pub wall with his wife, two kids, and a dog. “That’s four walls right there,” said Stringer to himself. “A wife, two kids, and a dog. That’s enough to keep you in it.”

The big man was trying with the lighter again, the patio heater clicking and clicking.

“Give that up, will you,” Stringer said. The big man gave up. He looked at Stringer forlornly. At the port, they were starting to roll the trucks onto the ferry and there were low, booming echoes going round. By now, the big man was losing his sense of excitement and was mildly nervous of the sea. He was nervous of Stringer too. He could be unpredictable. What could you do? He’d been good to his brother. Family was important to the big man.

Stringer watched the family with the dog head down the steps to the port.

“We’re all in it,” thought Stringer. “Even the guys at the top.”

The man closed the bag.

“How is he?” asked the Scouser.

The man made a noncommittal face. “You never know with him,” he said. The bag sat heavily on his lap. “I think he’s enjoying the sun out there.”

“Thank him. For the opportunity,” said the Scouser. If you wanted to operate here, you had to buy the right. You could try to just muscle your way in but the business way was better. There was a hierarchy. Respect was important, he understood that.

“Just keep making the money.” The man made the non-committal face again. “Is there anything you need?”

“No,” said the Scouser. “We’ve had a few problems, a few missing packets, but we’re handling it.”

“You can’t let that get out of hand,” said the man.

He felt the needles. He let them go through his body deliciously and thought of the Irishmen, soon to be on the water. There was kind of a fine meanness to him.

The man was looking at him.

“No,” said the Scouser. “It’s under control.”

Hold called up the number and asked about the car and the woman called to her son and the son said it was still up for sale. He said it didn’t have the MOT for much longer, and could probably do with new tires and Hold said it didn’t matter about the MOT and the tires. Hold took down the directions the boy gave him.

He went down onto the main road that ran parallel with the inner harbor and walked along until he came to the taxi place he’d noted earlier. It was grubby looking. The sort of place you’d associate with much bigger towns.

He went in and asked for a car and one of the guys inside got up from one of the chairs. A few of them were watching a television set mounted up in the corner like in a takeaway.

They went outside and Hold got into the taxi and the driver repeated the name of the place and Hold gave him the directions again. He didn’t want to talk. He could feel the roll of money in his pocket. That was the last of it. “It’ll get me through,” he thought. The driver had an air freshener plugged into the lighter socket and it stank out the car and he turned on the radio just low enough for Hold not to hear.

“Suits me,” said Hold. He didn’t want to talk. It was like he had lost the habit of discussion in this strange singular place he’d come to. It felt like longer. “It’s just two days,” thought Hold. The old life was way gone.

They drove out of the town past the thick train lines and over the bridge and peeled right off a roundabout through continuous estates of houses. To the sides of them in the evening light the fields showed flatly between the settlements and the dipping sun spread in the grease of the window so it was like looking through a thin, painful cloth.

They came into another estate of houses and Hold counted off the turnings until they reached the place. “This is it,” Hold said.

He paid the driver and the car went away and Hold walked past the red Fiesta in the driveway and up to the door. The boy came out and they went over the car. The documents were in the dash.

“Will you take one-seventy-five?” Hold asked the boy. He made a show of looking at the tires and kicked them absently.

“That’s fine,” said the boy.

By the time Hold started back, the sun had gone down.

He drove the car into town and took out the documents and put them into a bin and went over the car again. Then he went back to the room and plugged the phone in to charge and lay back on the bed, below the stag scenes, listening to the sporadic traffic. He thought of the dead Pole. The words in his head. Checkham.

He got up and took two of the big anti-inflammatories and went over things in his mind. “You’ve thought of it. You just have to wait. You’ve thought of everything now. You just have to wait for the call. It will come.” He took the bag out from the wardrobe and sat there, just looking at the rabbits and waiting.

The phone rang just after nine o’clock. Hold didn’t say anything, he just picked it up. He was sitting on the bed looking out through the window. For a while the other man didn’t say anything either. Hold looked across at the glow coming off a kebab shop sign across the road. Then the man spoke.

“It’ll happen tomorrow afternoon.”

“Where?”

“We’ll tell you where.” Hold could feel the voice lick out at him, taste him. Hold was focusing in on the pause, trying to discern anything he could. It was like watching for movement.

“We’ll have your money. Ten thousand minus the cost of the boat we lost. You’ll get seven thousand.”

Hold’s head spun. He waited, trying to sound flat but there were waves of adrenaline in him.

“Ten?” The blood pounded his ears.

“Seven. You lost the boat.”

Hold tried to hold the spin down, the glow from the kebab shop seemed like it was dropped in water, blurring. “Come on, come on,” he was saying to himself. The “seven thousand” kept sounding over and over into his head. He saw in his mind the clear picture of the dead Pole and the phone in the boat. For ten thousand.

“I know how much these packets are worth,” he tried.

“Find another buyer then.”

“Maybe,” said Hold. For a moment he’d lost focus, was dangerously thrown. He had no idea what he was doing. He tried to put this convincing threat in his voice to unnerve the other man.

“What do you think this is?” There was a horrible, tangible, calm violence. “Who do you think you’re dealing with here? You think we’re amateurs?”

The man’s nerve held. He was rhythmic, calm.

“They’re worth a lot more,” said Hold.

“ They are. But the job isn’t. That’s how it works.” The voice paused. “You think the guy that delivers leather sofas charges the cost of the sofa?” The voice paused again. It was almost gentle, didactic. A tired giving out of knowledge. Hold could feel the miscalculation, the short-sightedness sink into him.

“It’s worth ten thousand, minus the boat you lost.” Again, the voice was giving Hold time to fill up with the cold facts of it. “And the life of the other guy’s family.” That was the final little trap.

Hold felt a blip of anger. Of sheer dizzying comprehension.

“If you do anything to—”

“What?” The voice railed finally. “What? You’ll come for me? Grow up. You might get past one guy. You might kill the next flunky along. You think you’ll get to me?”