Angel on the Inside (34 page)

I ate my steak and drank my beer and then another one just to be sociable. When most people's attention was on the band, I sneaked into the hotel side, where there was a public phone in an oak-lined alcove, complete with a local telephone book.

It was a long shot, but it paid off. Something had to go right for me; I was long overdue.

I had expected a book full of Joneses, and possibly an entire appendix of Williamses, with perhaps a separate chapter of Pughs. I hadn't expected so many Reeses, but it was worth ploughing through to find that he was listed, as
Hadyn Rees, LlB
.

His address was:
Brynteg, Pentre, Tregaron
.

I had walked right by his house that afternoon, and then looked in at the back of it.

Ion Jones had been his next-but-one-door neighbour and had been headed towards Hadyn Rees's house when he shot himself.

Well, at least, that was the way the body was pointing.

 

I left The Talbot before the party got going, not trusting myself not to join in, and went back to Nodfa
.
I don't think anybody noticed I'd gone.

Mrs Williams was out at her Daughters of the Dawn meeting and Mr Williams was watching the local news in Welsh on the television. It didn't take long. We said good evening and I said I was turning in now. He asked me, nervously, if I'd seen the cat recently, and I told him not to worry, I had a key. He said: ‘Use it, ‘cos that bugger can open the handle somehow, believe it or not'. I told him I believed, I believed.

Twm Sion Cati was asleep on the bed, or that's what he would have liked me to believe.

I ignored him, went to the bathroom, came back and turned a bedside light on.

He had left me just enough room if I thought I was hard enough.

I kept my underpants and shirt on and perused the Williams son and heir's bookshelves. His Terry Pratchett collection was mostly hardbacks. He was a serious fan. I picked one at random, and with the bottle of brandy in the other hand, I slid under the covers.

I don't think Twm Sion Cati was impressed with my choice of bedtime reading, but he knew that a hardback hurt more than a paperback.

 

Thanks to the brandy, I slept a dreamless sleep. I was woken by Mrs Williams knocking on the bedroom door and telling me that breakfast would be in about ten minutes if that was okay and, by the way, had I seen the cat?

I answered in the affirmative to both questions and she scurried downstairs, unsure whether to cook the bacon or to get the first aid kit out.

Twm Sion was stretched out full length across the bottom of the bed, and I slid out without disturbing him.

I drew the curtains and was greeted with a fine bright morning with hardly a cloud in the sky. A red letter day in Wales indeed.

From my window I could see across the road into the municipal car park, and there was the Freelander safe and sound.

It couldn't last; and it didn't.

Parked next to the Freelander was a black London cab. A TX1.

 

 

 

 

 

Using the binoculars, I discovered that the TX1 wasn't empty and that Steffi Innocent had spent the night in the back seat. She didn't seem to be stirring, either, so I could sweet-talk Mrs Williams into making an extra mug of tea and take it out to her. But then I caught the smell of frying bacon coming up the stairs, and so did Twm Sion, who began to stretch so that both his front and back legs extended over the width of the bed. And I thought that if I dallied too long, he might claim the bacon before I did. Steffi could wait.

Over breakfast – which included fried bread, something that had been outlawed by the calorie police in London years before – Mrs Williams told me that the racecourse was on farmland about two miles out of town to the north-west and that the jollities began at about 12 o'clock when the beer tent opened. She added, for no good reason, that Mr Williams ‘was a bit too fond of the pint pot sometimes', and I put on my best ‘That must be terrible' face when asking if there was any more of her home-made marmalade.

The trotting went on all afternoon, but there were plenty of stalls and sideshows – like the model railway – for the kids, and maybe a traction engine or two, not to mention a cake stall womanned by the Daughters of the Dawn. I took the hint and asked her if she was contributing. She'd made a token offering, no more than a dozen chocolate éclairs, a cream sponge cake or three, two dozen brandy snaps, six apple pies and several kilos of home-made jam.

I reached for my wallet.

 

I rapped on the side window of the TX1 and she sat up like a reanimated corpse in a shoddy horror film.

‘Breakfast,' I announced, and showed her one of Mrs Williams' cream cakes and the carton of orange juice I had bought in the local Co-op. She didn't look impressed, but then women are always slow to wake up when you want them to. When you don't, they're like cats.

She opened the back door and rubbed her face with the back of her hand.

‘You checked out of the hotel,' she said without looking at me, but she made a grab for the orange juice and ripped the tab off.

‘Something came up,' I said, and I had a mental flash of Ion Jones kneeling over a damp cardboard box of guns.

The orange juice triggered an instant reaction.

‘I've got to take a piss.' she said, climbing out. ‘What the hell is that?'

‘Cream cake. It's the traditional Tregaron breakfast.'

She wasn't amused, and she surveyed the car park. I pointed to the whitewashed stone building with a sign saying ‘WC', though for once there wasn't a Welsh translation for it.

‘Don't go away. I want a word with you.'

She stalked off across the car park, shaking the stiffness out of her legs.

I opened the rear of the Freelander and deposited my other purchases from the Co-Op: a box of Belgian chocolates for Mrs Williams and two extra-power torch batteries. Then I sat in the open hatch and treated myself to a cigarette.

She had splashed cold water on her face and dried herself with toilet paper, as there were white flecks of it in her hair. I offered her the cake, still in the bag Mrs Williams had put it in.

‘Haven't you got a knife?'

I shook my head. She shrugged her shoulders, reached into the bag and tore off a chunk, squirting cream and jam everywhere.

‘I knew you'd come here,' she said, though her cheeks were stuffed like a hamster's. ‘I sat outside Haydn Rees's bloody office all day and there was no sign of him, so I made a few enquiries and was told he was spending the week here.'

‘I didn't come here to see Rees,' I said.

‘Yeah, right.'

‘I've never met the man and I don't want to. If he's in town, I haven't seen him. Wouldn't know what he looked like anyway.'

‘You expect me to believe that?'

‘Suit yourself.'

‘So what are you doing here?'

‘Just a bit of bird-watching. It's a Red Kite reintroduction-to-the-wild success story.'

‘Yeah, and I'm Liza Minelli.'

‘And what are you doing in Tregaron, Miss Minelli?'

She have me her second-fiercest look – there had to be one more fierce than that.

‘I want to know what's going on. I think I've been taken for an idiot by Rees – and by you. I don't like that. If Rees is working for a Cardiff gangster, he ought to be brought to account for it.'

‘A noble objective, but what're you going to do about it? You're a righteous citizen, with right on your side and more moral high ground than there are hills round here with chapels on. But he's a solicitor.'

‘I'll
shame
him somehow. They think the sun shines out of his arse. What if they knew he was consorting with criminals?'

‘That's what solicitors do for a living,' I pointed out. ‘Well, tell you what, you could keep an eye on him for me while I finish my business locally. I don't want to run into him, you see.'

She eyed me suspiciously. ‘This isn't a set up, like in Cardiff?' she said.

‘No way. I need you to identify him for me, and watch him for me. I know where he's going to be for most of the day, and if he sees you watching him, that's going to get him rattled a bit, isn't it? Induce a sense of paranoia?'

‘I like that. What will you be doing?'

‘Oh, I'll be up to no good.'

 

The first thing to do was to check out of Nodfa, so I crossed the street and let myself in.

Mrs Williams was putting her coat on. She was surrounded by enough freshly-baked produce to supply a UN airlift.

‘Mr Fitzroy, what are you doing back?'

‘I've come for my things, Mrs Williams. I won't be staying tonight. You won't believe this, but I've just met an old friend ...'

‘That would be the young lady in the car park?'

Didn't miss a trick.

‘Er ... yes. Bit embarrassing, really.'

‘Now there's no need for that. We in Tregaron can be as broadminded as people in the big cities.' I had a nasty feeling she meant Lampeter. ‘Your young lady is welcome to stay the night.'

The old devil ...

‘No, it's not like that, Mrs Williams. I meant it was embarrassing because she followed me here all the way from London. There's just no telling her; she's so young, you see. Much too young for me. And anyway, even if there was something between us – and I've tried telling her there can't be – she doesn't get on with cats.'

Mrs Williams' expression went from fire to ice in an instant.

‘That's the trouble with young girls these days, Mr Fitzroy, they can't say no and they won't take no for an answer. It's none of my business, and I'm not being nosey you know, but will she be all right about it?'

‘I think I'll take her to the races and talk her into going home. Thanks for your concern, though.'

‘Well if you change your mind, you can always let yourself in round the back. Nobody locks the back door in Tregaron.'

That was nice to know.

‘Thanks for the offer and for the use of your house,' I said, handing her the key to the front door. ‘Now I said I was staying a couple of nights, so I insist on paying for two. No arguments. I don't want us to part on a bad note.'

‘Now there's no need for that. You've been a lovely guest and you ... got on with everyone.'

She meant I was the first one ever not to complain about Twm Sion Cati, and probably the first not to run screaming from the house.

‘I insist,' I said, reaching for my wallet again.

‘Well, we'd normally charge £40 for the bed and breakfast ...'

‘And a good breakfast it was. I won't eat again today.'

‘Oh, get on with you.'

I counted out £80 in tens into her hand.

‘There you are, two nights at £40 pounds ...'

She started to say that she'd meant £40 pounds for the two nights, but she stopped herself just in time.

‘I'll get my things. Do you want a lift somewhere with all those cakes?'

‘No, no, don't trouble yourself. Mr Williams is coming for me in the van. They've been setting things up down at the races since dawn. I'll see you down there, will I?'

‘Count on it.'

I got my bag from the bedroom, and by the time I got downstairs she had the look of a woman who had just hidden a windfall 40 quid somewhere an unsuspecting husband would never look.

We said goodbye and I glanced around, but there was no sign of Twm Sion Cati.

Not in the house, that is. He was on the wall of the car park across the road, lying down with his front paws tucked under him, challenging me to a staring contest.

I didn't give him the satisfaction, just walked on by until I got to the Freelander and put my bag in the back.

The bag with three-quarters of a mangled cream cake lay there, and I broke a chunk off and walked back to the entrance, keeping behind the wall so Mrs Williams couldn't spot me desecrating her cake. Near where Twn Sion lay, I put the chunk on the floor and opened it up so there was cream on both sides.

‘There you go, boy, knock yourself out.'

Then I turned and walked away without looking back. When I got to the Freelander, I angled the wing mirror to see him slink down off the wall and take an exploratory sniff at my offering.

I thought he might have flicked a tongue out for a taste of cream, but he didn't bother. He just stuck his face in and chewed up the lot; sponge cake, jam, the works.

I'd hate to see him tackle raw meat. No wonder the sheep round here stayed on the higher ground.

 

‘What does
Dim Parcio
mean?' Steffi asked.

‘No parking.' Even I had worked that one out.

‘So why are all those cars parked there?'

‘They're Welsh. It doesn't apply to them.'

‘So why are the signs in Welsh?'

‘You don't get a grant from Europe to put them in English.'

She furrowed her brow at that. It never occurred to her to laugh.

We were in her taxi. It wasn't exactly inconspicuous, but then the whole point of the exercise was to let Hadyn Rees see her. The Freelander, on the other hand, I had to assume he knew belonged to Amy. Admittedly it had been parked in the municipal car park all night right next to the road leading to his house, but I wasn't too worried about that. The car park had been fairly full, and who looks into a car park if they're not parking? Most people can't find their own cars in a supermarket car park, yet alone someone else's.

We followed the home-made signs out of town to the race-track, which was basically a large, flatish field with an oval track laid out with hay bales and the occasional traffic cone. A man wearing a yellow reflective, high visibility ‘viz' vest pointed to a spot where we could park, and I told Steffi to reverse into the space between two Land Rovers (neither of which had tax discs). When she asked why, as I knew she would, I said that way she was pointing the right way for a quick exit, and she seemed to take this as the seriously good advice it was.

As she killed the engine and we sat there, she in the front, me in the back, we heard the whistle of a steam train.

‘That'll be him,' I said.

‘Rees?'

‘He drives the model steam engine. Gives kids a ride on it. Made it himself.'

‘Nice image. Local hero, good works for the community, yet takes money from gangsters.' She turned around and looked at me through the driver/passenger sliding panel. ‘We're going to take him down, right?'

‘If you say so.'

 

I had half a plan, but I was going to tell her only a quarter of it.

‘I want you to make sure Rees sees you, but I want you to keep him at arm's length for as long as possible. Keep him wondering what you're doing here. Get him worried. As I understand it, he'll be tied up here most of the day. As soon as you've found him and we're sure he's busy, I want you to run me back into town. Now, I've got things to do that it's better you don't know about.'

What had Stella said about her? Failed the police entrance test for being too right wing? In such cases, ignorance was not only bliss, it was vital.

‘I want you to come straight back here and watch Rees like a hawk. If he looks like he's leaving the race track for any reason at all, you're to ring me. You've got a mobile? Right, well I want you to put my number in the memory. Have it on speed dial if you can. I must know if Rees looks as if he's leaving. Okay? That's vital, absolutely vital. If I've finished what I'm doing, I'll ring you and we'll meet back at the car park.'

‘And what will you be doing?'