They squinted up at me as I approached. ‘We started without you,’ said Preseli. Ercwleff smiled and lifted the sandwich upwards in the way people do to convey appreciation when their mouths are too full.
‘You didn’t have to break the door. The key is under the mat.’
‘Where’s the fun in that?’ asked Preseli.
‘Looks like I’ll have to replace the door now.’
‘Looks like it,’ said Preseli with a full mouth.
‘Doors are expensive.’
‘Good ones are.’
‘To tell you the truth, I’m getting tired of you destroying my property.’
‘Your problem, peeper, is, you don’t listen. I told you not to go poking your nose in my affairs but you carried on anyway. That desk was a gentle warning, a way of telling you this is what happens to your face when you cross paths with Preseli Watkins. I hear you went to see Doc Digwyl. What for?’
‘Chilblains.’
‘Always cracking wise, eh?’
‘What business is it of yours what I go to see a doctor about?’
‘If you want time off sick I can arrange that.’
‘Is that what you did to Iestyn Probert?’
He carried on chomping nonchalantly, giving no indication of recognising the name. ‘There is no such person.’
‘Maybe not any more.’
‘And there was no such person. There was never anyone by that name.’
‘I heard he took part in the raid on the Coliseum cinema; I heard you were the cop who arrested him.’
‘I arrested the two Richards brothers, who each did a twenty-five year stretch. There was no one else.’
‘That’s not what I heard.’
‘Your informant is delusional.’
‘My informant was Doc Digwyl.’
He gave a fake laugh. ‘You’ll have to do better than that. Apart from the fact that Iestyn Probert never existed, I happen to know that the old doc would never tell you a damn thing about him if he did exist. He’s too busy moping about that woman who walked out on him.’ He threw a crust over his shoulder. ‘I also hear you’ve been friendly with Meici Jones, my new human cannonball. That has to stop, too.’
‘Why would you care about these people?’
‘If I told you that, you wouldn’t have to go round bothering them.’
‘So tell me.’
‘No need because you’re not going to go round bothering them anyway.’ He peeled a triangle of processed cheese and smeared it on a cream cracker. ‘Your food really stinks. Get some Stilton in next time.’
I said nothing but thought about ways to make him go; I let my gaze wander to the shovel lying discarded under the caravan. It wasn’t far away.
Preseli picked up a red triangle of paper napkin and dabbed his fat lips. ‘I don’t want you talking about me or my affairs to the doctor, butcher, baker or candlestick maker, or for that matter my human cannonball. Otherwise I might have to take that job away from him. He likes that job.’
‘None of that means a damn to me. I don’t care about Meici.’
‘So maybe I need to have a conversation with someone you do care about, that little girl for example, the one who works with you. I could give her to Ercwleff to play with; he likes little girls.’
Ercwleff smiled and chomped like the fat kid at your seventh birthday party.
‘I hear he likes rabbits, too.’
Ercwleff beamed. ‘I like rabbits.’
The mayor looked irritated.
‘Hugged one so hard it couldn’t breathe, is that right? Spent the rest of term in a dog kennel?’ It was my turn to smile, the smile of a man pulling the tiger’s tail.
‘That’s not a subject I care to have aired,’ said Preseli. ‘It’s painful for my brother.’
‘Those are the sorts of subject I make my living from.’
‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ said Preseli with mounting anger. ‘You’re just too stupid. You’d think having your desk chopped up might be a clue, but it just wasn’t obvious enough for you.’
The breeze whispered past the caravans; the sun flashed on the chrome bumpers and aluminium trim of the caravan and the tubes of the deckchairs. It was beautiful. I kicked the picnic table and it slammed against the side of the caravan spilling sandwiches over the laps of them both. Preseli jumped up; Ercwleff bent down to retrieve the sandwich he had been eating. I picked up the shovel and brought the thin edge of the blade down the back of his skull. It sounded like a stonemason chiselling rock. Preseli stared at me in astonishment and fear as I raised the shovel again. Ercwleff was frozen on the ground, his rear end jutting like a badger in trousers.
‘That’s what will happen to you if you ever touch Calamity. Your tame bear won’t be enough to protect you. Now get out.’
The blow would have killed most men, but Ercwleff just looked drunk. He climbed unsteadily to his feet and Preseli helped him back to the car. As they drove off, he said through the window, ‘You’ve just started something you can’t finish.’
I knew he was right.
I put the door inside the caravan, removed my shoes and socks, and headed towards the sea. I climbed the mane of marram grass to the crest where the breeze was stronger and made the sharp stalks of grass quiver and spin; as I stumbled down the face of the dune the world became silent except for the soft pat of bare sole on hot, dry sand. And then I found a gap in the wall of dune and was assailed by the distant rumble of the sea. The tide was out, and the sea far off, separated by a long walk across ribbed sand that held quivering pools of hot, sparkling water. Across the sea, the peaceful town of Aberdovey glinted; little white specks signified houses like teeth in the smile of a cartoon giant. Five minutes by boat, but an hour or more by car or train. The estuarial waters moved back and forth, like waters to and from the heart. Glass flashed on the hillside, and the train to Pwllheli moved slowly across the green backdrop with the speed of a bubble rising in a glass of water or a satellite moving across the night sky. Given the choice, it was a wonder anybody opted for burial on land, dropped into a muddy hole, soil in your nostrils and worms in your mouth, to engage in decomposition, a word uncomfortably close to compost. In the sea, down on the ocean floor among impervious fish, you didn’t disintegrate into mulch for the garden, you were purified. You became part of the heartbeat that draws the waters back and forth; you dissolved into that main, the constantly self-renewing, gleaming, pulsing body of salty loveliness.
Chapter 9
Sospan ran a damp cloth along the counter and talked of escape. I lifted my elbow to let the cloth pass. ‘Everything is prepared, ready for the moment should it ever come,’ he said. ‘An ice-cream van, anonymous and untraceable, secreted in a lock-up garage in Bow Street. Behind the row of council flats, with the red door. The key is hanging from a string taped to the water pipe at the rear. There is ice cream, money, food and clothing in the van. Enough to last a month or more.’
‘What are you expecting to happen? Armageddon?’
‘You mock, perhaps, but my family came to this country after the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. We lost a lot of customers during that dark period. An experience like that makes an impression that lasts for many generations. It’s like people who knew starvation during the war; they never forget it, do they? Always haunted by the fear that such a time might come again. They can’t even throw away a crumb of bread.’
‘Are you really worried you might be massacred in your beds?’
‘I worry about the unforeseen and make what allowances I can. No one knows what lies in store, no one can predict. The wise man prepares.’ He wrung out the cloth and put it away. He leaned forward onto the counter, supporting his face with his hands. ‘But to tell you the truth, physical escape is the easy part, isn’t it?’