by Mike Ripley
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?’
‘You don’t want to know. Trust me.’
To my surprise, she seemed to go along with it, or at least she didn’t argue.
The trotting races consisted of several one-horse, two-wheeled lightweight chariots careering round the track at high speed, seemingly glued together so that it was impossible to decide the winner unless you were in line with the finishing post. It was Ben Hur on a smaller scale without the whips, or the pod-racing sequence from The Phantom Menace without the engines, which was in fact Ben Hur without the acting. I’d seen the same thing before, but only in Kentucky at a State Fair, which was on a considerably larger scale.
There was no doubting the enthusiasm of the spectators, though, most of whom were Irish by the sound of it, probably fresh off the Rosslare-Fishguard ferry and already making the beer tent bulge. The locals politely visited the stalls and sideshows first, before breaking for the bar or the bookies. There were cake stalls, from which I reckoned I had diplomatic immunity; a stall promoting the Countryside Alliance; one where you could throw darts at playing cards to win a teddy bear; one promoting the Red Kite Society; one offering face painting for kids; and a stall promoting homeopathy. All were doing good business, and there was already a fair crowd at the start line of the race circuit. It looked as if the whole town was there.
It I hoped it was; I was relying on it.
We watched a race get underway and I tried to work out which language was coming over the public address tannoy. By the time I was convinced it wasn’t Welsh, but strangled and distorted English, the race was over.
‘Are you going to put a bet on?’ Steffi asked me.
‘No. I don’t gamble. Well, not on horses.’
From somewhere not very far away, we heard the shrill scream of an engine whistle advertising rides between the races, and we moved towards it, me hanging back until Steffi was a good couple of yards in front.
There was already a queue, which we avoided by moving along a single rope barrier strung between iron pegs at knee height. The rope marked out the track, about two hundred yards of miniature railroad, the rails no more than five inches apart and fixed to miniature sleepers.
Mingling with the crowd, we looked down the track to where a green model locomotive was getting up steam. Two men in overalls and flat leather engineer’s caps were standing over it with old-fashioned oil-cans in their hands. The green locomotive shone in the sunlight and its brass fittings twinkled. Even at this distance I could smell the hot oil.
‘It’s Thomas the fucking Tank Engine,’ hissed Steffi.
‘No, it’s an express, more like Henry the Green Engine, which ran on Welsh coal,’ I said.
‘You remember steam trains, do you?’
‘I remember reading the books.’
‘There were books?’
I realised she had only seen the animated TV series narrated by Ringo Starr. I bet it would be another shock to her to find out that Ringo had a career before ‘Thomas’, but I wasn’t going to be the one to break it to her.
The engine had a tender that carried the driver, and it pulled two bogies, which were little more than padded rectangular boxes on chassis, with a footplate, where the passengers would sit back to back.
Somebody shouted ‘All aboard!’ and the queue surged forward to thrust money into the hands of an old man dressed in the uniform of a Great Western Railway guard. He was old enough and the uniform fit so well that he probably had been one, and he could hardly wait to show that his whistle still worked. When the ‘carriages’ were full to the point of people clinging on – and a suspiciously large number of passengers were middle-aged men making their children wait their turn – he gave two good blasts.
‘Grown men ... Really,’ Steffi said under her breath.
One of the men in overalls took off his cap and produced a pair of aviator goggles from a back pocket.
‘That’s him!’ Steffi hissed.
‘Stay near the track,’ I said, and I backed away from her through the thickening crowd.
With his goggles in place and his cap back on, the driver straddled the tender and fiddled with the controls. The engine gave a double toot on its whistle and began to move off, heading towards us, to a small smattering of applause from the crowd.
In about five seconds, the driver, his head at our waist height, was drawing level with Steffi, and I watched his goggled face closely.
No reaction.
He didn’t notice her.
He didn’t notice her because he was looking at me.
I’d never seen Hadyn Rees in my life, but he recognised me.
And then the engine went by me and I was looking at a slab of happy, smiling passengers and, weakly, I waved back.
Before the train got to the end of the line and did the return journey in reverse, I had reached Steffi and grabbed her by the shoulders.
‘It was those fucking photographs! Why didn’t you remind me you’d showed him the photographs you’d taken? He recognised me!’
‘So what does that mean?’ she asked, dead cold.
I shook her some more, just because it felt good.
‘It means we’ve got to move now and fast.’
The TX1 roared back down the country road towards Tregaron. Fortunately, the only traffic on the road was going the other way towards the races, and for once the town square in front of the Talbot was empty of illegally parked cars. There had been so many there when I had arrived the day before - only the day before? – that they had completely obscured the Dim Parcio signs.
Steffi took the road to the left, passed the only public phone box I had seen, and swung into the car park. I jumped out of the back as soon as she stopped moving and the central locking came off.
‘Now remember, make sure he sees you, and if he looks like leaving, ring me.’ I illustrated the point by waving my mobile phone at her. ‘If he does make a move, try to keep him talking.’
‘What shall I say?’
‘Ask him about Len Turner.’
‘I know about Len Turner. It was me who told you ...’
‘I know that, but he doesn’t. Oh, just make something up. I need an hour. Try and keep him there for an hour.’
‘An hour? How am I supposed to do that?’
&
nbsp; ‘You probably won’t have to. He’s busy playing with his train set, remember?’
‘What will you be doing?’
‘If you don’t know, you can’t lie about it. Now go.’
She swung the taxi in an arc and it turned in a circle smaller than the Freelander needed, then she was off and I was climbing into the Freelander. But where she had turned left out of the car park, back to the town square, I was turning right, up the mountain road to Bryngwyn, the last place Ion Jones would ever rent.
Twm Sion Cati was sitting up on the wall of the car park, like one of those giant stone lions or jaguars outside a temple door in the depths of the jungle. I braked, hopped out and opened the boot. There was about half of Mrs Williams’ cream cake left squashed in its paper bag. I tore the remains in half and laid one of the pieces on the ground.
Twm Sion watched me but didn’t move until I had got back in the car and was moving off again. In the wing mirror I saw him drop like an eagle on its prey.
I hadn’t intended taking the Freelander, I’d been going to walk up the hill like the day before, only now there might not be enough time.
And it would just have to be a rainless, clear day, wouldn’t it? Not exactly a clear blue sky, which would probably be classed as a heatwave in Wales, but fine and dry, with visibility stretching for bloody miles.
In the mirror, I could see Tregaron fall away behind me, but I could still see it. But then the road curved around the hill and the town was hidden from view. So, therefore, was I, although I was relying on most of the good townsfolk being way over on the other side at the races.
I came to the offshoots of the road with the slate block signs, and there was Brynteg. I kept on going and the next was Garth Villa and then Bryngwyn. I turned off the road onto the track to the house and slowed to engage the four-wheel drive. I didn’t like the idea of doing this in broad daylight on a mountainside up a dead-end road, but at least if I had to make a run for it, I could take the Freelander the short way down the slope I had stumbled down yesterday.
The track dipped, so I couldn’t be seen from the road, but even so I pulled up between the side of the house and the shed where Ion Jones had kept his motorbike. That was still there, undisturbed except by spiders; the back door was still unlocked; the house was still empty, and, with the binoculars, I confirmed that Ion Jones, off in the distance, was still dead.
I got Amy’s gloves out of the back of the car, and while I was pulling them on, I checked the ground. The Freelander hadn’t left any tyre tracks, because it was mostly shale and scree over solid rock. Looking down the hill, mountain or whatever it was, I saw that it was covered in much the same material. Apart from an isolated boggy bit, all the top soil had been washed away a couple of ice ages ago, and it should support the Freelander easily if I had to make a run for it.
I patted my jacket pocket to make sure my mobile was there and set to work, sliding the top off the coal bunker.
The cardboard box with the revolvers was still there under the sacking, and there was another box under the first and then another. I had to climb on top of the bunker to reach in and carefully – very carefully – lift them out and transfer them to the back of the Freelander. They weren’t packed in anything, just laid in rows. I presumed they were all loaded – it was safer that way. They were certainly heavy enough, and though I wasn’t going to handle them individually, I could see that they bore the trademark of Smith & Wesson. It made me think of the bumper sticker of the National Rifle Association in America: ‘The West Wasn’t Won With A Registered Gun.’ Neither was West Wales.
By the time I had the third box up, I had counted 60-odd guns. Assuming the box Ion Jones had been carrying held the same number as the others, that was 80 or more pistols, all loaded for bear. Explain that away, Mr Solicitor.
But under the third box there were more, smaller boxes: ammunition boxes containing real live .22 ammunition. Four boxes each containing 100 rounds.
Planning a small war, were you, Mr Solicitor?
Except that one of them didn’t contain ammunition. I could tell that, because it didn’t rattle like the others. I opened that one and tipped it up on the top of the coal bunker. Nothing fell out, though it had some weight to it and obviously wasn’t empty.
I looked inside.
I had never seen so many £50 notes curled up in such a small space.
Those went in the glove compartment of the Freelander, and when I had stashed all the boxes of guns and ammo in the back, I took off my jacket and covered them as best I could, just in case a passing shepherd should peek in.
Then I took the Co-Op carrier bag they had given me that morning and removed the torch batteries I had bought. In the house, in the living room where the lathe was, I clumsily used the long handled broom to sweep up the pile of dust and metal shavings until I had filled the bag. The I swept the remainder into a pile as neatly as I could.
Explain that, Sherlock.
I drove back to the road, paused and swept the horizon with the binoculars. I couldn’t see a soul.
Now for the tricky bit.
I drove until I came to the turning for Brynteg and turned in. As before, the track dipped, so I was out of sight of the road, which was a relief until I realised I was in a dead end running off a dead end. Best not to think of these things.
The house, which I had previously seen only from the back, was a much more impressive building than Brygwyn but made of the same black, weathered stone. It had a front door in the middle, two windows downstairs and three upstairs. To the left was a garage with its doors open, but the track went to the left of it, round the back of the house.
In fact it was difficult to tell where the track stopped and the mountain began. They didn’t have to fence things off here; they didn’t have direct neighbours.
For which I was profoundly grateful.
The house was taller at the back than at the front, partly to level out the effects of the mountainside but also to accommodate a single-storey brick extension. This I guessed would be Rees’s workshop, built on below the level of the back door, incorporating some sort of cellar, which had probably been blasted out of the rock when the house was first built a hundred or so years earlier.
I put the binoculars to my eyes and scanned the slopes for any living creatures. Then I scanned the ground for dead ones.
I didn’t see either, but I thought I’d located the dip in the ground where Ion Jones was. There were two birds, which could have been Red Kites, hovering way above it.
Next problem: access.
I checked my watch. Half and hour had gone by since I’d left Steffi and there had been no phone call. I took that as a good sign. But then again, I was trespassing on someone’s property with a car full of weapons and there was a dead body within 200 yards. Better get a move on.
Mrs Williams had said that no-one in Tregaron locked their back door. Hadyn Rees did, and the separate, lower door to the windowless brick extension was also locked, with a hefty hasp and a shiny new padlock.
If Ion Jones had been heading this way, intent on planting the guns inside Rees’s house, surely he’d have had a plan to gain access without making it too obvious a break-in? Just leaving them on the doorstep would have looked a bit weak, wouldn’t it?
Then again, Ion Jones, fine precision engineer though he might have been, had managed to shoot himself dead, so whatever he’d had planned, it probably hadn’t been rocket science. But I was damned if I could think of it.
Anyway, I didn’t have time to think. I had to go and ask him.
The foxes had been back and the birds had started on him.
I tried not to look.
His body had slumped, or been pulled down and to the left, but he somehow had his arms still curled around the box of guns. The body looked pliable, so I assumed that rigor had been and gone, but I wasn’t actually going to
touch him if I could help it, as bits of him were moving slightly. Insect movement.
I gagged and took my eyes off his face, looking at the box of pistols instead, just to concentrate on anything that didn’t actually make me feel nauseous. And there it was. A multi-head rotational screwdriver, nestling in between the replica Smith & Wessons.
When faced with a padlock, you don’t try and pick it, you unscrew it from its hasp or hinge. Then you screw it back in when you leave. Oldest trick in the book.
I reached over his arm, trying not to brush his flesh, and lifted it from the box, holding my breath until I was sure one of the guns wasn’t going to go off.
‘Cheers, Ion,’ I said.
There was something I could do for him.
His torch had fallen face down, and when I pulled it out of the moss, the bulb glowed weakly. I took the batteries I had brought for the Freelander and exchanged them for the spent ones, leaving the torch on. Then I rammed it upright into the one soft patch of earth I could find, directing the beam towards him.
No one would see it in daylight, but if he hadn’t been found before nightfall, he would have his own son et lumiere to guide people to him. If nothing else, it might keep the foxes away from him for a while.
It was the best I could do.
I unscrewed the hasp and bent it back over the padlock. The door swung open.
It was a workshop, complete with lathes, benches down either side, drills, angle-grinders, you name it. There was a small model tank engine on one shelf, a disembowelled shell of another locomotive awaiting repair on another, radio controlled helicopters, model aircraft and a scale working model of a traction engine. A single office chair on castors was the only furniture, and clearly designed to slide from one workbench to the other. The whole place was neat and tidy, with tools put away, clean cans of oil and a laundry basket, for Christ’s sake, containing bits of oily rag. There was also an open box of disposable rubber gloves. The guy was obsessive, and neat with it. Not an empty can of Coke, a cigarette butt or an oil spillage anywhere. You could eat your dinner off all the surfaces.
