‘Where did you get the money for a bail?’ I said.
‘It was only fifty quid.’
‘I know. Where did you—’
‘Oh! Before I forget,’ said Calamity, ‘I need to tell you . . . I did something . . . I did a tail job on the boy who collects the pies. He takes the empties to Erw Watcyns.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s very interesting. Where did you get the fifty quid?’
Silence.
‘Calamity?’
‘Oh, you know . . .’
‘Oh, no! You didn’t . . . Not the book . . . ?’
‘It’s OK.’
‘You haven’t sold it?’
‘I pawned it. I can get it back if you don’t jump bail.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to jump bail.’
‘I know.’
* * *
It’s the one thing they never tell you about in the movies: the hard manual labour. You see people walking around all the time – shaking martinis, playing tennis, clutching long cigarette holders – but they never tell you about the problems you get when you kill one of them, when you take away their means of self-propulsion. It’s a can of worms. It’s like having a dead cow in the living room. And then there’s the mess. That’s another thing they don’t talk about. When people can still move about they have a thing called delicacy. They go to secret places to empty themselves. It’s not the same when they’re dead. They don’t care any more. They’re just offal. They spill themselves all over your carpet. You can spend all morning mopping up the blood, but a lifetime is not enough. The forensic boys will come along and laugh at you. They spray the room with special chemicals and turn on an ultraviolet light and hey presto! the stains are back, shining in glorious Technicolor. The floor is as clean as a new pin and guess what? Something red seeped through the gaps in the floorboards. All you did was give him a little bang on the head; you put newspaper down; there was no mess. But it forms an invisible aerosol cloud and floats around unseen like a thought bubble; ten million microscopic droplets. They only need to find one and you’re off to the chair. The forensic boys laugh at you; they love you; they eat you for breakfast.
What are you going to do with all that meat, anyway? All that gristle and cartilage, and bone, a stomach full of undigested food and an arse full of shit? Where are you going to put it? What are you going to use? Kitchen utensils? It’s like demolishing a piano with a pair of scissors. The only one that’s any good is the ice-cream scoop to take out the eyes. And even then one of them rolls under the sofa and won’t turn up again for years. And boy, do they struggle! They flail and scratch and gurgle; they bite and kick; they stick a finger in your eye and pull your hair . . . Those poor crazed African dictators couldn’t take it any more. Just couldn’t watch. They came up with a better idea: put two people in a cell with a sledgehammer and tell them to sort it out between themselves. One of you goes free. You decide. And hose the place down afterwards.
It’s the one thing they never mention in the movies. We’re too effete these days: we don’t have the strength. Just ask old Doc Sawbones in his frock coat and blood-spattered top hat how hard it is to remove a limb: he’ll tell you. Try using an axe. Chop, chop, chop . . . They’ll still get you. You’ll run out of bin bags. Or a bit of bone goes in your eye and turns sceptic. The surgeon who takes it out is an amateur sleuth. The worst sort. Sticks it under the microscope and knows it alclass="underline" it’s amazing what they can see. Young female, early twenties, five foot six in her socks, blonde hair, blue eyes, twenty-six-inch waist, had cornflakes for breakfast. All from a splinter. OK, Louie, let’s go through it again, and this time skip the fairy stories. How did you get DOA’s thigh bone in your eye? I don’t know, I keep telling you, I was chopping wood and I must have slipped. How do you explain the cornflake? It’s from your packet, the lab boys gave us a perfect match . . . Yes, it’s the one thing they never mention in the movies. You can’t burn them, you can’t hide them, you can’t cut them up; you can’t do anything with them. They’re made from the toughest substance known to man: man. In case you’re wondering, it’s why I will never kill Erw Watcyns.
Chapter 16
BESIDES THE CHAPLAIN there were four mourners at Miss Evangeline’s funeraclass="underline" the director of the nursing home, one of the patients, a woman from the social services, and, standing some distance away, Lorelei, the one-eyed street-walker who used to visit Miss Evangeline. A small lane runs through Llanbadarn cemetery, and in the late afternoon gloom the streetlamp was already lit. She stood like a sentinel under the lamp, surrounded by swirling white moths of snow; her mouth a scarlet fissure across the powdery moonscape of her face. It was as if she was reluctant to get too close, as if a life being made to feel unwelcome at any sort of respectable gathering had led to ingrained habits that were hard to dissolve, even for the funeral of an old friend. We stood together and listened to the drone of the chaplain’s words. Watched them lower the coffin into the ground. Listened to the thud of dirt on hollow wood. When there was nothing more to watch we walked down Elm Tree Avenue together and on down Queen’s Road to the Prom.
We went to the Cliff Railway station café and ordered two teas just as they were closing. Teas served with sullen ill-will because the appearance of two customers at this hour would make the woman late closing. Lorelei took out a metal flask and poured shots of whisky into the tea. The woman closing up with unnecessary bangs and accusatory crashes threw a look of disapproval. This was an unlicensed café, I could lose my licence. The last train of the evening clanked down to rest on the buffers. No one got off, no one got on. On a night like tonight there was no point trying to escape. Better to drink. To wassail.
‘Not much of a turn-out,’ said Lorelei.
From the radio in the kitchen came the haunting anthem of all troubled Christmases: Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright. The simple ditty that made the soldiers in the Great War lay down their arms and play football. Then pick them up and start shooting each other again. There is no better cameo in all the annals of human history for demonstrating the futile insanity of war.
‘Mind you, I’ll be lucky to get four turn up when I go.’
I squeezed her hand in an attempt to reassure. ‘Does it really matter, once you’ve gone, who turns up to the funeral?’ I said.
Lorelei considered. ‘We were quite close in school. Then we lost touch.’
‘How long have – had you been visiting her at the nursing home?’
‘About ten years. I left town for a while, then when I came back I heard about her from someone, so I started going to see her.’
‘She kept talking about a child.’
‘Yes. I never knew about it at the time.’
‘I promised her I’d try and find it.’
She nodded.
‘Was I wrong, do you think?’
‘It’s not for me to say.’
‘A dying woman’s wish. I could hardly say no.’
‘No, I suppose not. That Erw Watcyns . . . Someone should do something.’
I asked her if she had heard of a soldier called Caleb Penpegws, because all boys who fought in that war, as in all wars, must have passed on their way to the front through the arms of someone like Lorelei.
‘There were so many boys,’ she said. ‘I never remembered the names. But there’s a man at the Pier, Eifion. He might know.’
I paid for the teas and just before we stood up to leave Lorelei said, ‘Will you kill Erw Watcyns?’