“They was his slaves too,” I explain. “His ‘Gatherers’. Nobody took offence at that, ’cept me and Dafydd. Funny you mention the Thomases. Never saw hide nor hair of them after Guy Fawkes Night. Like they’d never existed…”
He gets up. Goes over to the bare noticeboard. If this is a ploy to help me remember more, it doesn’t. “One of them vanished sometime before November the fifth. Did you know that, Mr Dwyer? It’s been a cold case since then.”
I’m trying not to blink. Nor show any emotions. Something else the Scrubs has taught me.
“Which one’s that?”
“Dafydd. There he is. The smallest. And after that Christmas, having given up the search for him, the rest of the family emigrated. So we discovered. ”
“Why pick on me? Where’s the rest of ’em lads?”
“I’m not at liberty to say. Besides most of the gang have either died or live outside our jurisdiction.” He sits down again and his nose catches the sun while the tape recorder makes a sudden hissing sound. He corrects it. Leans forward towards me with another question on his lips. But I beat him to it. Not to ask what jurisdiction means, but something far more important. “Who took this photo?”
“That’s not for you to worry about.”
“Has someone sent it you, after all these years?”
A nod.
“I’d like a lawyer to be present.”
“That’s not appropriate, Mr Dwyer. May I call you Carl? This is just an informal chat…”
With both chairs and the table between us welded to the floor? With another Fuzz hovering outside the door, and a large glass panel taking up most of the opposite wall? The kind you see on TV cop shows? Come on, mate, pull the other one…
“Another tea, Carl?” he asks.
“You’re taking the piss. If you think I had anything to do with… with…”
“Dafydd’s death?” He switches off his machine. Eyebrows raised. “When you were still in short trousers, but old enough to know better?”
Death? Jesus Christ…
“Then I’m using my right to silence.”
“Up to you.” He stands up for the second time and pockets the neat gadget with my answers still inside. I notice the carotid jumping in his neck. He’s not as calm as he pretends. While the sun goes in, he taps on the door to be let out, then turns towards me. “Remember, from now on we’ll be breathing down your neck, so no moving away, eh? No contacting any of the others, unless you want another sojourn in the Scrubs. Think about it, Carl.”
And I do. ’Specially the slopping out…
For seven whole days, I avoided anywhere with fucking CCTV, which didn’t leave me much choice, but now needs must. At Baba’s Internet café, the Somalian guy takes my three quid and shows me into a pre-fab extension at the back, where I can work. I’ve done two IT skills courses in the past four years, so the internet’s no problem. But Dafydd Thomas is. Nothing on him at all. Nor any of the others in the gang. More and more, I’m beginning to feel something’s amiss.
Instinct tells me to try and find where those Taffies, who’d come from Port Talbot, ended up. Then I remember the ‘death’ word. Each death needs a certificate which is open to public scrutiny.
Rotherhithe Register Office is just a ten-minute bus ride away.
There’s always someone happy to make you feel like a jerk, and the wanker in the reception area proves my point. For a start, he can barely be arsed to look up from his computer.
“It’s Kew you want,” he says at last, and I notice how his lips are cracked and dry. His skin like a map of red rivers. Quite different from that moisturized Suit who kept me on my own for a further half-hour to “have a rethink”.
Bollocks.
“You’ll need some ID. A driving licence, utility bill, etcetera,” the geek goes on. “And it costs…” He then looks up at me and my crap clothes as if to say, “don’t bother”. I have to admit, he’s right. There are too many obstacles. Time for that rethink, to get my memory up and running before it’s too late.
I don’t recognize the place at all. Hell, no. Tarted up with new shingle, and where us kids used to race each other on to it, is a bistro complete with red parasols fluttering in the hot breeze. I hesitate for a moment. It’s not just the temperature sealing my nylon shirt to my back, but being there again.
“You OK, sir?” A uniform has suddenly materialized alongside me. One of those Community Police Officers. Some jobless git in fluorescent yellow fancy dress. “I can fetch you a drink of water…”
“I’m pukka, ta very much. Too old for this heat, mind.”
He wanders off, ducking away from a gull about to dump on his peaked cap. Normally, I’d say “serve him right”, but I’m too busy staring at the May Queen, uglier than ever. Now painted black to match her cabin.
Yes, the cabin…
It’s cooler here under one of these parasols and, with a cold Stella in my hand, I feel those intervening years fold away from me like a collapsing pack of cards.
Night-time, and while the other lads have gone to the chippie, Smiley’s dragging me and Dafydd towards the barge, by a rope round our necks. Neither of us can swim, but Smiley can. He can do everything, and I mean everything. Sometimes the Thames’s tarry water fills my lungs, but does he care? Why should he? Me and Dafydd who’d stood up to him when he’d branded us “fucking snitchers” for telling our teacher at Gladebrook Primary how weird he was. Not that we went there much. But she wasn’t frightened of Smiley and his rubbish family…
Dafydd’s up on deck first. No screaming, not with that rag in his gob, while my heart’s drumming so hard it feels about to burst. No moon or stars. No lights either except those feeble pinpricks along by St Paul’s, and the pong of oil and damp and the shit dribbling down Dafydd’s short trouser legs. Him with the cheeky grin and his Robertson’s golly badge proudly pinned to his home-made jumper, lies tied to the rickety old table. His clothes chucked overboard.
“I want me mam,” he grunts. “I want to go home…”
But what can I do?
Smiley’s living up to his name all right. Smiling. He produces a knife he’s nicked from somewhere and makes the first, bloody cut. “Tastes just like pork, Carl.” He licks his lips as he lowers the fork and its pink morsel of shoulder over the lit stove. “Try some.”
That’s when I throw up, and as a punishment, I have to watch till he’s eaten his fill.
How could I get any kip after that? ’Specially after doing three years for breaking and entering and GBH, which I never meant to do. Two hours a night, if I was lucky. Just as well, given the pond life I shared with. And, no, don’t talk to me about ham…
I make myself a cuppa on my bedsit’s gas ring. Nice and sweet. But why’s my hand shaking? Why do I feel as if that same shite river water’s rolling over my head again, like it did when I made my escape from the May Queen, my numb feet paddling back and forth for Britain? Because I’d just dreamed of teeth with bits of Dafydd trapped between them. The very same smile I’d seen a week ago…
The Suit had changed his name, hadn’t he? Long before he and I first met. The coward. And been on leave from the can since midnight. There’s a young Polish cleaner, Jana so her name tag says. I’d spotted her while he’d led me into The Box under false pretences. Trying to pin things on me. This time she’s collecting her bike from the rack in the full staff car park. Once she’s out of the CCTV’s range, I make my move. Ask her where this Suit lives.
“54, Darcy Road. Near cricket ground. Something like that,” she hisses, stuffing my three crisp tenners down her bra. I’m not fussed what she does with ’em. Worth every penny when you think of it.