LITMIR.BIZ

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hypothetical question, Huw. You have a punter who is walking along a railway line and he comes across a parcel that has obviously fallen from a train. He looks inside and finds … Let’s say a camera. An expensive camera, in its original packaging, no owner’s name. So where does he take it?’

      ‘If he’s local, he brings it to me.’

      ‘Let’s say he’s been away for a bit and picked up bad habits. And his wife’s just given birth to triplets and he needs instant cash to buy disposable nappies and fags. Where would he take the hypothetical camera?’

      ‘Why do you want to know?’

      ‘I’m on sick leave remember, Huw. I’m keeping my mind active, researching cottage industries between jigsaws and sudoku.’

      ‘Bullshit, Sarge.’ But he laughed. ‘You’ve met him.’

      ‘I have?’ I was surprised. I had no memories of any encounters with a neighbourhood fence.

      ‘Yes, our boy Ryan.’

      Ryan Shaw. The local low-rent dope dealer. ‘Christ, Huw, is he a crook-of-all-trades? Renaissance Hoodie?’

      I heard him laugh down the line. ‘We don’t have enough of the spread round here that you had in Cardiff that enables them to specialize.’

      I thanked him and hung up. I had had one previous encounter with Ryan, and he had not been a very happy young hoodlum at the end of it. So much so that he had complained to Emrys Hughes. Because Ryan was also a local snitch.

      He was protected. I was going to have to be careful how I approached him.

      Orchard Close, Maesmore. Not much had changed. A supermarket trolley had joined the junk installation on the former front lawn outside number 3, Ryan’s house, which he shared with his mother and sister and at least one baby that I knew of.

      I was glad to see his purple VW Golf was creating its usual obstruction on the pavement. Because, as I had no official business to go knocking on that front door with, I was going to have to wait for Ryan to come out to me.

      It was heavy dusk by now. I calculated the distance I needed and parked a few houses down, facing in the same direction as Ryan’s car. I kept out of the pool of the street light. I didn’t think that he would know my car, but I didn’t want to take the chance. Curtains twitched in the house I was parked outside of, but I didn’t let it worry me. If you lived near a dope dealer you got used to strange traffic, and usually you learned not to complain about it.

      When it was dark enough I slid over to the passenger’s side and got out of the car without closing the door. I had already de-activated the interior light. I checked that the street was empty in both directions before making my way up the pavement on the other side from Ryan’s house until I was opposite his car. I checked the street again, and then flowed across it, sinking into a low Groucho Marx stride, and dropping to a crouch at the rear of the VW.

      I tied the end of the string to the towing ring and bundled the rest of it with the attached tin cans under the car, out of sight. I made my way back to my car.

      Now all I had to do was continue waiting. Ryan could do two things to fuck my plan up. He could decide to stay in for the night, or, if he did elect to go out, he could do a three-point turn and head off in the opposite direction to where I was waiting for him.

      In the end he obliged me on both counts.

      The night had cooled down to chilly, but he still appeared in just a tight white T-shirt and cinched black jeans to showcase his pumped physique. He got in his car, gunned the motor and headed down the road in my direction.

      KLANG! KLANG! KLANG!

      I had tied the tin cans to a four-metre-long piece of string, so by the time they started rattling, and he had reacted to what sounded like his straight-through exhaust trailing the ground, he was a couple of car lengths short of me when he stopped. As I had anticipated, he left his door wide open and the engine still running when he jumped out and ran to the rear to investigate his mechanical prolapse.

      I glided up, switched off the engine and took the car keys out.

      He was still snarled up in the confusion of the moment. He had found the cans. He heard his engine stop. There was too much happening here, and it took him a beat to react. When he did turn, I could tell that he hadn’t recognized me in the dark.

      ‘What the fuck …?’ he growled threateningly, trying to make sense of this.

      ‘Shouldn’t leave your engine running like that, Ryan, it fucks up the atmosphere.’

      Curtains were twitching all around like Aldis lamps. He stared at me malevolently. I could almost hear the tumblers in his brain clicking through the recognition process.

      ‘You!’ He pointed at me. ‘You’re fucked! You were warned off after the last time you tried to mess with me.’

      ‘This is just between you and me, Ryan.’

      ‘Says who?’

      ‘If I thought you were going to report me, I wouldn’t help you.’

      He chuckled nastily. ‘And how are you going to fucking help me?’

      I dangled his car keys. ‘You’re going to have a hard time finding these otherwise.’

      ‘That’s fucking theft,’ he whined indignantly.

      ‘Which is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.’

      ‘Are you trying to fit me up?’ he asked suspiciously, his mind shifting into another gear.

      ‘No, I want your professional advice, that’s all. You talk to me nicely, and I give you your keys back, and walk away.’

      He digested it. Probably wondering what particular branch of his profession I was talking about. He nodded his head carefully. ‘Okay. I’m not promising anything, mind.’

      ‘Did you know Jessie Bullock?’

      ‘Never heard of her.’

      ‘Oh, come on, Ryan,’ I snorted impatiently, ‘she was only the biggest piece of fucking news around here since the glaciers retreated.’

      He shrugged, unconcerned about being caught out in the lie. ‘Okay, I might have heard the name.’

      ‘Did she or any of her friends ever give you something to try and sell for them?’

      He looked at me calculatingly. ‘Like what?’ He was trying to work out what I knew.

      ‘Something valuable.’

      He couldn’t help himself. It was embedded in his nature to brag. It was only the tiniest twitch, but I caught it. He smothered it with a big faux doubtful frown and a shake of the head. ‘Not that I remember.’

      The bastard knew what I was talking about. I had my first small open chink into this thing. But what leverage was I going to be able to use on this guy to open it wider?

      ‘Thanks, Ryan.’ I tossed him the keys. ‘Remember the deal.’

      ‘Yeah. Thanks for nothing. And you can untie those fucking cans before you go.’

      I complied. No point in upsetting him any further. Because, if I had my way, I was going to have a lot worse in store for him in the near future.

      I even waved sweetly as he roared off.

       5

      As half expected, he finked on me.

      Talk about honour among fucking thieves, I thought, as I listened to Inspector Morgan tearing me off a strip down the telephone line. But Morgan I could tune out. He had the whingeing drone of an ineffectual schoolteacher which whisked me in spirit back to the non-attentive zone at the rear of

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