Good People

He was silent for a moment. ‘Are we talking about a pimp?’

‘No.’

‘We would be interested in that.’ He paused. ‘DCS Galbraith has asked me to pass a message on to you.’

Which meant that Jack Galbraith knew that I would be calling Bryn. ‘And what would that be, sir?’ I asked, switching to formal.

‘Don’t blow this up into something it isn’t in an attempt to climb back on board the big ship.’

‘No, sir.’ I had a sudden flash of my fingertips clutching the gunnels with Jack Galbraith’s polished brown brogues poised over them. ‘I have to go, sir,’ I said, catching sight of the truck in my rear-view mirror. I cut the connection and got out of the car as it approached, weaving to avoid the worst of the potholes in the lay-by. A small truck with a standard cab, but an unusually high-sided, open-topped rear.

The driver’s window rolled down. I assumed that the head that poked out belonged to Tony Griffiths. ‘I got a call from the office to meet someone here.’

I held up my warrant card. ‘They said that this was the best place to intercept you on your route.’

He looked at me suspiciously. ‘I don’t know you.’ He glanced down at my warrant card and scowled. ‘What kind of a name is that?’

I beamed up at him. ‘My parents embraced the spirit of Europe.’

He wasn’t impressed. ‘I don’t remember being the witness to any incident.’

‘I’ll come up,’ I said, swinging round the front of the truck before he had a chance to say that we were fine the way we were. I climbed into the passenger’s side of the cab. It was overheated, despite the open window, and smelled of something stale and bad that I couldn’t put my finger on.

His look of suspicion shaded off into new knowledge. He pointed a finger at me, pleased with himself. ‘I heard about you. You’re the city cop they shifted up here. What did they catch you doing?’ He grinned wickedly. ‘Kiddy-fiddling, was it – with a name like that?’

I overcame the urge to tip his face into the steering-wheel boss. I needed him.

‘What’s this about?’ he asked, still grinning, cranking the window back up. He was wearing a high-visibility yellow tabard over stained and crumpled blue overalls. He had dark oily hair swept back behind his ears, small but smart brown eyes, and a dark complexion that was accentuated by a heavy shadow of beard growth. The way he sat hunched over the steering wheel gave him the appearance of a small man, but the shirt and overall sleeves rolled up past his elbows revealed hairy and powerful forearms.

‘You’re not in any trouble, Tony. I just need your help,’ I said reassuringly, forcing a smile, keeping it friendly. ‘Saturday night, someone tells me that you might have dropped a female hitchhiker off at a service station on the Llanidloes road outside Newtown.’

‘I don’t pick up hitchhikers,’ he came back at me, deadpan. ‘We’re told not to. It’s against company policy.’

I smiled at him. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone.’

‘And my last drop was eleven o’clock Saturday morning. Bachdre Kennels, half an hour away from my place.’

‘You were seen, Tony. Seven, half past seven, Saturday night.’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve got a motorbike. A trials bike, it doesn’t take passengers.’

He was lying. But why? He didn’t look like a man who would give a toss for company rules.

‘My only concern is for the woman.’

He held my gaze and shook his head.

‘You were seen with her.’

He just shrugged; he knew that he didn’t have to give me any more. But he didn’t smile. That was important. He wasn’t cocky about it. I looked for the natural line of leverage.

‘I’m worried about her, Tony. She got into a minibus with six drunk guys, and she hasn’t been seen since.’

He shook his head and dropped eye contact. ‘I’ve nothing more to say.’

He wasn’t going to tell me. What had he been doing on Saturday that he did not want me to know about?

I spat on my palm and laid it flat on the seat between us. An old Ligurian trick of my father’s. Sometimes it worked, impressing strangers with the deep scope and breadth of my ouvrier honesty. ‘This goes no further, I promise you. Anything you tell me stays here. Stays strictly between us.’

He glanced down at my hand, and then up at me with a look that told me he had been around too many gypsies in his time to fall for that one. ‘You’re a cop,’ he stated simply.

‘I can be trusted,’ I replied earnestly.

A knowing smile split his lips.

‘What can I do to prove that?’ I asked, still hoping that rhetoric and persuasion were going to carry me. Not quite catching the shift in his concentration. Not realizing that the bastard had actually started to think about it.

‘Are you serious?’

‘Of course I’m serious. I promise – you can trust me.’

‘No. About proving it?’

‘Does that mean you did give the woman a lift?’

He grinned. ‘You haven’t earned my trust yet.’

‘How do I do that?’

He held up a mobile phone. ‘You know what this is?’

‘It’s a mobile phone.’

‘It’s also a camera.’ He smiled as my expression turned puzzled, and inclined his head towards the rear of the truck. ‘Do you know what I carry in the back there?’

He lowered the tailgate. I understood then why the sides of the truck were so high. To stop people seeing the dead meat.

‘Farm casualties,’ he explained. ‘We get paid to pick them up and dispose of them.’

The components of the pile in the back of the truck were small in number, but they made a big gruesome bundle. Two dead sheep tangled on top of a black-and-white cow, which lay on its side, legs splayed out, as stiff as driftwood. The harness and wire cables from a winch curled over the grouping. The smell was noxious. An ammoniacal reek from stale urine, combined with lanolin, and the start of decomposition. The sawdust that had been used to cover the truck bed had absorbed unimaginable fluids and turned to gelatinous slurry.

‘Jesus …’ I gagged involuntarily.

He laughed. ‘You get used to it. These ones are fresh.’

I had no intention of getting used to it. ‘Why are you showing me this?’

‘This is the deal.’