Wild People

He lay down in a prone rifleman’s position and sighted along an imaginary barrel. ‘This would have been the optimum position.’

‘Did you find anything on the ground?’

He shook his head. ‘They’re not going to leave a casing behind. And it’s been too long, and this ground’s too springy to have retained the mark of anyone having lain here.’

‘What were you sniffing for?’

He shrugged. ‘Powder residue. You never know.’

‘You think it was a rifle?’

He looked up at me. ‘I don’t think anything. This is your story.’

‘Okay.’ I nodded, starting to run with it. ‘So I’m side-on to them when they fire. Is that to stop me seeing the muzzle flash?’

‘They’d have used a suppressor. They’d already have sighted-up with the laser, so they wouldn’t have to worry about you seeing that.’

‘Wouldn’t they have used a telescopic sight?’

‘Yes, a scope with a laser designator to set up the target initially. And the main reason they’d have set themselves up to the side here would be to make the target easier to hit.’

‘I’m presuming the target’s my front nearside tyre?’

He nodded. ‘The side wall of a tyre presents a better profile.’ But he was distracted. Still working through the mechanics of it. ‘The gun would have been pre-sighted and locked into position here with a tripod and clamps, ready to fire when you came along. There’s plenty of cover, it’s remote, no livestock, so the chances of anyone nosing around are scarce. They could even have set the gun up a few days before, camouflaged it and waited for the moment.’ He sighted along his imaginary barrel again. ‘The car’s always going to be slowing down for the bend, so its speed is broadly predictable. And over this short range they could accommodate variable wind speeds and directions.’

Something he had said before suddenly made sense. ‘They needed two people to set the tyre up as a target?’

‘Right. One here tuning the rifle and the other one driving a car, probably with a paint stripe on the tyre to get the exact mark. On a quiet road like this they could drive the simulation target backwards and forwards until they were sure they’d got it right. Then lock the thing down so that when it’s fired it’s always going to hit the same place.’

‘It sounds easy.’

He smiled. ‘Everything is in fairy tales.’

‘Would they have used an exploding bullet?’

He shook his head and tried not to make his smile too superior. ‘Too dangerous, even in fairy tales, and even if you could get hold of one. Probably a hollow-cavity bullet. It would fragment on impact, shredding the tyre, and making it virtually impossible to trace in this sort of terrain.’

Even if anyone had been looking. Which they hadn’t. It had been designated as an accident, not a crime scene.

He got up slowly, brushing dry grass and pine needles off himself. He was gazing back towards the road, his face distracted again.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I could be completely wrong, of course; they could have used the cobalt zirconium ray.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked eagerly.

He turned his grin on me. ‘Another myth I just invented. That’s what I need you to hold on to. This is a story, not an explanation.’

I nodded my acceptance. But both of us knew I was going to totally disregard his rider.

The pied wagtail I had anthropomorphized into my special little friend wasn’t around when we got back to Unit 13. I felt an irrational twinge of sadness that he wasn’t there to welcome me home. I was used to him bobbing around on the rocks in the river outside the large rear window of my caravan, although, if I was being honest, I had to admit I was never sure that I was seeing the same bird every time.

Mackay wanted to fuss around making things comfortable for me. Much as I appreciated his friendship and kindness, I needed to be on my own to reflect on what he had told me. He left when I played up fatigue, mentioning that the drive, the fresh air and the emotion had taken its toll.

I took on board his disclaimer that it had only been a story, an invention. And okay the details might be totally wrong, but that didn’t matter. What was important was that he had demonstrated that it could have happened. Someone could have set out to shut me down and make it look like an accident.

But who and why? I came back to it again. Who, as Jack Galbraith had so succinctly put it, would go to all that fucking effort to waste me?

Were there other possibilities? Could someone have deliberately set out to target the girl? Or could it have been a random hit? But both of those scenarios seemed as unlikely and as implausible as someone trying to waste me.

Because, what could a teenage girl have done in her short country life to warrant that sort of terrible attention? And who would set up a random hit in an area so remote and deserted that they were more likely to end up assassinating an otter than a person. No, random shootings were a strictly urban feature. If someone was that sick and determined to take out a stranger in a car they would have set up their kit on a motorway overpass, or a crowded city street.

So, if it was specific and deliberate, that left me or the girl.

I reminded myself that Kevin Fletcher had never come back to reassure me that my name was not on a butcher’s order in Cardiff.

Had I been too quick to dismiss the possibility of a Professor Moriarty?

I set the mental sieve finer and went back over my past cases. I had been involved in a number of murder investigations that had resulted in prosecution and a subsequent life sentence for the perp. But why target me? I had always been part of a team. It had never come down to me being the one brilliant brain that had brought the bastards to justice. No convicted murderer had ever screamed, I’ll get you, Capaldi, across a shocked courtroom as they dragged him from the dock.

What about the ones I had booked who had died?

Two suicides, one on remand, one inside after sentencing, both of them clinically depressed junkies already well on their way down the dead-end road. One serial car thief who had received his moment of illumination in prison, when the sharpened end of a toothbrush had been rammed into his ear to let him know that he hadn’t been as hard as he had thought he was. The kiddie molester who had jumped off a railway bridge to get away from me just as the delayed 9.13 to Swansea was coming through.

And Nick Bessant. The pimp who a farmer had executed for desecrating his son and his daughter. The farmer I had led to Bessant’s lair in Cardiff, thinking I was doing something for justice and common humanity. Which was the reason that I was at this moment sitting in a cold, damp caravan in the middle of the boondocks looking out the window in the hope of seeing the return of a small fucking bird.

It was impossible to believe. No one could have mourned any of those trashed-up lives that much. Okay, they had mothers. But I didn’t think that love or tenderness could have been anywhere in the air at the moment they were being fucked into existence.

And even if one of them had someone who was carrying a torch for their memory, it was way too sophisticated for that world. If they had stooped to revenge it would have been boiled-down battery acid in the side of the face, or a bunch of hired scagheads with pickaxe handles. Something course and mean and demonstrative.

It was a jaundiced view, but I was feeling blue and bitter, and my excuse for it was twofold. First, someone had tried to kill me, and secondly, I now had to let these low-rent bastards back into my thought process again.

EDGAR FISKE!

The name crash-landed on my consciousness. A name I hadn’t even run past idle recollection in years. Edgar Fiske had once threatened to kill me.

But it had had nothing to do with me being a cop. When had it been? I racked my memory. But he was back in my head now, looming up too close to make out background details like time or place. A thin-faced young man with short curly sandy hair, freckles, and thick-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses actually quivering on the bridge of his nose as his anger boiled tears and flecks of spit out of him.

I am going to destroy you, Capaldi. I don’t care how fucking long it takes. One day you’re going to know what it’s like to die.

It was uncanny. I wasn’t even paraphrasing. They had come back to me after all these years. The very words he had used.

3

I reached for the phone. But it had been so long since I had called that I had to fetch my diary and look up the long number.

‘Pronto!’ A confident young girl’s voice.

I had two nieces. I hazarded a guess. ‘Graziella?’

‘Si.’ A hesitancy.

‘Ehi, e Zio Glyn da Galles.’

The receiver clattered down. I heard the receding cry, ‘Mama …’ as she ran away.

I had often wondered whether, if my parents had given me an Italian name, I might have made my home in my father’s old country, like my sister Paola. Something rolling like Giancarlo. Waving to all and sundry in my silk suit in the sun in the piazza sucking up spaghetti con vongole, instead of my single-syllable Brythonic moniker predestining me to grey skies and scrub-topped hills.

Paola lived in a village above San Remo with her husband Roberto, a plumber who hated me. I had never found a reason for that hatred, which both my sister and my mother, trying to keep extended family cracks smoothed over, told me I was imagining. The only thing I could pin it on was that I had once informed him in a spirit of bonhomie that Paola and I used to share a bath as children.

‘Naked!’ His reaction had surprised me.

And it should have warned me not to respond with a quip, that underwear only got in the way of soaping down the fundamentals.

Whatever it had been, Roberto had inculcated a terror of me in his children, so that Graziella’s reaction hadn’t come as a surprise.

‘Glyn!’ I don’t know whether it was the richness of her adopted language, but Paola managed to put a lot of expression into merely saying my name. Like anxiety and What the fuck are you calling for?

‘Hi, Paola, you all right?’

‘How’s Mum?’ she asked anxiously. As usual, she couldn’t imagine a call from me without an image of our mother face-first at the bottom of the stairs, or straining to hear the last hopeless echo of the defibrillator.

‘She’s fine.’

Even over the phone I felt her de-stress. ‘I was sorry to hear about the accident.’

‘Thanks, but I’m fine now.’

‘Mum says you’re on convalescent leave?’ She was probing. The worry being that I might be trying to swing some Mediterranean recuperation, and she was already preparing herself for Roberto’s reaction.

I put her out of her misery. ‘Do you remember a guy called Edgar Fiske?’

‘Edgar Fiske? What on earth brings him up?’

‘He was stalking you at teacher training college?’

She gave a small laugh. ‘Well, stalking is putting it a bit strong.’

‘That’s the word you used. When you came home once and told me about it. You were really upset, said you couldn’t say anything to Mum or Dad.’

‘Glyn, I don’t really remember that, and what’s it got to do with anything now?’

I had hoped for a more sinister recall from her, but I ploughed on anyway. ‘Colin Forbes, my friend from Splottlands?’

‘I remember Colin. What about him?’

‘We went over to Bath and sorted it out for you.’

‘Sorted what out?’ she asked, puzzled.

I felt that it was time to add a rider. ‘I was eighteen. I wasn’t very subtle in those days. My social skills weren’t too highly developed.’

‘Tell me about it,’ she chuckled. ‘But what did you sort out?’

‘Didn’t you ever wonder why he didn’t bother you again?’

‘I got a new boyfriend.’ She paused. ‘Are you trying to tell me something different?’

I winced at the crassness of the memory. Feeling the shame now in the retelling. ‘We boot-polished his private parts and took a Polaroid photograph and told him we’d post it on the student noticeboard if he didn’t leave you alone.’

‘Glyn!’ she screeched. ‘How could you? That was horrible.’

‘It worked,’ I protested righteously.

‘No it didn’t. Going out with a rugby player worked.’

I didn’t try to correct her. ‘Have you any idea where Edgar Fiske is now?’

‘Why? Are you going to apologize?’

I thought of the set-up in the Scots pine stand. ‘I think it may have gone past the time for an apology.’

‘I think you should. God, Glyn, that was such a horrible thing to do. Poor Edgar.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Edgar and his partner Michael are running a little gallery and tea room in Yeovil. You’ll find him in the telephone book.’

‘Edgar Fiske is gay?’ I asked, surprised.

‘Of course. That’s why he was pretending to be interested in me at college. He didn’t want the trainee PE teachers finding out and making his life a misery.’

A tea room in Yeovil? Suddenly it looked as though Edgar Fiske had lost his sting.

Okay, gay men could be vindictive too. But not usually if their life had settled into a comfortable and contented pattern, which would appear to be the case with Edgar Fiske.

Back to square one. With Edgar Fiske disposed of, there was really no one I could think of out there with a big enough grudge against me.

Was I going to have to consider Jessie Bullock again?

No. It couldn’t be. I shook my head to reinforce it. She was an eighteen-year-old girl from the foothills. The Mid Wales equivalent of fucking Heidi. And the Heidis of this world didn’t draw down the wrath of professional snipers.

Now that I was home, had no pied wagtail, and had run up against another brick wall, I found that I wasn’t yet ready for the isolation. I didn’t want to be here alone when the night came down.

Dinas, the town that Jack Galbraith had exiled me to, hadn’t quite achieved the tourist bonanza it had hoped for when it had promoted itself as having more abandoned Primitive Methodist chapels per head of population than anywhere else. Consequently the Chamber of Commerce was currently debating whether to give up on failed religion and to try and ride the coat-tails of the town’s dead lead-mining legacy instead. It was that kind of vibrancy that kept the tumbleweed moving.

I bought some basic foodstuffs in the convenience store and made my way to The Fleece across the empty market square, past the Victorian gothic clock tower, and the statue of a shepherd with a tilted traffic cone on his head.

The Fleece had been a coaching inn until a smarter and more enterprising town had stepped in and pinched the mail trade. The place now doubled up as my unofficial city desk and recreational centre. Its owners, David and Sandra Williams, who had both spent some time out in the wider world, were also the nearest things I had to best buddies in Dinas without feathers.

I went in through the door to the rear bar. It was early, and the place was quiet enough for David to be making a show of polishing glasses behind the front bar. He held one up to the light with the scrutiny of an ever-hopeful opal miner.

I saw myself in the mirror behind the bar. My gait was still stiff, and the jolting motion it produced, combined with my discoloured, unshaven face and the plastic carrier bag of groceries, gave me the look of an old lush on automatic pilot treading the well-worn nightly path to the beer tap.

I sent out a silent prayer for this to please not be the future I was seeing.

David turned round. He did a jerky double-take when he saw me. ‘Jesus, Glyn …’ He ducked his head into the service entry between the two bars and yelled, ‘Sandra!’ He emerged smiling. ‘We weren’t expecting you. You should have called and I’d have come over and got you.’

‘Thanks, but I need the practice.’

He took a step backwards and appraised me, following it up with a wince. ‘You’re not a great advert for the health service.’

‘Don’t knock it, you should have seen the before pictures.’ I climbed stiffly onto a bar stool.

He started pulling me a beer and looked at me seriously. ‘We were all fucking devastated, you know that.’

I nodded. ‘Thanks for the card.’ It had been signed by David and Sandra and their cat, and by two of the old regulars who had probably thought they were putting their names to a petition to repeal the Corn Laws.

‘We would have come up to the hospital, but Emrys Hughes said you weren’t allowed visitors.’

I smiled ruefully. ‘They didn’t want Joe Public seeing the levels of luxury and excess their taxes were keeping me in.’

He chuckled and let it run out to a questioning expression. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

I lifted the pint glass he slipped across the bar. ‘I’m not going to avoid it.’ I took a drink. It tasted good, and it helped me avoid it for the time being.

‘Glyn!’

I swung round on the stool to see Sandra coming through from the kitchen, her apron balled into one hand. She caught me into a hug, her cheek pressing tightly against me. I smelled old shampoo and cooking oil in her hair.

She pulled back to look at me. She had tears in her eyes. ‘It’s so good to see you home again in one piece.’

The door to the front bar opened, interrupting the return-of-the-prodigal tableau. Four young-farmer types entered in a whirl of noise and motion. One by one their sweeping glances lit on me, and their animation wilted. It was as if all the juice had been suddenly sucked out of their batteries. They stared at me like they were one entity for a moment, before carrying on to the bar in whisper mode.

David moved away to serve them. Sandra was watching me anxiously. ‘I gather there’s been talk?’ I quipped, trying to lighten the moment.

‘It’ll pass. They just need something to gossip about.’ She touched my hand comfortingly.

Right, until the next time I was seen to fuck up. I had been in this situation before. As an outsider I made a convenient Jonah. Why blame global warming when you had me in town?

I took my beer over to a corner table.

‘How are you doing, Capaldi?’

He startled me. I spun in my chair to see Emrys Hughes standing over me, a sheepish smile on his face.

He looked awkward. Trying not to shuffle from one foot to the other. I had an image of this shambling bear of a man crowded into a small lift with a posse of diminutive female Chinese acrobats, knowing that any movement of his was going to nudge tit. If he had been feeling guilty for being partly instrumental in what had happened to me I could have felt sorry for him. But I didn’t credit him with that degree of sensitivity. What was probably cutting him up was having to be in my proximity now that I was even more of a social leper.

He put an envelope down on the table. ‘This was left for you. I’ve been holding onto it.’

Sergeant Capaldi. The handwriting was neat, cursive, and probably female. ‘Thanks. You could have dropped it off at the caravan.’

He pulled a face. On reflection, I think it was meant to be sympathetic. ‘It might be hate mail. I wouldn’t have wanted you coming home and this being one of the first things you found.’

I smiled up at him. ‘Thanks, Emrys.’ What was the deal? I asked myself. My wellbeing didn’t usually loom too large in Emrys’s repertoire.

Then it struck me. Seeing the anticipation in his face. He knew who had written this. He wanted to be in attendance when I read it. He wanted to watch my reaction. He and his cronies probably had some sort of sweepstake running.

He made no move to go. ‘Thanks, Emrys,’ I repeated.

He still didn’t budge, his smile frozen in place. ‘Emrys?’ I said quietly.

‘What?’ He bent forward to hear me better.

‘If you don’t fuck off now I’m going to thank you very loudly for sending me the sweet flowers and then stand up and give you a great big kiss on the lips.’

His head shot back like a sprung trap. He coloured. ‘You don’t have to be like that, I was only trying to do you a favour,’ he said crossly.

I waited until he had left the bar before I opened the envelope. It was a card with a printed header, but I honed straight in on the handwritten message.

Dear Sergeant Capaldi,

I hope that your injuries are not too extensive, and that your time in hospital will be short. This is just to let you know that I hold you in no way responsible for the tragic accident that has resulted in the loss of my daughter Jessie.

Wishing you a speedy recovery.

Yours,

Cassandra Bullock

Jesus! I put the card down carefully on the table to mask my emotions. I started to get teary. Torn up by the fact that this woman could have taken time out in the middle of her grief and devastation to write this. To comfort me. A stranger.

And that’s when it came to me. The catalyst that snapped me out of my egocentricity. What I had missed seeing. What my self-centredness had blinkered.

Forget Edgar Fiske. Forget the convicted murderers and the dead lags. Forget Nick Bessant.

I had overlooked the facts that made it impossible for me to have been the target.

Which meant that they had been out to kill Jessie Bullock.

Maybe not Jessie precisely. I pulled back and rejigged it. I gave it more thought and revised the specificity down. Maybe the target had been more general, like whoever I had ended up carrying in the back of the car.

But definitely not me. Because, once I’d ditched the persecution complex and thought about it analytically, I had to conclude that I couldn’t have been the target. Okay, so Morgan’s so-called security blanket hadn’t been exactly tightly banded with razor wire. In fact, it had been as leaky as a spiked hose. So anyone who had been at all interested would probably have known that I was part of the operation. But they couldn’t have anticipated the role I ended up giving myself.

Because what was crucial was that my offering to transport Jessie had been an opportunistic whim. When they had set up that gun in the stand of Scots pines they had no way of knowing that it would have been me driving. What they could presume was that the operation would produce at least one kid travelling to Dinas in the rear of a police car. They didn’t care who the driver was, it was the passenger they were after.

I returned to Jessie again. Was she a random victim? Or had it been somehow arranged that night that she would be the one that we caught? I couldn’t answer that. I left it hanging. Hopefully at some point I would find a hook for it.

And this all now made terrible sense of things. The locked rear door, the fastened seat belt. Whoever had created the accident must have taken her out of the car and cold-bloodedly broken her neck and flung her away like an abandoned manikin.

I felt a chill creep over me. What would have happened if I hadn’t been unconscious? Would they have broken my neck too? Or torched us both in the car? Because those people were after only one consequence and I was certain that they wouldn’t have hesitated to kill me if I had gotten in the way of it.

Who could do that to someone who wasn’t much more than a child? What kind of person could shut down all humane and nurturing instincts like that? What kind of training in the poisoned arts could produce that kind of soul?

The corollary intruded. What the fuck could she have done in her short country life to warrant such a dreadful reprisal?

I looked at the card her mother had sent me again. The printed heading read The Ap Hywel Foundation. I knew I was going to have to visit Cassandra Bullock. I only hoped that she was going to remain as generous and forgiving when she saw me in the flesh.

I got up early the next morning, dragging all my protesting stiffness out of bed in the dark. I shaved for the first time in days, watching my face reappear in the steamy mirror. I stared at myself. Had I changed? I felt that I was underscoring a new start. The old lush was setting aside his torpor.