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.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘You’ve got to shag the cow.’
I waited for the punchline. It took me a minute to realize that it had already arrived. He was serious. ‘You can’t really expect me to …’ The line was too absurd to finish.
‘I don’t expect you to do anything. You want something from me. You need to pay a price.’ He pointed at the rear end of the cow with his mobile phone. ‘I want a shot on this which makes it look like you’re fucking that thing.’
‘Are you some kind of pervert?’
‘No, I just want to be safe. I need a cast-iron guarantee that if I tell you things you have a real good reason not to spread them. I can’t think of a better reason than a picture like that.’
‘I couldn’t do it.’
‘That’s your choice. It’s all voluntary, Sergeant Capaldi.’
Oh fuck … We had stopped pretending. We now both knew that he had a story to tell me. ‘Why are you making me this offer?’
He thought about it for a moment. ‘I want to help the girl.’
‘Do it for her then,’ I entreated.
‘No. I need to keep myself covered.’
‘You want win–win?’
‘Fucking right I do.’
I shook my head slowly. It had to stop here. She was a stranger. She would have moved on, totally oblivious of my search for her. She didn’t need any kind of sacrifice. Bryn Jones was right, no crime had been reported, no one was missing. She would be back in Cardiff by now. Where I should really be, instead of discussing necrophilic bestiality with a twisted hayseed under a too big sky. It was time to let go.
He lifted the tailgate tentatively. ‘Okay?’ he asked. ‘I drive off now and you leave me alone?’
I started to nod. ‘Tell me,’ I blurted. ‘One thing …’
He stared at me.
‘Was she a prostitute?’
I thought that he wasn’t going to answer.
‘No.’
