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
