Angel on the Inside (37 page)

While the tape was spooling forward, I charged back to the computer room. The desktop was up and I clicked on ‘My Documents'. There were a hundred or so files listed alphabetically. Fortunately for me, ‘Amy' came near the beginning alphabetically. I clicked the mouse and it opened on to nothing. There was a blank space, clearly filed as ‘Amy', but a blank space nevertheless.

I hadn't the time to go through the computer. A spotty 16-year-old nerd could have told me which files had been deleted and could have recreated them from the ghosting on the hard disc in ten seconds; but there wasn't one available.

I didn't know how to do anything else, and I was about to turn it off when I noticed the rewriteable CDs in a rack on the desk. They were a commercial brand, all in clear plastic wallets, and some had written descriptions of the contents such as ‘Property' and ‘Ongoing Litigation' but several had just numbers. There was a Number 4, a 10 and a 14. There was no Number 17.

I fed disc 4 into the computer, and the screen jerked into life. It was the redhead in the check shirt and jeans in her initial pose of looking slightly bemused. I let the disc run, took the others with numbers on, threw them around the office.

The tape I had put on fast forward had reached the end and was automatically rewinding. I stopped it and played. Girl Number 6 was a small, straight-haired blonde who had probably looked frightened from the start. She wore a blue shirt with a fringe down the sleeves, long suede skirt and cowboy boots. She wasn't kneeling, she was standing, tugging at the handcuffs as they slid up the pipe. When she put one leg against the wall to try and get leverage, her skirt rode up to reveal stockings and a suspender belt. Red stockings with black seams.

I left that running as well and selected tape 10 to take into the workshop.

The only good thing about the tapes was that there was no sound. Whatever Rees was getting out of them, it wasn't the sound of women pleading to be set free. That was something, I supposed.

But nowhere near enough to save him.

The unmistakable sound of a diesel engine interrupted my train of thought, and I rushed back into the office, which had a window looking to the front.

Steffi Innocent was driving her cab right up to the front door, and just in case I hadn't heard her coming, she was blowing the horn.

 

I ran down into and across the cellar and out through the workshop, to where she was pulling up behind the Freelander.

She lowered her window and stuck her head out as she braked.

‘I knew you'd be here, you lying bastard!'

‘You should have rung me. Why didn't you call?'

‘There's no signal up here. No signal anywhere in Tregaron. Check your phone if you don't believe me.'

I pulled it out of my pocket and did so. She was right. The one time I had remembered to charge the battery and turn it on and I was in a dead zone.

‘Where's Rees?'

‘That's why I'm here. He decided to leave. The train rides stopped about half an hour ago and he started to pack up. What have you been doing? It's been nearly three hours.'

It had?

‘How much start have you got on him?'

‘Five minutes maybe, tops. He wouldn't stay and talk to me, just ignored all my questions and said he was on holiday and to contact him at his office next week. Just cut me dead, but he was looking for somebody in the crowd. Probably you.'

‘Probably. Look, stay in the cab, keep the engine running. If you see anyone coming down the track, honk the horn. I'll be back in two minutes.'

She started to protest, but I was running back into the workshop before she could get a word out.

I slotted tape 10 into the VCR and set it to play, then ran through the cellar and up the stairs. Disc 4 was still on the computer screen. I gathered up the other numbered discs from where I had thrown them and then checked the living room, where the tape of Girl 6 was still running. I took as many of the numbered tapes as I could clutch to my chest, but left two or three scattered across the floor.

I looked around to make sure I hadn't left anything of mine and checked that I had tape 17 safely in my pocket. Then I went back into the office, where the phone was.

‘Police, please'.

I was put through to a central control, which could have been in England so distant was the answering female voice and so English the accent when she asked me where I was calling from.

‘Listen. I'm in a house called Brynteg on the mountain road going south-west out of Tregaron. That's T-r-e-g-a-r-o-n, north of Lampeter and south of Aberystwyth. The house is being used to keep young girls against their will. They make pornographic videos of them. This is not a joke. There are also guns in the house. Lots of guns. A whole factory of guns. They might be terrorists. Check the cellar. Check the workshop. Get here fast. I repeat, this is not a drill.'

I hadn't bothered to disguise my voice. Keep it short and snappy and voice prints are rubbish as evidence. I had given them ‘young girls', ‘guns' and ‘terrorists', three trigger words that should set wheels in motion in the remote-call-centre set-up. The phones would be manned by civilians, but they would have been trained to act on any of those and channel the message to the appropriate unit despatch, or police station as we used to call them.

I hung up before she could say anything, but if they wanted to trace the call, they were welcome. I ripped the receiver off its wire and replaced it carefully so that the break didn't show at first glance.

Then I was tripping down the stairs into the cellar, remembering to close the doors after me. I dropped a couple of the tapes on the cellar floor near the camcorder, turned off the lights and snapped the Yale lock shut behind me as I reached the workshop.

The tape was still running, as it would for about six hours, or however long Rees kept the girls for. I made sure that even a daffy Welsh copper could see the boxes of guns, and I actually skidded on some of the loose .22 ammunition I had thrown around. I dropped another tape here and then dug into the laundry basket and grabbed an armful of underwear.

Outside I dumped the tapes and the knickers on the ground while I rescrewed the padlock hasp.

‘Stop pissing about. Come on!' shouted Steffi. Then: ‘What the hell have you got there?'

I didn't answer, just concentrated on ratchet-driving the last screws home. It wasn't a perfect job, but it would pass muster.

Then I dived for the Freelander, clutching the underwear and videos. I turned the keys with one hand and rammed tape 17 into the glove compartment just to make sure I didn't lose it. As the engine roared into life, I checked I was in 4 x 4 drive and fastened my seat belt.

Then I lowered my window and shouted to Steffi to follow me.

‘Down there?' she shouted back.

‘No problem,' I yelled.

Well it wouldn't be for me.

I moved off and aimed well to the left of where I reckoned Ion Jones was, dropping videos and bits of female underwear at 20 yard intervals. Then I was concentrating on my driving and trying to lead Steffi down the gentlest path around and down the hill to the road at the bottom.

The sight of her TX1 swerving and bouncing and occasionally leaving space under all four wheels in my mirror was the best entertainment I'd had in a long while. I couldn't resist a chuckle at the thought of the state of her suspension by the time we got to the road. It was no more than a cat-kicker deserved, and it took my mind off the other things I'd seen that afternoon.

I grimaced in sympathy as I saw her hit one particularly savage depression, and I swear I saw her head bang into the roof of the cab.

If anyone was out walking the dog on the hillside across the valley and saw the two of us careering down the mountain like that, they must have thought it was a Euro-funded Welsh re-make of
The Dukes of Hazard
.

Then again, it was the week of the races, and they'd probably just shrug and put it down to the mad Irish visitors. Or again, someone might start a rumour that Jones the Farmer had got ideas above his station and had taken to herding his sheep with a London taxi.

In a way, I regretted that I wouldn't be in the back bar of The Talbot that night to start some of the better rumours.

 

Eventually we hit the road, and I turned right, past The Talbot, and right again, behind it into the car park, remembering to park ready for a quick exit.

About a minute later, the TX1 appeared and parked next to me.

Steffi was ashen-faced and she climbed out, leaving the door open, and bent over as if she was going to retch. She did retch, but nothing came up.

She had a massive bump on her head above her left eye and into the hairline, and there was blood oozing from her bottom lip where she'd bitten it.

‘You're fucking insane!' she said, when she got her breath back.

The car park was near deserted with everyone still at the races, so nobody but me noticed the steam coming out of the bonnet of the TX1.

‘What car does Rees drive?'

‘A silver Lexus.'

He would.

I walked to the entrance to the car park, ready to duck down behind the wall. Twm Sion Cati was perched on it, as he had been that morning. I nodded to him, and I think he blinked acknowledgment.

There was very little traffic through the town that I could see, and from where I was I had a good view down the main street all the way to the garage on the bridge.

Steffi came up behind me, unsteady on her feet, dabbing at her lips with a tissue.

‘What are we doing?'

‘Seeing how close we came,' I said, then I grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her knees as I saw a silver flash of a car come over the bridge.

It roared by without a pause, only throttling down to take the narrow, twisty road up the hill.

‘Was that him?' I asked her.

‘I think so. I'm not sure. I think I might have concussion.'

‘Nonsense. We've got to get out of here. Take the back road to Lampeter. That's the one we came down the hill on to.'

‘Hill? That was a fucking mountain!'

‘Whatever. Take the back road, that's important. There'll be police coming up the other road and a black London cab out here's just too conspicuous.'

‘I think the suspension's buggered,' she said.

I knew it was, but didn't want to depress her.

‘You can't risk hanging about here to get it fixed. There's going to be some serious shit going down for Mr Rees.'

‘What have you done?'

‘Nothing. Just given the authorities a few pointers. Now go wash your face and let's get out of here.'

‘Where are we going?'

‘I'm going home, I don't know about you.'

She looked down at the ground and put a hand to the bump on her head. She would have quivered her lower lip if it hadn't been bleeding.

‘I don't think I've got enough diesel left to get back to London,' she said quietly.

Don't worry about that, the suspension will give way long before then, I thought, but I didn't say anything, just walked back to the Freelander, took 40 quid out of my wallet and handed it over.

She didn't say thanks, she just limped off towards the public toilets.

As she raised her hands to her swollen head, the back of her jacket rose up and I saw the dolphin for one last time.

I suppose I sighed. How could someone like that – fairly attractive I had to admit, and fairly resourceful, too – with such a strong sense of right and wrong, kick a cat and never say she was sorry nor even ask how he was?

There was a cruel streak in some people.

In the back of the Freelander, I still had about a quarter of Mrs Williams' cream cake, now fairly well squashed and bounced around. I ripped the bag open and showed it to Twm Sion Cati, who proved there was nothing wrong with his long vision by dropping off the wall like a stone and then padding his way purposefully across the car park towards me.

‘Come on, boy,' I said quietly. ‘You've got a job to do.'

I moved over to the TX1, which still had the driver's door open, and I showed him the cake, then plopped it into the luggage well next to the driver's seat. He didn't hesitate, he just took off and leaped by me and into the cab. He landed once on the driver's seat, then nose-dived into the cake.

Very carefully, so as not to frighten him, I closed the door.

‘So long, pard'ner.'

 

I was by the entrance, engine running, signalling left when the first police car appeared in the town square and rushed up the mountain road across my bows, sirens blaring and lights flashing.

I looked at my watch. Seventeen minutes since I'd rung. Response times were improving.

In the mirror, I saw Steffi come out of the Ladies toilet, shrugging her way back into her jacket and wiping the palms of her hands down the legs of her jeans.