CHAPTER 21
Sparky and Kim helped me into the living room, and then Sparky went back into the kitchen for a minute, returning with a towel and a bag of frozen peas, which he pressed against my face.

“You are going to have a real shiner tomorrow, woman. Let that chill, and then I want to feel your face. The cold will numb it enough, I think”

“What for?”

“Broken orbit or cheekbone, love. Give it a few minutes…”

The burn of the frozen peas gradually changed to an ache, and I nodded to him to let him know. He quickly ran his fingers over the left side of my face, where Norley’s fist had caught me with real force.

“Can’t feel anything obvious, Deb. Nothing out of line. I think your nose would have gone if he’d caught you there, though. You at work tomorrow?”

“Yeah”

“What were you planning on telling them?2

“I’ll come up with an idea. Anyway, Kim?”

“Yeah?”

“Plates and microwave, girl. Not wasting food”

“What are they going to do with Dad?”

“Don’t know, don’t really care. Rosie will tell us what she can. Food, please! And a cuppa?”

Once she was out of the room, I looked over to Sparky.

“You wondering what I am?”

“If you mean asking how he knew where you and Kim were, yeah. I’m going to have a listen around, see what I can pick up”

“You think one of your… someone else sleeping rough?”

He looked at me for a long time before shaking his head, and not as an answer to my question.

“Debbie, it’s bloody annoying, you know? I read the papers when I can get them, and it’s all black and white. One side is all about skivers, junkies, dole scum, and there’s the other lot talking as if everyone on the streets is a bloody angel. It’s bollocks, all of it. Good and bad, everywhere. Except fucking Tories, of course. I will have a dig, and see who’s been stupid”

“You call them stupid? That’s all?”

He grinned, in a really nasty way.

“With how you went at the bastard, and the way your family were looking at him, stupid is what I meant. Bloody terminally stupid, death wish, isn’t it? I can hear her pouring, so let’s leave it. I’ll hang on here a couple of days, just in case, aye?”

“Please, mate. Can’t do much from work. Sweetness and light for now, then”

We ate and drank in silence, Kim looking nowhere but at her plate, before she made her excuses and headed upstairs. I stared at Sparky for a while, then shook my own head.

“What can I do, butt?”

“Be there for her, Deb. Just keep on being there. I’m off to my bed. See you in the morning?”

“Aye, OK. I’ll be up early for work”

“Cuppa on your way out be good!”

“Cheeky sod. Will do”

I made my own way upstairs, changing into my pyjamas before stopping at Kim’s door, where I could hear her sobbing. I knocked.

“Hiya, love. It’s me. Can I come in?”

“Yeah…”

I opened the door, and she rolled away from me, I assumed to hide her tears.

“Kim?”

“Yes?”

“Budge over. I’m getting in”

Once under the blankets, I spooned her. The words were there for me, lodged in my mind from playing it so many times.

“Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving…”

In no way was I Sandy Denny, nor would I ever be, but after a while Kim started to join in with the chorus, and the time did indeed go, until I caught the faint ringing of my alarm clock from the next room. I managed to extract myself without waking her, and as I did my morning routine in the bathroom, I saw how right Sparky’s prediction had been. My eye was a spectacular picture in purple. Shit.

Dress and a bowl of cereal, slice of toast, cuppa, and another for my friend on the way out. I used an open-face lid to save pressure around my eye and started the Suzuki. Ouch, ouch, ouch all the way to work, and then the gauntlet of questions about the bruising. Finally, I turned to the small group of drivers awaiting their tasking paperwork, trying to look shamefaced.

“Look, it was all my own fault, aye? Had a friend round, and sent him with my cousin to pick up a takeaway. I got the kettle on, sorting stuff from a top cupboard, and they knocked at the back door. Idiot here turns to open it, and I hadn’t shut the cupboard door again. Whack. Nothing dramatic, OK?”

I don’t know whether it was their ingrained sexist ideas of women as clumsy, but they seemed to accept the lie, and my own reputation with a right hook helped that along. I got through the day with minimal aggravation, until I was finally able to ride home and dump the lid. Kim was already in, and preparing mince and onions with a collection of vegetables. Solid and filling, just what I needed. Sparky was already gone, which worried me slightly.

“It’s OK, Debbie. He waited till I was in safe from Ruth’s before he went. Said he had some business he needed to sort”

‘Business’. I remembered how Carl and Rosie used that word. Leave it for now, Wells.

By unspoken agreement, our evening became a quiet one of reading and music, lyrical rather than loud, and to no surprise at all on my part, Kim worked through some of my Sandy Denny discs. At eight o’clock, there was a knock at the back door, Kim leaping to her feet with a little shriek. I waved her back down onto her seat before heading to the door, leaving the light off and once again collecting my chef’s knife as I bent to look through the peephole.

Rosie, alone. I slid back the bolts at the top and bottom before releasing both Yale and mortice locks, appreciating what a good job Sparky had done. I needed to find a way to pay him. Rosie entered, the van parked once more in its usual spot, my friend looking meaningfully at the kettle as I put the knife away, then asking me in a whisper if Kim was OK. I nodded, and once the tea was brewed, I led the way into the front room, announcing Rosie as I entered. She went straight over to Kim for a hug.

“OK, kid?”

“Yeah, sort of. Thank you… What did you do to Dad?”

“Let me get outside this cuppa first. Rockrose and Elf will be down in a bit with my bike, so expect another knock in an hour or so. What’s that I smelled in the kitchen?2

“I did mince and onions and stuff for Debbie”

“Good for you, girl. Deb, that is one amazing shiner!”

“Yeah, walked into a cupboard door, didn’t I?”

“You couldn’t think up a better lie? Ych, suppose simple and close to home is safer”

She drained her mug with obvious appreciation, then looked hard at Kim.

“You want him breathing, kid, or not?”

Kim sat in silence for a few minutes, then shook her head. Rosie’s eyebrows rose a little.

“Really, girl? No?”

Kim started weeping, and I slipped in beside her.

“Not what I meant, Rosie! I mean, yeah, I wished he was dead, whatever, every time he hit me, but…”

She paused, bringing her breathing back under control.

“If he disappeared, or he was found dead, there’d be all sorts of shit for me, for Debbie. I just want him out of my life, to know I don’t have to hide any longer”

Rosie nodded.

“Sensible girl, Kim. Topping a straight gets messy; draws attention. Want to know what we did? He’s still breathing, by the way, at least for now”

I took the bait.

“Do tell, sis”

“Ah, nothing special. Told him we know where he lives—I’ll need that from you, Kim, just in case. Anyway, told him that, then showed him the bottom of one of the quarries up to Taff’s Well. Showed him from the top of the quarry, after Oily had him write a note about how he missed his son, and how ashamed he was about how he’d hurt him. So Oily shoves the note into his pocket, and shows him the edge. I was pissing myself laughing. Oily says ‘Don’t worry, you won’t fall all the way, the rope will catch you, that’s a strong tree I’ve tied it to’. That’s when he pissed his jeans”

I already had a good guess, but I had to ask.

“One end to a tree, then. The other end?”

“Round the fucker’s neck, of course. Gave him a choice, we did. He is either out of Wales in a week, or we say hello again. Last I saw of him, he was setting off to walk back to Ponty. Sparky doing the rounds?”

“Yes. Thinks it was someone sleeping rough”

“Sound. He can let them know to expect a fucking slap, so they might want to relocate in a hurry. More tea in that pot, Debbie?”

By mutual agreement, we changed the subject completely after that set of bombshells. Rosie expressed her appreciation of Sparky’s work, offered a recommendation for someone who could fix us up with a discreet CCTV system, and then rode off with her two sisters.

After calmly discussing murder, and taking Kim’s old address for ease in its performance.

Shit.

I was off on longer runs for that week, so I was left to sort my feelings out in my own space and time, and it was Thursday before I remembered Ruth’s comment. I rang Nita’s office while waiting for the load to be cleared in Carmarthen.

“Nita Harris!”

“Hiya. It’s Debbie Wells”

“Ah. Can you hang on a second, while I shut the office door?”

She was back on the phone quickly.

“What the hell happened, Debbie? Norley senior?”

“Sorry?”

“You are not fooling me, woman, but I will ask no more. I am informed that the father of the missing child that is not staying with you has packed a suitcase and run off to foreign parts, or at least England. Mrs Norley is giving their house back to the local council. I have a very good idea why, but as I am no longer a police officer, I will indeed ask no more. A little bird tells me, however, that he visited his local NHS surgery, where he was treated for what was described to me as a whipping. I do not believe BDSM is really his thing”

I found myself almost snarling.

“My own little bird tells me that the ‘S’ was most definitely his thing, as you put it. He’s gone, then?”

“Yes. That problem seems to have been sorted, and once again, I neither need nor wish to know how or by whom. I’d rather have a living shit moving away than have to deal with a dead one who was stupid enough to hang around. How goes the building work?”

“All done. Nice work, as well”

“Connecting door?”

“All as you suggested, apart from some stuff in the second house. Ruth said something about you having trade for me?”

“Yes. What are you up to this weekend?”

“Off for the two days, then back on three weeks of local runs on Monday”

“Can I come around on Friday evening, then? Tomorrow”

“What do you have for me?”

“Ah, leave it till then, please. I have some horse-trading to do, and one of my colleagues is being a bit of a tit. Friday?”

“OK. I’ll warn Kim”

“It would be good if she could be there. See you tomorrow, then”

I spent the next evening and working day wondering what she was about to hand me, and after briefing Kim, we settled down to fish and chips and something anodyne on the telly. Kim had decided to be girly that evening, I suppose as a flag to Nita and her crew, but she was looking good, some of the hollows under her eyes wiped away as she slowly understood how neatly her father’s presence in her life had ended. Safe, here in our home. Safe, in a dress that suited her. Safe, slumped in an easy chair and watching crap on the glass tit.

Safe.

She still left me to answer the back door when the knock came, though, and I still armed myself before checking through the peephole.

Nita, and someone smaller in a hoody. I stepped back to the knife block to stow the blade, then sprang the locks and bolts.

“Hiya, Nita. What do you think?”

She ran her experienced gaze over Sparky’s work, nodding in appreciation.

“This is good work, love. Who did it?”

“A friend”

“Ah. Can we come in?”

“Of course”

As soon as she was in, I shut and bolted the door.

“Debbie, meet Eleanor. Eleanor, this is the woman I was telling you about. See how strong that door is? This is a safe place. You OK so far?”

The voice was so quiet that I had difficulty hearing the words clearly.

“Yeah. How long am I here for?”

I shrugged.

“Depends on how we get on, and what you’d like. We’ve had tea, fish and chips, aye? You can still smell them, I’m sure. You eaten, Nita?”

“We grabbed a meal before we came out, Debbie. How’s your other guest?”

The girl, or so I assumed from her name, reared up.

“What other guest?”

Nita squeezed her shoulder.

“Nobody to worry about. Safe place, remember?”

I knocked on the inner door to reassure Kim, then led the way in. As Eleanor’s gaze darted round the room, she suddenly locked on Kim, sitting back in the armchair, feet up, the debris of a paper-wrapped fish supper still on the tray resting in her lap. I called over to her.

“Want to say hello, Kim? This is Eleanor”

Slowly, the new arrival pulled back her hood, revealing a crewcut and quite a large nose. That was when Kim made me absolutely proud of her.

“Hiya, Eleanor. This is a good place. Just in case you’re wondering, I used to be called Barry. What room is Nell getting, Debbie?”