December by Phil Rickman

Author:Phil Rickman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-06-10T07:12:16+00:00

The police arrived informally, shortly before 8 p.m.

Eddie Edwards, watching from behind a curtain in the darkened front bedroom at his home, the Old Vicarage, was rather disappointed at first, when merely this elderly, grey Ford Sierra pulled up under his porch light and just one man emerged and with no great hurry.

He was tall but slumped. Walked with his neck bent, looking from a distance like an old-fashioned lamp-post.

'Coffee, I think, my love,' Eddie called to his wife, to get her out of the way, waiting for the ring before moving towards the door. Only one man; maybe it wasn't such a big deal after all.

'Mr Edwards?'

To his surprise, the policeman had a denser Welsh accent than you generally found in this part of the world, indicating origins considerably further west. He had a long, thin, pale face, like a half-moon.

'Oh, ah, Superintendent Gwyn Arthur Jones, sir, Gwent Police.' Sounded as if it was already well past his bedtime.

'You're not from these parts,' Eddie said brightly.

'Nor indeed, it seems, are you,' said Supt. Jones, adding hopefully, 'Siarad Cymreig?'

'Lapsed, I'm afraid. Used to, see, but you get out of it, especially around here. Carmarthen, is it, you're from, Mr Jones? Come in, sit down.'

The policeman handed his overcoat to Eddie and bent his head to enter the sitting-room, which still had an air of Vicarage about it, thanks to Marina and a lot of chintz.

'From Pontmeurig, I come, sir, originally.'

'My God, there's an outpost. Must seem like the bright lights where you are now. Newport?'

'Abergavenny. Mind if I smoke? So many people in horror of the humble cigarette these days, I live in constant fear of an even more terrible backlash against my historic pipe. And his pipe did indeed look historic. Eddie spread his hands in happy acquiescence. Something less forbidding, somehow, about a pipe-smoker.

'Part of our great heritage, the pipe.' Superintendent Gwyn Arthur Jones bent over an old-fashioned chromium lighter with a flame like oxy-acetylene. 'Course, I haven't seen this candle yet, but I don't somehow think I'd care for one on my fiftieth birthday cake.'

'Not ... not for a few years yet, surely,' Eddie said, thrown a little by the unobtrusive way this man changed gear.

'Week on Friday,' said Superintendent Jones mournfully. 'At least advancing age allows one to exhibit eccentricities. I could go quite over the top, see, on this business. Get the church sealed off, fill it up with little men in plastic suits, have my boys doing house-to-house. Make no mistake, Mr Edwards, we are talking Dead People here. Babies even, who knows until we hear from the lab.'

'Babies. Good God, man!'

'Newborn babies, it's been known.'

'You have reports on this kind of thing?'

'Like most men of limited intellect, I take the News of the World,' Gwyn Arthur Jones said drily. 'What I am getting at, Mr Edwards, is that other men might call out the troops but brought up in Pontmeurig one learns caution. Your vicar, now what does he have to say?'

Eddie hesitated. 'He, er, he doesn't know yet, Superintendent.

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