Eoin Miller 01 - Faithless Street Read Online Free PDF Page B

Fuck Off.
    The land this side
was muddy and uneven. There were signs that the ground beneath me had once been
concreted over, but it was smashed and broken, weeds climbing through towards
my feet. To my left was a large patch of land that looked like it had once been
an allotment, providing the camp with vegetables and berries, but the plants
looked like they’d been trampled into the ground and taken over by more weeds.
    In front of me was
the camp. A loose grid of caravans squashed into a small corner of the old farm
land. Each one had a small yard, with low picket fences, and wooden extensions
built on to them to provide extra rooms. People were stood in the doorway of
every caravan, staring at me, willing me back through the gap in the fence.
    I smiled and nodded at
them, and started walking deeper into the camp, through the maze of caravans
and cars. I figured I didn’t need to look for the man in charge, he’d come
looking for me.
    The ground got better
the further into the camp I walked. The concrete had been left intact and it
ran alongside rectangular sections of grass which had washing lines and
children’s toys.
    The children ran from
all around to stare at me, but they kept a distance of around ten feet, forming
a circle around me. I hadn’t expected to see any Roma at the camp, but I saw an
old man leaning on the gateway to a caravan’s front yard. He had the dark looks
of a Cale or Romanichal, and he was eyeing me with contempt.
    “ Rom ?” He said as I drew near. I nodded. He eyed my suit and took a
guess at my job. “ Bawlo? ” Pig. I
nodded and he spat in my face.
    The children parted
to allow a lean and wiry man to walk through. He stepped in close to me and
squinted, “I’d say you’re here about the fire?” He had the Irish tilt to his
words of someone who had never set foot in Ireland.
    “I am, yes.”
    Up close he looked to
be around the same age as me, but he carried himself like the burdens of the
world were bearing down on him. He walked like a man twenty years older.
    He looked over my
shoulder, back toward the fence, “Other cops come in through the front, with
back up.” He smiled as his focus came back to me. “Pretty brave coming in that
way on your own.”
    “I’ve been in a fair
few camps in my time.”
    “You’re that gypsy
cop I heard about, aren’t ya? The one they wheel out in the local press
whenever they want to get away with shitting on a minority group?”
    I didn’t know how to
answer that, so I just said, “Yes.”
    He laughed and
offered his hand for a firm shake, “Michael,” he said, “Michael Shannon, my
father settled this place. Come on inside, I’ll get you a coffee and we’ll get
your face cleaned up.”
    ***
    “This was all ours,
once.” Shannon passed me a coffee and settled onto the sofa opposite mine.
    His caravan was at
the centre of the camp, and was more like a chalet. It was too large to be
towed by a car, and had three extensions built into it. The inside was
decorated like any other home, pictures, furniture, a fireplace. There was a
collection of children’s toys in a pile by the TV, but there were no other
signs of a child. Come to think of it, I couldn’t see any signs of a woman
either.
    “He bought the land
from the old farm. All of it. Got planning permission for this place, “ he
waved at the walls around him, “and a few of the others around us, then more
people came.”
    “More Irish?”
    “More everything.
Yours, mine. A few people who just fancied the lifestyle, burned out hippies
who’d taken too many drugs. The whole thing grew.”
    “What happened?”
    He shook his head and
pointed at me, more out of humor than anything else, “You know how it goes. The
council wanted us off, wanted the land for themselves. They tried all the
tricks, they changed the town’s borders to fall down the middle of the land,
they reclassified it as greenbelt, we had homes torched by vandals in masks,
all the usual. But we fought them