Sympathy for the Devil Read Online Free PDF Page B

for?’ she said. He hadn’t even had the courtesy to brief her.
    ‘The obvious. Anyone loitering.’
    But both corners were deserted. The only sign of life was a small late-night store, dim lights bleeding from behind its metal blinds.
    They waited in the car for a few moments in an uncomfortable silence. There wasn’t much to look at, and no one passing. Thomas seemed bored already, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
    ‘Looks like a false report,’ he said at last.
    He told her the next stop was another alley, on the far side of Caroline Street. There’d been some muggings a couple of months back. Since then, it had become a regular stop-off point for night patrols with time on their hands.
    He drove past the mouth of the alley without stopping. It looked quiet also, and dark. There were no obvious signs of suspicious activity. The only figures visible were a couple of elderly rough-sleepers, pulling a trolley piled with bin bags.
    This time Thomas parked two streets away, and they approached on foot. She followed a couple of paces behind to discourage conversation. He was taking the route down Chip Alley, fifty yards of kebab shops and curry houses, the haunt of after-pub stragglers. But it was still only Wednesday, and hardly anyone was about braving the cold.
    Glancing at the neon of the shopfronts, memories of her teenage years came flooding back; ending up here at the end of a big night out, some boy who couldn’t hold his cider chucking up in the gutter while the rest of them threw chips at each other and wondered what might happen next.
    But the city she grew up in had a yeasty, comforting smell. This new place smelt like plastic, and something else. There was just a hint of vomit in the air, not strong but lingering in the background like an unpleasant memory that refuses to fade.
    Thomas had slowed his pace, was following her sightline towards the kebab and curry houses.
    ‘Brings back memories, does it?’ He said this without the earlier edge in his voice. ‘This is one of the parts that hasn’t changed much.’ It was an unusually sensitive remark for Thomas, but she ignored it all the same.
    They had come back to the mouth of the alley. The rough-sleepers and their trolley had gone now. The shops were closed, blinds down. The place was dark, empty of human life.
    At one end of the alley there was a CCTV camera on a high metal pole. These had been placed at all the city’s trouble spots, but the alley was so poorly lit the thing was next to useless. Thomas was waving into the lens. Maybe he’d check the footage later, she thought, see how effective it was. Maybe he was just clowning about.
    ‘There’s fuck all here,’ he said.
    She noticed he was stifling a yawn.
    ‘What next?’ she said.
    He didn’t answer, just drove away, circling the block. He wasn’t even bothering to look at the figures walking on the pavements. He seemed to be marking time.
    Then his phone went off, the ringtone from The Pink Panther . He cracked the window, leant away, so she couldn’t hear, but she could of course.
    ‘A floater?’ he said. ‘At the tidal barrier? Are you sure about that?’ He didn’t sound too excited, but she saw his legs jerking, as if to some fast, inaudible rhythm.
    She remembered the term floater from the old days. The strong tides brought bodies from all the way down the coast into the bay. The bodies would turn up every couple of months, drunks and suicides off the Severn Bridge usually. Some things obviously didn’t change.
    ‘Keep the press away,’ she heard him say. ‘We don’t want another scrum. No, doesn’t matter if it is or it isn’t – either way we don’t want them within a mile of this.’
    ‘What’s all that about?’ she said.
    ‘You’ll see, love,’ he said, the irritating smirk back in place. ‘You’ll see very soon. We’re taking a little trip down the bay.’
    They drove down Bute Street, past the Butetown housing estate, the shadowlands where the