SWANSEA TERMINAL - Couverture souple

LEWIS, ROBERT

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1852429755 ISBN 13 : 9781852429751

Editeur : Serpent's Tail, 2007

Synopsis

Swansea Terminal is the sequel to Robert?s Lewis acclaimed debut, The Last Llanelli Train. Readers of the earlier novel may be surprised to discover that a sequel exists: after all P.I. Robin Llewellyn ended the first book as a terminal alcoholic pursued by killers. Well, he?s back, but only just: as Swansea Terminal opens, Robin is homeless in Swansea, just another dosser intent on drinking himself into an early grave. He doesn?t look in any state to stagger through another crime caper as twisted as The Last Llanelli Train ? but stagger through it he does. After all, Robin is the perfect patsy, and before long Swansea?s dodgiest gangsters have found him a job ? one only a chronic alcoholic with nothing to lose would be crazy enough to take. Every bit as dark, funny and oddly poignant as The Last Llanelli Train, this is new British crime fiction at its very finest.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Robert Lewis was born in the Black Mountains, in the Brecon Beacons, which is by all accounts a beautiful part of the world. He spent his twenties getting sacked, living in bedsits, drinking in the dodgier pubs of various cities, and caring about the wrong things. Most of this is still going on.
He still thinks literature can save him, and he's almost thirty now. He hasn't seen it save anyone else.

His first novel, The Last Llanelli Train was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Writing, along with Zadie Smith and Chrisother Brookmyre.

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

Swansea Terminal - Robert Lewis

Leadtext: Featuring P.I. Robin Llewellyn, this is the follow-up to The Last LLanelli Train. First chapter follows...

Scotty and I had got up early to go to the beach, and the weather was so good you could stand on the beach and actually see the sea. We had walked through the middle of town, crossed the Kingsway and breached the Quadrant, passed the prison and the Vetch, and were sitting on the sand at the bottom of the big concrete steps on the other side of County Hall. I think it was about half nine. Already you could tell it was going to be a stunning day, and we had the place more or less to ourselves. It was a Monday morning, and the university had finished for the summer, so there weren't going to be any locals and there weren't going to be any students. I watched a gull hover effortlessly in the wind. He had the cloudless sky to himself too. Then he went for something I couldn't see and I lost sight of him.



"It's not enough," I said.



Scotty looked at me.



"What do you mean it's not enough?"



He unzipped the cheap nylon sports bag and held it wide open.



"We've got one bottle Commissar vodka, one bottle Highland Spirit scotch, if you can call that fucking shite scotch, eight cans of special and four cans of 'bow. And we have smokes. We're all set, man."



Scotty was a twenty four year old heroin addict from Glasgow. There are other types of people from Glasgow, I know, but that was what he was. And he looked my age. All that stuff they say about heroin is true. A year ago I wouldn't have given him the time of day, and now he was the only person I really spent any time with. I looked for the gull but I still couldn't find him.



"No," I said. "I need more than that. I like to have a bit in reserve. I need it if I want to feel settled."



"I'm going to score this afternoon. You can have some of my half."



I usually did: there was a kind of synergy at work between me and Scott.



"No. You might not. Anyway, it's yours."



"So what are you going to do about it, big man? You don't have any fucking money."



"I can get some."



"Where?"



About a hundred yards away up the prom I could see a small man in a polo shirt and pleated trousers carrying a metal detector. Scotty caught my gaze and followed it.



"Chester," he said. "For fuck's sake."



Charlie Chester, Child Molester. Mind you, I don't think that was his real name. It was what all the leaflets and posters said, though, when they appeared on the lampposts and phone boxes: his shifty-looking face and a stark warning about your children and a lot of exclamation marks. It was perfectly plausible, I suppose. He was at least as boring as most deviants, and had arrived in town not long before either of us; a state-assisted relocation, was what they said, after he'd been released for some dark and terrible sexual offence. He spent most of his free time down here, talking to the bums, the drop-outs, garnering some feeling of social acceptance. I expect in his head he liked to think we were all dentists and engineers.



He had been a petrochemicals analyst, I think he said.



"Yeah," I said. "I'm definitely going. Look, stay here. I'll be back in a couple of hours tops. With more booze. Alright?"



"Suit yourself, big man."



I went off in the direction of the High Street; all the way to the Neath road without so much as a bus fare. Ten steps in I heard the defiant crack of a can being opened, and its sibilant hiss, but I kept going. There was a woman that wanted to see me.



She lived in one of the houses in Tom Williams Court, up past the train station, a little terraced block built out of that dark brick that they seemed to like in the eighties. It backed onto the Matthew Street flats, both blocks of them. She had an electric doorbell that played the opening bar of God Save The Queen.



"I'm Robin Llywelyn," I said.



"You got my message then?"



Oh yes, I said. He had told me all about her, some shrivelled pensioner, some walking raisin, come down from the home opposite with pockets full of gambling slips to tell me the mad fat woman wanted to see me.



"How'd you know who I am?" I'd asked.



"Everybody knows who you are, Magnum."



She led me down a pale green hallway into an immaculate kitchen. The whole house smelled of Shake n' Vak. The tap was dripping, but everything else in there was spotless perfection. It looked like something out of an Argos catalogue circa 1984, all beige and barley. The kettle matches the toaster matches the bread bin matches the coffee jar matches the drawn down blinds, at two thirty on a sunny Swansea afternoon. Ooh, she's a subtle one. But you could have taken the house and its contents and reconstructed it at St Fagan's brick by brick, called it 'Domestic Wales in The Eighties' or something, and no one would have batted an eyelid.



"This here is his photo," she says. I can barely look at it. I did not think I would be doing this again.



"Do you have to smoke that in here?" she says, this woman. She must weigh thirty fucking stone. Christ, the strain on that heart. It will blink out one day not ten years hence, you can be sure of it, and leave her stranded in some bingo hall or shopping centre like a beached whale. The work you must have to put into being that fat, Jesus. I hold my cigarette up to the light like a glass of fine wine: I don't know where the tobacco comes from, I don't know where it's made, I can't remember where I bought my pack. I couldn't have told you what brand it was without looking. I used to be fussy about brands once, but they all taste the same now. They taste of transcendence. It surprised me, that.



"Put it out," says the woman, and passes me a saucer to stub it out with. I use it. It's her house. I don't have an office anymore. I don't have a home anymore. "I'll give you two hundred quid."



"Fuck off," I said. The woman pretended to do some sums in her head. It was funny to watch. It was clear that she was both very bad at pretending and very bad at doing sums.



"Four hundred," she said. "No, three hundred and fifty."



I had to smile.



"That should do it," I said. "I'll take the two hundred now."



"Fuck off," she said.



"Two hundred and I'll fix that fucking tap."



And I did. It was only a washer. Then I walked blinking out into the sunlight, quick as I could, into the Matthew Street estate in mid-June, with two hundred quid cash in one jacket pocket and a photo of this fuck-knows-who bloke in the other. I gave it a glance. It could have been anybody. Then I put it in the nearest bin.



She was well known, this woman, this female Forrest Gump. She should have been in the nearest institution, but her family liked to pretend there was nothing wrong with her. But oh boy. One thing she did, she had obsessions about men. Complete strangers, half the time. Sell her a bunch of bananas and she would turn up at your house at two in the morning screaming. Now this may seem strange to you, but I believe that there is love in the world for everyone, although we may not find it, or if we do, we might very well lose it or not know what to do with it. It might pass us by in an instant and leave us incomplete and broken for the rest of our lives, but it was there. Well, not for this woman. Nobody is going to share a bed with her twice, or possibly even once. There could be no love in this world for Rebecca Blethyn of 11 Tom Williams Court, of that I am sure. She doesn't have the right parts of her brain working. And she looks like a bus. But that is hardly my fault. If she wants me to see if her pretend fiancé is having an "affair," then I will play along. Delusion is all some people will ever have, and that goes for a lot of the bigshots in this world as well as the Becca Blethyns.



That's what I do, that sort of thing. It's what I used to do. People paid me to observe husbands and wives who may or may not have been having affairs. That progressed pretty quickly to surreptitiously helping the odd unwitting husband have an observed affair, thanks to a certain rapport I had with a particular type of woman, and the next step was blackmailing, and at that point the customer stopped telling me their real names or even if they were married. Which, in turn, led to me leaving town very quickly in the middle of the night, and to bad old Swansea and the Heathfield. That and a few other things. Being a private detective, I understand it's called. A lot of people do okay out of it, but don't look at me. People gossiped about me just like they gossiped about the huge woman at Tom Williams Court. The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about at all: Oscar Wilde said that, and he was wrong. He also said that the only thing a rich man cannot buy is his past. I used to like that one too except I don't have any money and I can't get my past back either.



I had thought about changing my name, but this is home territory for me and Wales is a small place. There are people here who knew me from before, and it would be hard to convince them casually that I was now Gary Roberts or Wayne Jones or anybody else at all, for that matter. The last thing I need at this juncture is for people to think I'm mad on top of my other troubles. They already thought I was half way mad as it was, coming home after twenty five years penniless and claiming to have been Humphrey Bogart or something. And you cannot believe how gossip spreads around these parts: everybody knew within days, and lots of people I don't know. There are corporations that would pay millions for that kind of access. With all that going on I thought they were bound to track me down, but nobody seems to give a fuck about Robin Llywelyn. Nobody wants to come to Swansea and get me. I reckon they think this is bad enough. To be fair, it was also the gossip that got me into that stupid fat bitch's house, mind, and got me out with two hundred quid in my jacket. And if you wanted further proof of her devastatingly low intelligence and pitiable grasp on reality, I would invite you to read that sentence again. But please do not mistake these traits for innocence.



Just over the road from those houses there's a pub called the White Swan. I hadn't had a drink in a pub for a while. Money was scarce and it went a lot further drinking on the street, and at that time of the year hanging about outdoors was no bother at all, Swansea in summer is full of dossers doing just that, but there was another thing. The thing was, when you've been living rough for a while you get to feeling a bit awkward about yourself. There's no reason for it, but it happens. Drinking constantly like a fish every day and not washing can't help, I suppose.



"Brains, please," I said, after a little trouble. I tell you, I had never ever stuttered before in my life. Now I did it all the time.



The man pulled the pump and put it on the counter and I paid him one seventy and watched it settle. There are things you miss about pubs that you weren't even aware of until you stop going to them. The sound of them, even when they're empty, and the smell of them, of all that stale beer and smoke, that probably takes decades to truly mature, and that lower level of light, those horse brasses, that mock-tudor woodwork, a mirror with a brand of whisky emblazoned on it maybe, and most of all the people, the presence of other people, all quietly working towards a common goal.



I picked up my pint, the Imperial Pint, five hundred and eighty six millilitres, twenty fluid ounces, the mysterious magic unit by which entire lives can be measured out. I wanted to hold it up to the light, because you don't get to actually see it when it comes in a tin, and I wanted to see that precious amber sparkling, but I thought it would look phoney. So I held it in my hand, and nobody threw me out, nobody insulted me or started a fight, nobody stared at me, or paid me any mind, and I drank it.



I put it down and watched a bubble drift lazily down the inside of the glass until it hit the bottom, and then I walked out. A quick pint. These things are possible. Then I went a little further along the High Street to Tariq's and picked up a four pack of Extra and headed back to the beach. There are a lot of pubs on that street, though. I had a quick Guinness in the Shoulder of Mutton, just because I liked the look of the toucan, and after that I went back out. And I had a quick pint of Brains in the Adam and Eve. And I had a quick pint of something in the King's Arms Tavern, which it turned out is a gay pub, but all they had to do was look at me to know why I was in there. Nice hanging baskets, though.



By that point I was nearly at the castle, and I thought to myself, as I often did those days, whenever I was on my own and I'd had a few drinks, fuck Scotty, and fuck Rebecca Blethyn, you have a case of your own you're supposed to be working on. This personal interest job I was doing for myself. And I took a detour down Caer Street and went past all the shops and came out the other side heading for Uplands. I'd been down that way a couple of times since coming back, but I guess I was still finding my way around, because I turned up down by the cricket ground, and had to walk up through Brynmill, and I was already knackered. I wasn't up to much physically even then. But I had a few breathers and I made it: 4 Glanmor Road.



It was a good house in a good part of town. Right by the neighbourhood shops but private too, set back from the street with a low wall and a neatly trimmed privet hedge. The front garden was pretty small but there was a nice looking tree in it, maybe a little cherry tree or something. All original features too, the front door was beautiful. I don't mean to sound like an estate agent, but it was a really nice house, and all I had was a room at the Heathfield. It had three bedrooms and two living rooms and a decent-sized kitchen. How did I know that? Because I had been in there. About twenty five years ago. I used to go with the sister of the woman who lives there now. They were from a good family. Still, so was I.



I went over the road and sat down in my usual spot under an elm outside a hairdresser's, Headquarters or Hair Force One or some such bollocks, and opened the first can, and watched, and waited, none of which is new to me at all. I got moved on about an hour after that, probably that hairdresser ringing the station and asking for a bobby to come down, what with some alkie sat outside her place of business. It's a line of work that places a lot of importance on image, after all, not that you could tell from looking at the fucking awful names they give their shops. The officer that came down was a different one to the one that had moved me on the other day, though. I gave it ten minutes and came back and sat a little way off, outside the photo shop. You could still see the front of the house.



I was on my last can when a white Ford Transit pulled up with Merlin Auto Parts written on the side. A man came out of it about six two with dark, almost black hair and blue eyes. A young man. He went around the back of the van and opened the doors and then let himself inside the house, with his own key, and reappeared with an old bookcase which he loaded onto the Transit. Then he locked the van and went inside for about the time it takes to make and put away a cup of tea. And then he left. That was it. That was my lucky day. I watched his van nudge off into the distance through the traffic and stood in the same place staring a time afterwards, although it had long gone. Then I finished my can and put it in the carrier with all the other empties and left it on the doorstep of The Hair Necessities or whatever it was called, and followed it, down Walter Road, back into the middle of the city. Christ I was doing a lot of walking.



I stopped into the Spar and bought another four pack, seeing how I didn't want to turn up at the beach after all this time without the extra booze I said I was going to get. I got a four pack and a two litre bottle of White Strike, one of those strong ciders that comes in a blue plastic bottle. Like detergents. But I didn't want to go back to the beach. I had money and I was in the middle of town and I had done a day's work, plus I'd had a result: my mark, as they sometimes say in my line of work, had turned up. When you get a result you have to treat yourself. And I really couldn't walk back in one go.



I thought it would take a bit of looking to find somewhere viable, being Uplands, which is supposed to be well-to-do. I expected all the pubs to be full of affluent men with cufflinks or their green-haired nineteen year old progeny, but it was late afternoon and the Uplands Tavern was free of both, of anybody, in fact. Nineteen year-olds round here probably thought green hair was a bit passé now, and it had never really been a cufflinks kind of town, not even in Uplands. I got a pint and took it to a quiet corner and thought there's really nothing to this, is there, and then the same person who'd served it to me came up and said I had to leave. I finished it stood in the doorway with him looking at me.



Then there wasn't anything for ages until the George, which at first glance looked like your average British boozer, until you heeded the tubular aluminium furniture on the pavement, and the fact that the staff were all in black. Of course I was halfway to the bar by the time I'd clocked all that.



"Well he can have that one, and then he's out the door," said the landlord when he came back from the pisser, just about loud enough for the passers-by outside to hear. I didn't dawdle over that one either.



Next door was the Royal Welch Fusiliers Club, for which I felt I lacked the obvious credentials, not having ever been a fusilier, but the drought was over by that point and I already could see a couple of bars on the horizon. A place called Reef I sailed straight by, the name alone was enough, and then picked my way through a couple of Kawasaki's to get into the Tenby, a rock/biker effort that met my demands for a scotch and water without raising a pierced eyebrow, but then some mohawk started pumping pound coins into the jukebox. And as much as I understand the need to roll back the borders of silence, as much as I appreciate the horrors that lurk within it, listening to some middle-aged yank bloke in tights screaming about the anti-christ never really seemed like an alternative to me.



A little further on I watched a man drunker than I was climb the front steps of Bunnies Health Massage, where he would undoubtedly do no more than pay his fifty and pass out, and not long after that I could see the huge concrete monolith that was Jumpin' Jaks over the rooftops, and I knew I would soon be back in the thick of it, soon I would be back in the middle of town and I could take my pick from dozens of bars and pubs. But it had been a hard afternoon, so I sort of gave up, and went in the Singleton, which is the pub equivalent of the Heathfield. In fact a lot of people in the Heathfield have stayed in the Singleton Hotel, either on the way up or on the down; it wasn't much of a stretch.



"Not you, pal, out," said John the barman.



"I'm alright," I said. "I'm fine. Here, put this behind the bar."



And I gave him a twenty.



"You're sure you're alright, are you?"



"I'm alright enough to drink in here for fuck's sake."



"Hey, no more of that. I'll be watching you."



He did this every time I came in. I'd had some bad news a couple of months ago and I'd made a bit of a fool out of myself, and although I'd calmed down now John still liked to go through the motions. It was just a display, really, the way a dog might bark at cars, just to show whose neighbourhood it was: there was about as much chance of that dog catching his car as there was of anybody being permanently barred from the Singleton. John had seen plenty of bad news, and lots of people make fools of themselves, and nobody had been turned away once their nerves had settled. You couldn't turn people away from the Singleton. That wasn't what the Singleton was for.



John put a pint of something like Carling down on the bar towel and it must have been one third foam but I took it and gave him a smile which cut no ice, and then went and sat in the restaurant, behind a pillar, so no one could see me. No one ever went in there, the Singleton not being the sort of place you would go for an evening meal even if you were blind, starving and Japanese, so it was empty, and unlit. They do a breakfast, I'm told, but it doesn't have a good reputation. It was pretty miserable sat in there but it was better than sitting out front with the punters, I can tell you. Sitting out there was like being inside a country and western song. Several of them, actually, at the same time, in Welsh accents.



Of course, it doesn't make for an enjoyable evening, but then nobody expected that. It kept you drunk, and if you had the money, it got you drunker, and that was that. It's all any pub does at base, but no one wants to see the base. Trust me. You have to approach from a pretty low angle. So I've developed a strategy for the Singleton, if you can call it that, the essentials of which are as follows: leave it as often as you can. Between pints, or even halfway-through, if it's not a busy night or you're desperate, take a walk up and down the street. Stand by the side of the road for two minutes. Actually, you'll find yourself doing this anyway, coming up for air like that, if the Singleton is where you have to drink. Drive past on a night when people are in there and you'll likely see somebody lurching down Western Street or leaning against the traffic lights: that's what they're doing. It's like those Indian divers who can stay under for minutes, except instead of a shiny new pearl you get a flat lager that tastes like fuzzy-felt, and when you surface you're standing under a lamppost in downtown Swansea on your own, shaking.



There are people who can stay in there all night, of course, without ever seeming to notice how bad it is, or caring. Given time I suspected I would become one of them myself, which was a knowledge that made nothing easier. It was one of the reasons you have to step out periodically, one of the key ingredients in its aura of misery. John stands it the same way most sober people who can stand it do, I guess, by making money out of it. Not much, something pitifully small, but enough to keep him sane and separate.



I think I tried a few other places around there during my jaunts outside, nothing too far away. I don't remember anyone letting me in, although they might have done. Actually I must have got in somewhere, because I met someone. The Garibaldi, in all likelihood, which was just over the road. They were closing down for good and they didn't care, I suppose. In there I met a man I hadn't seen since I'd left Wales, twenty five years ago, a man I had known reasonably well, and I drank a little with him, but I can't remember who he was or what we said. Occupational hazard. Then they closed bar in the Singleton.



I weaved my way across town, still with an eye out for the main chance, but the doormen had come out and I didn't look my best, I have to admit. I did try, once, in some place along the Kingsway, but he just looked at me and he didn't have to say a word. I'm in fancy dress, I was going to say, but I thought the better of it. I don't like being out at that time anyway, with all those people out drinking for fun. I don't like them at all, because they can, or because they think they can, I'm not sure which. Anyway, I felt it was time at last to hit the beach. I gave Wind Street the widest berth I possibly could, because it was always insane, and walked down to the end of Kingsway and went left at the roundabout and then cut through the terraces around the Singleton, and what did I see down there, on Bath Street or maybe Paxton, but Merlin Auto Parts. It was all locked up for the night, or course, but it looked like a perfectly decent concern. It was about the same size as a Kwik-Fit but it was a far older building, part of that final, brash push of British industry that came after the war, before everyone just gave up and let other people do it. It looked incredibly quaint now, the thought of building an industrial unit entirely out of brick and then painting your company logo on the side, you don't see that anymore. The paint was faded, of course, and it was advertising some firm that must have gone bust donkey's years ago, but all in Merlin Auto Parts looked like a tidy concern. Maybe he owned it. Well I hope so, I thought to myself, as I crossed the four lanes of Osytermouth Road, and finally returned to the sands.



Scotty wasn't at the beach. I looked, but I couldn't find him. The sun had gone too. It was past midnight, I suppose.



There were a few small clumps of people huddled down under that concrete wall they have lining the prom after you get to the Marriott, but none of them contained Scotty, although I wouldn't be surprised if they boasted other young Glaswegian heroin addicts. Up and down the long stretch of coast you could see the odd little bonfire, with a small circle of dim shapes huddled around them. Like the bush fires of the Tuaregs. Funnily enough, Chester was there, standing on his own with his metal detector, off by the steps. His silhouette was fairly distinctive. I didn't bother saying hello, though. Then I sat down by a vacant stretch of wall and went through that extra bit of booze I had been lugging around all night, and fell asleep with ease. Well, I passed out.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Serpent's Tail
• Date d'édition: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1852429755
• ISBN 13: 9781852429751
• Reliure: Broché
• Langue: anglais
• Nombre de pages: 272
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible