Postcard
(A
Ken Frane Mystery)
“In my experience, those who beg for mercy seldom
deserve it”. The body of a man of Slavic features lay just behind the ornately
carved posts leading to the public park. Place:
Penarth, South Wales, Time: 8.40am. The body would not be moved or discovered for another
two hours with early morning passers by believing it to be someone left over
from a Wedding Reception at the Windsor Hotel, the night before. The Green
Copper Roof of the Victorian Pier glinted a spectrum of light on to the
fishermen taking up their positions at the end. Flasks
opened and sandwiches eaten early. Another bright and beautiful Saturday
morning to the casual observer but darker forces were at play in the avenues
and alleyways of Grangetown, a mile to the East of Penarth. The No 29 dropped
Ken Frane off at the Black and White Cafe, coughing up last night’s cigar
before ordering a Full Breakfast without the Tomatoes. Ken was a throwback to
an earlier Cardiff.
His 35 years spent as a policeman, detective, security guard and now gumshoe or
private detective which was embossed and smudged on his business card. One such
card was pinned, now yellowing on Toni's cork board.
“Ken sit down, I bring it over. You want bread n
butter?”
Ken nodded and slumped into his seat by the window.
Another week without a job, another week spent watching the cheap porn trailers
on You Tube. Titillation was the order of the day. Food was just something
functional like sex. The breakfast would pass through his digestive system and
shake its head at the mess of an ulcer lying at the bottom. Ken placed his new
Half Corona next to the Sugar Container. At least he'd have something to look
forward to. Out of the corner of his eye, as Toni was moving from the hatch to
the cutlery tray, he saw a Refuse Collection Cart turn left by the old library.
The guys sitting in the cab, to a man looked like Eastern Europeans. Like London, all of Britain’s
major cities had tendered out its refuse collection to private contractors and
like all businessmen, they had gone for the cheapest labour who at this moment
in time were former refugees and asylum seekers from the old Yugoslavia. The War crimes
tribunals were happening in The
Hague and although the 1990’s had seen Ken fall
from Detective to Security Guard in one fell swoop of a Chief Inspector’s pen;
he had not been blind to the images coming out of Bosnia.
Those images of Serb soldiers sitting astride lorries and wagons deserting
Muslim areas. The refuse wagon passed a woman wearing a Burkha on her way to
the library. It passed close to the pram she was pushing. She faltered, looked
back and carried on.
“There you go Kenny Boy, another of my finest
specials.
You working now?”
“Been quiet Tony,”
“Not enough murders for you eh?”
“There a bit high stakes for me now”.
“What you do den”?
“Mostly surveillance, tracing relatives, missing
persons”.
“But you ain’t got a car!
“I get there in the end Toni; Cardiff Bus does its
best”
Tony smiled and shook his head, moving over to the
corner of the café to wipe a few tables.
“Here look at this Ken, one of dose rubbish men have
left a postcard. You want it. It looks nice”. Tony hands it to Ken as he goes
back to the kitchen and there is a picture of Dubrovnik.
He flips it over catching some brown sauce off the plate and sees an old stamp,
that looks like President Tito and the writing in an old ink pen in what appeared
to be Serbo-Croat.
Ken waves a salute of farewell to Toni and lights up,
before the door has a chance to close behind him. Over to the old library,
dodging the articulated lorries on Penarth Road and in to
see Jean.
“Hya Ken Love, Western Mail’s over there”.
“How are you Jean?”
“The usual Ken, overworked and underpaid”.
Someone shouts shush from the far corner! Jean shushes
back. Ken smiles and sits to read the headlines. His eyesight was not what it
used to be.
George, the other librarian who is Scottish comes in
with two teas. He shouts over to Ken!
“I’ve just had one thanks’ mate.”
George comes over and sits next to Ken.
Ken looks up and smiles.
“I still can’t understand why you swopped bonny Scotland
for down here.”
“Women problems Ken and I was also a big fan of Dylan
Thomas”
“Swansea is that way”
“This’ll do me, I can do a day trip from here on the
Shuttle.” George pauses and looks at Ken with a mixture of pity and what seemed
like anger.
“You’re not doing yourself any favours, living like
this.”
Ken flinched “Living like what George, I’m only
reading the Western Mail”
“Precisely, it’s no reading matter for a thinking man
like yourself. No,cooked breakfasts and cigars. It’s no healthy.”
“I don’t have a wife, the last one left me, remember.”
“Aye I do remember, lovely Lisa, shame that, what did
happen?”
“She just got bored, like everyone else”.
Police sirens travel up Penarth Road
and then an Ambulance.
A small crowd had gathered at the gates of Alexandria
Park and a dog was
about to cock its leg when it was startled by the Police Sirens. The Fishermen
had laid down their rods and were making their way across the road.
“Hey George, where’s the languages section?”
“Ah about time you went on holiday!”
“What on tax credits?”
“Over there behind the lending machine”.
“Good thing I’m not on holiday, I wouldn’t be able to
get home with the Volcanic Ash everywhere, I hear half of Dinas Powys is stuck
at Alicante
Airport.”
“Aye what with their banks and now their volcanoes, Iceland
is becoming a right royal pain in the arse and we’d never much fussed over it
before”.
Ken picked up a few books, Portugese, French, Italian
for Dummies, aha a very old and tattered copy of Serbo-Croat made simple.
This’ll do, something to pass the time of day, thought Ken.
The lending machine bleeped and gurgled as Ken swiped
his bar code, another Police Car went past.
“you’d have no hope of getting an ice-cream from that
van, it was going too fast. Happy reading Ken, here have this apple. It’ll keep
the Doctor away for another day”.
George's farewell made Ken feel as if the world hadn't
abandoned him completely.
Ken still had a few friends
on the force, those that would still talk to him, that is. Ken had spent the
last ten years trying to justify his actions of that night but whichever way he
stretched and spanned it, he couldn’t get away with the fact that it was a
miscarriage of justice.
Walking in to Butetown
Police Station half an hour later after catching the No8, Ken went straight
through the waiting area and waved his
book at the Duty Officer. Ken passed by where his old office would have been.
How appropriate he thought that it was now the ladies toilet.
Detective Inspector Lewis
Davies eyes shot up to the ceiling and his vision stayed there a moment longer
than was necessary and Ken told him so.
“Ken, I'm looking forward to
my retirement and you visiting at all hours is not going to allow for an easy
passage back into civvy street”.
“Christ, it was ten years
ago man, Is the old witch still going on about it?”
“She has her moments yes. So
what can I do for you today”? Ken tosses the postcard from the black and white
over the table.
“Been on holiday have you?”
“Look at the Stamp!”
“President Tito, Ken these
are two a penny down down Jacob's Market. I've got a few in my collection at
home, not that I get a chance to look at them these days.”
“That's why I've brought it,
you can have it”.
“I'm completely underwhelmed
Ken. Surely you haven't come in just to give me a postcard.”
“No, not exactly, I was
wondering if you put a good word in with the old lady whether I might get a
pardon or re-instated.”
“And you ask why I look at
the ceiling?”
“I just want some kind of
recognition from the force that I'm not a bad old bastard and I deserve a
second chance, whether I get one or not doesn't really matter. I'd just like to
see something written down in the records that changes me from Police Enemy No1
!”
“Lot of water under the bridge Ken since
then, does it really matter”?
“When you sleep like I sleep
Lewis and live like I live, then yes it does bloody matter. I gave the best
part of 30 years of my life to the force
to be brushed aside and made a scapegoat. Remember I took the Flak so a number
of others beneath me, Lewis, wouldn't have to.”
“What can I do? We've been through
this so many times, in fact every time we meet”.
“Get me an In, in some way
on a case, a big one, let me do some freelance detective work, come up with the
goods, you give me the leads and I'll follow them up. I'll get you the evidence
that nails the bad guys.”
”For Christ's sake Ken, I'm
not Gene Hunt and this is not the 1980's, we don't work like that anymore”.
“You've got informants,
you've got police protection. There's such a thing as goodwill Ken but you'd
never believe it.”
“Look, what can I tell you?”
“Tell me that a man who begs
for mercy sometimes receives it even though he might not deserve it. I need,
Lewis, I need a letter from that bitch saying I'm a good guy and that I was
badly treated by the force before I go to my grave. That's all. I'm not looking
for a bung or a backhander. I just want a letter, a piece of paper that
vindicates me from that miscarriage of justice that so many were involved in
but were not responsible for because you know Lewis, because I was your
superior, you know that it wasn't our fault but the system's bloody fault.”
Ken slumps his head and
Lewis notes a rash at the hairline.
“Hope you're taking
something for that Ken, it looks rather nasty”.
“It's like talking to a
brick wall”.
“She'll be passing through
any minute on an inspection of duty so if you don't want to cop it for a second
time I'd have it away on your toes Ken”
Ken moves his face closer
and Lewis flinches at the odour of breakfast and apple.
“You owe me Detective
Inspector Lewis Davies”.
Lewis looks rather shocked
and gets to his feet.
“I'll be seeing you Ken and next time will you ring
me please”!
Ken looks disgusted and
pushes the table. Muttering he leaves and marches straight across James Street.
Ken leans on a fence
persuading himself that it’s more for rest than to regain his breath and
composure.
Passing the Royal Stuart
Workshops where he had nicked an American Express Traveller's Cheques Counter
fitting Operation in 1991. The case had been thrown out because it was claimed
that the police had planted an informant who encouraged these jobbing printers
into the operation because the police seriously wanted to nail Jamie Parker but
had not been able to up till then. That had begun the downward spiral that Ken
had found himself him. The finger gad been pointed at Ken for planting the
informant.
“Ungrateful Bastards”, he
thought and shouted, startling an elderly lady moving across the lane.
This was certainly a tale of
two cities down here. When he’d started walking the beat in the late seventies,
it was the ‘Docks’, now thirty years on, the developers and money men had
renamed it the ‘Bay’.
At the Penarth Times, Cub
Reporter Craig Standish is staring incredulously at his notebook. “Unidentified
man found with throat cut in Alexandria Gardens”.
This was a big story, the
biggest story he’d covered thus far and he needed an old head to help him
handle it. Who did he know who could advise him? Listing his contacts, a name
that he hadn’t called before but one with a bit of police background, a man who
could be relied on for help in return for a cooked breakfast and a cigar. Ken
had just sat down on a bench in the Hamadryad Gardens when his phone went off.
Glasses on and a slightly panicky hand presses a key which he hopes is the
answer key.
“Ken Frane speaking”.
“Hello Mr Frane, you
probably don’t remember me but its Standish the reporter at the Penarth Times.
We met at the Charity Function in the Paget Rooms last November. You gave me
your card. You mentioned that if I had any leads, any big stories to give you a
ring, well, look, I’ve got a big story.”
Ken clicks off the mobile
and looks out to the Barrage. He is smiling. “Oh Yes, the Wicked Witch of the
West will be mine”.
Ken and Craig waste no time
and Standish outlines the facts as he knows them. Toni brings over two mugs of
tea.
“So you are working Ken!!”
“ Hey Toni, have those bin
men been back in, you know the ones who left the postcard?”
“Funny, you should ask dat
an I was going to tell you but it slipped my mind. I been busy over de Cash n
Carry. Well he came back in, the man who had left the postcard, he was looking
for it”.
“What did he look like
Toni”?
Toni a little surprised at
Ken’s interest replies in a deadpan manner:
“Like a bin man, big and
fat, like Eddie Yeates, you remember Eddie Yeates off Corrie Ken, yeah he
looked like him.”
“When’s bin day?” Ken snaps
at Toni and Craig splutters on his tea.
“Well it’s a week today,
innit, they only come once a week.”
Friday, it’s too far away.
Ken is thinking quickly and reaches down for the library book in his coat
pocket.
“He was definitely an
Eastern European.” Craig carried on talking. I contacted the Police at Penarth
and they told me that the case had been transferred to Cardiff Central. “That
means they’ll be dealing with it in the Docks”.
The “Bay” you mean.
“No I mean the Docks” Ken
snapped and apologised and then pushed Standish for some more information. What
the passers by had noticed and what a Fisherman had handed over to him.
Craig Standish reached into
his inside pocket and drew out a postcard, the exact same picture of Dubrovnik
but with a different, more modern stamp and the writing this time was in
English.
“In 1991
after the breakup of Yugoslavia it was besieged by Serb-Montenegrin forces for
7 months and heavily damaged by bombing.”
“How do you know that?” Ken looked astonished.
“Wikepedia”, Craig winked, “ The Journalist’s best friend”.
“The Fisherman!” Ken pressed Craig further.
“He’d found it down at the end of the pier nowhere near the body.”
“ Why did he give it to you”?
“ Because there’s blood spots on it”.
“ Jesus, why didn’t you say before. This is crucial”.
Ken reached for one of Toni’s serviettes and wraps the postcard into it
and places it into his inside pocket.
“ OK, if I keep this?”
“ Suppose, what you going to do with it?”
“ Give it to the police.....eventually. My advice to you son, give the
article a snappy title, just write the facts as they appear to you. Don’t go
into theories and hypotheses as you see them, that’ll come after once or if the case is solved. Leave em dangling with an
angler’s hook in the end. For example, readers are asked to contact you with
any information rather than mention the police, don’t know if you’ll get past
the editor with that one but it’s worth a try. Look I got to go. I’ll get back
to you with any info I get but we’ll keep schtum for the moment. Ciao for now.”
Ken wastes no time and catches a bus up to the main Council Depot. He
glances up at the filthy sign peppered with mud and sand ‘Cardiff City
Cleansing’.
“ Does exactly what it says on the tin” he mutters.
A big bastard in string vest is sat on an old school chair, plastic red
and four black metal spikes at a kind of reception area made out of milk
crates.
“No work” he barks.
“
I’m not looking for work,” Ken barks back. “Take me to your leader”. The big
fella nods to a door beside him and motions him enter. Ken follows the
direction and sees a little man with huge glasses sitting behind a name plaque
saying ‘Pierce’.
“
Mr Pierce, I presume”.
“
Yes, How can I help you?”. He appears a little ruffled perhaps sensing an ex
copper.
“You
have Serbs and Croations working for you, Mr Pierce”.
“
We’ve got all sorts here pal. It’s like the United Nations. I blame the
government myself.”
“You
don’t approve”.
“
Not for me to say……..I just does the drains”.
“
I’d like to speak to any Serbs or Croatians that you have on your books”.
Pierce
looks up at Ken, analyses him for a minute then adds “ Must be important!” He
then goes over to his computer at the back of the office. Pierce looks over his
shoulder and shouts at Ken.
“We
got Poles and Checks, a Couple of Hungarians and some Romanians but not Serbs
or Croats”.
“What
gang was working Grangetown, this morning, any of those you mentioned?”
“Perhaps
you’d like to tell me a little more before I divulge any confidential
information”. Pierce swivels in his chair and folds his arms in front of him.
After Ken explains and hands over his card Pierce looks at him and says
“
It may look like a shit hole Mr Frane but we do have standards”.
“
Mr Pierce, any help that you and your department give will be acknowledged.
Thank you for your time”.
As
Ken approaches the corner of Roath Park, he pulls out his phone and glasses and
squints at the screen! A few buttons pressed later and the reception at
Butetown police station answers. “Could I speak to Detective Inspector Lewis
Davies please”. Ken is put through to an answer machine.
“
Hello Lewis. Its Ken here, ere …look… I hate talking into one of these. Can you
ring me back pronto please! It’s about the Penarth case Bye”
Ken
looks up towards Roath Park Lake. There on her own feeding the swans by the Scott
Tower is Lisa. Faint heart never won fair lady even though he’d lost her
already; Ken walks passed the pedaloes and row boats and stops for an
ice-cream. He notices that Lisa is throwing in a very distracted, almost
dejected fashion. She doesn’t notice until Ken places a Cornetto to her mouth.
“
God Ken, you gave me a fright, what are you trying to do?”. The questions had
started already.
“I’ve
bought you an ice-cream, if you don’t want it, Sidney the swan over there can
have it”.
“Thank
you”. They look at each-other intently and then sit down together without a
word on the nearest bench.
“
I’ve missed you”. Ken said between licks.
Lisa
knowing his style just nods acknowledgement.
“You
met somebody new”?
“Does
it look like it?”
“If
you want monogamy, marry a Swan”. Ken wasn’t sure where that had come from but
it broke the ice and both laughed.
At
Butetown nick, Inspector Lewis Davies and his team were drawing blanks. They
had been down to the Welsh Refugee Centre on Newport Rd. The unidentified man
was actually a Kosovan Muslim by the name of Ladi Mulliqi. It appears that he
had been in Dubrovnik in the last month. He had attended a few English classes
at Newport Rd but there had been an argument with some others in the class and
he had left. When trying to ascertain who the others were, he drew a blank from
students and the teacher who refused to co-operate with the investigation. Back
in his office he goes through his messages and sees the one from Ken. Leaning
back in his chair, his hand wavers on the postcard in his inside pocket.
Ken
and Lisa are laughing, in fact they used to laugh a lot before the boredom set
in.
“Don’t
suppose you fancy a trip to Penarth? A stroll along the Pier”. Lisa nods her
head in affirmation.
An
hour later Ken, Lisa, Detective Inspector Lewis and Craig Standish are standing
at the end of Penarth Pier. Lisa and Craig looking out to Flatholm and Ken and
Lewis looking back towards Alexandria Park.
“
Shall we play snap?” Ken and Lewis pull out a postcard apiece.
“So
the blood samples on yours match the test taken from one of the ‘Romanian’ Bin
men.”
“Romanian,
my arse”, Ken replies. “If you cut him in half, he’d have the word Serb written
across him like a stick of pink Penarth Rock”.
“So
what had this poor guy done to end up with his throat cut?” chimes in Craig
Standish.
“
That my friend is written on both postcards, it’s in code. Let’s just say that
he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and of the wrong ethnicity. And
Toni was right, he did look like Eddie Yeats.”
“
We’ve also arrested the teacher at the Welsh Refugee Centre, he wasn’t all he
appeared after he’d had his big white beard shaved off” Inspector Lewis added.
Seeing
the look of confusion on Lisa’s face he can’t resist a little dig “You can’t
say that you’re bored now!”
“Well
Lewis”, Ken carries on “ Do you think I’ll get my letter from the Wicked Witch
now?”
“Letter
Ken, she’s coming to thank you in person”.
On
cue, a police car pulls up at the entrance to the pier and a female in uniform
steps out.
“
You all right Ken?” Lisa asks, “you’ve gone very white…
Ken…..Ken!”
