Murder at the Market

Ken Frane had forgotten what it was like. Making love to a woman. Sex.

Terry Heston was walking down Dead Man's Alley between the Old Library and St John's Church to the Trinity Rd side of the Market when a Police van and car turn up with eponymous sirens blaring.

The last time Cardiff Central Market had been shut for business a suspect I.R.A Bomb had been planted by a cell from the Clifton Street/Broadway part of the City. It failed to detonate properly and there had only been superficial damage. They had tried to shift the blame on to the F. W.A who had been active a couple of years previously at the time of the Prince of Wales Investiture but the Police knew that their Leaders were in Swansea nick.

“Scabby cunt with hooded eyes, green sweatshirt, dirty blond hair, short arse maybe five foot seven” Terry Heston didn’t mince his words especially when describing a suspect to Ken Frane and he himself would expect no less from his old crime fighting pal.

“You gonna find another innocent man guilty Frane?”

“Depends, are you going to confess to it?”

“At my age?”

“Never too old to kill Macey eh?”

Arthur Macey fixed Terry Heston with the coldest, darkest stare, powerful enough to make him look away.

“Originally the site of Cardiff gaol, the gallows were located on the site of the current St Mary Street entrance, where Dic Penderyn was hanged on 13 August 1831.” The walking tour guide sounded bored and the motley assortment of American and Japanese tourists in cagouls looked at each other with “I don’t understand what he’s talking about”

“I had one of my first murder cases here Terry, before I met you, over the road there next to the Romilly Pub. Nasty case over Christmas 1988/89. Place called Six Arts Press, owned by a Swiss guy called Rainer Niedermeyer. What the fuck he was doing here running a pretty successful printing business I don’t know! memory doesn’t serve me well on that one”

With that Terry turns the torch off. Both Frane and Heston let their eyes become accustomed to, by now, the inner pitch black. It was lighter outside and the trees and branches cast shadows on the window frames. Terry Heston pulls Ken Frane by his coat sleeve and motions with a finger to the lips to remain very silent. The sound of a drunk wassailing on his way home from the Romilly stops them in their tracks. Terry shines his torch on to a corner wall.

“I’m a bit concerned Kenneth that you are taking Peter Price’s warning a little too lightly. Don’t forget it was me who witnessed him and his Docks’ posse arriving yesterday morning. If he knows we’ve been sniffing about, he’s probably got very good reason to warn us off”

Terry Heston and Ken Frane are now themselves fugitives from the law. Assaulting a senior police officer in the course of his duty would carry a serious charge. The only saving grace would be to solve the Murder at the Market and with that in mind, they head to Adamsdown.