A free short story about a father, a daughter, a lost cat and some found bodies by Serban Anghene

Reading time: less than it took me to write it

Looking for Lyneth                

A petrol station.

The laminated A3 poster dangled from the cable tie hinges slotted clumsily through perforator holes. The wind, in waves, fought to tear it down from the motor oil advertising stand. There was an intention of snow in the air.

The woman from the battered Mercedes booted the door open, then stopped. One leg in arrested ascent – it was understandable that she preferred not to touch the grimy handle – she appeared at least to look at the picture. Perhaps she even read the caption.

MISSING

Since 8th December

LYNETH

7 years old

Tabby – tortoise shell mix

Check sheds and hedges. If you see her, please call…

Attached to a pear-shaped sitting body, seemingly patched from at least three very different cats, the confident green-eyed feline stared at the woman as she completed her step and went inside.

Lewis made a note.

A man came in after the woman. Motorcyclist. Lewis watched him fight the zippers on his hardened leather kit to fish out a phone. He took a picture of the add.

In his exfoliating notebook, Lewis made another note.

“Sorry,” the woman with the Merc said by means of greeting. “Pump two. And these.”

“Sorry.” Lewis pried himself away from his notes and scanned the chewing gum and the bag of crisps. He left a tenth of an eye, perhaps less, in charge of the forecourt and the door. “Yes, no problem. That’ll be…”

The motorcyclist was next. He’d definitely taken a photo.

Lewis tried not to give anything away. A deal with Bethan was a deal with Bethan. He rotated the ancient card terminal towards the customer. They waited for the transaction to go through. It was quite the wait. Down that valley, only life and the weather were more disappointing than the Wi-Fi.

“Not too bad, the weather,” the motorcyclist tried to strike up a conversation.

“No,” Lewis said. “Not too bad at all.”

It was getting dark. It had been dry all day, but there was an orange alert for snow in a couple of hours. First snow of the year. On a small winch radio behind the counter, the local news came on.

“That your cat?” the motorcyclist asked.

“Sorry, pal?”

Lewis had heard him but he wasn’t used to people asking. He was starting to regret the small print in Bethan’s deal. It was what it was. Clearly the man had taken a photo, had asked, was interested in the fate of the cat.

Just as the news lady wrapped up the day’s top story about a new dead body that had been found, the transaction went through.

“Here,” Lewis said, handing him a Welsh cake, “on the house.”

The helmeted head bobbed in surprise. “Are you sure?”

“Sure, I’m sure.”

“What for?”

“For good luck, pal.” Lewis tried a smile. “Take it or leave it.”

The motorcyclist examined the solitary cling-film-wrapped cake that must have come from a multipack.

“Cheers, man,” he said and snatched it away with the receipt. “Nice sweet touch. Much appreciated what with all of them petrol scores going up.”

As if Lewis had to be reminded. The big Shell twenty miles south was hoovering his customers like there was no tomorrow. And there wouldn’t be one, not with him dishing out free sweets on top of everything.

But a deal was a deal, and Bethan was Bethan.

And the motorcyclist rode off into the sunset, no doubt to tell his urban friends how friendly people were up there, and look, there’s a cute lost cat.

“Do I get a teacake?”

The new voice made Lewis take a small step back. How had he not noticed the new customer? Yet the man was there, card in hand. A recent model silver Lexus with something like a family swarming inside was stationed next to Pump One.

“All out of,” Lewis said, “sorry.” 

The man glanced at the last two cakes on the plate behind the till. He struggled with a smile. “I thought it was for good luck, no?”

“You won’t need it,” Lewis said.

The man looked puzzled.

Lewis pointed at the Lexus with his nose.  “I mean you’ve got four wheels. Nice ones they are.”

“Oh, yeah. Fair enough.”

Lewis pulled the roller blinds over the shop window. Even with the solstice almost a month behind them, it seemed darkness came down earlier every day. It spilled a thick patina of emptiness over the spines of the arching hills that he’d been used all his life to call mountains, one of which, his father had told him, was a badly revegetated spoil tip.

Since his wife’s passing, he’d realised he’d always been living in the no man’s land between a colliery past and an out of reach touristy present. Futures not available. 

He pulled himself together with a vigorous head shake. He had to return to the house and check the Lexus on the camera. He hadn’t had a chance to catch the full number.

He called it a house, but it was really the back of the petrol station. He knew they weren’t technically allowed to live there, but for the converted farmhouse ruin that it was, it was comfortable enough. He’d have liked to see a buildings’ inspector come all the way down there to tell them to leave. He even had his lines chewed up and ready.

If this ain’t suited for human habitation, pal, why don’t you have the whole valley knocked down? You could fill it up with cement. That should stop the floods at least.

It was warm inside. The flowery wallpaper was stained, but rosy and homely. There was Bethan’s bedroom, a tiny bathroom, a kitchen space in an old horse stall and the living room, which was larger now that he’d knocked down the wall to the old matrimonial bedroom. It’d become obsolete and too painful. He’d placed the computer and security screens in that corner.

“Hi, dad!” Bethan said and hugged him. “I’ve got news for you. Come over and I’ll show you. Oh, and how was your day? Don’t tell me, I’ve been watching.”

She was only 11 but the impression was that he had to stoop less every time he kissed her hair.

She ran back to the sofa, picked up a few sheets of paper and moved to the crippled swivel chair by the computer screens.

Mr Tom Jones and Lady Oren stretched briefly and curled back into their slumbering yin and yang ball on the same sofa, where Bethan did her schoolwork during the day and Lewis slept his few hours at night next to a radio alarm clock and an otherwise empty coffee table. Right beside the two cats there glowed the four-bar electric fire that had been a wedding gift from his mother-in-law and which, he’d always suspected, had started its career as the old lady’s wedding gift many years before. Bethan’s mum had always denied it, but never without a chuckle.

The old darling used to look a bit like her daughter.

His wife used to have the most charming chuckles.

He stood over his daughter’s shoulder, trying to decipher handwritten notes and printouts.

“Is this it?” he said.

“No, dad, sorry,” she said and pushed some papers under the keyboard. “That’s my geography homework. You can look at it later or whatever.”

He remembered. Settlements along tidal basins. Riveting.

“I just need to check something,” Lewis said. “Could you…”

“Here it is,” Bethan said, showing him a photo of the silver Lexus. “You can see the number. I almost have all the locations.”

“But are you sure he didn’t look?”

“Yeah, dad. I watched him all the time. I even looked at the people in the car and they didn’t look either.”

She still found it hard to say mum, or children, or family, Lewis thought, but you wouldn’t know it from her chirpy tone.

“I saw you weren’t watching,” she went on. “Was it because you gave the guy with the motorcycle the cake and he asked you why?”

She was getting cleverer by the minute. Soon homeschooling her would be an uphill battle. At least for him it would.

“Oh, yeah,” he suddenly remembered, “then there was the old Citroen van, the one that coughed up blue smoke. I don’t think that guy…”

“She did.”

“She?” Lewis said and froze.

Bethan hadn’t noticed his reaction. “Yeah, it was a woman. And she did.”

The girl sounded stern and final.

“Right, then.”

“Yeah,” she said, “not today-today, but like the other day when she came by. You were in the toilet. And I think her name’s Sam or Samantha and she’s from the farm down the road.”

About ten miles down the road. Still, their closest neighbours. He wondered how come he didn’t know Sam but Bethan did. Even so, it was good to know the camera inside the shop worked well.

It was even better to learn that Sam had looked at the poster. He entertained a growing fear that at some point he would have to handle a woman and he wasn’t sure he could do it. So far, so good. Women looked at the poster at the very least. Most took photos and left with cakes. Good for them. After all, it was in memory of a woman that they were doing what they were doing.

He stirred his pot noodle. Yesterday’s rice-and-veg did its microwave dance macabre. The child deserved better food, just like she deserved a better world, free of bad people.

He couldn’t think of how else he could make it happen, so again he browsed through the Lexus pictures and the camera data. How Bethan had broken into the general road traffic surveillance camera servers and the ANPR database remained a feat of remarkable genius. He would often worry they’d get caught – he was ready to take all the blame, of course – but she’d assured him it was safe, so long as she used his old laptop and some stuff she had downloaded from a place on the internet with a dark background that he didn’t understand.

He could see that the Lexus had last been spotted up the B6549. Right by the layby where farmers and drunken lads stopped to relieve themselves. They were probably heading to the organic farms and artisan chocolate maker. Late day trip. The car was registered down south. Wouldn’t be too hard to locate it, especially if the bastard was going to drive back the same way. And there was no other way. Not unless you had a death wish.

The body of a dead man has been found…

As soon as he heard the words, he remembered he’d left his alarm clock radio on. So they had made Radio 1. He went to turn it off but tripped over the large litter tray. Lady Oren jumped out of it, job left unfinished, with an irritated war cry that woke Mr Tom Jones up. But not for long.

“It’s ok, dad,” Bethan said, amused. “It’s the umpteenth time I’ve heard it today.” Her voice turned to a deep tone that overlapped with that of the newsman she was mimicking. “… second such discovery this month. The strangulation marks and a piece of…”

“Bethan!”

She stuck her tongue out at him, shrugged and went quiet.

He switched the blasted thing off.

“Right, smarty pants,” he said. “Let’s have a look at your work before you tuck into that rice. Geography?”

“That was easy. I’ve still got a bit of history left.”

“You might do better to finish your work instead of staring at the camera screens for –“ he meant to say no good reason but reason there was. “Or looking for reg plates while I’m not around. Just saying.” He slurped a tablespoon of Bombay noodles. “Explorers, colonialism and empires?”

“No, dad. That was before Christmas. Crime and punishment in the seventeenth century. Witch trials. Did you know about this thing called trial by ordeal?”

Great, exactly what he needed.

“How about maths?” he asked.

“You know, I was actually thinking…”

Too late.

“…what if I found a different cat? I mean this one looks alright and that…”

“Alright?” he puffed. “It looks like it’s patched up. Did you make it with that thing – what’s it called –“

“It’s not AI,” she said. “I snipped it from a random doc about a cat show in Adelaidee-dah or someplace like that.”

“And you’re sure it’s not a giveaway?”

She thought for a bit. “No. It’s quite hard to find. I broke into some old lady’s private drive. I wanted one that really-really didn’t look like Lady Oren or Mr Tom Jones. Can’t be too careful with these things,” she added with wisdom beyond her years.

“Suppose so,” he said and slurped another mouthful of noodles. After the first half of the pot, spicy turned to corrosive. “Although this Lilibeth…”

“Lyneth!”

“Lyneth.” He’d never asked how she’d come up with that name. “Looks like she was put together from every other cat in the world.”

“Still more real than AI.”

“Realistic,” he corrected her.

“Yeah, that.”

“Eat your food.”

He extracted the rice from the microwave and placed it in front of her.

“No, but what I was meaning to say,” she started again, “if we got the picture of an uglier cat or some poor little thing that was missing an eye or a leg or something, that might make people look more if you see what I mean, like grab their eye sort of thing. If they see a nice fat cat, even for just like a split second yeah, they say like… Oh, that cat can look after itself if you see –”

“I see,” he said. “And no. Remember what we agreed? You said it first.”

“Only because…”

She stopped and looked into her plate. He knew what she meant. This time she went all the way.

“Because mum used to say it.”

She played with her food for a bit.

“Yes, that’s why,” he sighed. He teared up but after two years he was used to it. “A cat is a cat, your mother used to say. And whoever doesn’t care about a lost cat is the worst sort of person. And –” he slurped the last noodle and drew a deep noisy nose breath.

“And whoever is the worse sort of person,” Bethan took over, “deserves to –“ she pointed at Lady Oren and Mr Tom Jones’ litter tray where the head of a dry forgotten excrement stuck out from its partial interment.

He stood up all of a sudden. Checked his watch. “Yeah, well. I better go.”

“Should I run another scan?” she said with her mouth full of rice.

“Neah. I think I know where to go.”

He took another look at the papers on the computer desk. Silver Lexus. Registered not far down south.

He placed his phone next to the keyboard and picked up the van keys, black tape, ropes, balaclava, hunting knife and the new jerrycan. Shame he’d lost the old one the previous time. These things didn’t grow on trees. He switched off the last functional forecourt CCTV camera. He couldn’t risk being recorded driving off.

Over the backs of the arching giants guarding the valley, the idea of snow had materialised into meaty flakes with notions of a flurry. The reddish light of the closed forecourt was the last sign of life for as far as he could see. Fewer eyes to worry about.

He gave Lady Oren and Mr Tom Jones a kiss each.

“That’s it,” he said, “we’ll finish looking at the homework tomorrow.”

“You gonna be late?”

He looked out the window again. He might manage to get him while he was still in the valley. The old breakdown trick. Only needed to be careful about the family.

“Don’t think so, Bethan. Hug for daddy?”

She hugged him.

She’d soon be too old for that, but not quite yet.

He kissed her hair. She was definitely growing. In a better world, he hoped.

“Eat your food,” he said. “And don’t stay up waiting.”

END