Read Online Say Goodbye to the Boys by Mari Stead Jones - Free Book Online

herring gull sitting on the statue’s head that Sunday morning. Ceri Price, holding back a small, brown terrier on a lead, was looking up at it.
    â€˜I just called at your house,’ she said. ‘I can’t make it this afternoon. Some of dad’s family from the port coming to tea.’ She looked at me carefully. ‘You do remember we had a date? You look vacant this morning. I’ve seen a photo of you and Mash and Emlyn Morton sitting up there on King Teddy’s lap in form three.’ She laughed. ‘Down, Tiger!’ she told the terrier.
    â€˜That noise last night,’ I said. ‘You know – when we were in the Hall...’
    She held her head a little to one side. ‘Oh, good God, don’t say that! You don’t think it was that poor Mrs Ridetski? Is that why you look so absent?’ We began walking together, the terrier tangling its lead around our legs. ‘But, it couldn’t have been her, could it? Poor woman. It wasn’t eleven when we left, and they’re saying it happened late on. Did you know her?’
    Grey eyes looking up at me.
    â€˜Yes, I knew her.’ A reporter’s daughter would know they were crying murder. She knelt to pat the dog’s head. I wanted to tell her that there was no way up to the top floor of the Market Hall except through the bird man’s shop. She held my arm as she straightened up. I had been one of Lilian’s callers. More than anything at that moment I wanted to walk on with her in the sunshine, but we parted at the corner. I had Emlyn to see and questions to ask about Mash.
    Emlyn was standing on the black mud under the boat, a can in one hand, a paint brush in the other. ‘I’ve heard,’ he said, jabbing the brush into the seam. ‘And if Idwal’s heard it’s murder, then it’s murder – so where were you last night?’
    â€˜Me?’
    He dipped the brush into the can. ‘You were about to ask me where I was last night. More than anything – you were going to ask me where Mash was.’ He gave me a swift calculating look. ‘We used to visit, didn’t we? Stand by for questions. So – where were you?’
    â€˜At the pictures.’
    â€˜By yourself?’
    I was annoyed now. ‘Not by myself, no.’
    â€˜With Ceri Price, then?’ He began to clean his hands with a paraffin rag. ‘Good. That clears you.’
    â€˜Clears me of what?’ I said. There was a heron standing stock still in the river, as if it was listening to us. ‘Where the hell were you last night, if it comes to it?’
    He held up his hands as if he was holding a trumpet. ‘There was a do on. At the Royal. I’ve got fur on my tongue to prove it!’ He poured more paraffin on his hands. ‘It was a fantastic session. Me and the band. They were dead until I joined them. I was well and truly on form. Ask around.’ He had a familiar, go to hell expression on his face. Then he turned to face me and said quietly, ‘Marshall Edmunds got a skinful. I had to walk him home.’ He saw the relief on my face, and annoyed me further by saying, ‘Mash wouldn’t kill poor old bloody Lilian, Philip. Jesus!’
    â€˜Oh, for God’s sake,’ I said. ‘But he wasn’t so far from killing you, was he?’
    He smiled then. ‘You have a point there. But he was with me all night. I had him on the drums.’ He held both hands to his chest. ‘God, I had a pulse beat of a hundred this morning.’ We sat on a clean stretch of sand under the dune. ‘You saw Idwal then? What did he have to say?’
    â€˜Let me tell you about last night,’ I said, and I told him about the noise Ceri and I had heard.
    â€˜Yes – but what time was she found? And what was she doing out, anyway? And why the Market Hall?’
    There was a shout above us on the dune. We got to our feet in time to witness MT come blundering