BOILER

Chapter 30

The file had an address in amongst the photos for a home in a trailer park called Pleasant Place. He'd been driving for half an hour and seen nothing but pine trees, flat creatures, and a deer with its head on backwards. The sky was greying, and the air carried snow as dust.

The pine trees went away, and a hedgerow ran with the road a short distance before he turned off and came around to a row of white trailer homes all built on wooden plinths, and a sign with the sun setting over a valley and the words Pleasant Place. There was one home painted beige with a welcome sign on and through the window he could see a woman at desk watching him. He went in.

'What can I do for you?' the woman asked. She was a strong-looking woman with a cardigan and an overbite. She had very light eyes, and they were looking up at him from under wild, grey eyebrows.

'Do you have a family up here by the name of Grant?'

'Are you from the city?'

'I am?'

'Can I see your ID?'

'Sure,' Toland said. She gave the card a cursory look and let him pocket it.

'Susan Grant,' she said. 'She is up at 70.'

The woman took out a map of the place that was just numbered boxes drawn in crayon and put her finger on number ten. 'Me and you are here. If you go back out to where you parked and make a left, you'll pass the first and second rows, after the third row she will be the last home on your right.'

Toland came out and smoked as he walked. Small birds darted between the homes. The sun was a pale ball above the black trees. There was a small patch of well-maintained garden below a window that had plastic sunflowers turning in the wind. He went up the steps and opened the screen door and knocked the inner door.

Susan was stood in it almost immediately. She was blue-eyed and tanned. Her hair was blonde and up in a knot and she was standing in roadrunner pyjamas.

'Yes,' she said.

'Hi there. Sorry to bother you, but I was hoping I could talk to you about your son?'

'Why would you want to do that? He's been dead almost eight years.'

'Is it all right if I ask anyway?'

She had a look of disbelief. 'Ask anyway? You couldn't do this eight years ago? You boys didn't seem to give a cold shit back when something might've been done.'

Toland bowed his head a little and prepared to be her punchbag, but she didn't carry on, so he did. 'I don't doubt that,' he said. 'A lot of what passes for law in this town doesn't stand up to a hard shake. But I wouldn't bother you with this just to pass time. It could be important.'

She looked him down to his boots and up to his eyeballs and to the sky beyond him.

'Come in,' she said.

He went directly into the living room. She had a black cat that was sitting on the back of a couch and watching him. The carpet was a copper colour, and the sunlight was creeping up the wall.

'So, what do you wanna know?' she asked, with her head cocked and hands on hips.

'Just what you can remember about him. Things he was doing around that time.'

'Well, there's not much I remember. I got a box of his stuff here that might help. I'll get it out. Do you want coffee? I don't have any milk.'

'That's all right.'