AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

For earlier Chapters and an explanation of this dreadful story, see blog: The Cardiff Grandma. WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh.
In the last chapter, The Plenty Capable Code. Still to come, something occurs to Pam Napkins, wretched landlady previously seen ladying land at the 43a Cwrt Roy Jenkins barn conversion.
The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 65

Schumacher stopped. He stopped so suddenly he nearly bumped into himself. Suddenly, it all added up! The whispered words he'd not been privy to, the midnight meetings he’d not been in attendance at, the meaningful glances exchanged when he wasn’t around, the plans hatched about which he knew nothing – it was a plot! It could mean but one thing: tunnels.

On the other side of town, a certain Pam Napkins was doing the rounds, collecting her protection money and spreading viscious roomers when suddenly she stopped - dead in her tracks. Good riddance. But not entirely, because the capricious deity controlling her fate wound her back up and she was off again, bustling about like a busy but efficient cliché, her capacious apron pockets working overtime and off the books. Yes, her money was safe with her, she could tell you that ! The terribly unfortunate thing was that she did tell you that, smartly patting her bulky imbursary, and then, to make things worse, she’d wink and say, ‘Not that I would tell you that, mind you!’ and chuckle tartly as she tottered out with your kid’s college fund or your sick mum’s ‘special pills’ account. She never accepted payment out of your mad money or what you’d set aside to invest in soft porn, no, not she. It had to hurt someone else as well. Two birds with one stone, she thought, and why not? She’d witnessed enough misery in her life, largely inflicted by herself, to know how fulfilling it was to dish it out. Why should she stint herself, she’d like to know? It wasn’t as though she didn’t do unto others, God knew. She was, she didn’t mind saying, understanding to a fault, even if it were her own. She had precious few of those, and she cherished them. She did not merely tolerate difference, as an illustration, but downright celebrated diversity. ‘The more unlike me the better,’ she’d boom merrily, tossing back another one as she retilted her cone-shaped party hat ‘We’re all one of a kind, eh? Each of us special?’

The other participants at these tiresome affairs would toot perfunctorily on their party horns. And who were these participants? Her rumours, i.e. Sonny Quito. Oh, long ago, there had been others. But such a bother! Thanks to time-management, she’d whittled them all down to one. Balsa-boy, she called him, to his face.

How little she knew Sunny Quito and his guardian deity, the same deity (little did Napkins suspect) as her own, this great child that had, just today, decided He liked Sunny better with his original spelling, Sunny Quito, a capital fellow, a man worth saving, a man who didn’t bore Him with italics, a man who, even now raced alongside Rhoda Crwys to their mutual salvation while Pam Napkins? Hah! The deity had plans for her, plans involving a slanted eternity of characters among which she did not figure. Watch out, Napkins, for your fate is upon you. Now! Good riddance!

How this came to pass can only now, and only just, be told:

On the flat roof of the local kebab supermarket the figure checked his watch once more. Reassured that he had a few minutes left to wait, he carefully wiped each round as he loaded the magazine of his high powered rifle. He remembered his military training, best not to place the magazine spring under too much unnecessary pressure, only load the rounds when needed. The sights were checked, as was the laser rangefinder. This wasn’t ideal, he’d have preferred that there wasn’t any pattern on them at all.

That woman! When she had crossed him she had gone too far. Further than that even – beyond too far! He was set to finally make her meet her maker. He waited. He’d waited years for this moment, a few more minutes wouldn’t matter much now. As Mrs Napkins traversed the city taking money off tenants, and tenants off fellow landlords, her movements were random and unpredictable - this was to be her downfall. Her unpredictable-ness gave her away and made it possible to calculate the exact nature of her random behaviour. Using two powerful computers and some heavy duty application of Quanta-chaos theory, the former mathematics postgraduate from Berlin had worked out her timetable before she even knew it herself. Months! For months he had planned this moment, the moment when the coldhearted gossip and roomer-spreading landlady’s reign would be violently punctuated.

Briefly he was overcome with a flashback of the torment he’d suffered at her hands and her feet. Sub-sub-clauses in contracts, non-refundable deposits, surprise bonds, hidden penalty clauses and small print so small he’d needed a microscope to even find it. She’d played all the usual tricks on him and some new ones she’d cooked up herself! The way she would let herself in unannounced; that fateful day she’d caught him in bed with… with… it was too shameful to even think about writing down! Movement on the street below jolted him back into the present.

At exactly 11:01 and three and a bit seconds, her plush French car pulled up outside of the ‘‘BEDS, BEDS, BEDS, BEDS, BEDS!’ Bargain Discount Slumber SuperstoreTM’ located across the street from Cwrt Roy Jenkins. The store was something of a local landmark with it’s 30 foot high neon signage but Napkins didn’t care for such matters, she just liked to park in the ‘disabled’ parking bay out front.

As she switched off the ignition and prepared to leave the safety of her bomb-proofed vehicle, the German former tenant readied his aim and checked his breathing. For her part the toxic tenant defrauder was due to do a little ‘shake down’ before lunch. A run of the mill encounter, even by her low standards. Just adding to the local economy was how she saw it: taking a few foreign students for a few unexpected extra Euros. As she tossed a coin to determine which particular tenant she was going to target first, she was wholly unaware that she was a target herself.

From his position, perched up above the street like a giant heavily armed bird of prey, the would-be assassin watched his quarry with a hawk-like gaze. He’d waited and waited many weeks, days even, for this moment, this sweet chance of revenge on the woman who had wronged him so wrongly. The smell of unspecified animal byproducts hung heavy in the air as the kitchen staff in the shop below prepared for the lunch-time rush and the fumes burst up out of the rusty upturned bucket on the shop roof that passed for a chimney. He eased his finger over the trigger and prepared to take his shot. With the explosive rounds he had loaded one shot was all he’d need. One hundred yards further up the same central Caerdydd street, another trigger finger moved over another trigger. Someone had sent someone else to assassinate the assassin. It was true that someone wanted Pam Napkins dead, just not yet. As the German zeroed in on the wild haired Mrs Napkins, someone zeroed in on him.

It was all over in a flash, three bangs and an almighty crash. In the split second that the German former tenant went to squeeze his trigger the killer killer up and did the same. As his first round connected with the German’s neck he was jolted upwards and released his own shot. Now wildly off target it flew upwards and exploded into the rusty iron supports holding the neon sign above the Bargain Discount Slumber SuperstoreTM. As Mrs Pam Napkins looked up the sign began to topple. The assassin let off another round and the German was dead . Alerted now to the familiar and definite sound of gunfire, Napkins moved to move away and back to the relative safety of her plush French car. At that moment an unexpected gust of wind blew** and with a sickening crash part of the now swaying neon ‘BEDS, BEDS, BEDS, BEDS, BEDS!’ sign fell from it’s perch. Crunching to the pavement in front of her, it startled the landlady. She lost her footing and slipped into a comma (from which she never regained consciousness).

The effect was just the same: a very good riddance indeed!

*His body was never found. Despite intensive questioning by the Heddlu, the kebab shop staff insisted they never knew nothing about anything. The Heddlu found they couldn’t not disprove this and so gave up asking and all went back to the police station to eat their complementary kebabs.
**Witnesses later claimed they had heard a ghostly voice say “remember sunny quiiitooo?’ at this point.