Constable Evans 02: Evan Help Us Read Free

motherly woman but she had two faults: She was determined to fatten him up like a prize turkey by feeding him three enormous meals a day, and she was equally determined to get him married off to her granddaughter Sharon, who was herself built with the girth of a prize turkey.
    Evan sighed and walked on up the street, past a row of shops on the right. G. Evans, butcher, was next to R. Evans, dairy products. The monopoly was spoiled by T. Harris, general store and post office. As Evan passed, the door of the first shop was flung open and a big man in a blood-spattered apron leaped out, waving a murderous-looking meat cleaver.
    “Nos da, good evening, Evans-the-Law,” he called out. “Solved any juicy murders today then?” He laughed loudly at his own joke.
    “Not yet, Evans-the-Meat,” Evan called back. “But there’s still time, isn’t there? Are you planning on committing one?”
    “I just might,” Evans-the-Meat replied, the smile fading from his face. “I’d like to murder all those bloody tourists. Why can’t they leave us alone, that’s what I want to know.”
    Evan looked up and down the deserted street. Even in the height of the summer holidays, Llanfair could hardly be described as a tourist mecca. There was little here to make them stop—a petrol pump with small snack bar, and postcards that were sold at the post office and general store. A couple of cottages took in b-and-b visitors, and four new holiday bungalows had appeared this spring on Morgan’s farm, but that was the extent of the hospitality industry in the village itself. The well-heeled drivers of BMWs and Jags stayed at the new Everest Inn, further up the pass. Evan glanced up at the overgrown Swiss chalet that had so enraged the residents when it was built. It still looked monstrously out of place—a kind of Disney mountain fantasy on a bleak Welsh hillside.
    “It’s not like we’re overrun with tourists here, is it?” Evan voiced his thoughts out loud. “And Roberts-the-Pump likes the extra money he gets selling snacks.”
    Evans-the-Meat sniffed in disgust. “Sell his own mother for tuppence, that man would,” he said. “And that idiot Evans-the-Milk too.” He added this loudly, glancing hopefully at the open door of the dairy. One of his main hobbies was fighting with his next-door neighbor. But nobody came out of the dairy to meet the challenge.
    “Evans-the-Milk?” Evans asked. “What’s he selling then?”
    Evans-the-Meat leaned closer as if he was divulging a great secret. “He’s planning to make his own ice cream, that’s what,” he hissed. “He thinks the tourists will come running. I told him I didn’t want to see another tourist anywhere near my shop!”
    Evan grinned. “But the tourists don’t bother you, do they?”
    He couldn’t imagine too many out-of-town visitors would find a reason to pop into a butcher’s shop.
    “Those people staying at the new holiday bungalows do,” Evans-the-Meat said. He glanced up at four new wood and glass structures that stood on what used to be Taff Morgan’s farm. They had been built during the spring and the villagers complained that Taff’s son Ted hadn’t even waited until his poor father was cold in his grave before he started spoiling things with his fancy London ways. Not that he ever came near the place himself. A contractor had simply shown up one day with instructions to build, and Mr. Ted Morgan hadn’t even come to check on the result.
    Evans-the-Meat came closer, still waving his cleaver. “Would you like to hear what happened today, then?” he asked confidentially. “One of those English people from the bungalows had the nerve to ask me if I had any decent English lamb! I told her the day I had to start selling foreign lamb was the day I closed my doors for good.”
    Evan tried not to smile. “I don’t suppose she’s ever had the opportunity to try our local Welsh lamb,” he said easily.
    “Then it’s about time she bloody learned, isn’t