by P. F. Ford
‘It will be interesting to see what Amy Pritchard has to say about Sandra and John,’ said Norman.
‘What do you think she was going to say when she hesitated about John Pritchard being in Scotland?’
‘Yeah, that was weird wasn’t it?’ agreed Slater. ‘Maybe she knows something we should know.’
‘D’you think it’s worth coming back again?’
‘I think we made it clear John Pritchard is a suspect who can’t defend himself. Let’s give her a few days to think about it. If we’re making no progress by then, it might be worth coming back to try again.’
Chapter 24
As planned, Slater and Norman took a leisurely drive down to Wales later that afternoon. When they finally reached their destination just before 7 p.m., Slater’s first thought was that whoever had decided Llangwelli should be designated a small town apparently had no idea what a village was.
‘That must be the smallest town I ever saw,’ said Norman, as they passed a handful of houses and were suddenly back on the open road.
‘We can’t be through it already,’ said Slater. ‘There were only about twenty houses.’
‘Maybe this main road cuts past the edge of town. Perhaps if we had turned left back there, as I suggested, we would have gone into the actual town and not just past the outskirts.’
‘Okay, smartarse,’ said Slater. ‘I’ll turn around and we can try your way.’
He soon found a suitable spot, turned the car around, and headed back the way they had come, turning off the main road as Norman had suggested.
‘There you go,’ said Norman. ‘It’s almost a metropolis.’
‘Only if two small shops and a pub counts as a metropolis.’
‘Someone obviously thought that was enough to make a town, so why not?’
There was a small square with three or four tiny shops and one large pub. A sign hanging outside the pub saying ‘B&B’ suggested they may well have found their destination. Half an hour later they had booked in, taken their cases up to their rooms, and were back down in the bar.
As they studied the not-very-extensive menu, the landlord pulled two pints for them. ‘So, what brings you two gents to Llangwelli?’
‘We’re looking for a guy called Rhodri Evans,’ said Norman.
The man pulled a face. ‘What’s that idiot done now?’
‘Do you know him?’ asked Norman.
‘Everybody in this town knows him. He’s like chewing gum on your shoe, bloody hard to get rid of.’
‘Do you know where we can find him?’
‘What are you, debt collectors?’
‘Would that be a problem?’ asked Slater.
‘Not for me, but the last time he had debt collectors after him they found him in here and there was a fight. I don’t need trouble like that.’
‘Do we look like troublemakers?’
‘The last lot didn’t look like it until it all kicked off.’
‘Trust me, we’re not looking to pick a fight with anyone,’ said Norman. ‘We’re investigating a murder that happened ten years ago. Rhodri was a witness at the trial. All we want to do is ask him a few questions and check his story.’
The landlord didn’t look convinced.
‘Does he come in here?’ asked Slater.
‘More often than I like.’
‘Will he be in here tonight?’
‘Maybe later. Are you going to ambush him in here? I just told you I don’t want a fight in my bar.’
‘As a gesture of goodwill, how about we eat our dinners and then go to our rooms?’ said Norman. ‘That will make sure there’s no fight, and then if you tell us where he lives at breakfast in the morning, we’ll go and speak to him there.’
‘I promise we’re not looking to cause trouble for anyone,’ said Slater. ‘Once we’ve spoken to him, we’ll be gone.’
Chapter 25
Slater wasn’t best pleased to find himself back in his room before 8 p.m., but as Norman had pointed out, it meant they would find out where Rhodri Evans lived. They could speak to him first thing tomorrow and be on their way home before lunchtime.
He switched on the tiny TV and tried to find something worth watching, but, as so often happened, there was nothing that appealed to him. Then his mobile phone started to ring, and he forgot about the TV.
‘Hi, it’s Robbins.’
‘I thought you were going to keep a low profile,’ said Slater. ‘You can’t be doing that if you’ve got more info already. I didn’t expect to hear from you again for days. I really think you should back off a bit. You’re taking a lot of risks.’
‘I admit, I’ve had to be even more careful than I thought I would. It seems my boss thinks I might be tempted to take matters into my own hands. I can’t imagine where he got that idea.’
‘It sounds to me like he knows you well. Or maybe he had his nose put out of joint too, and he’s tempted himself.’
‘Well, whatever, here’s what I’ve got so far. First off, I wanted to see if we could find out who drove that car the night Lenkov died. My God, it’s taken hours, but I got it eventually. They made sure we couldn’t use CCTV from the immediate area, but we’ve got footage from further out, and it clearly shows a car bearing your number plates being driven into Winchester the night Lenkov died, and better still, we’ve got one that shows the driver.’
‘Can you see who it is?’
‘Whoever it was they’re wearing a baseball cap pulled down low over their face, but I’m pretty sure I can see some long blonde hair hanging out of the cap.’
‘You think it’s Samantha Brearley?’
‘I couldn’t say for certain, but it’s possible.’
‘Bloody hell, d’you think she detonated the bomb?’
‘I don’t think we’ll ever know that for sure,’ said Robbins. ‘There could be a whole team of people already on site waiting for her to lure Lenkov into position.’
‘What else have you got?’
‘Those parking tickets on your car are fake.’
‘Are you sure? Why would anyone fake them?’
‘I got them checked out by the company that runs the station car park, and by the local council. They don’t have the right serial numbers. They’re definitely fake tickets. As to why they used fakes? To throw you off the scent and make it look as though your car had been there all week.’
‘Do you think the car might have only arrived there the morning it was found?’
‘I don’t think it did, I’m certain it did. The car park CCTV stopped working sometime after two o’clock on Sunday morning. At least that’s the last recorded footage.’
‘That’s convenient,’ said Slater.
‘Isn’t it just? It’s the only time it wasn’t working during the whole week. My bet is the car must have been parked there during the early hours of Sunday morning.’
‘And they knocked out the CCTV, so we’ve got no way of knowing who dumped it there.’
‘Unless that person used a train to get away. We’ve got a possible suspect.’
‘You’re quite good at this, aren’t you?’ said Slater.
‘I didn’t get to be detective inspector because I was a moron.’
‘Don’t tell me, your suspect was wearing a baseball cap, and you can’t see her face.’
‘It’s worse than that. Whoever it is, they’re hiding behind an umbrella, but there’s no doubt it’s a woman. We have no way of proving she got out of your car – all we know is she got onto the train. But she didn’t walk to the station from the town, so she must have come from the car park.’
‘Could it be Watson?’
‘Well, yes, it could be, but then it could as easily be me,’ said Robbins. ‘If it is her, she certainly knows how to keep her face hidden from the cameras.’
‘What about the train? Is there any CCTV in the carriage she was using?’
‘Oh sure, but she keeps the umbrella up until she’s down in the seat. We never get a clear shot of her.’
<
br /> ‘Bugger,’ said Slater.
‘Yes, it certainly is,’ agreed Robbins.
‘You’ve made a lot of progress.’
‘I’m not so sure I have. Okay, so we know when these events happened, but we’ve got no proof who’s behind them. They’ve left us a few hints but taken away enough to make sure we can’t prove anything. All we have are our suspicions.’
‘I think you should let it drop, at least for a week or so,’ said Slater. ‘If they’ve left hints, it could be they’re tracking those hints to see if anyone comes looking for them. You could be walking into a trap.’
‘D’you think so?’
‘These people are experts in being devious, aren’t they? They certainly don’t care about what we might call right and wrong, and they wouldn’t think twice about ending a career if it suited them.’
‘My boss is a good bloke. He’s got my back.’
‘I don’t doubt that for one minute, but I’ll bet they’d be quite happy to shoot him down in flames as well.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ she said, gloomily. ‘Okay, I’ll leave it be for a few days, but I’m not giving up.’
‘I didn’t say give it up; I said be careful. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can learn anything my end. I’ll let you know if I find anything.’
Chapter 26
Just after 9 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Slater drove into the road where Rhodri Evans lived.
‘The landlord was right when he said you wouldn’t be able to miss the house,’ he said.
‘Sheesh, I thought he must have been exaggerating,’ said Norman.
‘Well, there you have it,’ said Slater. ‘Grass a foot long and crap everywhere, just like he said. It’s a pity when the rest of the estate is so neat and tidy.’
‘Yeah, his neighbours must love him,’ said Norman.
Slater parked the car a short distance along from the house, and they both stared at it for few moments.
‘It must have been quite nice when it was built,’ said Slater.
‘Yeah, it’s a pity no one has thought to clean the windows in the ten years since.’
‘I suppose it saves on curtains.’
‘Maybe he thinks if he can’t see all the rubbish piling up outside he can pretend it’s not his,’ said Norman.
‘D’you think he cares?’
Norman turned to look at Slater. ‘About the rubbish? Or what the neighbours think? I think you’ll find guys like this don’t give a damn either way.’
Slater sighed. He didn’t feel like dealing with a slob this morning. ‘I suppose as we’ve come all this way to speak to the guy we’d better get on with it.’
‘Don’t forget I have a date tonight,’ said Norman. ‘So yes, let’s go. The sooner we do it, the sooner we can go back home.’
They climbed from the car and carefully picked their way through the assorted rubbish. To their surprise, there was a bell attached to the front door, but when Norman pressed it, they couldn’t hear it ringing inside. When he let go, the button popped out and dangled uselessly on the end of its spring.
‘Ding, bloody, dong,’ said Slater, wearily. He stepped forward, hammered on the door, and then waited, but there was no sign of life from inside. Then Norman tried pummelling the door, but still nothing happened. He stepped back and looked up at the upstairs windows.
‘You don’t think you’re going to see anything through them, do you?’ asked Slater.
Norman grinned at him. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘there’s no chance, is there?’
He picked up an abandoned plastic shopping bag and walked over to the front window. He scrubbed at the window until he revealed a clean spot. His put his eye to the clean patch and then swore.
‘What’s up?’ asked Slater.
‘There’s even more crap on the inside. I could clean the entire outside of this window and we still wouldn’t see a single thing inside.’
‘If this were a normal house I’d be surprised,’ said Slater, ‘but somehow, I’m not, I can’t imagine why. I tell you what – you keep hammering on this door. I’m going to try around the back.’
Norman watched as Slater gingerly picked his way across to the side of the house and disappeared around the corner, then he began hammering on the door again.
Slater made his way down the side of the house until he came to a rickety gate. As a precaution, born of old habits, he slipped on a pair of latex gloves and then, careful not to make any more noise than he had to, he eased the latch and gently leaned against the gate. Unsurprisingly, it caught on the ground almost straight away, so Slater put his foot against the base and added a bit of shoulder higher up. To his dismay, the gate didn’t swing open as he had hoped but just collapsed before him.
‘Oh, bugger,’ he muttered, as the gate crashed to the ground, taking him with it.
‘Are you okay?’ called Norman, peering around the corner of the house.
‘The sodding gate collapsed,’ said Slater, struggling back to his feet and brushing his jeans down.
Now Norman was grinning. ‘You realise he would have to be deaf not to have heard all that noise.’
‘If he hasn’t heard us hammering on that front door, I’m pretty sure he won’t have heard the gate, but you’d better keep an eye on that front door in case he tries to do a runner when I go in the back.’
As Norman disappeared back around the corner of the house, Slater was sure he heard him laughing, and he couldn’t help but smile, too. It was getting to be like the old days, and he was beginning to enjoy himself.
He crept down the side of the house and peered around the corner. A wheelie bin overflowing with rubbish was off to one side, and assorted garden chairs in various states of disrepair were piled in a corner, but otherwise, the rubbish round here was nowhere near as bad as he had expected.
He stopped at the kitchen window and tried to look inside, but it was like staring into a thick fog. He wiped a small patch in the dirty glass, but, just like with the windows at the front, it made no difference. Norman had been correct: there was even more crap on the inside.
He crept across to the kitchen door and gently tried the handle. It wasn’t locked, so he eased the door open a couple of inches then waited a few seconds and listened hard. The only sound he could hear was the tick, tock, tick, tock of a clock, so he eased the door open enough to slip through into the kitchen.
Slater had been inside the house just a few seconds when he realised it was inordinately hot in there. ‘Bloody hell,’ he muttered. ‘It’s like an oven in here!’
Then he noticed something rather unpleasant, and this time he spoke more loudly. ‘Oh, Jesus, what’s that stink?’
He seemed to recall reading somewhere that every house has its own aroma, if only people had a keen enough sense of smell to detect it. It didn’t need a bloodhound to find this one, and for a few nasty moments, Slater was sure he was going to be reacquainted with his breakfast.
Having satisfied himself his stomach wasn’t going to embarrass him, and as there was apparently no-one in, or at least awake, he made his way through to the front door and opened it to allow Norman to join him.
‘Come on in,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there’s anyone here. But you should put some gloves on. It’s impossible to know what you might be touching in here.’
‘Is it that bad?’ asked Norman as he made his way through the door. He stepped inside and then stopped in his tracks.
‘It’s a bit hot in here, isn’t it?’ he asked, and then, ‘Holy Jesus, what the hell’s that stink?’
‘That’s funny, that’s more or less what I said.’
‘That is not funny,’ said Norman. ‘It’s disgusting. Have you any idea what it is?’
‘I think the underlying odour is that of stale marijuana smoke. Then there’s a frisson of rotten food from the kitchen sink, where the remains of a pizza are growing a rather stylish fur coat. There’s also something else that I feel I should know, but I can’t quite put my finger o
n right now.’
‘Keeping the house at this temperature is an ideal way of encouraging everything to fester,’ said Norman. ‘Thank God it’s not summer or it would be even worse, and there would be flies everywhere as well. How can people live like this?’
‘It takes a special breed, that’s for sure,’ said Slater.
‘I take it there’s no sign of Evans?’
‘Not down here but be my guest if you want to go upstairs and have a look around.’
‘You’re kidding, right? D’you really think he could have slept through all that noise?’
‘Norm, if he smokes as much dope as I think he does, he could be comatose up there, and a bomb wouldn’t wake him.’
‘Do you really want me to check?’
‘He’s probably not here at all, but as we’ve come all this way to talk to him, we might as well make sure before we go back home.’
Norman began muttering to himself as he made his way to the stairs. He stopped at the bottom and looked up into the darkness. ‘The windows are so shitty up there,’ he said. ‘It’s almost like it’s still night.’
‘Try that switch thing on the wall,’ said Slater. ‘I think you’ll find if you push it down, the lights come on.’
Norman glared at Slater, who looked back at him impassively.
‘I didn’t complain about you laughing when I fell over the gate,’ said Slater, ‘because I knew that if I bided my time, my chance would come, and sure enough, here I am getting my own back.’
Norman didn’t have an answer to that, so he switched on the lights and started up the stairs.
‘I’ll have a nose around down here,’ said Slater.
There was a small dining room off the kitchen. In the centre was a table, littered with papers. Slater made his way over and sifted through them. One of the items was a bank statement, and he found his eyes drawn to it.
He tutted as he read it. Then he saw something that made him draw his breath in sharply through his teeth.
‘Well, well, Rhodri,’ he said, quietly. ‘What’s this all about?’
There was what looked like a regular payment of £3,000 a month into his bank account, and yet he was overdrawn. Slater could see that nearly all of the withdrawals were in cash, but that didn’t surprise him. After all, who pays their drug dealer by direct debit?
