The Wilderness Murders: DI Giles Book 16 (DI Giles Suspense Thriller Series)
Page 3
“I see.”
“Are you linking the bag to the murders?” he asked again.
“Probably not, but we are keeping an open mind. Thank you, Eifion. We may need to speak to you again,” she said, rising from her seat.
“You’ve got my number,” he answered, grabbing his jacket. “I’m glad to help.”
Alfie Lloyd, also seventeen and a sixth-form student, attended the station thirty minutes after Eifion left.
Casually dressed, in jeans and a t-shirt, he sported a tan which highlighted his shoulder-length fair hair. He had a confidence that belied his youth and sat down without invitation.
“Thank you for coming in, Alfie,” she began. “We wanted to ask you questions about the rucksack that you and your friends found on the Kerry Ridgeway.”
“There’s not much to tell.” He shrugged. “We found it, and we reported it. That’s it, really.”
“I understand that, but you may have inadvertently witnessed something important.”
“We didn’t see another soul up there. It was unusually quiet, in fact. I put that down to people’s habits having changed during the lockdowns.”
“I see.” She pursed her lips. “What about vehicles? Did you notice them around? Any parked up?”
He shook his head. “Not that I recall.”
“But, you felt it important to report the bag by phone, instead of taking in to the station?”
“Are you asking why we did that?”
“You may be aware, now, of a double murder that took place on the Ridgeway.”
“Yes, we heard about it.”
“Were you aware of it when you were up there?”
“No, they hadn't found the bodies then, had they?”
“No, they hadn’t, so it’s fortunate that you reported something that may be vital evidence, and had the foresight not to touch it.”
“Yes, I suppose it was.”
“What made you choose to leave it in place, and not bring it to the station?”
“Well, I was all for bringing it to the station. I thought it was odd that someone left it up there and, to be honest, I felt a bit spooked. It was like the owner had disappeared into thin air, like they had been vaporised or something. It was my friend, Eifion, who suggested we leave it where it was and phone police.”
“So, Eifion suggested you leave it there?”
“Yes, he said we shouldn’t touch it, only report it. And we all agreed that was probably the best course of action.”
“You say you didn’t see any vehicles, did you hear any?”
“In the distance, maybe, but not close by.”
“What about shots? Did you hear gunshots at all?”
He shook his head, glancing at his watch. “No.”
“Why was Eifion so suspicious about the rucksack?”
Alfie pulled a face. “His cousin disappeared while on a family holiday in Thailand, six years ago. They found her body three months later. Someone had murdered her. Eifion was only young, but it stayed with him.”
“Wow.” She pursed her lips. “Well, I can see why that would stay with him. And now I understand why he reacted the way he did.”
“But, we did the right thing, right? I mean, leaving it where it was. Was it the murdered people’s bag?”
“We don’t know, and I cannot comment on the ongoing investigation. I’m sure you’ll understand that.”
Alfie nodded. “Sure.”
“What did you do after you reported the rucksack to police?”
“We headed back to our car, and into town for a beer by the river.”
“In Newtown?”
“Yeah, we had a few drinks, and forgot about the bag on the Ridgeway, until we heard there’d been murders up there.”
“And what are your thoughts, now?”
“I shudder when I think about it. We may have come close to seeing the murders, or the murderer, or even had a narrow escape ourselves.”
Yvonne smiled. “You and your friends did well, reporting the bag and leaving it in place. Thank you, Alfie. That is all the questions I have, for now.”
“Do you mean you’ll need to see me again?”
“Possibly.” She rose from her seat. “It will depend on whether we connect the bag to the murders. We’ll let you know, anyway. Thank you for coming in.”
After Alfie had left the interview room, the DI pondered the death of Eifion’s cousin, and why he had failed to mention it in his interview. Was the memory too painful? Or was there some other reason?
Dai interrupted her thoughts. “Ma’am,” he said, stepping into the room, “Just letting you know that the book you found stuffed in the tree at the Paynes’ campsite, had no fingerprints on it.”
“Really?”
“Yes, and Jonathan Payne insists Seren was reading it and took it with her, so her prints should have been all over it.”
“Someone must have wiped it clean.”
“Seems that way.” He pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his crumpled jacket.
“What about other evidence from the site?”
“Everything else appeared undisturbed near the tent and vehicle. I think it likely the killer marched them at gunpoint to the isolated spot where he killed them. Perhaps, the murderer returned to the campsite to put the book in the tree, though why he would want to do that is hard to fathom.”
She nodded. “I agree. It was an odd thing to do. I think he left it as a message to us or someone else… some kind of signature. What about the shotgun?”
“Ballistics are looking at the shell casings and shot, and there are officers out talking to locals. Callum is going through gun licence holders in the area. I’ll let you know if he finds anything significant or if we find anyone who witnessed events before, during, or after the murders.”
“Thanks.” She frowned.
“Are you okay?” Dewi asked, walking next to her.
“We still don’t know if the rucksack found on the Ridgeway relates to what happened. We could be wasting valuable time interviewing those three lads.” She shrugged. “But, now We’ve started…”
Dewi placed his hands on his hips. “Well, someone put that bag there and, if we can find out who, they may have critical information for us. Either someone left it on the track in a hurry, or they did so deliberately as a message. Given everything that’s happened, the latter wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Like the book in the tree.”
“Exactly.”
Ieuan Jones was late. “Sorry,” he said, as he removed his raincoat.
The DI glanced through the window. Thundercloud had replaced that morning’s azure sky, the one that had accompanied her drive to work. “Did you get caught in traffic?” She asked, aware that Ieuan’s dad had dropped him off.
He nodded, scratching his head through close-cropped blonde hair, before rolling up the sleeves on his blue-check shirt. “Got stuck behind a tractor for most of the way.” He grimaced. “I thought we’d never get here.”
Ieuan’s family inhabited a farm near Bettws, a village seven miles from Newtown. The roads were narrow and winding, with very few places to pass tractors and horse boxes.
Yvonne wasn’t surprised he was late. “Don’t worry, you’re here now. Would you like a cup of tea?”
He shook his head. “No, thank you, I’m good.”
“Very well.” She led him through to the interview room. “Do you know why you’re here?” She asked this out of politeness, knowing full-well that Dewi would have explained the situation to him and his father.
“You want to ask me about the rucksack we found on the Ridgeway?”
“Exactly.” She closed the door behind them. “This is an informal chat about what you saw that day.”
He pulled a face. “It won’t take long, then.”
She showed him to a seat before organising her papers on the table.
“I knew right away that we needed to phone in and report that pack,” he announced, leaning back in his chai
r, arms folded.
“Oh?”
“Oh yeah, it was really strange, finding it like that. Eerie, you know…”
She made a point of looking through her notes. “I thought it was Eifion, who pushed for us to be informed?”
“Yeah, but obviously I supported that. I felt all along that something bad had happened to the owner.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
“Do you know the owner?”
He raised an eyebrow. “No.”
“Then what makes you think something bad happened to them?”
“Well, I just thought… with the murders and all… I assumed it must have belonged to the victims. Didn’t it?”
“We don’t know, Ieuan, not yet.”
“Oh.” He ran a hand through his hair.
“Do you have guns on the farm, Ieuan?”
He scoured her face. “We have a gun cabinet, yes. Sometimes we have to shoot injured animals, or ward off dogs who are running loose, especially this time of year.”
“It’s a bit late for lambing, isn’t it?”
“The dogs don’t seem to care.”
“What guns do you have?”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. “Shotguns and an air rifle,” he said finally.
“Do you use them? Or is it just dad who uses them?”
“I shoot with them sometimes. My dad taught me to shoot when I was twelve.”
“Twelve? That is young, isn’t it?”
“Oh God, I pestered and pestered until he let me have a go. The recoil on the shotgun sent me over onto my backside, bruising my shoulder. I was hurting for days. But, I loved it. Couldn’t get enough. I can only use them when my dad is there.”
“He supervises you?”
“Well, he’s got the keys. He keeps the cartridges in a locked drawer, but…” He shrugged. “I know where he keeps the keys to the ammo drawer, and the gun safe. I wouldn’t use them without his permission, though,” he added. “My mum used to go crazy at him taking me shooting, but she’s more relaxed about it now I’m eighteen. She trusts me to be sensible and knows I won’t shoot myself in the foot.”
“Have you ever had an accident with the guns?”
“I had one go off once when I didn’t intend it to. But, luckily for me, it didn’t hurt anyone. The blast hit the dirt.”
“I see. So, tell me about the day you found the rucksack. Take me to the beginning.”
“All right. Well, Eifion, Alfie, and I, had gone walking for a few hours up on the Kerry Ridgeway.”
“Okay…”
“We left home about nine in the morning. Eifion picked Alfie up in his car and brought him to mine.”
“Do you drive?”
“I do, but I don’t have a vehicle of my own, so I have to borrow dad’s Land Rover or truck, if I want to drive. I only passed my test a few months ago. But we took my dad's Land Rover up to the Ridgeway. Eifion left his car at the farm.”
“Do you have brothers or sisters?”
“I have a younger brother, Dafydd. He’s fifteen, and doesn’t drive, yet, not on public roads, anyway. He operates farm machinery and takes a quad bike out onto the land.”
“What are your plans when you finish school?”
“I might head to Aberystwyth Uni, to study agriculture.” He grinned. “I’ll likely inherit the farm one day, and I may want to modernise it… bring it into the twenty-first century.”
“Are you saying your dad is old-fashioned?”
“He’s a bit set in his ways, yes. I like to keep things moving. I think we should embrace new technologies when they come along. My dad doesn't like change.”
“I see. So, you left home at nine, with Eifion and Alfie?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“We had our own backpacks, nothing like the size of the one we found, took a few drinks and snacks with us, and our money and mobile phones. We’d been looking forward to it all week. The COVID restrictions had been going on too long, and it was even worse for the other two, as they live in far smaller homes. At least I could mess about on the farm. They had nowhere to go, except their back gardens, and that isn’t enough roaming for growing lads. Well, that’s what my dad said, and he was right. We were all restless. They lifted the lockdowns, and we planned the Ridgeway trek.”
“What time did you start your walk?”
“We started it just before ten that morning.”
“And what time did you find the rucksack?”
“Ah… That was about an hour before we reached the dairy farm, so it would have been around twelve o’clock.”
“So, you passed it on the way up, at around twelve?”
“Yes.”
“And what were your thoughts about it? Did you look for the owner?”
“We didn’t go searching for them, but we had a quick glance around, and called out. No-one answered. We assumed the owner had gone for a pee in the fields, and would be back.”
“So you continued on to the dairy farm?”
“Yes, we went on, ate ice cream outside the farm shop for about half-an-hour, and then set off back down. The bag was still in the same spot.”
“And what time would that have been?”
“It would have been around three-ish. At any rate, it would have been about ten or fifteen minutes before the call we made to police, in case something bad had happened to the owner.”
“I see. When did you realise that murders had taken place up on the Ridgeway?”
“When my dad told me, the day after. He had the telly on, and it was all over the news. The Welsh news, you know.”
“And you don’t recall hearing or seeing anything unusual on the day of your hike, aside from the khaki kitbag on the pathway?”
“On the track,” he corrected. “No, I don’t recall seeing anything else going on, and I’ve wracked my brains. We all have. There was the occasional sound of a vehicle, but none that stood out, and nothing that came close to us. I guess it’s possible that someone else was lurking in the area, but we didn’t see them if they were. There's not much more I can tell you, really. I guess that's not much help?”
“Your information has been useful.” She smiled at him. “It’s helping us build a picture. The rucksack may have nothing to with what happened in the wood but, if it has, then your information will help us with our timeline.”
“Well, that’s great. I’d hate to think we wasted your time.”
“Ieuan, we rely on information from such as yourselves in order to do our job. It's never a waste of time.”
As she returned to the office, after seeing Jones out of the station, Callum approached her with a mug of coffee. “There you go, ma’am, thought you might need this.”
“Thank you.” She took a welcome sip.
“I also wanted to tell you that none of the items found inside the rucksack on the Ridgeway had usable fingerprints.”
“What? None of them?”
Callum nodded, loosening his tie. “Not one.”
“How is that even possible?” She grimaced. “Someone must have wiped everything clean.”
Her DC nodded. “And, I’m assuming that those boys are sticking to their story, that they didn’t go into the bag?”
She nodded. “They are adamant they didn't. They insist they only phoned it in because it spooked them. One of them allegedly lost their female cousin six years ago, murdered in Thailand. That’s what made him so afraid for the owner of the rucksack. And, we are no further forward, but the contents of that backpack being so clean of fingerprints is strange indeed. What on earth is going on? Could it be the murderer’s kitbag? And, if so, why leave it at all, let alone wipe it clean of prints?”
Callum shrugged. “Beats me, unless the killer wanted us to have it. Maybe, he has a desire to confess and is going about it in a roundabout way.”
“That thought has crossed my mind, Callum. Seren’s book was also wiped clean. Have we been able to get DNA from it?”
“Damn… Well, we’ll just have to keep on asking the locals if they recognise the rucksack, and hope the ballistics on the gun help us find a match. There were prints on the outside of the bag. Do we have an identity for those?”
“They didn’t match any in the database, but we have them on file, so if we need to compare them with someone, we can.”
“Thanks, Callum.”
6
The cairn by the river
Lisa and Joe Evans took a large picnic box from the back of their SUV and searched for a suitable, shaded spot by the river. A place to shelter from the relentless mid-day sun.
They wandered through Dolerw Park, along the riverbank, greeting a lone angler as they passed, and stopping before they got to a wooded area on the western fringe.
The couple had married two years earlier, and were local to the area.
Lisa worked as a carer in Newtown. Her husband for the county council.
They avoided the Park’s primary field, as the country was fresh out of lockdown restrictions related to the pandemic, and several groups had gathered on the grass, drinking beer, kicking footballs, and lighting barbecues.
Lisa and Joe, in their late twenties, preferred their own company, and the ability to hear one another and the creatures in the environment.
Joe unfolded their tartan blanket, laying it on the ground and flicking at several insects, who also fancied it as a place to alight. “Goddamn flies,” he muttered.
Lisa scanned the river. “It’s a beautiful day.” She ran a hand through her long blonde hair, watching bubbles rise and burst on the surface of the water in a slow-moving stretch of the river.
Joe removed Tupperware from the cool box, laying it on the blanket with plastic plates, cutlery, and wine glasses.
The sound of something snapping in the undergrowth further along the bank had Lisa turning her head, shading her eyes so she could better see between the trees.
“Are you ready to eat?” Her husband asked, spooning potato salad to accompany the ham and tomatoes he had already plated.
Her gaze returned to him. “I’m starving.” She smiled, her face relaxing.