by Gwen Moffat
Owen moved suddenly. ‘I told you—’
‘No!’ cried his wife.
‘Shut up,’ Dewi shouted, appalled at his parents’ panic, himself throwing an amazed glance at Miss Pink who was watching with interest. The older Owens froze at their son’s shout, and then carefully unfroze, scarcely breathing, silent.
‘Shall I tell you what happened?’ Miss Pink asked.
‘When?’ Dewi’s tone was cold.
‘On the Friday. One person kept watch on Mr Judson’s movements. Seale said there was someone in the woods that morning. That person saw Judson drive away. So only Evans and Mrs Judson were left at Parc. Then someone started shooting at the head of the combe and that drew Evans away from Parc. Mrs Judson left to go shopping and almost immediately the black Alsatian was released from the stable. He followed a trail—a bitch’s trail—up through the woods to the ruined cottage where the bitch was tied by a hole already dug, and there the Alsatian was shot and buried. The bitch was released and she ran back to her home—from where she’d been taken earlier that morning. There were three people involved: one to fire the decoy shots at the head of the combe, a second to release the Alsatian, the third to shoot it.’
‘Christ!’ Owen exclaimed. ‘Did Bart tell you?’ He rounded on his son. ‘You see! Your mate shot his big mouth off when he saw trouble—’
‘It was Lloyd who talked,’ Miss Pink said.
‘But Lloyd—’ Dewi stopped.
His father said viciously: ‘So Lloyd was in it. You didn’t tell me that. I thought you two were playing around on your own. That’s what you said.’
‘Dewi hasn’t done anything wrong,’ Mrs Owen said. ‘All he did was let that dog out: just a boy’s prank, that’s what it was. Did Lloyd put you up to it?’ she asked her son fiercely.
Dewi looked sullen. ‘He didn’t know nothing about it.’
‘Just Bart and you?’ Miss Pink pondered. ‘But there had to be three people.’
There was a strained silence broken by Mrs Owen.
‘If you won’t speak,’ she told her husband, ‘then I will.’ She turned to her son. ‘Look at the trouble you’ve got your dad in now! Yes,’ she told Miss Pink defiantly, ‘this lad did help shoot that dog—but it was a vicious brute and it deserved to be shot. But he shouldn’t have suggested to his dad that he go up the combe shooting, while him and Bart were shooting down the bottom end: just pretending it was a game to keep Evans running up and down the lane. That’s what Sydney thought they were up to: playing tricks with Evans.’ She rounded on her husband. ‘You’re as bad as them: you a grown man, playing silly games. Now look at you! You should be ashamed of yourself.’ She appealed to Miss Pink. ‘He couldn’t say anything when the dog’s body was found, you see. He was certain they’d done it—Bart and this one—but if he’d said anything he’d be in it too, and it would be telling on his own son. Oh, we’ve had a fair time here, I can tell you.’
She was fiercely angry now and Owen glared sulkily, but Dewi’s eyes were full of intelligence, watching Miss Pink. A bell rang.
‘See who that is,’ Mrs Owen ordered, and Owen made his escape. She shut the door behind him. There was a bright, hard look about her.
‘That’s it,’ she said with finality. ‘So they shot the dog between them, and a good thing too. All that Barty Banks has done that’s criminal is to use a gun when he’s under age. Dewi’s done nothing they can get him for. And may I ask where you stand in this matter?’
‘Certainly,’ Miss Pink said. ‘I like Seale and I don’t believe she’s a murderer, but she and Lloyd are being questioned about Evans’s death. The post mortem showed water in the lungs which means he drowned but there’s a bad bruise on the back of his head—not a fracture but enough to stun him.’
Mrs Owen’s eyes widened fractionally but her expression didn’t change.
‘He went in with the cooker. He’d have bumped his head on it when he went down. He did away with himself.’
Miss Pink did not deny this but she did say: ‘He suspected Lloyd of having shot the dog and he was following up his suspicions, one way and another. So the police are suspicious of Lloyd and, to make it worse for himself, he said he killed the dog. His spade had been used recently, you see, and he hadn’t done any normal spade-work for some time. It had been used and cleaned. Obviously he guessed Bart and Dewi killed the dog and he decided to protect them. Of course, you realise why he feels he has to protect them.’
Mrs Owen shook her head. Dewi appeared bored. Miss Pink was undeceived but as she hesitated, searching for a crack in their armour, the door opened and Sydney Owen returned scowling. She addressed him.
‘Which of the residents in the combe is on the telephone?’
He was so surprised at the question that he answered without thinking.
‘Parc, Lloyd.… They’re all on the phone. No, Lucy Banks isn’t.’
‘I’ve taken enough of your time,’ she told them, standing up. ‘I must go and see if there’s anything else I can do for Lloyd and Seale.’
Mrs Owen accompanied her into the shop and took up her stance behind the counter. For a moment the two women regarded each other and it was Miss Pink who looked away first. She walked out of the store and got into her car. Mrs Owen went back to the living room and faced her menfolk.
‘Get out,’ she said, ‘separately. They’ll be here soon enough. Make yourselves scarce. I’ll deal with the police.’
The Reserve appeared to be empty but Bart was taking no chances. He slipped through the upper fringe of the oaks like a deer, pausing every so often to listen, his mouth open, relying more on his ears than his eyes. This morning he wore an old green sweat shirt and at a distance he was virtually indistinguishable from the vegetation. He contoured the slope well below Lloyd’s cottage and came to the cart track. He looked up and down its dusty length then trotted across and took the path that the marten had used when Miss Pink encountered it. The boy saw nothing untoward, he heard no movement of big animals; only the birds flitted unconcerned about the canopy and a cow lowed on the river flats. He avoided the old ruin and passed above Parc. By the time he reached the slopes north of the bridge he felt safe and he started to angle down the hill towards the river. He was moving fast now, running lightly between the tree trunks towards a dense patch of brambles. As he swung out to avoid the stolons a voice said: ‘Just a moment!’
He halted, nostrils flaring like a colt’s. Miss Pink sat on a stump below the brambles, her binoculars lowered, looking faintly annoyed.
‘Woodpecker,’ she said. ‘You frightened it.’
‘Where?’
She gestured downhill. ‘It’s gone. A great spotted. Not climbing today?’
He carried no pack and was wearing track shoes.
‘No. We’re having an off-day.’
‘Oh yes. I’ve been talking to Dewi.’
He squatted on his hunkers, then, finding the slope too steep for that, sat down, but he didn’t sprawl. He looked as if he might leap away at any moment. Like a faun, she reflected, regarding him blandly, waiting for his question.
‘What did he have to say?’
‘We’ve straightened out a few points. The dog, for instance, and the Volvo.’
He stared at her. ‘Dewi has?’
‘And his parents. And Joss Lloyd. Tell me: when you took the car, was there a light in the cottage?’
He looked thoughtfully in the direction of the village.
‘What car?’
‘The Volvo.’
‘You don’t mean Mr Judson’s Volvo? The one what was stolen? But was it stolen? There’s a story going round that he drove it to that car park himself, someone picked him up and drove him away. Is that just gossip?’
She ignored the question and put one of her own.
‘What time did you leave Dinas on Saturday?’
He thought about it. ‘After dinner. Midday dinner—lunch, I mean.’
‘And you went straight there?’
‘To Cr
aig yr Ysfa, yes. We biked round to the Conway Valley and walked up to the foot of the cliff.’
‘And you climbed on Sunday.’
‘We told you that last night.’
‘So you did. But you were very late doing Pinnacle Wall.’
‘We were?’
‘In midsummer the sun doesn’t leave the lower pitches until the evening.’
‘So?’
‘So what were you doing earlier in the day?’
‘Dewi—’ He stopped. When he spoke again he was polite and careful. ‘You’re asking a lot of questions, miss.’
‘I want to get at the truth,’ she said simply and then, with a burst of exasperation: ‘For Heaven’s sake, man, if you weren’t doing anything criminal, where’s the harm in it?’ She started to talk fast, as if sparing only a glance for thoughts that tripped through her mind: ‘You can’t get a word in edgeways with his father ranting away; if Lloyd and Seale were on the cliff, why not say so?’ He gaped at her. She raced on: ‘Did you talk to them? Did you cook something up between the four of you? But they wouldn’t have been on Amphitheatre Buttress; it’s too easy for them. Did you see something else, across the amphitheatre—go round and meet them on the top? Is that why you were so late getting to Pinnacle Wall? Because, having done the Buttress, you spent so long talking?’
‘No, we didn’t meet Lloyd and Seale.’
His slow words contrasted sharply with her garrulity.
‘So what happened when you’d done the Buttress? What’s Dewi holding back?’
‘We just lay around on the top and talked about what we’d do next.’
‘You mean you did nothing other than Amphitheatre Buttress and Pinnacle Wall?’
‘No.’
She suppressed a sigh. Her hands were wet on the binoculars.
‘Is that all the questions?’ he asked, not impertinently. ‘Can I ask you one?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Why are you asking questions?’
‘Because Lloyd and Seale have been taken to the Police Station, and Evans drowned but he had a bruise on the back of his head. He couldn’t have done that himself. He was hit before he went in the water and the police suspect Lloyd and Seale.’
He absorbed this, his mouth twitching uncontrollably.
‘Do you think they did it—miss?’
‘No.’
He smiled: an open boyish grin that lit his eyes, but as suddenly as it came, it was wiped away.
‘So what’s it to you?’
‘I want to help. I want to find Mr Judson.’
He hesitated. ‘You said something about the Volvo.’
Miss Pink got to her feet and he followed suit.
‘Dewi said nothing about it,’ she told him.
‘Of course not; he don’t know nothing.’ He watched her narrowly. ‘What’s this about a light in a cottage when the Volvo were stolen? What cottage? Was that a trap?’
She was acutely aware of her vulnerability: of her age and weight, and his lithe power. They could hear the sounds of the village: a muted background of animals, children, and traffic passing on the main road, a background in which a stifled scream would be absorbed as effectively as that of a rabbit. And that was why she didn’t press him about the Volvo, about that discrepancy in the accounts of what they’d climbed before Pinnacle Wall. She had spared him a twinge of compassion when he stepped into that trap; he had no more idea than she what time the sun left the lower pitches but he’d been rocked further by her meaningless gabble about Lloyd and Seale and had seized the offered straw: Amphitheatre Buttress. But Dewi said they did Great Gully.
There was no need to revert to the Volvo and, in the face of his bleak stare, it was undesirable.
‘You’re quite right,’ she said. ‘It was a trap.’
*
‘You know the country well enough,’ Pryce said, ‘but are you sure it can be done in the time available?’
She had found them at the Bridge, drinking coffee after a long session with Lloyd and Seale. They had driven up the lane for privacy and were now parked in the gateway near the pool where Evans’s body had been discovered. Body and cooker had gone to morgue and laboratory long ago but occasionally they caught glimpses of men among the gorse bushes on the bank of the stream, searching, so far unsuccessfully, for traces.
The car windows were rolled down and Miss Pink was sitting in the back, with Pryce. Williams was in the front. On Pryce’s knees was the Ordnance Survey map of the area.
‘It’s possible,’ she asserted, ‘no doubt about that, and it’s a boy’s trick, isn’t it? Designed to cause the maximum of inconvenience, even scandal. The quarrel between the Warings was noisy and violent enough to be heard by everyone in the kitchen, and the grapevine works fast in these tiny villages. So Anna leaves Dinas and Judson follows, and in some way those two boys already knew about the cottage on the moor. After lunch they go off on their bicycles, ostensibly for a weekend’s climbing. It’s only twelve miles to the cottage; they had hours of daylight in which to reach it, to hide their cycles in the forest and wait for darkness. Then they would have crept up, stolen the car—possibly pushing it for a distance—and driven it to the car park under Tryfan.’
‘Can either of them drive?’
‘It shouldn’t be difficult to find out. I can’t imagine Barty Banks not being able to drive his mother’s car.’
‘And you reckon they walked back to their bikes: thirty miles or more in a day?’
‘Part of the night too. It would be no trouble to them, even without hitching; they’re as fit as fleas. They’d have three ranges to cross but they’d have had a map and they wouldn’t be carrying loads. It’s just the kind of wild adventure that would appeal to them: walking through the rest of the night and the following day, chuckling over Judson’s fury when he woke up and found his car had been stolen, and his being forced to report it. Bang goes the secret of his love-nest.’
‘They had to cross main roads,’ Williams put in. ‘They wouldn’t want to be seen, would they? They’d committed a criminal act. They were thieves.’
‘Who’d take any notice of two young lads crossing a road in the middle of the summer in Snowdonia?’
‘Anna Waring was in Chester,’ Pryce said thoughtfully, ‘so when they reached the cottage on Saturday night, there’d only have been one car. They’d have known she wasn’t with Judson.’
‘It would make very little difference. If Judson were alone, he’d still be furious when he went down and found the garage empty. But there may have been a second car at the cottage. Not Anna’s, one belonging to some—other—woman.’
Pryce leaned back in his seat, his face drawn with fatigue; he’d had only two hours’ sleep this morning.
‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘we have to talk to those two lads. And from what you say it looks as if we’re going to have our work cut out. You admit you won their confidence because they respect you as a mountain climber. How do you suggest we go about it?’ The sarcasm was laboured.
‘I don’t have any suggestions,’ Miss Pink said, her mind on that hypothetical second car at the cottage on the moors.
‘You don’t think they’re killers? They’re sixteen years old. There’ve been ruthless killers of that age before now, ma’am.’
‘But did they hold up under questioning? I wonder. Wouldn’t you have the feeling, talking to killers of sixteen, listening to them, that you were in the presence of a hard and vicious mentality?’
‘You didn’t get that kind of feeling with young Banks?’
‘I had a doubt,’ she admitted. ‘I wouldn’t have liked to push him. But the doubt was based on reason, I was thinking: I don’t know that this boy is not a killer, I must be careful, particularly in a place where there are no witnesses. On the other hand my instinct didn’t warn me that I was in the presence of something evil. I watched his eyes. The stolen car is in character: the desire to watch the enemy writhing. That terrible hatred that needs to see the hated person wipe
d off the face of the earth is not.’
‘Have you come across anyone in this village capable of that kind of hatred?’
‘Given the right circumstances—’ She stopped short of the trap. She caught the flicker of a smile on his face and rallied with the first ammunition to hand.
‘Both deaths resemble suicides.’
‘Resemble is the operative word, but Evans was unconscious when he hit the water. There’s no way he could have banged his head on that cooker as he fell, not to cause the bruise he has. But think of it as a murder. The killer needs to simulate a suicide but you can’t persuade a conscious man to tie a rope round his neck before you push him off the bank, tied to the cooker. So you knock him out when he’s bending down, looking inside a tent, for instance. It’s only a matter of a few yards to drag him to the bank above the pool.’
They were silent. Suddenly Seale was in the picture again.
Pryce continued: ‘Judson’s death is more straightforward; his prints are on the gun—and it’s his own gun. Gladys Judson identifies it.’
She frowned. ‘That was suicide?’
‘Again, it looks like it at first glance but the only prints are about the trigger guard. The weapon should be covered with ’em. There are some certainly, but others are overlaid. By smudges.’
‘Gloves?’
‘And wiping, ma’am. Like the latch on the front door that should have Judson’s prints on it or, at the least, the prints of someone who was at the cottage with him. There should be prints on that latch and there aren’t. Someone came to the cottage after Judson arrived, and that person wore gloves.’
‘And even if he’d met a woman there, she wouldn’t be wearing gloves on the moors in the middle of summer. Are there other prints in the cottage?’
‘Anna Waring’s. We were prepared for those, of course.’
‘So you’ve taken her prints. What about Lloyd and Seale?’
‘We haven’t found theirs in the cottage.’
‘And on the cooker that you removed from the pool?’
‘Innumerable fragments and smudges, but probably a lot of those come from animals that have been licking it and rubbing against it.’
