The Wrong Boy

by Cathy Ace

  Nan was aware that her customers had fallen silent; an air of expectation filled the bar.

  ‘I choose to not say anything against you or your boy at this time, Gwendolyn. Though God knows I could. But I don’t want you in my pub. I never have. You know very well why not, and it’s got nothing to do with Aled.’

  ‘What do you mean, it’s got nothing to do with Aled? It’s got everything to do with Aled. This is all about Aled,’ screamed Gwen.

  Nan could feel her stress levels rise. Her fingers were tingling. She felt ready to explode. The entire pub was agog. ‘It’s not about Aled. It’s about you, and it always has been. You . . . you whore! Get out of my pub now, or I’ll phone the police. Agata – find Helen. Fetch her to me, now.’

  ‘I’m here, Mum,’ said Helen, suddenly at her mother’s side. ‘Come on now, this isn’t the time or the place, ladies.’

  ‘Go on, let ’em at each other,’ shouted a joker from the far side of the lounge.

  ‘Helen, find that man, throw him out, and bar him for life,’ shouted Nan. ‘And you get out now, Gwendolyn bloody Beynon, or sure as eggs is eggs, I’ll push you out myself. I might be half a dozen years older than you, but I’ll show you.’

  Nan reached out and picked up the nearest object she could find; she swung the bottle of tomato ketchup above her head like a club.

  ‘See what sort of woman has raised your precious Aled,’ shouted Nan when she caught sight of Sadie’s head peering out of the kitchen. ‘She’s a dreadful, scarlet woman.’

  ‘She will be if you smack her on the head with that bottle of sauce, Nan,’ replied Sadie. Chuckles rippled through the crowd.

  ‘Come on now, Mum, put that down. And you’d better leave, Gwen,’ said Helen, trying to grab the condiment from her mother’s hand.

  ‘I’ve said what I came to say,’ said Gwen. ‘But you all saw what she’s like; she’d raise her hand against a saint would Myfanwy Jones, and I know for a fact she has done on many an occasion. The Lord is watching you, Myfanwy, and he sees into your soul.’

  ‘And he knows how filthy yours is,’ snapped Nan.

  The chatter began to swell, as people returned to their drinks, with plenty of fresh topics for conversation. Helen steered her mother toward the bottom of the stairs, and encouraged her to go up to her bedroom for a rest.

  Nan was having none of it. ‘I won’t let that woman drive me from my own pub. Not ever. I didn’t back then, and I won’t now.’

  A young woman, dressed entirely in shades of red, ran into the pub screaming, ‘There’s an old woman who’s collapsed. My phone won’t work. Someone phone 999. And let’s get her off the road and onto a seat in here!’

  It took an hour for the paramedics to arrive. Word spread quickly that they suspected a stroke. When they finally took Gwen away, Nan said prayers of thanks that the Good Lord had decided to punish Gwen for the terrible lies she’d shouted at her in the pub that day, and for her terrible deceit and betrayal all those years ago.

  It had almost been worth the wait.

  31st March

  Evan

  ‘Wake up Betty. You’ve got to see this.’

  Betty Glover peeled open her eyes. ‘Morning, Evan. What time is it? It’s still dark.’

  ‘It’s almost seven. Well, almost six really, because we lost that hour last night when the clocks changed. Anyway – you’ve got to look at this. Where are your glasses?’

  ‘Can’t you just read it to me?’ Evan could hear irritation in Betty’s voice, which he was beginning to realize might be justified.

  ‘Right,’ he said abruptly. ‘They’ve found Dean Hughes. In Scotland. Alive. It’s all over the Scottish Sunday Recorder.’

  Betty pushed herself up with her elbows, looking sleepy, and puzzled. ‘Isn’t he the bloke whose remains were found in Rhosddraig?’

  ‘Exactly. But obviously not.’ Evan was almost vibrating with excitement.

  Betty sat upright, and rubbed her face. ‘What in God’s name are you talking about, Evan? Dean Hughes was the man they identified; they were his remains. Rakel told you. It’s been in all the papers. It was a DNA match. How can he be in Scotland? Alive.’

  ‘That’s the thing; nobody understands it. It says here he left Swansea back in November and has been up in Scotland ever since. Living in a squat, largely stoned out of his mind, it seems. One of the reporters for the paper found him sleeping rough on the streets one night, recognized him from all the publicity, and got him into a rehab clinic at the newspaper’s expense. They’ve been waiting until he’d cleaned up his act a bit to do this exposé.’

  ‘They waited? How long?’

  ‘See, I knew you’d get it. Yes, they waited. Couple of weeks, it looks like. They could be in hot water because of that; I’m not up on Scottish law, but I’m sure they must have something on the books about perverting the course of justice up there. We do down here. This is crucial evidence in a case where charges have been laid. How can the Crown Prosecution Service go ahead when the supposed victim is hale and hearty, and having his photo taken in a newspaper office in Glasgow?’ Evan suspected he was babbling, but he didn’t care. ‘This is incredible news.’

  Betty pushed off the duvet and swung her feet out of bed. ‘It’s not going to look very good for those people in London who ID’d the victim, is it? I thought DNA was supposed to be reliable. How did they get it so wrong?’

  Evan considered his wife’s question. ‘You’re right, and I don’t know. I’ll phone Rakel, she might have some insights. I tell you what, I wouldn’t like to be Ted Jenkins this morning.’

  ‘Nor Liz,’ called Betty as she headed for the bathroom.

  ‘Nor Liz,’ agreed Evan quietly.

  He was still feeling bad about Liz; he’d invited her to come for coffee, to discuss the case, of course, but she’d declined. It had hurt him – not that he’d admitted as much . . . not even to Betty, though he suspected she knew anyway. She usually did.

  He’d had a knot in his stomach every time he thought of how curtly he’d signed off from that last phone call with Liz. She didn’t deserve it – he’d known he’d been putting her in a difficult position. He hadn’t handled it at all well.

  Poor Liz. She was a good sergeant. Betty was right – there’d be a huge amount of work for the whole team to do because of this revelation, and he knew a great deal of it would fall on Liz’s shoulders.

  ‘I’m going to put the kettle on,’ called Betty at the top of the stairs. ‘I’m up now, I might as well keep going. Are you coming down?’

  ‘In a minute, love,’ Evan replied. He sat on the bed rereading the facts that were going to be headlines for most of the news outlets for the next few days. He couldn’t help but allow himself to think through what the team would be up to that day, how Jenkins would be reacting. Making his displeasure clear to the scientists in London to start with, he suspected, and when he’d done that, the team would gather to discuss two critical questions. If it wasn’t Dean Hughes they’d found in Rhosddraig, then who was it? And how did Dean being alive affect their case against Aled Beynon?

  Sadie

  Church was so weird this morning. No one spoke to Nan, Mam, nor me when we got there, and the vicar’s sermon was all about forgiving people.

  He seemed to look at Nan a lot when he was talking, and he kept repeating a quote from Matthew 6. ‘For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.’

  It sounds like Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby to me. Or The Lord’s Prayer. Stupid.

  The vicar said he’d been told by the doctor at the hospital that Aled’s grannie might recover, given time; the hospital’s keeping in touch with him, and he said he was going to go and visit her this afternoon. I thought she’d be dead by now.

  Nan’s hardly spoken at all since yesterday. She won’t talk about what happened, she just purses her horrible, ugly mouth, and sucks o
n her cigarettes. I hate her. Everyone knows she did this to Aled’s grannie. That’s why the vicar gave the sermon he did, so Nan would know she should have been nicer. More Christian. Like she tries to make out she is. She’s not.

  Of course, everyone was talking about the news about the body, too. It was on the telly, in the papers, and everywhere online. I have to admit, I was always really confused about the Dean Hughes thing. Why did the police think it was him, if it wasn’t? No one knows. No one’s saying, anyway.

  And what does it mean for Aled? I’m a bit worried now, because I’ve worked so hard with my Tweets to get people to believe Aled would have been right to kill Dean – not that he did, of course – but . . . now what?

  I don’t usually Tweet on a Sunday, because it’s hard to get away to do it, but I’ve been scrolling through my feed, and a lot of @wrongboy10’s followers are as confused as me. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what to do. I wish I could ask Aled. Or even Mam – but I can’t ask her about this.

  What’s really worrying me is that there are already lots of memes flying about where #wrongboy10 has been given a new meaning; it’s being turned around to point out the police identified the wrong victim, not that Aled is the wrong boy to accuse. That’s not good; I want everyone to stay focused on Aled being innocent, or at least having had a good reason to do it if they find him guilty.

  That’s not too much to hope for, is it? It’s quite simple, really, though some of those reporters have been writing long, boring articles about how it’s an impossible moral stance. But, there, what would they know?

  Maybe if they find out who really died it’ll make it easier for Aled to come home; after all, if it isn’t the drug dealer who gave his mother the drugs that killed her, then why would Aled want them dead?

  Of course . . . he hasn’t even got a motive for doing it now. Maybe I could risk just one Tweet from home this afternoon. Or maybe, if I scroll carefully, I’ll find someone who’s saying what I’m thinking and I could Retweet that. That could start the ball rolling. Maybe Aled will be home before we know it.

  But I’ll have to be careful; Friar Lawrence says it perfectly in Romeo and Juliet, ‘Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.’

  Helen

  The lunchtime crowd arrived later than usual, which didn’t surprise Helen – it always did when the clocks sprang forward an hour; she’d allowed for it when planning the cooking times for the roasts.

  What she hadn’t expected was to get back from church so late.

  She’d been delayed by a bit of an incident as the congregation had filed out, all greeted by Reverend Thomas at the door. Helen had always liked Llewellyn Thomas; he didn’t stand for the politicking which was usual within any small church community, and made his views about inclusiveness and acceptance quite clear.

  His sermon that morning had obviously been directed at her mother, whose argument with Gwen the previous day was widely recognized as being the reason for Gwen’s collapse. Helen realized the entire sad event could have been avoided if only Gwen hadn’t come to the pub, but it seemed churlish to point that out when the woman was lying in a hospital bed, flirting with death.

  Nan Jones had been the ‘housekeeper’ at the church – tending to the heating, cleaning, floral decorations, and heading up the altar guild – for many years, but the hundreds of hours of work she’d put in apparently counted for nothing when her fellow villagers all decided they’d had their fill of Nan’s acid tongue. Helen knew her mother should have had all her sympathy, but she admitted to herself she saw the point of view of the ‘enough’s enough’ crowd.

  However, even with the sensational news about the discovery of a living Dean Hughes, and having to put up with all the sideways glances at her mother, herself and her daughter, it was something else entirely that had kept Helen talking in the graveyard after the service.

  When Mair Bevan approach her, Helen had assumed it was going to be to discuss something to do with the church, so it had been a surprise when Mair had whispered to her, ‘You’ve got to get Nan to go and see Gwen in hospital, before it’s too late. Those women need a heart-to-heart before one of them’s gone. Neither of them should go to their grave with their feud on their conscience.’

  ‘With what feud exactly on their conscience?’ Helen had asked, never having had the faintest idea why her mother hated Gwen Beynon so much.

  ‘Just tell your mother what I’ve said, and she’ll know what I mean. They’ve told the vicar Gwen will recover, but you never know. Tell Nan to go to the hospital – quick, if she’s got any sense. You should drive her – she’ll need a shoulder to cry on when they’ve talked about it.’

  ‘About what?’ pressed Helen, but Mair hadn’t been prepared to elaborate.

  Helen admitted to herself she’d dawdled back to the pub, but when she got there it was full steam ahead, until the main rush had been dealt with. By four she knew she needed to put her feet up for half an hour. Helen went to her bedroom; she couldn’t face her mother, and needed her own space for a little while.

  Lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling she’d known since she was a child, and counting the spots of mold growing there, Helen tried to take stock of her life; it was a less than rosy picture. The previous night, during one of her now-frequent tantrums, Sadie had viciously accused her mother of living a tiny, pathetic life.

  Helen finally took the time to give some thought to the barb, which she’d rejected out of hand when it had been flung at her. She admitted to herself that, in a way, her daughter was right; Helen’s life – necessarily – revolved around the pub, the village, and the church, with trips to the wholesaler’s in Gorseinon, the market in Swansea, and Alis’s shop across the road thrown in to spice things up. She hadn’t so much as met anyone for a drink since the previous year, and that coffee she’d had with Betty Glover seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Helen almost chuckled at that recollection; it had only been about six weeks since she’d received the card from Bob, which was what had set her off jabbering at the poor woman. She still felt bad about that; she’d basically used Betty’s good nature to extract a free therapy session from her. Though, truthfully, she had felt a great deal better after having let off a bit of steam that day.

  Helen still wondered if Betty had been right – that going for a few formal sessions would help her, but then she reassured herself nothing else had happened, and she was coping very well; she’d been using techniques she’d learned during her previous brief stint of therapy, and had now more or less stopped jumping every time the phone rang, or when she half-saw someone out of the corner of her eye who looked vaguely like her ex-husband. She was much calmer now.

  But Helen wasn’t back to ‘normal’, she knew that. And it seemed as though any little thing could throw her off kilter; like the way Sadie was behaving, or the way her mother was acting. In Sadie’s case, Helen knew it was because the girl was working all hours to get ready for her exams.

  As for her mother? She had no idea what was up with her. Yes, she was getting older; yes, she suffered a fair amount of pain because of the hard work she’d done for decades in the pub; yes, she’d always had a bee in her bonnet about Gwen Beynon. But the past couple of months had been completely different; or maybe it was just since they’d found that card from Aled to Sadie . . . her mother had gone totally over the top about it.

  It had all come to a head with the debacle and near-tragedy the previous day, and now there was this cryptic message for her mother from Mair. What on earth had prompted Nan to call Gwen a whore? Why did Mair think the two women needed to talk? It was a real puzzle.

  Helen sat up, not feeling terribly relaxed anymore. She had to talk to her mother; she didn’t know what Mair had meant by her comment, but was convinced it was important, so she should pass it on. Having been a private, rather solitary child, and – other than those years with Bob – mainly a solitary adult, Helen wasn’t one to wade into things. Her soul told her to keep quiet, keep her
head down, and do all she could to allow life to move along at a regular pace, with no confrontations or conflict.

  But maybe now was the time to insert herself into her mother’s life a little more forcefully. She was so lucky with Sadie; she was such a good girl, really. Maybe it was time to focus on her mum.

  Once Aled was released, she knew Sadie would be happier; it was bound to weigh on her – even if they were only good friends. Helen had noticed that Stew Wingfield had also all but hidden himself away in his family home – he was another friend of Aled being affected by the whole thing. The Valentine’s card from Aled had been sweet, not passionate – Helen was sure it was just a bit of an infatuation Sadie was feeling; few things were as attractive to a young girl as an unjustly accused boy.

  Helen got up off the creaking bed, convinced she knew her daughter well enough to be able to give her attention to her mother for a little while. She straightened her cardigan, smoothed down her jeans, and headed for her mother’s room. It was time for her to pass on Mair’s message – and weather whatever storm might present itself.

  Evan

  The tension crackled in Liz Stanley’s voice. ‘I know it’s late, but could I come to see you? Informally.’

  Evan hesitated for a full half a second before saying, ‘Of course. When?’

  ‘I’ll be there in a few minutes. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ He hung up.

  Betty called from the kitchen, ‘Who was that, at this hour?’

  Evan cleared his throat. ‘Liz. She’s on her way over. Needs to talk, by the sound of it. You want to join us?’

  His wife stuck her head into the sitting room. ‘It’s up to you. Do you mind?’