by Jan Newton
‘Oh come on, Jules, that’s a reach even for your vivid imagination. How would she know where they lived?’ Helen tutted. ‘You’re making connections that aren’t there.’
‘Do you think?’
‘I do. The main thing is, what’s he going to do about the phone calls? If I were you I’d confiscate his ruddy phone and when she calls again you’ll get an idea yourself of what’s going on.’
‘How do I do that, he’s not some fourteen year old who’s been grounded for not doing his homework.’
‘Just nick it. You’re a copper, use your initiative. Anyway, it’ll frighten her off if you answer the phone.’
‘Maybe. Anyway, what are you doing tonight?’
‘We’re off to a posh wine bar in Alderley Edge, as coincidence would have it. How the other half lives, eh? What about you, home to a nut cutlet?’
‘How dare you speak about my husband in those terms, Helen Mitchell-Cartwright? Go and have a fab evening and think of me when you’re ordering your pork chop in Alderley Edge.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Day Six
‘Bacon butty, is it, love?’ Nerys already had two pieces of white sliced out of the wrapper.
‘How did you guess?’ Julie smiled, sipped the strong black coffee that was waiting for her on the counter and sighed contentedly. ‘Perfect.’
‘You look as though you’ve not slept a wink,’ Nerys said, adding slices of bacon to a sizzling frying pan. ‘What have you been up to?’
‘Probably not what you think,’ Julie set the mug back on the counter. ‘Driving round the north-west of England and worrying for most of the night about my parents.’
Nerys pressed the bacon flat with a fish slice. ‘It must be difficult living a way away from them. I’ve never been more than three streets away from mine. They’re right next door now.’
‘That was lucky.’
‘Not really, my uncle passed away and they moved into his house.’
‘Oh God, Nerys that was thoughtless of me.’
‘You’re all right, lovely, he was ninety-seven and he was tired.’ She put the bacon and bread together and cut it into triangles. ‘There you go.’
‘Nerys, you are a lifesaver.’ Julie picked up her plate and her mug and headed for her favourite seat in the far corner of the canteen. From here she could see the steep spire of a church and hills beyond. She was still surprised by how rural it was, even in the centre of town.
‘Great minds.’ Rhys Williams plonked his mug of tea and two slices of golden toast onto the table. He sat down and applied enough butter to leave teeth marks in as he took his first bite. ‘How are things going? The boss said you had to go back up north yesterday. Everything OK?’
Julie nodded and applied a serviette to the trickle of grease on her chin. ‘A break-in at my parents.’
‘Oh that’s bad news. Are they all right?’
‘They’re fine. My dad’s a bit battered, but they’re good. And I did manage to find out some more about Rosa and the man who was roaming out on the hill.’
‘The boss will be pleased. We haven’t got any more that I know of. How can someone go missing and have nobody looking for them? If I’m not back from work on time my Rhian gets on the phone within twenty minutes.’
‘We spoke to a woman in Llandrindod the other day whose husband walked out in December, and she’s not reported him. He cleared out the bank accounts and he could be anywhere. And yesterday I spoke to a man whose wife left in the autumn and told him not to look for her. And he didn’t. I can’t imagine doing that.’
‘But then you’re a copper, Sarge. You wouldn’t be able to just leave it alone, would you?’
Swift was whistling ‘Bread of Heaven’ when Julie and Rhys arrived in the office together.
‘You had a good day yesterday then, Julie. Can you fill us in with more detail?’
Julie dropped her bag on her desk and joined Swift at the board. ‘I spoke to Rosa’s brother. She was known as Caroline or Caro until she left home. She fell out with her parents after she got in with the wrong crowd while she was still at school, particularly an extremely nasty piece of work called Quigley. Nobody I spoke to knew his first name, but he shouldn’t be too hard to trace, as he seems to own a house on Eighth Avenue in Blackpool. She hadn’t had any contact with her parents for at least four or five years.’
‘And is the child Quigley’s?’
‘That’s the speculation, although nobody really knows for sure. Maggie’s checking to see if we’ve got him on record.’ Julie pinned a photograph she’d taken of the houses in Blackpool on the board. ‘Rosa, Quigley and Rosa’s son, Sean, lived at this one. The next-door neighbours are John and Lizzie Slaithwaite. He’s a solicitor. She’s gone missing. She’s been away from home since November.’
‘What is it with people running away willy nilly these days?’ Swift tugged at his ear. ‘He has no idea where she’s gone?’
Julie shook her head. ‘Said something about having to find herself.’
‘Oh, good God.’ Swift sat down on the edge of Julie’s desk. ‘And he’s not tried to find her?’
‘He said she left a note which said not to look for her.’
‘What about the man on the hill?’ Rhys asked. ‘You said you had some information about him.’
‘The man seen at the café in Rhayader was definitely the same man who stayed up at the farm with the soldiers. It was Rosa’s brother, Ardal.’
Swift stood up again and peered at the information on the board. ‘So we’ve got the body of a girl from Preston who was living in Blackpool and was found dead up in the Elan Valley, and Rosa’s brother, also from Preston was up there too, looking for her.’
‘No sir, he thought she was still in Blackpool somewhere. He was looking for the little boy, Rosa’s son.’
‘Right, so we can assume he thought the boy was here somewhere. And there’s another woman missing from Blackpool who lived next door to Rosa?’
‘That’s about it, Sir.’
‘So is this Lizzie Slaithwaite connected to the child’s disappearance do we think?’
‘Her husband said she used to go to the park with the child and Rosa, and that Lizzie used to be in charge of the pushchair.’
‘So why would she want to take a toddler away from his mother?’ Goronwy shook his head. ‘That’s terrible, that is.’
‘Is it though?’ Julie asked. ‘Both Rosa’s brother, Ardal, and John Slaithwaite, and all the other neighbours said Quigley’s a head case. Maybe she and Rosa hatched a plan together to get the child away from him.’
‘I like that,’ Swift said. ‘Julie, could you contact Slaithwaite and ask him for a description of his wife, and a recent photo if he’s got one. Get him to e-mail it.’
‘There’s something else, Sir. The reason Ardal thought the child was here. He said he’d come across an envelope with a partial address of a property in Rhayader, in Rosa’s house in Blackpool.’
‘How did he do that?’ Goronwy asked. ‘I thought you said she hadn’t had any contact with her family for years.’
‘He did speak to her now and again, apparently, but on this occasion he broke in. He said he was worried about his sister’s welfare as well as Sean’s. He said he’d sat in his car and watched the house. I get the feeling he’d been doing it for a very long time, not just the couple of times he mentioned. He said the house name on the envelope he found is Bach,although even I know it must be something-Bach and it looks as though it has a Rhayader postal address.’
‘Morgan, you’re very quiet. Get on to the sorting office, see how many places there are with Bach in the name within the Rhayader postal district. Google is absolutely useless for the outlying farms.’ Swift was fired up for the first time in the investigation. ‘Rhys, find out whether the parents are still here. They said they were staying locally overnight, Brian Hughes will know where. I got the impression they didn’t want to leave Rosa… Caroline… here on her own. Get them to come in to see me a
s soon as they can this morning and I’ll see if they can give us any more information about Quigley and the boy. Goronwy, I’d like you to get onto GPs within a thirty-mile radius and see if the child was registered with them between last November and now. You and Rhys can try nurseries and reception classes too, if he’s three or four years old, the chances are he’d be going to school somewhere by now.’
‘So do we assume that Rosa knew where the boy was?’ Morgan asked.
‘Well, with the envelope Ardal found in her house, it looks that way,’ Julie said. ‘I suppose she could have got the boy away on her own. Lizzie Slaithwaite might not even be connected with this in any way.’
‘Right, people, let’s get to it.’ Swift turned towards his office. ‘Julie, have you got that map of Rhayader with you?’
‘Yes, Sir. It’s in the car.’
‘I’ll see you in the car park in five minutes.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Day Six
‘So where am I looking?’ Julie unfolded the map as Swift hung his jacket in the back of the Volvo. When he dropped into the driver’s seat, she noticed beads of perspiration on his forehead.
‘It’s going to be a hot one today.’
‘Do you promise?’ Julie laughed. ‘That would be a first.’
‘Anyone would think you came from the sultry south-east and not the rain capital of England.’
‘Actually, Sir, Manchester’s the sixth soggiest city in England. Funnily enough, Preston’s the dampest and Blackpool’s about fourth.’
‘Very appropriate. No wonder they’re all leaving there and heading over here. It must feel like home.’
‘Trust me, Sir. It won’t.’ She grinned. ‘So where are we going?’
‘See if you can find anything with bach in the name, starting from the Wilkinson place and working outwards.’
Julie folded the map into an oblong with the alpaca farm at the centre. ‘Well, there are only two, one spelt with an f though.’
‘And it was definitely bach on the envelope, was it?’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘Well fach would come after a feminine noun, see, like Ffynnon Fach. Bach would be after a masculine noun. So you’d have Tŷ Bach.’
‘Seriously, there are different genders for nouns?’
Swift smiled. ‘There are. And the b changes to an f because of it. There are dozens of those rules. Mutations, they’re called.’
‘And you want to send me on a course to learn Welsh?’
‘It’s not as bad as it sounds. Trust me, you’d enjoy it.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘So there’s just the one contender, then?’
‘Yep, Pull Bach, but it’s closer to Mal’s farm than the Wilkinsons’ place.’
Swift hooted with laughter. ‘Pwll,’ he said, ending the word with a flourish and a sound Julie had never heard in her life. ‘Pwll Bach.’
‘So much spitting in two tiny words, Sir.’
‘Right then, let’s go and see if we can find it.’
‘There’s no road to it on the map. It looks as though you’d have to go through Mal’s yard and then across the fields.’
‘Is it within walking distance of Mal’s?’
Julie nodded. ‘It looks steep but it’s just a couple of fields from his place, according to this.’
‘Then I might leave you to check it out while I have another word with Mal and Sarah.’
*
Sarah was wrestling a large white sheet onto the washing line as they drove into the yard. She stuffed the sheet back into the laundry basket and waited for them to get out of the car.
‘We’ve had no visitors at all save the lads with the shearing, and then we see you three times in a week.’
‘I know, I’m sorry, Sarah. It’s the nature of the enquiry.’
‘Don’t apologise, Craig bach, it’s lovely to have company. Shall I go and fetch Mal from the shed?’
‘It’s all right, I’ll go and find him. How would Julie here get to Pwll Bach? Is there a track?’
Sarah pointed a gnarled forefinger in the direction of a metal gate, perched on the hillside above the back of the farm. ‘It’s straight up there but it’s been empty for a couple of years now haven’t it, since old Miss Davies passed.’
Julie smiled at Sarah’s use of ‘old’. She wondered what age you had to be to qualify.
‘So there’s nobody living up there now?’
Sarah frowned. ‘We think there’s a woman up there, maybe with a little boy, but we’ve barely seen them. We did go up, or Mal did, a couple of times to see if they needed anything, but nobody answers the door.
‘Right then, Julie. Off you go. I’ll be in the shed if you need me.’
‘But you’ll come in for a cup of tea and a scone, Craig, won’t you?’
‘Well, if you put it like that, it would be rude not to.’
The field was even steeper than the contours had suggested. Julie struggled to hold onto the heavy metal gate as gravity took hold and it swung out into space. She managed to close it and replace the plait of baler twine which held it shut and she set off again, up the hill. Good grief, Miss Davies must have been a ruddy mountain goat. As she got to the top of the slope, she paused to catch her breath and looked back, down to the farm. It looked like a toy farmyard from here. A couple of miles in the distance, water glistened in the sunlight. She looked at her map. The River Elan curved its way into Craig Goch Reservoir and, from there, down into three others, Penygarreg, Garreg-Ddu and Caban Coch. It looked exactly as it did on the map from up here, much easier to understand the vastness of it all than it had been in the car. So much water. She smiled. At least there was something to show for all the rain.
It was a false summit. The field rose steeply to a second gate and beyond. How would you get a vehicle up here at all? Why would you want to be this far away from civilisation with a small child? That had to be noteworthy in itself.
Finally, just when Julie thought she would never get there, a chimney and then a slate roof appeared, followed by windows and finally two more windows and a door. The little house was perched on the edge of a hollow, gazing out over the spectacular valley beneath it. Like Mal’s house, there were no electricity or telephone wires, but a small windmill whirred and there were four solar panels planted on the hillside next to it.
The path led between tall stone gateposts supporting the weathered wooden gate, and up to the glass-fronted porch. It was fronded with tiny yellow flowers and grasping, serrated leaves. Julie poked a piece of white plastic with her toe and a tiny unicorn with rainbow mane and tail tumbled free from the weeds and onto the dark bricks. She picked it up and smiled at its serious little face and ridiculously blue, slightly crossed eyes. She stood the unicorn on the edge of the path and tapped on the glass in the porch door. The door and the glass rattled independently. Small chunks of putty were missing, leaving irregular oblong gaps like missing teeth. There was no reply, but as Julie turned to walk away, a curtain moved, as though a draught had lifted it and let it fall. She knocked again, harder, more insistently. She tried the handle and the porch door opened wearily, allowing her to check and memorise the contents of the porch. Chest freezer, coat hooks with drab, damp-smelling jackets, and boots – wellingtons, green and insubstantial. No boots belonging to the small owner of the unicorn.
She bent to peer through the letterbox and, along with the slit of stone-flagged hallway, she caught the suspicion of urgent whispering. A door snicked shut and a woman walked slowly towards where Julie was waiting. Julie let the letterbox close and stood up as the door was opened.
‘Can I help you?’ The woman looked around thirty-two or thirty-three years old, Julie guessed. She had long red hair, held in place with tortoiseshell combs, and her clothes buried her slender figure. Folds of floor-length skirt and tunic with a pale green scarf enveloped her.
‘Sergeant Julie Kite, Mid Wales Police.’ Julie held up her warrant card, but th
e woman didn’t even glance at it. Instead, she kept her gaze fixed on a point somewhere behind Julie’s right elbow. She stepped down into the porch and closed the front door behind her.
‘How can I help you?’ The accent was definitely not local, not even Welsh. She was well-spoken, but the slightly raised inflection at the end of the sentence was familiar to Julie.
‘You sound as though you’re from my neck of the woods.’
The woman said nothing. ‘Lancashire,’ added Julie. ‘Am I right?’ The woman gave the tiniest of nods. ‘Have you been here long?’
‘Not very long, no.’
‘We’re asking everyone if they may have seen or heard anything that could help us with our enquiries. You must have heard by now that a woman was found down there,’ Julie jerked her head, indicating the valley behind her. ‘We need to trace her movements in the time leading up to her death.’
