Rather to Be Pitied

by Jan Newton

  ‘What about we both go to the hospital and let Morgan go and have a word with Mal and Sarah?’ Julie said. ‘He can’t help himself, he just opens his mouth and words come out, they bypass his brain completely.’ She waited to be shot down, but Swift just laughed. ‘Where’s he gone? Shall I go and tell him he can go up to Mal’s?’

  ‘He’s in the canteen. I told him to go and calm down,’ Swift smiled. ‘Yes, tell him the good news. I’ll have to go back to the office anyway.’

  ‘Why, Sir?’

  ‘I bounced out without my car keys.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Day Eight

  They approached the A&E reception desk in the usual formation. Julie in front, breathing in the sights and smells of the hospital, wishing she had applied herself and gone to medical school and Swift following behind her, trying not to breathe at all and keeping his gaze steadfastly away from the potential horrors of the screened areas. Julie showed her warrant card to the nurse behind the desk.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Julie Kite, Mid Wales Police. You had a chap called Mick brought in a couple of hours ago by ambulance. Knife wound to the wrist. Would it be possible to see him?’

  The nurse tapped the keyboard and ran a finger down the crowded screen. ‘He’s still pretty poorly to be honest.’

  ‘Will he recover?’ Swift asked.

  ‘Oh yes, the doctor has done a lovely job on his arm. He didn’t need to go to surgery, it was a nice clean cut, just a bit deep.’

  Swift’s clean white handkerchief was out of his pocket and he dabbed his mouth. ‘When can we speak to him?’

  ‘Well it’s more his mood that’s causing us a bit of worry, you see. We want him to see a psychiatrist, but given how weak he is after the loss of blood he was surprisingly and very loudly rude at that suggestion.’

  ‘I think he’s had his fair share of help in that department already,’ Julie said. ‘Would it be possible to see if he would talk to me?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Usually we wouldn’t let him, not until he’s been evaluated. Do you know him?’

  ‘I have spoken to him before. He will know who I am. He asked for me when he cut himself.’

  ‘Well just let me have a word with doctor. I’ll be back now.’ The nurse hurried off.

  ‘I hate these places,’ Swift said.

  ‘I know you do.’

  ‘You should have let me go to Mal’s.’

  ‘I’m keeping you away from scones.’

  ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Sergeant.’

  ‘Seriously, Sir, you need to look after yourself. Your blood pressure must have been through the roof earlier. With Morgan.’

  Swift shot her a glance and looked away. ‘The older I get, the more I seem to let certain people wind me up.’

  ‘You don’t have to be older for that, Sir, trust me.’

  Swift turned to her and laughed. ‘That’s what I like about you, Sergeant, you say it as it is.’

  ‘Gobby you mean?’

  ‘Not at all. And thank you.’

  ‘What for, scone avoidance?’

  ‘No, for not letting me blow Morgan’s comment completely out of all proportion.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Sir. Marginally out of proportion was just about spot on I’d say.’

  The nurse beckoned from a door just behind the desk. ‘You can see him now, but I’ve to stay with you.’

  ‘It’s a bit delicate, to be honest, Sister,’ Swift said. The nurse smiled. Her name badge made no mention of the exalted rank. ‘Could you stay outside and we promise to call you immediately if we need your help?’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t, but go on then. Just don’t let me down.’

  ‘We won’t,’ Julie said, wishing she had that much confidence in her abilities to calm a suicidal ex-soldier while discussing a brutal murder.

  Mick was pale, heavily bandaged and staring into the distance.

  ‘Hello.’ Julie approached the bed while Swift stayed by the door. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve come. I wanted to thank you.’ He looked down at his bandaged arm. There was blood still encrusted under his fingernails. ‘I didn’t think you’d come all that way out to the farm just for me being a prat. I honestly thought I was done for. Stupid.’

  ‘Why would I not have come?’

  ‘People let you down.’

  ‘I hope I haven’t let you down. Did my questions about Ardal worry you?’

  Mick shook his head. ‘It’s me that worries me, nobody else. You were straight with us that night. I knew I could trust you.’

  ‘You still can, you know.’

  ‘I should have stopped her. It was all my fault that man died. I could have prevented it. I just froze. It was like I was watching something that wasn’t real, as though it was a film.’ He tried to hitch himself further up the bed and winced.

  Julie shook her head. ‘I’m not sure I would have been able to stop her either. I don’t think anyone could. She was a woman on a mission that day.’

  ‘I spent hours on those drawings and every time I looked at them it reminded me of the dead and the dying, all of them, every single one I’ve ever seen. It brought it all back, all the mindless killing, all those wasted lives.’

  ‘I’m sure it did. I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve seen, how you feel. I wish I could.’

  ‘Believe me, you don’t want to know.’ Mick pulled the sheet up towards his chin and held it there in one balled fist. ‘I dream death so often, I spend most of my nights just walking on the hill, out in the open.’

  ‘Could you tell me what you saw that day? Would it help or would it make things worse for you?’

  Mick glanced at Swift, hovering by the door. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘That’s Detective Inspector Swift, my boss.’ She leaned forward and whispered to Mick. ‘He hates hospitals.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  ‘Are you up to talking?’

  ‘I can try.’

  ‘Tell me if it gets too much.’

  ‘Oh believe me, Sergeant, you’ll know if it gets too much.’

  Julie pulled up the chair and sat down. ‘Just take your time and tell me what happened up there.’

  Mick took a deep breath in and let it out again, slowly. ‘Well, I was looking for two of the alpacas. The Major thought they’d strayed, so I volunteered like a shot when he wanted someone to find them. I like being by myself up on the hill.’ The faintest of smiles, then it was gone. ‘I was checking the scrub, the little buggers like to get tangled up in the brambles by Preese’s boundary. I hadn’t even seen her at first, the woman.’

  ‘The one in the coat?’

  Mick nodded. ‘There was another woman, well, she was so skinny maybe she was just a girl, but from the shouting she was doing at the man, she was definitely female.’ He smiled. ‘My wife used to shriek like that when she got mad. And she got mad a lot. I don’t blame her, I wasn’t easy to live with, not after I got back.’

  ‘What happened to the woman, Mick?’

  ‘The woman in the green coat was goading them, especially the man. She was like a ringmaster, cracking the whip. Then, once they were really arguing and the skinny woman was hurling abuse at the man, she backed away and let them fight. The skinny woman yelled something at the bloke, which made him really mad. She turned her back on him, started to walk away. I saw him pick something up, a piece of wood or a pole, I don’t know. She never saw it coming. He smacked her hard on the back of the head and she went down. Then he was running, towards where I was hiding in the scrub. He didn’t get as far as me. As he got alongside the pit, the woman in the coat came from nowhere. She hurled herself on him, lashed out at him and he went in.’

  ‘When you say she lashed out at him, what do you mean?’

  ‘She was like something possessed, kicking and punching him. She must have caught him off balance and he went backwards.’

  ‘So he fell into the cess pit?’

  ‘Aye
, went arse over… base over apex, straight into the –. He went straight in, under the surface. I thought he’d drowned, and all the time, she was standing there, waiting for him. I couldn’t do anything to help him. I couldn’t move.’ Mick looked up at her, and Julie could see how hard this memory was for him. It was as though the scene was replaying right in front of his eyes. ‘Somehow, he got himself half out of the pit. Came out of there like a monster from the deep and just lay there with his head and shoulders on the concrete.’ Mick pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘She took something out of her pocket, wrapped it round his neck and pulled.’ He sniffed hard. ‘That obviously didn’t do what she wanted it to do, because she had another go then. She rammed her knee into his shoulder to give her a bit of leverage. It was as vicious as anything I’ve ever seen in combat. Even from where I was, I thought his head would come off.’ Mick shivered. ‘Then she just shoved him back into the cess pit.’ Mick’s breath began to come in short rapid bursts.

  ‘Are you OK? Should I call someone?’

  Mick shook his head. He pulled the sheet down and Julie could see that the damaged arm was oozing blood. The bandage was saturated, and deep red blood dripped from the elbow onto the sheet. Swift flung the door open and the nurse almost fell into the room.

  ‘Will you sign a statement for me?’ Julie asked.

  ‘You’ll have to leave now.’ The nurse pressed a buzzer in the wall and attached Mick’s arm temporarily by its bandage to a drip stand, which she manoeuvred into position with her foot. Julie stood up and walked round the bed towards the door.

  ‘Sergeant,’ Mick said. ‘Yes, I’ll do it. I’ll do anything it takes if it will help put that woman behind bars.’

  ‘It will, Mick. Believe me, it’s about the only thing that will.’

  Swift relaxed as soon as they were out in the car park. They leaned on the Volvo in the sunshine.

  ‘You did well in there with him.’

  ‘He’s a good bloke. He wanted to help when we were trying to identify Ardal.’

  ‘Do you think he will testify, from what you’ve seen of him?’

  Julie considered. ‘I think he would. But to be honest, Sir, with a full statement and his drawings, then maybe that will be enough. I’m not sure how he’d cope with a courtroom. There’s plenty of forensic evidence for Quigley’s murder.’

  ‘But not for Rosa’s, is there?’

  ‘Kay said there were two injuries to Rosa’s head. Maybe it wasn’t the first one that killed her, though how even Kay would sort that out, I don’t know.’ Julie flicked through her notebook. ‘She’s still working on it. They’re both in the same area, on the back of the head.’

  ‘Maybe Mick just didn’t see the first blow and Quigley did hit her twice,’ Swift said.

  ‘Or maybe Quigley did only hit her once and the second injury was actually from the gatepost at the cottage, where the blood was found.’

  ‘Did we get the new results on Rosa’s bag back yet?’

  ‘Not that I know of. Shall I run down and see if Dr Greenhalgh is there?’

  Swift turned his face to the sun. ‘You do that, Sergeant. I’ll just wait here for you.’

  Kay Greenhalgh was in her office. She reached for the kettle as Julie poked her head round the door.

  ‘Brew?’

  ‘I can’t stop, the boss is outside, and we’ve got someone on the PACE clock.’ Julie said. ‘We were just about to charge her and we were called over here.’

  ‘He won’t mind waiting for five minutes,’ Kay said, spooning coffee into two mugs. ‘He’s happier out there than he is in here.’

  ‘Did you get the results back on that bag?’

  ‘I did, they’re… here.’ Kay retrieved a sheet of paper from her post tray. ‘And we’ve been lucky. I don’t know how it happened or how we missed it the first time, but I can tell you that there are microscopic flecks of plagioclase feldspar crystals in the fabric of the bag which match the stone gatepost at Pwll Bach.’

  ‘And that tells us what?’ Julie took the mug from Kay and sipped the strong black liquid.

  ‘That tells us that the bag was up there, actually at the cottage, and that it contacted the gatepost with some force.’

  ‘But surely there are lots of places with – what was it – feldspar?’

  ‘There are, but this particular one is from the Carneddau Volcanic Formation which is from the other side of the Llanelwedd Quarry in Builth. Large lumps of that type of rock aren’t normally seen in the Elan Valley; they would have been much more inclined to use the local stone for building purposes.’ Kay sipped her coffee. ‘And the best is yet to come. The same feldspar crystals are in Rosa’s head wound. They’re well embedded, and deep, deeper than the extent of the first head wound.’

  ‘Could they be from the rock she was propped up against though?’

  ‘No. That rock is a completely different composition. It’s a conglomerate, formed from turbidite activity.’

  Julie whistled quietly. ‘How do you know all this stuff?’

  ‘I have to hold my hands up to that one, I’m afraid. I haven’t the vaguest idea about rocks. But I do know a man who has.’

  ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me? Is it enough to make it absolutely certain that she was up there?’

  ‘Well the rock chemistry and the indigenous soil traces are enough to make it certain that her bag was up there, and that her head came into contact with the same type of rock.’

  ‘And if her bag was with her in the pictures that Mick drew, when they were down by the cess pit…’

  ‘Now you’ve lost me.’

  ‘Sorry. It’s all coming together, but just from random sources.’ Julie put her mug down and stood up. ‘Thank you so much for your help. I’d better go and drag the boss back to the nick.’ She opened the door, but turned back.

  ‘OK, this is probably going to sound like a ridiculous question, but how would you go about learning about forensics properly? Not that I want to do the medical school thing, but I would like to know more about it.’ She blushed. ‘Daft idea.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Kay grinned. ‘I’d say it just confirms what I’ve always thought.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You’re wasted as a copper. Get yourself a proper job.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor, for that vote of confidence.’

  ‘Seriously though, there are courses you could go on. Would you fancy specialising within the police force?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve not really thought about it. It’s just that every time I speak to you, I realise how little I know, stuff that would be really useful.’

  ‘I can find you some information if you like?’ Greenhalgh smiled. ‘And believe me, Julie, I would be absolutely useless at what you do.’

  ‘A perfectionist like you, Dr Greenhalgh?’

  Kay laughed out loud, a huge hooting chuckle. ‘Bagged. Now bugger off and let me get some work done.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Day Eight

  Back at the station, Morgan Evans gave Swift a thorough and comprehensive report on his visit to Mal’s. No, there was nothing else they’d remembered, but Mal had picked up a scaffolding pole he’d found in the field, which must have been moved from outside the shed, and not by him. He definitely didn’t remember taking it up the field. Fortunately, on the day he found it, he had been side-tracked by a huge delivery of hay and the pole was still where he’d left it when the lorry had arrived, just by the shed door. Morgan had already sent it to the lab. Julie could tell Swift was impressed. Maybe he’d discovered the key to getting the best out of DC Evans.

  Goronwy and Rhys had spoken to the other two soldiers.

  ‘Did Mick tell them anything about what he had seen?’ Swift asked.

  ‘Baz said Mick never speaks to anyone about anything, not really,’ Rhys said.

  ‘So they didn’t know anything about what happened up there?’ Julie asked.

  Goronwy shook his head. ‘Nope. But he did tell h
im that Ardal bloke had been inside Lizzie’s cottage on one of the days Mick was doing his solitary thing up on the hill. He saw him. Mick told him Ardal had waited for the woman who lived there to leave with her son, he said. I think Baz was really shaken about what happened to Mick. They thought he was past that self-harming stage.’

  ‘Has he tried to cut himself before?’ Swift asked.

  ‘It was a long time ago, they said, before either of them arrived.’

  ‘So why didn’t Ardal tell you about his visit to the cottage, I wonder?’ Swift tugged his ear. ‘That was a bit of an oversight on his part, I’d say.’