by Rhys Bowen
Evan agreed with the sentiment in the case of this lot of bloody English. He put his foot to the floor and swung his aged car around the bends until the slate hills of Blenau Ffestiniog appeared ahead of him—great gray gashes cut out of the mountainsides around the village. A chapel was just emptying on the High Street, mostly older women, plus a couple of old men and a few children. Evan parked his car and hurried to question the worshippers.
“I saw him.” An elderly woman pushed her way through to the front of the crowd. She was a tiny bag of bones with a beaky nose and black flowerpot hat perched on top of pure white hair. “You saw him too, didn’t you, Gwladys?” Another elderly lady nodded. “That’s him all right.”
“When was this? What was he doing?”
The first woman screwed up her face in concentration. “Ooh, let’s see. We were on our way to catch the bus to do our shopping yesterday. The bus goes at nine-fifteen, so it must have been before that, mustn’t it, Gwladys?”
Her friend nodded again.
“Can you tell me what he was doing?”
“Shouting, that’s what he was doing, wasn’t he, Gwladys?”
“Shouting something shocking,” Gwladys finally spoke. “The two of them, yelling at each other, right there in the street.”
“Foreigners, I said to Gwladys. What can you expect?”
“Can you remember who he was shouting at?”
“Another foreigner, it had to be. They were speaking English, weren’t they?”
“Big sort of chap,” Gwladys cut in. “Youngish. Fair hair, I think.”
“And what happened after that?”
“We don’t know. They were still at it when the bus came.”
“All right—what’s going on here?” a male voice demanded and a uniformed policeman pushed through the crowd. He eyed Evan with suspicion. “Can I help you?”
Evan extended his hand. “P. C. Evans from Llanfair. I’m looking for a missing person who was last seen up here.”
A big smile spread across the constable’s face. “Evans from Llanfair. I know who you are.”
Evan flushed. He hated the way his fame as a super-sleuth had spread around the force. It usually meant either resentment or teasing. “Yes, I know all about you, what kind of food you like, what kind of girls you like … .” The constable paused, watching Evan’s confused reaction. “I’m Meirion Morgan. You’re lodging with my auntie Gwynneth.”
Evan laughed. “Morgan, of course. That was Mrs. Williams’s maiden name. Nice to meet you, Meirion.”
“Now what can I do to help?” P. C. Morgan asked.
“It’s this Englishman from a film crew who are shooting near Llanfair. He came up here yesterday morning, supposedly to visit a slate mine, and hasn’t been heard of since. And his Land Rover was found parked in Porthmadog.”
“That’s odd, isn’t it?” Meirion Morgan agreed.
“And we saw him,” the first elderly lady tugged on his arm, “didn’t we, Gwladys?”
“These ladies saw him arguing with someone in the high street yesterday morning.”
“Right down there it was, outside the fish-and-chip shop,” the woman pointed down the street. “Yelling and screaming at each other something terrible.”
“Foreigners,” Gwladys muttered conspiratorially.
“Did anyone else happen to see this?” P. C. Morgan addressed the crowd that still hung around.
Several other women admitted hearing shouting in English. The newspaper shopowner remembered hearing the shouting and then seeing a man go running past his shop front.
Then Evan asked about the Land Rover. Some people thought they had noticed it, but one woman was definite. It had been there when she went to fetch her son home from school for lunch at twelve o‘clock and it was gone when she went to meet him from school at four o’clock. She remembered because her son had commented on it. He thought Land Rovers were cool and wanted to know if they could buy one. She had told him they cost too much money.
“So, what do you think he was doing up here until early afternoon?” Meirion Morgan asked as he and Evan moved off together and the crowd broke up. “He must have been in someone’s shop, had a cup of tea somewhere surely?”
Evan nodded. “All I know is that he came up here to visit a slate mine and he had an appointment with the custodian.”
“Which mine would that have been? Llechwedd or Glodfa Ganol?”
“Manod.”
“That’s closed now. Been closed for some time.”
“Right. But it’s where they kept the paintings during the war.”
“Oh yes, I heard about that.” Meirion Morgan nodded. “My granddad was working in that mine in those days.”
“Mr. Smith wanted to include that story in the film he’s making on Wales in the war. That’s why he wanted a tour of the mine.”
“Oh, in that case you’ll want Eleri Prys. He used to work there and he has the keys. I’ll come with you if you like.”
“Thanks,” Evan said. “You’re sure I’m not keeping you from anything?”
Meirion Morgan grinned. “No, just making a quick patrol through the town before I go home to my Sunday lunch, and Megan won’t have that ready until one. You’re welcome to join us if you like. My Megan does a lovely roast lamb with all the trimmings.”
“It does sound tempting,” Evan said. “I’ll see how we’re going with this. I have to find some sort of clue as to where he went. There’s a main-line station here, too, isn’t there? It’s just possible he took a train to London.”
“Then who drove his vehicle down to Porthmadog?”
Evan shrugged. “I know. Nothing here makes sense.” He clapped Meirion on the shoulder. “Let’s go and see this Mr. Prys. Maybe he can shed some light for us.”
They walked together past the row of shops and then dropped down a narrow side street until they came to a pleasant bungalow on the edge of the town. Eleri Prys was a strong, square-jawed man with a young face, although his hair was streaked with gray.
“That’s right,” he said. “I used to be the mine manager until they closed it. I wasn’t there in the war, of course. I’m not that old, thank you very much, but I understand it must have been quite a sight with those sheds built right inside the slate cavern.”
Evan produced the photo. “I believe you had an appointment with Mr. Grantley Smith yesterday. Did you show him around the mine?”
“He never turned up, did he?” Eleri Prys asked with disgust in his voice. “I told him I’d meet him outside the mine at ten o‘clock, but he never came. I waited half an hour, then I said, ‘Bugger this,’ and went home. It was bloody cold yesterday.”
“And he didn’t contact you afterwards to say why he hadn’t shown up?”
“I haven’t heard from him since,” Mr. Prys said with a sniff.
“Mr. Prys,” Evan began. “Is there any way he could have gone down the mine alone?”
Eleri Prys shook his head. “I’ve got the key, haven’t I? The entrance is padlocked.”
“And you checked the actual mine entrance yesterday, did you?” Evan asked.
A fleeting look of alarm crossed the man’s face. “No—no, I can’t say that I did. I waited by the street, like I told him. Then I did walk up the path to see if he might have gone on ahead of me, but no one was there. I could see that.”
“Would you mind going with us to take a look?” Evan asked. “Just to make sure?”
“I’m just about to have my elevenses,” Mr. Prys said. “I’ve got the kettle on.”
“The man you were supposed to meet is missing, Mr. Prys,” Meirion said. “The constable here has been searching for him. We have to check every lead at the moment.”
Eleri Prys nodded. “All right. I’ll just turn off the kettle and get my coat then, shall I? Bloody nuisance. I wasn’t too thrilled about showing him the mine in the first place. Too many hazards down there, and the emergency lighting’s not good. But he’s the kind of bloke who knows how to pull strings.
I got a phone call from the mine owners saying I had to be helpful.”
They walked back up the steep alleyway and then continued on to the edge of town. The wind was blowing off the high moor so hard that they had to lean into it.
“Raw old day, isn’t it?” Mr. Prys said.
Evan nodded. “We came up here a few days ago when I took Grantley Smith to see Trefor Thomas. You know him, of course?”
“Everybody knows old Tref,” Eleri Prys said. “Poor old bloke. I don’t suppose you got much out of him. His mind’s gone, hasn’t it? That son of his has to look after him like a baby. Wonderful with him, so I hear.”
“What did you go and see him for?” Meirion asked.
“He used to work in the mine,” Evan said. “He was there when they built the sheds for the pictures and Grantley thought he’d be good to talk to, because he was quite an artist himself.”
“Old Tref was?” Eleri asked.
“Yes, I heard that, too.” Meirion nodded. “When he was a young man, anyway. I never saw anything he painted.”
They reached the mine entrance. Eleri Prys unlocked the gate and led them up a path made of crushed slate, between slag heaps of slate to a hole in the mountainside. An iron grille now blocked the opening. It was secured with a large rusty padlock. Above it a rusted sign warned: “DANGER. PRIVATE PROPERTY. Vandals and Trespassers will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” If it had stated, “Go back. You have been warned,” it could not have been more forbidding.
“There you are,” Eleri Prys said. “Just as I left it.”
Evan was searching the ground for signs that the padlock might have been opened recently. But he couldn’t detect any flakes of rust lying on the slate.
“You’re right,” he said. “It doesn’t look as though anyone’s been here. Sorry to have bothered you.”
“That’s all right.” Eleri Prys managed a smile. “I’m just relieved to find the door still locked. I’d be for it if anyone had got in there.”
“This is definitely the only way in then?” Evan asked. “He couldn’t have found another entrance?”
“No,” Eleri Prys said, then he hesitated. “Well, there was an old emergency exit, in case there was a cave-in or a fire at the front of the mine, but it’s round the other side of the mountain. There’s no way he’d find it. I doubt that I’d even find it now.” He pointed to the scarred cliff face, hidden as it curved away sharply to the right by a slag heap and a jumble of rocks. “Somewhere behind those rocks, it was. Anyway, it’s locked too if it’s still there.”
“As you say, there’s no way he could just stumble on it then,” Evan said.
Eleri shook his head. “No way at all. It would take a bloodhound to find it these days.”
“Well, it looks like he never came here then,” Meirion Morgan commented. “Unless he was stupid enough to try his hand at a little mountain climbing on those cliffs and he fell.”
Evan stared up at the cliffs, their slate ledges slickened black with recent rain. He was a pretty fair climber and there was no way he’d want to tackle those cliffs. “I can’t think why,” he said. “He didn’t strike me as an outdoor type. And he’d have had no reason … .”
“Fair enough,” Meirion Morgan said. “Well, that’s that then. It looks as though he came here, changed his mind, and went away again.” They walked back down the path with Mr. Prys and parted from him on the High Street.
Meirion turned to Evan. “Where now?”
“I’ve no idea.” Evan stared out across the bleak landscape. “I should call the hotel, just to make sure he hasn’t turned up while I’ve been out here and nobody has bothered to call me. I should call P. C. Roberts in Porthmadog, just to make sure he hasn’t found out anything down there, and then I think I’ve done almost all I can for now. If he isn’t found by tomorrow, I’ll hand it over to the plainclothes boys. He could be anywhere by now.”
“You can use the phone at the police station and then come and have some lunch,” Meirion Morgan said, putting a friendly hand on his shoulder. “I always say there’s nothing like a good meal to help things make sense.”
Evan managed a smile. “And I think I’ll just double-check at the train station and the petrol station, too, and maybe any cafés that are open today. Someone must have seen him after nine o’clock if his car was parked here until midday.”
“You’d certainly have thought so,” Meirion said. “The police station’s down here. I’ll give you the key. Just lock it after you’re finished and then come on up to my place. I live in that row of cottages up there. Number Twenty-one with the red door.”
“Thanks very much,” Evan said. “I’ll see you in a while then.”
“I hope you have some good news soon,” Meirion said. “These bloody Englishmen—always coming here and getting lost, aren’t they?”
Evan laughed. They parted company. Evan let himself into the police station and made his calls. P. C. Roberts had asked questions at local B-and-Bs. He’d asked the worshippers coming out of a nearby chapel. Nobody recognized the photo of Grantley Smith.
Next he called the Everest Inn. Edward Ferrers sounded distraught. “No, we’ve heard nothing,” he snapped. “Didn’t anyone see him park his car? He must have gone on by train somewhere. Have you contacted the police in England? He must have met with some kind of accident.”
Evan felt hopelessly inadequate as he put down the phone. There was nothing he would have liked more than to have looked good to Bronwen’s ex-husband. It would have been so nice to have announced breezily that he’d located Mr. Smith without too much trouble and Mr. Smith was sorry he hadn’t contacted them before. No problem, sir. All part of the job. But instead he had to admit that he was getting nowhere.
He came out of the police station and stood staring down the deserted High Street. Grantley Smith had been here until noon yesterday. Someone must have seen him. He was loud and offensive and looked so distinctive that he must have been noticed. Evan began to walk down one side of the street, showing the photo to everyone he passed. He tried the booking clerk at the train station, the man who pumped the petrol, small boys on bikes, the woman in the Gloch Las Café. The result was the same—after the morning shouting match, nobody had seen Grantley Smith.
Evan paused, watching the clouds building over the coastline. It would rain before long. He stuck his hands in his pockets and started to walk again. Based on what he knew so far, the last person to have been seen interacting with Grantley was the man with whom he quarreled—and that man, from his description, sounded awfully like Edward Ferrers.
Chapter 12
Edward Ferrers, who now seemed so completely bewildered and distraught, was the last person who had seen Grantley Smith. Now it appeared that he was also the person who had had a very public fight with Grantley.
Evan continued on down the High Street. What was all this about? Edward sounded and looked genuinely worried, but then Edward had been an actor, hadn’t he? They’d all gone to the Edinburgh fringe with a play when they were at Cambridge. Howard looked sick and scared, too. Sandie was hysterical. Did they all know something that they weren’t telling?
Evan took this one stage further: Was someone trying to do away with Grantley Smith? He had fallen out of a train a few days previously, after all. People didn’t fall out of trains that often. And if the train hadn’t been going so slowly on the steep gradient and Grantley hadn’t rolled into an oak tree, he’d have kept on tumbling down a thousand feet into a ravine. Was it possible that someone had repeated the process, successfully this time?
Evan glanced at his watch. He had time before lunch. He should check the train’s route down the mountain for himself. He went to his car and started back down the mountain, slowing whenever the narrow-gauge railway passed over a road or river or hugged the edge of a cliff. After a while it became too frustrating. The train tracks hugged the edge of a steep slope almost the whole way down to Porthmadog. You could push someone out and possibly kill them
at almost any point along the track. It would take a whole team to search the ravines and gullies for a body.
Evan pulled over to the side of the road beside a noisy mountain stream and sat thinking again. If Grantley even suspected he had been pushed, it had to have been by one of his friends. And he wouldn’t be likely to give anyone a second chance by leaning out again, would he? But was that why he had chosen to disappear? Now that made more sense. Someone he knew—Edward?—had either threatened or tried to kill him. So Grantley had chosen to vanish for his own safety. In which case, nobody was likely to find him in a hurry.
You’re being overdramatic, he told himself. Look at them—pink pudgy Edward, seedy inoffensive Howard, and Sandie, skinny as a rake. Could any of them be a potential killer? It was too absurd to think about. Evan turned the car around and drove back toward Blenau Ffestiniog. A good lunch might well put things in perspective.
As he glanced up at the moors, another thought came to him. It was just possible that Grantley had gone back to visit Trefor Thomas again, maybe to see how he was getting on with his tape recording. He might just have fitted in a visit there before his appointment with the mine caretaker, which would mean after he parted from Edward.
Classical music was playing loudly as Evan knocked on the cottage door. Tudur Thomas opened it, saw Evan, and scowled. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Look you, I don’t think you better see my father again. He’s been quite upset since your visit. He’s a sick old man, you know. He’s been fretting that he’ll get in trouble when the man comes back for his machine because he can’t remember things properly anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Thomas,” Evan said, “but I’ve come here because Mr. Smith is missing. Did that man I brought to see your father come by yesterday? I just wondered if he came here yesterday.”
“He’d have been out of luck if he had,” Tudur Thomas answered. “We weren’t here. I always drive my dad down to get his pension on Saturday mornings and then we do our shopping at Tesco’s. We were gone all morning.”
