by Rhys Bowen
“That’s not fair,” Bronwen said angrily. “First they take away half your weekends and give you two useless weekdays off instead, and then they phone you on your days off too.”
“I am a policeman, Bron,” he said. “It goes with the job. If there’s some sort of emergency, days off don’t count.”
“But I hardly ever see you these days,” she said. “I’m busy marking papers all week and you’re working all weekend. I had to do that lovely hike over Glyder Fach by myself.”
“We could always solve that,” Evan said, slipping an arm around her. “I could give up trying to make this place habitable and come and live with you instead.”
“Oh, yes, that would go down very well with the locals, wouldn’t it!” Bronwen laughed. “Imagine what fodder that would give the two ministers for their Sunday sermons. Besides,” she reached up and stroked his cheek, “we’re doing this for a purpose, aren’t we?” She gave him a hasty peck on the cheek. “Got to go,” she said. “If I don’t get back, those kids will be running wild.”
Evan followed her out and watched her run up the street before he made his way down the hill to his little sub-police station.
“Oh, Constable Evans. Glad we found you,” Megan, the dispatcher, came on the phone. “Sorry to be disturbing you on your day off, but the chief inspector would like a word with you and he’s off to Birmingham for a conference in the morning. It’s all about this reorganization he’s planning. He’s come up with a solution to making you more—upwardly mobile, shall we say.”
“Is he there to speak to me now?”
“He’d like you to come down so that he can speak to you in person. Is that all right? I know it’s your day off, but …”
“I’ll be there in half an hour,” Evan said.
He put the phone down and went out to his old clunker of a car. It started on the third attempt. Community policemen were not equipped with police cars. Mobile units were sent as backup from Caernarfon when needed, so the car was his own—had been his own for many years now. “Upwardly mobile”—what could that mean? And she had sounded so enigmatic when she said it, too. Did she know something he didn’t—a promotion maybe? His transfer at last to the plainclothes division? He put his foot down and the engine growled in protest as he drove out of the car park.
“Ah, Evans. Good man.” It was Chief Inspector Meredith’s standard method of greeting, unless one had done something wrong, in which case it was just “Ah, Evans,” with the “good man” part omitted. So he knew he wasn’t in trouble.
“Glad you got here so quickly.” This was also part of the standard welcome. “Pull up a pew.”
The chief inspector was in his customary rolled-up shirtsleeves and Evan noted that the room was pleasantly warm. No cost-cutting attempts with the central heating going on here.
“So how are things up at Llanfair?” The chief inspector pronounced it awkwardly, not able to get his tongue around the double l, like all non-Welsh speakers. He was from North Wales, but from the coastal city of Llandudno, which had always considered itself gentrified and where Welsh-speaking was a rarity.
“Oh, about the same as usual, sir.” Evan perched himself on the hard wooden visitor’s chair and wished the chief inspector would cut the small talk and get to the point. The anticipation was killing him.
“No bodies for a while? You must be getting bored.” He laughed—a polite little ha ha. Evan smiled and wisely kept silent. He knew that his apparent knack for solving murder cases had not always gone down well with the top brass. In fact, he sometimes wondered if his track record was what had prevented him from being selected for detective training.
“I expect it’s pretty quiet up there in Llanfair at this time of year, isn’t it? No tourists around yet to get lost or stranded or lose their keys.”
“That’s right, sir.”
The chief inspector leaned forward in his chair. “Look here, Evans. You probably know that we’ve been given a directive from Colywn Bay to cut departmental costs considerably. One of the suggestions, of course, was to do away with the smaller outstations and consolidate our personnel at headquarters.”
“I thought that had been tried before, sir, before I got here. I thought they discovered that having an officer on the spot was a great crime deterrent.” (As if anyone with any sense hasn’t already figured that out, he thought.)
“True, but then the population out in the villages is shrinking all the time, isn’t it? In a few years they will only exist for the tourists—a sort of Walt Disney re-creation of Wales as it used to be. Bed-and-breakfasts, craft shops, ye olde blacksmiths—that kind of thing.”
“Not for a while yet,” Evan said. “We must have at least a couple of hundred people in Llanfair and we’re one of the smaller villages.” He looked directly at the chief inspector. A sinking feeling was growing in his stomach. He had rushed here, filled with expectancy, dreaming of possibilities. He didn’t like the way the conversation was going. “You’re not thinking of closing the Llanfair station, are you?”
“Not for the moment. However, I can’t afford to keep officers where they are not fully utilized. I know you have periods when you’re busy up there. I know there have actually been some major incidents since you joined our force and your presence has been most—” Evan thought he would say, “instrumental,” but instead he said, “—useful in solving them quickly. Then, on the other hand,” he picked up a logbook, “there are days when you seem to do little more than answer phone calls and make cups of tea.”
“It’s not quite as bad as that, sir,” Evan said. “I catch up on my paperwork when there’s nothing to do. And I imagine there are days down here when you’re not exactly run off your feet either.”
The chief inspector managed a smile. Evan couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. “So what are you planning to do with me?” he blurted out.
“Expand your territory,” Chief Inspector Meredith said. “At the moment you are confined to an area you can cover on foot. I know you’re a fine climber and you’ve been able to get up to accidents on the mountains, but the response time is naturally slow. We’re going to make your job easier by issuing you a motorbike.”
“A motorbike?” Evan couldn’t have been more surprised, or disappointed. “I’ve never actually ridden a motorbike, sir.”
“No problem. There will be training, of course. And that way we can justify keeping the Llanfair substation open. You’ll be able to patrol the territory from Llanberis on one side to Beddgelert on the other and the most frequently used mountain paths as well. Everyone carries cell phones these days. If we get a call from a climber or hiker in distress, you’ll be able to whiz straight up to them.” He beamed as if he was giving Evan a wonderful present.
“So—uh—when do I get this—motorbike?” Evan asked. He tried not to let his feelings show in his voice. He had never actually wanted a motorbike, even when his teenage friends were pleading with their parents to get one. They had always looked cold and uncomfortable. He saw no point in getting the rain in his face when he could be safely inside a car. Now he pictured himself riding up mountains in rainstorms in search of stranded tourists. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect.
“It’s already over at the motor shop, being checked out,” the chief inspector said. “There are five of you constables who are being turned into mobile units, so we have to find time to schedule each of you for training. Go and look at the master schedule in dispatch and see when you can fit in a training session. We want it done as soon as possible, so you can be out and about before the tourists show up en masse.”
Evan got to his feet. “Will that be all, sir?”
The chief inspector stretched, leaning back in his chair, extending his arms, and cracking his knuckles. “Yes, that’s about it. Off you go then. And no doing wheelies when we’re not looking!” He chuckled again.
Evan started for the door then turned back. “About my request, sir. My transfer to plainclothes. Any idea what chance I’ve go
t?”
“None at the moment with all the cost cutting going on, I’m afraid,” Chief Inspector Meredith said. “Plainclothes is having to pare down to the bare bones, just as we are. And I’m in no hurry to lose a good man, either.”
Evan came out into the hallway and made for the front door. He didn’t even feel like stopping at the cafeteria for a chat and a cup of tea. Megan, the cheerful carthorse of a dispatcher, poked her head through the window as he passed. “Seen the chief, have you? Did you like my little joke? Upwardly mobile, get it?”
“Very funny,” Evan said, and pushed the swing door open.
Chapter 4
It had started to rain, the fine Welsh misty rain that locals sometimes described as a “soft day.” You didn’t notice it as much, Evan thought, but it soaked you just as thoroughly as the heavy stuff. He didn’t even bother to turn up his collar to keep it out. It matched his mood. Megan’s laughter rang through his head.
He swung away from his car and instead walked through the car park to the maintenance sheds beyond where the new motorbike would be waiting. Might as well get it over with and take a look at it. He couldn’t understand why he had such a negative feeling about motorbikes. He had never owned one. None of the friends of his youth had ever owned one either. So why was he so sure he’d hate riding one? It wasn’t the cold and rain in his face that was worrying him. Anyone bred in the Welsh mountains was used to cold and rain in their faces. He’d had plenty of experience of it in his life waiting for school buses or playing rugby. And he never even minded the weather when he was hiking or climbing. It had to be something more than that … . Evan racked his brains. He had never been a speed freak, but then he’d never been too worried by speed either. An image came into his head of a motorbike leaning over at an impossible angle as it rounded a sharp curve. When had he ever seen …
Then all at once it came back to him. He was on holiday with his parents on the Isle of Mann and they had gone to watch the motorcycle grand prix race held there every year. Evan couldn’t have been more than five or six at the time. He remembered climbing up on the fence to see over. The bikes had flashed past, engines screaming, going so fast that they were a blur of bright color. He’d thought it was the most exciting thing he’d ever seen. He couldn’t wait to get home to his new two-wheeler and pretend that it was a motorbike. Then it had happened—one of the bikes took the bend too fast. It was leaning at an impossible angle, the rider’s head only inches from the tarmac. It had been raining and the surface was slick. Suddenly the motorbike was over and sliding into the other bikes. There was a horrible crunch of metal and then a great ball of flame shot up. Evan didn’t think that anyone had actually been killed, but the image was still sharp and clear in his mind. He heard his mother saying, “Promise me you’ll never ride one of those dreadful things. Promise me.” And he had promised.
She had made him make similar promises about anything that frightened her, and extracted similar promises from his father too. But it hadn’t done any good. His father had promised, over and over, that he would be careful and yet he had fallen in a hail of bullets one night, trying to intercept a drug transaction.
Evan hoped his mother had forgotten about the grand prix incident, but he didn’t think she would have. He’d have to remember not to mention the motorbike in their weekly phone conversations.
His new machine, with four others, was standing in the garage, next to a dismantled squad car. It didn’t look nearly as big or impressive as Evan had feared. It was a lightweight contraption with big, knobbly tires. He let out a sigh of relief.
A head poked out from under the squad car and Dai, the mechanic, emerged. “Hello, Constable. It’s Evans, isn’t it? Come for your bike then?”
“I just came to take a look at it today. I’m supposed to sign up for training before I’m allowed to ride it.”
“Oh, there’s nothing to it,” Dai said, grinning. “Any ten-year-old could ride this bike. It couldn’t go fast if it tried. Made for off road, really, like all the farmers have around here for rounding up their sheep. See the big tires. You’ll be able to take it up to the top of Snowdon if you’ve a mind to. Ever ridden one before?” Evan shook his head. “Go on then. Hop on and get a feel for it. I’ll run you through the basic controls. After that there’s nothing to it. You could take it out for a spin today if you wanted.”
Evan climbed onto the bike. It was small and compact, a pony not a race horse. “You switch on here,” Dai said, “and your throttle is there on your handlebar. Go on, try it.”
As the machine sputtered into life, Evan was conscious of two figures standing in the garage doorway.
“Would you take a look at that, Glynis?” Sergeant Watkins said, grinning to his partner. “It’s King of the Road. Don’t tell me that Hell’s Angels have invaded the motor pool.”
“Give it a break, Sarge.” Evan smiled, hastily switching off the engine and climbing off the bike. “Did you hear I’ve been assigned one of these things?”
“I heard something about it, yes,” Sergeant Watkins said. “Not a bad idea, really. You’ll be able to respond more quickly when some stupid Englishwoman drops her purse down a mountain, won’t you, boyo?”
“I think it looks like fun.” Glynis Davies, the young detective constable, gave him one of her dazzling smiles.
Not as much fun as doing your job, Evan thought. The job I applied for but you got. He tried to push the thought from his mind. He knew it wasn’t her fault that she’d received the promotion before him. She was smart and able; also a woman at a time when they’d been directed to hire more female detectives. But it still rankled.
“Are you allowed to carry passengers?” she asked.
“I’ve no idea what I’m allowed to do yet. I only heard about it a few minutes ago.”
“If you are, I’m first in line for a ride,” she said. She glanced across at Sergeant Watkins. “Have you heard the other news yet?” Evan thought he noticed Watkins give her a warning look, but she didn’t stop. “Our chief is taking early retirement.”
“The D.C.I.?”
“That’s right. And guess who is going to take his place?”
“Not D.I. Hughes?” Evan sounded incredulous. “You’re not serious. That man couldn’t detect a fried egg sitting on top of his toast.”
“He knows the right people,” Watkins said, “and he was the only choice, really, unless they brought someone across from Colwyn Bay.”
Evan nodded. Why should he worry? It wasn’t as if the change of power at the top of the plainclothes ladder affected him.
“So they’ll be doing without a D.I. then, will they?” he asked.
Watkins’s face turned bright red. It was the first time Evan had ever seen him blush.
“Sergeant Watkins is being sent for training,” Glynis said proudly. “He’s in line to be promoted to inspector.”
“That’s wonderful, Sarge,” Evan said, giving his hand a hearty shake. “Congratulations.”
“Let’s wait until it actually happens, shall we?” Watkins muttered. “With all these cost-cutting measures, they’ll probably decide they can’t afford to promote me.” He turned to Dai, the mechanic. “That’s why we’re down here. Cost-cutting measures again. They’re resurrecting old cars that should have been sent to the scrap heap years ago and we’ve been assigned this beauty. I take it it’s not going anywhere for a while, Dai?”
“You can say that again, Sergeant,” Dai said. “A proper mess, if you ask me. It’s going to cost them a fortune in new parts to get it back on the road. And you should see the rust in the chassis. You’ll be lucky if it doesn’t fall to pieces while you’re driving.”
“Thanks a lot. Very encouraging,” Watkins said. “Looks like we might have to ask Evans for a ride on the back of his motorbike after all.”
“You’re out of luck. I’m not taking it anywhere yet. I’ve got to sign up for training sessions first.”
“Training sessions?” Watkins chuckled. “What ar
e they going to do—start you out with training wheels? Our Tiffany could ride that thing. You should have seen her at the go-cart track at Rhyl the other day. Proper little speed queen she is. Am I glad she can’t get her driving license until she’s eighteen!” He put a hand on Evan’s shoulder. “We might as well get a cup of tea in the cafeteria then. Coming, boyo?”
“All right, why not?” Evan left the workshop with them and crossed the wet parking lot.
“Isn’t it supposed to be your day off today?” Glynis asked him. “I was planning to come up to see you, but then I looked at the duty roster and saw you were off.”
“I was supposed to be, but the chief inspector called me down here to tell me the wonderful news in person.”
“Wonderful news?” Glynis asked innocently.
“About my motorbike.”
“I gather you’re not too thrilled,” Watkins commented.
“I thought it might have been better news,” Evan said.
Watkins nodded. “It will come.”
“So what did you want to see me about, Glynis?” Evan asked, steering the conversation to safer areas.
“You know about youth hostels and things, don’t you?” she said. “I thought you could help me. I’ve got to put up flyers in all the local youth hostels. We’re trying to locate a missing girl.”
“Staying at a local youth hostel?”
Glynis shook her head. “No idea. She’s an American college student, doing some kind of course at Oxford University. The course finished before Christmas. She called her parents and said she’d like to stay on over here and do some traveling before she went home. She promised she’d be home by Easter, in time for her spring term at university over there. Her parents haven’t heard anything since February and she didn’t show up for Easter. They’re worried sick, naturally, and they’ve come over to look for her.”
“What makes them think she’s been around here?”
“Her last postcard said she was going to Wales. That’s all they’ve got to go on.”
