Simeon's Bride

by Alison G. Taylor

  ‘1793. I’m answering your question, McKenna. She’s been here since 1793, or thereabouts.’ Dr Roberts knelt by the body, looking up.

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’ McKenna demanded. ‘If you can’t tell us how many months the other one’s been hanging around, how can you possibly say how many years this one’s been here?’

  Dr Roberts stood up, brushing soil from the knees of his trousers. He climbed out of the trench, assisted by Jack. ‘It’s Rebekah, listed on official documents as “Wife of Simeon the Jew”. Close your mouth, Michael!’ he said. ‘You’ll swallow a fly if you’re not careful, then you’ll be like that old lady who had to swallow a spider to catch the fly.’ He surveyed McKenna speculatively. ‘Be interesting doing an autopsy on you after you’d swallowed the horse, wouldn’t it?’

  Jack giggled. McKenna glared at him and the doctor. ‘Are you having a bit of fun at my expense?’ he demanded.

  ‘No, I’m not. Straight up, this is, in your criminal parlance.’ Dr Roberts removed his surgical gloves. ‘After you’d told me that yarn the other day, I went to look in the archives in Caernarfon. It’s all there, word for word as you heard it. This is your Rebekah, final resting place finally found. It actually says “Resting place unknown” in the records. What a thing, eh? They’ll be able to fill in the gaps and draw a line under that story now. She’ll have to have a proper funeral, of course. Wonder who’ll arrange that?’ he asked. ‘Wouldn’t be quite right just to throw her into an unmarked grave and toss quicklime on her, would it? She’s a bit of history.’

  ‘Will you be cutting her up?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Oh, most certainly.’ Dr Roberts surveyed the body. ‘Very interesting it’ll be, as well. I’ve never had occasion to autopsy an executed criminal before. They’d abolished the death penalty before I started practising, you know. Be able to see how efficient they were in those days, won’t I?’ he added, sneaking a look at McKenna.

  ‘I think you’ve got something wrong with you, I really do,’ McKenna told him. ‘You treat these poor devils like specimens or something!’

  ‘Well, this one at least is a bit academic, so to speak, isn’t she?’

  ‘Are you really sure it’s Rebekah, Dr Roberts?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Look for yourselves,’ he invited. ‘Come on, McKenna, there’s no need to be squeamish. She won’t bite.’

  ‘Not all of us share your ghoulish interest in corpses,’ McKenna snapped. ‘How can you be so sure it’s this Rebekah?’

  ‘She’s virtually mummified,’ the pathologist said. ‘Comes from being in ground like this. If she’d been put anywhere else, she’d be nothing but dust by now.’ He turned to the four men waiting silently in the trench. ‘Let’s move her, shall we? And make sure you put all those bits of fabric in with her. I want those.’

  Jack and the pathologist walked together to the parked cars and the mortuary van, McKenna in front, but close enough to hear the pathologist’s conversation. ‘D’you know, Jack, after the riots at Strangeways Prison, they had to dig up the burial ground for the new extensions,’ he was saying. ‘Took nearly forty bodies out of there, and gave them a proper Christian burial.’

  ‘Who were they?’ Jack wanted to know.

  ‘About fifty years’ worth of executions, if not more. I’ve got some details on it at home, if you’d care to have a read. Who they were, why they were topped, when….’

  McKenna left them gossiping by the vehicles, and walked a little way into the woods. Darkness closed about him and, within a few paces, he was out of sight and earshot of the others, surrounded by whispering silence. Hopeless, of course, to expect to find the man he had seen, or follow the way he had gone. The familiar smell of rotting leaves and damp filled his mouth and nose. He stood for a while, trying to look through the trees, then turned to go back to the others, and knew a moment’s panic when he thought he might be lost. Only headlights glimmering at the edge of the wood as one of the cars set off up the track showed him the way out.

  Rebekah’s pitiful remains lay on the autopsy table in the hospital mortuary, denuded now of the scraps of cloth which had hung from her shrivelled flesh. Looking at her, Dr Roberts felt it would be almost sacrilege to cut into her, as if destroying a little of his own history with a few strokes of the scalpel.

  Emrys stood beside him. ‘D’you really think we ought to, Doctor?’ he asked. ‘Two hundred years you said she’d been there. Why are we doing this?’

  ‘We’re doing it for several reasons, Emrys, one of which is scientific research,’ Dr Roberts said. ‘Another one is simple curiosity, and the fact, of course, if she’d been left on the gibbet like they usually were instead of being carted off by her hubby, the powers-that-be would’ve cut her up at the time, so they could certify how she died.’

  ‘Pretty obvious, I’d’ve thought.’

  ‘Procedure, Emrys…. You can’t say for sure how a body died unless you cut it up, even if you were the one who killed it.’ He picked up a scalpel, and fingered its blade thoughtfully. ‘Anyway, despite what I told McKenna, we really do need to make sure this body is as old as I think, and therefore who I think.’

  ‘Even if it’s as old as that, you can’t be sure it’s Rebekah.’

  ‘Well, no. But who else is she likely to be? Eh?’ He placed the scalpel at the throat, whilst Emrys held the twisted limbs and trunk as straight as possible. The doctor laughed. ‘Let’s hope it is Rebekah, Emrys. McKenna’ll have a blue fit if any more corpses turn up round there, especially one’s that’ve been hung!’

  Jack and Emma lay side by side, gazing up at the bedroom ceiling, watching patterns flow across sculpted plaster as moonlight beyond the uncurtained window fled back and forth behind scudding cloud.

  ‘What d’you think Michael and Denise are doing now, Jack?’ Emma asked, her voice soft.

  ‘Not what we’ve just been doing, that’s for sure!’ His teeth gleamed wolfishly in the silvery light.

  ‘Don’t be so crude!’ Emma exclaimed. ‘I was being serious.’

  ‘Sorry, love.’ Jack was still smiling to himself. ‘Why are you bothered, anyway?’

  ‘They’re our friends, in a way,’ Emma said. ‘At least, Denise is my friend.’

  Jack sighed. ‘McKenna’s been in a hellish mood all day. People are beginning to talk.’

  ‘Did you ask him what was wrong?’

  ‘Not my business, really, is it?’ Jack said. ‘We don’t have the sort of relationship where I can go barging in asking personal questions.’

  Emma put her arm across his chest, twisting the wiry dark hairs in her fingers. ‘People need to have friends to talk to. Denise has got me and her sisters.’

  ‘She’s all right then, isn’t she?’ Jack snapped, and turned over, his back to Emma.

  Chapter 8

  ‘Oh, SHIT!’

  ‘Jack, please!’ Emma flashed a warning glance in the direction of the twins.

  ‘What’s up?’ one of the girls asked. ‘Who was that on the phone, Mummy?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Mummy! You’ve been talking to yourself again!’ Both girls erupted in a fit of giggles.

  Jack slapped his hand on the table. ‘That’s enough! Get ready for school. Now!’

  The twins rose from the table and went into the hall to gather books and bags and coats. Jack heard them muttering and laughing, lost as usual in their own world.

  ‘Are you taking them to school or should they get the bus?’ Emma asked.

  ‘They can go for the bus. They’re quite old enough.’

  ‘Don’t take it out on them, Jack. It’s not their fault.’ Emma went after her children, fussing about raincoats and the weather, and money for lunch and bus fares. The front door slammed, footsteps skittered along the garden path. Emma returned to the kitchen and slumped in her chair.

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ Jack demanded. ‘What exactly did Denise say?’

  ‘She said Michael told
her he’s leaving her. Just like that, completely out of the blue.’ Shock still tarnished Emma’s voice. ‘She wants me to go round right away.’

  ‘Why? What are you supposed to do about it?’ Jack asked. ‘Anyway, it’s hardly out of the blue, is it? What else did you expect?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know!’ Emma was distressed, and it angered Jack that other people’s dramas, their selfishness, should intrude on his own family.

  ‘Em, there’s nothing to be done.’ He touched her hand. ‘They’ve got to sort out their own problems.’

  ‘I know … I know,’ Emma said. ‘But I can’t just leave her in the lurch. She’ll be relying on me.’

  ‘To hold her hand, I suppose,’ Jack observed. ‘And agree that her husband’s a rotten miserable bastard!’

  ‘Please!’ Emma cried. ‘Michael’s been a bit brutal. You can’t deny that.’

  He stood up. ‘I’m going to work, Em. God knows what state McKenna’ll be in,’ he said. ‘And if you want my opinion, I think Denise is up the wall because it wasn’t her decision.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Oh, use your brains, Em. She wanted to leave him, have a big drama,’ Jack said. ‘Be centre stage in the big dramatic role of the wronged wife. He’s really taken the wind out of her sails, hasn’t he? Cut her right down to size …’ he added. ‘Well, she could still have her starring part; all she needs to do is change the words a bit, become the abandoned wife. Serves her right, if you ask me!’

  ‘I wasn’t asking you!’ Emma snapped. ‘You’re getting to be as cruel and nasty as he is!’

  Dewi Prys hunched over the computer in the CID office.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Jack asked.

  Dewi looked up. ‘Morning, sir. Mr McKenna had one of his brainwaves. He’s like a dog with two tails this morning.’ Dewi grinned. ‘You remember we had the name of a bloke who lived at the address where this Ms Cheney was supposed to be? Well anyway, Mr McKenna’s told me to put that name – it’s Allsopp – through all the missing persons on the list to see if it matches.’

  ‘And does it?’ Jack wondered how McKenna could possibly be in a good mood.

  ‘Dunno yet, but I haven’t been at it long. Keep our fingers crossed, eh, sir?’ He punched more keys, and gazed at the screen. Jack decided to leave him to it.

  ‘Sir!’ Dewi called out. ‘Sir, Mr McKenna said to remind you the Press conference is at half ten.’

  ‘Where is the chief inspector, Prys?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir. He was talking to the superintendent last time I saw him.’

  ‘This is sad news, Michael,’ Owen Griffiths said. ‘Are you sure there’s no other way?’

  ‘No point in prolonging the agony, is there?’

  ‘I suppose not….’ The superintendent sighed. ‘I don’t know, Michael … the number of times I hear of policemen’s marriages going down the drain, and often, there’s no reason you can lay a finger on.’

  ‘Not much point in looking for reasons,’ McKenna said crisply. ‘These things happen. I told Denise I’d move out as soon as possible.’

  ‘Then why not take the day off to look for somewhere? Jack can deal with the Press. Nothing much to tell them, anyway.’

  Questions, McKenna realized: Jack would ask questions, would want to know why routines were disrupted, set plans thrown to the winds. There would be intrusions into his privacy, and gossip; others would know of this most private thing, and speculate. Denise would talk to her friends and family and Emma Turtle; her family would whisper and make judgements and spread their mischief through the chapel grapevine, and Emma would talk to Jack.

  ‘Michael?’

  ‘Yes, Owen?’

  ‘People are bound to talk. But it’ll be nothing more than a nine days’ wonder…. What’re you going to do about Jack? He’s bound to know from your Denise telling his Emma.’

  McKenna sat on a wooden bench in the Bible Garden, under a huge horse-chestnut tree, its candles still green among brilliant emerald leaves tossing in the wind. Gorgeous weather, blustery and warm, promised enough to lift the dourest of spirits. Waiting to meet an estate agent to view a house to let, he felt light-headed, detached, as if making a decision had taken away an intolerable burden. Still anaesthetized, he knew pain and doubt would come later.

  The garden, laid out, according to the plaque by its wrought-iron gates, ‘For Your Pleasure’ by one Tatham Whitehead, nestled below the cathedral yard. Had Tatham been a man or a woman? McKenna wondered idly, picturing a goodly Puritan fellow, pounding the pulpit in chapels across the land, intent on saving the lawless Welsh from themselves. And where had it got Tatham? Same place as everyone else in the end: mouldering bones, flesh gone to the worms and grubs. Nothing mattered, McKenna decided. His own little tragedy was nothing, a speck of dust on the winds of time, having no memorial, except in his own heart while he still lived. No one would come this way in a hundred years time and say, ‘Oh, yes, Michael McKenna sat under this tree the day after he told his wife he was leaving her.’ Neither pleasure nor pain would he leave behind him, no green shoots to delight the eye as Tatham had.

  A fat tabby cat crossed the path, stood eyeing McKenna, its pupils tiny slits in the sunshine. He smiled. The cat stared a while longer, then moved on about its mysterious business.

  Pleased with himself for his professional touches at the Press conference, Jack could not suppress a smile at the memory of television cameras almost constantly focusing on his own face.

  ‘Stop preening,’ Eifion Roberts said. ‘Where’s Michael? He should’ve been there.’

  ‘Gone off somewhere.’

  ‘Stop hedging. What’s happened?’

  ‘Only what you predicted,’ Jack said, relief mingling with the reluctance to talk. ‘He’s told Denise he’s leaving her.’

  ‘Doesn’t let any grass grow under his feet, does he?’ Dr Roberts said admiringly. ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘Denise rang Emma first thing this morning.’

  The pathologist fiddled with the paper clips on Jack’s desk, shoving aside papers and reports to find enough to make a chain.

  ‘Stop that, will you? You’re getting on my nerves,’ Jack said.

  ‘Sorry, SIR!’ Eifion Roberts saluted. ‘Can’t have you upset as well, can we? Where’s McKenna gone off to?’

  ‘I don’t know. He spoke to the superintendent, then disappeared.’

  ‘Oh, well, he’ll turn up. Don’t expect we’ll have any call to go fishing his body out of the Straits,’ the pathologist observed. ‘He’s made of sterner stuff.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Suicide. I’m saying Michael’s not likely to do himself in. Won’t throw himself off Menai Bridge, even if things are a bit lousy at the moment.’

  ‘I never for one moment imagined he would!’

  ‘Exactly. I’m agreeing with you,’ Dr Roberts smiled. ‘When you see him, tell him I found a mummified little foetus in poor Rebekah’s tum, will you? Obviously didn’t have any qualms about hanging expectant mums in those days.’

  Unlike the elusive Ms Cheney, McKenna paid six months’ rent by cheque, on a narrow three-storey house set in a terrace on a mountainous street overlooking the city, and bought himself a hiding place, a respite wrapped around with old-fashioned comfort. From his windows, he could look to Puffin Island in the east, to the lego blocks of the new hospital far over to the west. Menai Straits glittered in noonday sunshine, a huge dredger unloading its cargo of sand far away at the old port. Immediately beyond a tiny back garden, the land fell sharply to the back yards of High Street shops, small patchworks where nature ran amok over ancient outbuildings. Ash and rowan trees grew on the slope, their branches dipping and swaying in the wind. A scruffy cat crouched on the slate wall dividing the house from next door, its black and white coat dusty and unkempt.

  Jack wandered back and forth from his office to the general office, badgering Dewi for information the computer could not yield. No one named Alls
opp had disappeared anywhere, at any time; nothing was forthcoming about the clothing and belt taken from the dead woman; no one called to claim her as their missing wife or daughter or sister or niece. He fidgeted with files and pieces of paper, and breathed a sigh of relief when McKenna walked through the door.

  ‘You OK, sir?’ Jack asked, and regretted the words as soon as they were spoken.

  McKenna nodded. ‘I wondered if you’d do me a favour?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ve rented a house on Caellepa,’ McKenna said. ‘I could do with some help moving in. How are you fixed for Saturday?’

  ‘Fine. No problem,’ Jack said. ‘Emma and the twins are off to this big wedding, and Em’ll twist my arm to go with them if I don’t have a good excuse.’

  ‘Denise is going,’ McKenna said, his eyes opaque behind the spectacles. ‘It’s the daughter of the revered chairman of our police authority. Councillor Williams, CBE.’

  ‘I know. Big chapel do, all the trimmings.’ Jack grimaced. ‘Not my idea of a fun day out….’ He looked up. ‘Williams hasn’t got a CBE, has he?’

  ‘Yes he has.’ McKenna smiled. ‘Chairman of Bloody Everything! You should go and shake the man’s hand, get matey with him. Tell him how beautiful his daughter is, even though she’s like the side of a house. Could do your career no end of good.’

  Jack laughed. ‘Brought her down to earth, did it? With an almighty crash, I hope!’

  ‘You’re horrible!’ Emma had tears in her eyes again. ‘Denise was only trying to protect herself. Then the solicitor said she probably wouldn’t get a penny maintenance and she’d have to sell the house. It’s not fair,’ Emma railed. ‘It’s not right! He’s walking out. Not her.’

  ‘What d’you expect him to do?’ Jack demanded. ‘Stay with the miserable bitch, or spend the rest of his life letting her bleed him dry? Some choice, I don’t think.’

  ‘What choice has he given her?’ Emma snapped. ‘And don’t call Denise a miserable bitch! She’s my friend.’