Simeon's Bride

by Alison G. Taylor

  ‘I called to tell you to enjoy your holiday, not to be interrogated. And if you have questions like that to ask me, I suggest you ask them when you can’t be overheard by Jack and Emma Tuttle and probably their daughters as well!’ McKenna’s angry words, muffled behind the office door, reached Dewi as he stood in the corridor. He waited until the telephone rattled into its cradle, then knocked at the door.

  ‘I didn’t see Mary Ann, sir. She was out.’

  ‘Then you’d better sit on her doorstep until she comes back. I want her interviewed tonight.’

  ‘I saw John Beti.’

  ‘So what d’you want? A medal?’

  ‘No sir. I thought you might want to know.’

  ‘I’m not interested in John Jones. I’m interested in what Mary Anne’s got to say. So go back to the village and find out.’

  Dewi reached the supermarket as the minute hand on the town clock raced towards 5.30. Pushing past the fat youth in a blue overall about to lock the plate-glass doors, he rushed to the checkout, where the blonde girl sat behind her till, cashing up the day’s takings. When she smiled his heart leapt to his throat, cutting off the words, because she was suddenly very beautiful. Like her name, he thought, walking on clouds back to the yard behind the police station, keys and coins jangling in his pocket. Her name was Arianwen: it meant pure silver, and she wanted to spend all day Sunday with him.

  No light glowed behind the windows of Mary Ann’s cottage, no smoke curled from her chimney into the deepening blue of a May dusk. A little worried that she might have had an accident, Dewi made his way round to the back yards of the row, shining his torch through the windows of lean-to kitchen and back parlour before meandering along the lane and down the path towards Beti’s cottage, torchlight dancing before him, midges rising and whirling under the trees. Branches creaked and cracked under the weight of rooks and crows settling to their roost, he heard an owl call softly in the distance. Beyond the wall, mist billowed through crooked gravestones and twisted trees, drifting upwards to wrap itself into foliage and branches, making more ghosts to haunt the village night.

  Standing by the broken gate at the bottom of Beti Gloff’s garden, Dewi thought her dwelling like a fairytale cottage, hidden in the woods, hiding all manner of nightmare and terrifying magic. Light burnt dim behind ragged curtains, smoke rose mean from the chimney, and through the stillness and the whispering trees, he heard a whimpering, the stifled yelp of an animal in pain. Tangles of thorn and nettle snatching at his trouser legs, he stole up the path and sidled to the front door, leaning so close the smell of hot sun lingering in old wood burnt his throat. He listened to gasping breath and rhythmic squeals and the rasping undertones of a woman’s voice mouthing ugly words, and took hold of the door knob, stumbling into the room as the door swung inwards under his weight.

  Dirty dishes, the detritus of feeding, lay upon the kitchen table, newspapers spotted with grease stains and jam folded carelessly amidst crumbs and crusts of old bread tipped from its wrapping. A knife stabbed a lump of runny butter in a cracked dish, a fly crawled up and down a wedge of yellow cheese and hopped on to the butter. A spider hung upside down from the lamp above the table, its legs curled about its body, casting a huge shadow over table and floor and the two figures moving like animals in the lee of the table. Beti Gloff knelt on rough stone flags, her hands splayed before her, fingers scrabbling in the dirt, tethered by the neck to a table leg, clothes slung over her humped back and grotesque face, mounted like a bitch in heat by her husband, whose urgent whimperings had brought Dewi to their door. The tether jerked and slackened with each convulsion of the old woman’s body: dark greasy leather writhing and leaping, the buckle tinkling and scratching on the flagstones. Dewi stared at the buckle, mesmerized and horrified, unable to shut eyes or ears to the beastly coupling, while each time the buckle hit the floor, a little more dirt and tarnish was scoured from the two faces of the Roman god.

  ‘Has Beti made a complaint?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘No, sir,’ Dewi mumbled.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She didn’t say anything.’ Dewi fidgeted with his notebook. ‘She waited until that dirty little bugger finished with her, pulled her drawers up and her skirt down, untied herself and went to sit by the fire.’ He shuddered. ‘She didn’t even look at me. You’d’ve thought I wasn’t there.’

  ‘What else could the poor bitch do?’ McKenna said. ‘I can understand why you were worried, but you shouldn’t have gone in.’

  ‘The curtains were shut, sir. I honestly thought an animal was hurt … the last time I heard that noise was when a dog got run over outside our house, and it lay in the gutter crying while it died.’

  ‘People call it a little death,’ McKenna said. ‘I suppose it is for a man….’ He poked a pen at the wreath of silver laurel leaves around the finely wrought head of Janus. ‘And I suppose you must report how you found this belt.’

  ‘Everybody’ll know about Beti and that bastard if I do, sir. Can’t I say I recognized it earlier?’

  ‘Everybody except us probably knows already,’ McKenna said. ‘And you can’t afford to suppress the facts to spare either her sensibilities or your own.’ He again nudged the buckle with his pen. ‘I don’t know how John Jones got his hands on this, but it certainly wasn’t a present from Robert Allsopp, and we’re likely in for a long session trying to find out, because I don’t think he’s suddenly going to give us chapter and verse.’

  ‘No!’ Jack shouted into the telephone. ‘You are not interrupting my dinner. I’m not getting any dinner, am I? Unless I cook it myself.’

  ‘Is – er – my wife still there?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘No, she isn’t. And neither is my wife,’ Jack seethed. ‘They’ve gone out for a drink. What are things coming to? You wouldn’t credit the way your life can just fall apart in front of your eyes. House like a bloody bomb-site with all the stuff your Denise brought for this garage sale they’re going in for after the holiday; suitcases, books, underclothes, swimming costumes all over the place. You name it, it’ll be here somewhere, and the only thing I can’t find is something to eat.’

  ‘It’ll sort itself out, Jack. I daresay Emma’s rather over-excited. Come and share a canteen dinner with me,’ McKenna offered. ‘We might be able to provide a little after-dinner cabaret.’

  ‘How’s that, then?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ John Jones stumbled from his chair in the interview room, trouser waist bunched in his hand. ‘I’m not speaking to no fucking machine! Devil’s business, they are! Pinch your voice like photos steal your face.’ He sat down again, nowhere else to go in the room overcrowded by police officers and the solicitor on night call. He spat on the floor. ‘You coppers don’t know nothing about fucking nothing!’

  ‘Superstition, isn’t it?’ Dewi lounged against the wall, hands in pockets. ‘I shouldn’t think the Devil’d want even a smell of you, John Beti, let alone your voice. He’s not that hard up.’

  John Jones sneered, ‘You’ll learn, you bastard! Learn the hard way what some folks know already. And serve you fucking right!’ He turned on the solicitor, snarling, ‘And you can fuck off back where you came from. You’re not getting your greedy hands on my money!’

  ‘Oh, give it a rest!’ Dewi said. ‘This isn’t the first time you’ve been here for some evil-doing, and you know bloody well the brief comes for free.’

  ‘Does my client have a record?’ the solicitor asked.

  ‘For poaching salmon out of the river, pheasants off Vaynol Estate, and robbing half a ton of coal from the railway yard. That we know about,’ Dewi said.

  ‘Didn’t have no fucking money for food and coal, did I? What’s a body to do, then, Mr Clever Dickhead? Starve? Let his crippled wife go cold and hungry?’

  ‘My heart is bleeding,’ Dewi said. ‘You sold the salmon and pheasants and coal and spent most of the money down the Three Crowns and on the dogs.’ He stared at John Jones. ‘Pity you don’t think about your cripple
d wife and her welfare more often, isn’t it?’

  ‘Fucking bastard sticking your nose in where you’ve no right!’ John Jones raged. He rounded on McKenna. ‘Why’re you letting him bully me? Think I’m nothing but shit, don’t you?’

  ‘What else are you, then?’ Dewi demanded. ‘I reckon you’re the biggest lump of shit outside the biggest cesspit in Wales.’

  McKenna slammed his fist on the table. ‘Enough! Keep your mouth shut, Dewi Prys, unless you’ve something worth saying. And you, John Jones, can stop acting the fool!’ He switched on the tape recorder, holding the belt with its buckle for John Jones and his solicitor to see. ‘This unusual buckle matches the description of the buckle probably missing from the belt which bound Margaret Bailey’s hands. Perhaps Mr Jones would care to say how it came into his possession.’

  ‘None of your fucking business!’

  ‘May I remind you,’ McKenna said, ‘that this tape recording can be used in evidence. May I therefore suggest, Mr Jones, that you moderate your language.’

  ‘Mr McKenna’s telling you to stop swearing, John Beti,’ Dewi added.

  ‘And I heard him tell you to shut your fucking trap, Dewi Prys! So why don’t you?’

  ‘Mr Jones, will you please answer the questions put to you,’ the solicitor intervened. ‘In your own interests.’ He picked up the belt and scrutinized the buckle. ‘I wouldn’t imagine there’s another buckle like this in the whole of Wales, so without pre-empting any investigation or compromising the interview, if you refuse to answer, I can’t see the police have any choice but to charge you with the murder of Margaret Bailey.’

  John Jones face became a sickly grey mask. ‘I didn’t kill her! I found her body.’

  ‘We know that,’ McKenna said. ‘You came to tell us, didn’t you? Tell me, when did you first find her body? When did you first know she was dead in the woods?’

  Chapter 40

  ‘Her hands were tied up with the belt. I cut the buckle off. And that’s all I did.’ John Jones stared at the floor. ‘No use to her, was it?’

  ‘When did you cut if off?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘When I found her, didn’t I?’

  ‘And when did you find her?’

  ‘If I tell you, what’ll you do to me?’

  ‘Why don’t you tell us first, and we’ll see about that later,’ McKenna persuaded.

  Voice piteous, John Jones said, ‘Can I have a fag? I’m gasping.’

  McKenna gave one of his own cigarettes to the captive.

  ‘It was that fucking bitch, wasn’t it?’ He drew in a chestful of smoke.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her you’ve got banged up in the cells.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Killed her from Gallows Cottage, didn’t she?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘’Cos I fucking saw her, didn’t I?’ he snapped, spittle flying on to the table. ‘How the fuck else?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ McKenna said. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘They was having a row. All three of them.’

  ‘Which three was that, then?’

  ‘Her from the cottage, that bitch Stott, and Jamie Thief.’

  ‘And what were they rowing about?’

  ‘Dunno, do I?’

  ‘Oh, I think you do, Mr Jones,’ McKenna said. ‘I think you were probably listening.’

  ‘So what if I was? No fucking law against listening to folk rowing, is there?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’ McKenna almost smiled. ‘So what was the row about?’

  ‘Money, wasn’t it?’

  ‘And who was rowing about money?’

  ‘Bitch Stott was creating hell because the other one wouldn’t give her money for something or other. They’d been at it long before I got there.’

  ‘And Jamie?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘What was he doing there?’

  John Jones took another cigarette from McKenna’s packet on the table. ‘What d’you think he was doing there? Picking fucking daisies?’

  McKenna took the cigarette out of his mouth. ‘Listen to me, John Jones. Answer my questions. When I ask them. Why was Jamie there? What time of day was this row? What was the row about?’

  ‘They was rowing about money. I said.’ John Jones eyed the cigarette, still in McKenna’s fingers. ‘It was in the morning, earlyish.’

  ‘How early?’

  ‘About nine o’clock … bit later, maybe. I went past the cottage to the woods because my boss told me to clear some dead trees.’ John Jones spat. ‘Fucking English slave-driver making me cart wood like I’m some sodding peasant!’

  ‘There’s nothing demeaning about carrying wood,’ McKenna said. ‘After all, our Redeemer had to drag His own cross to Golgotha, didn’t He? Why was Jamie there?’

  ‘Jesus wept! D’you want a fucking diagram? He was at the cottage most nights she was there. He was screwing her, wasn’t he?’

  ‘And Mrs Stott?’

  ‘Suppose she got the early bus, or walked. I don’t know, do I? I never stopped to ask.’ He sniggered. ‘Maybe they was having a threesome.’

  McKenna put the cigarette down. ‘When was this? How long ago?’

  ‘Years, wasn’t it? Nearly four … November … Fucking cold and pissing down like usual.’

  ‘Early November? Mid? Late?’

  ‘Before Bonfire Night. The Rugby Club was having the dead trees for the bonfire.’

  ‘Good.’ McKenna offered a light. ‘See how much you can remember when you try? What happened next?’

  ‘They had a fight.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Bitch Stott and the Englishwoman.’ John Jones paused, savouring the taste of tobacco. ‘Jamie was screeching for them to stop, and they didn’t take a blind bit of notice … went at it hammer and fucking tongs. I heard the other one call bitch Stott bad names, saying she’d made that poncy husband queerer than he already was and turned her kid into a slag with all her goings on….’ He paused again. ‘Couldn’t make no fucking sense out of it, except the English one said she wouldn’t give Stott the dirt from under her fingernails after what she’d said and done. She told Stott to get off her fat ugly arse and get a job, because she wasn’t getting any more money off her.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And there was a horrible shriek and it all went quiet….’ He looked into McKenna’s eyes, his own dark with some pain. ‘Jamie comes rushing out, white like a fucking ghost, and throws up on the garden path.’

  The tape recorder began to whine. McKenna waited for Jack to replace the tape, listening to John Jones’s breath rattle in his scrawny chest. ‘You should give up the cigarettes.’

  John Jones ingnored him. ‘Stott comes waddling after Jamie and gets him round the neck like she’s going to choke the life out of him, and he’s screaming and trying to fight her off … she said if he didn’t help her, she’d tell you lot he’d killed the other one.’

  ‘Did they know you were there?’

  ‘Eh? Dunno … I was in the trees … Jamie goes back inside, comes out again, falling around like he’s drunk … into that lean-to and out wheeling a barrow, and Stott’s watching from the door….’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘They disappear inside the cottage … and come out again, and Jamie’s pushing the barrow, and bitch Stott’s pushing him down the path, like a fucking dog worrying sheep.’

  ‘What was in the barrow?’ McKenna asked quietly.

  ‘The English one … bundled in like a bag of old rubbish, her hand dragging on the stones and her head bumping and thumping on the path, hair getting all dirty….’ He shivered violently. ‘Can hear it now, I can!’ he whispered. ‘Fucking dream about it! Thump! Thump! You wouldn’t believe the noise on it.’

  ‘Was she dead?’

  John Jones stared at McKenna. He licked his lips and swallowed the taste on them, and stared again. ‘No,’ he said after a long silence.

  ‘How d’you know?’
/>   ‘She woke up, didn’t she?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Would you repeat that, please?’ McKenna asked. ‘Louder, so the tape recorder picks it up properly.’

  ‘I said,’ John Jones snapped, ‘she woke up!’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When Jamie Thief was pushing her into the woods … struggling and yelling and screaming, she was,’ John Jones said, his voice stricken with awe. ‘Knew what was happening, didn’t she?’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Bitch Stott pushes Jamie out of the way, and starts fighting with her….’ His voice sank away. ‘I couldn’t’ve done anything. I couldn’t’ve stopped them.’

  ‘Stopped what?’

  ‘The fighting … and the rest of it….’ The old man gulped on his cigarette. ‘Stott was a-pushing and a-shoving, screeching for the other one to shut her fucking gob, slapping her around … slip-slap over and again at her face, knocking her head this way and that … bodies all over the fucking shop, and the screaming and scriking and the fucking crows in the trees watching it all….’

  ‘What else did you see, John Jones?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘I dunno….’ He stared pleadingly at McKenna. ‘I dunno….’

  ‘I think you do. What did Mrs Stott do?’

  He sighed a weary breath. ‘Leaned on the other one, pushed her back in the barrow. She’s got arms like fucking shanks of ham, and she goes red in the face with the effort of it. The other one went quiet, and Jamie screamed and Stott fisted him in the face so hard he fell over….’

  ‘What about the belt?’

  ‘She made Jamie Thief do it, didn’t she? She pulled the belt off the Englishwoman, and held her down while Jamie strapped her hands up….’ He paused, tapping ash slowly from the end of his cigarette. ‘Then she grabbed a fistful of dirt and dead leaves off the ground, and stuffed them in the other one’s gob to shut her up from any more screaming … I didn’t see no more, and that’s the truth.’

  ‘When did you find the body?’

  ‘Two, three days after,’ John Jones muttered. The ashtray overflowed with cigarette stubs, its smell pungent in the stuffy room, seeping into clothing, weaving itself into hair, laying a greasy patina on to the skin.