He’s not angry really – knows I couldn’t have done otherwise – just wants to vent.
I say, ‘Bethan Williams.’
He stares at me, says nothing.
I go on: ‘Because, you see, I could say something a bit similar to you. The file on the Bethan Williams case tells us that the guy co-ordinating the search teams back then was one DS Alun Burnett. And if I were you, I’d have been wondering if the unknown dead girl of Ystradfflur was in any way related to the missing presumed dead girl of Llanglydwen. I’d probably have been thinking that even more, given that the dead girl of Ystradffur appears to have spent time in Llanglydwen a mere day or two before her death. What’s more, I’d probably have thought about sharing those thoughts with a keen young detective sergeant from South Wales who was trailing around with me at the time.’
Burnett lowers his eyebrows, till his eyes almost vanish. If the eyes are windows to the soul, then these are gun-slits.
‘The two cases,’ he says. ‘They’re not related.’
‘Missing girls. Same area. One dead, the other presumed dead.’
‘One local girl, a hay merchant’s daughter. The other one some Ukrainian trillionaire. That’s hardly the same.’
I don’t say anything, but my face doesn’t agree.
Burnett waits for me to crumple before his great inspectorial authority but, when the crumple fails to happen, says, ‘With Bethan Williams, we basically know who the perpetrator was. We didn’t have enough to bring a prosecution, but that doesn’t mean the guy wasn’t guilty.’
‘No body. No weapon. No confession. No evidence. That’s a Dyfed-Powys thing, is it?’
Burnett taps rapidly on the table. If he were in his office in Carmarthen, he’d be up, prowling around, fiddling with coffee mugs and drumming at the window. I wonder if it’s humane to keep him here, out of his natural habitat.
Eventually he comes to a decision. ‘The file. I assume you’ve read it?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK. Going on what that says, I’d think the same as you. I’d think, Len Roberts, yes probably guilty, but we can’t prove it, so we have to say we don’t really know. But the file doesn’t tell you what happened, not really.’
‘And if it did?’ I whisper.
‘Look, this is the Breacon Beacons,’ says Burnett. ‘Home of the Who Dares Wins brigade.’
Who Dares Wins: the motto of the Special Air Service, the country’s elite Special Forces unit. The corps is headquartered just over the border in Hereford, but the countryside there is all a bit orchardy and gentle for the games those folks like to play, so they use the Brecon Beacons as their primary training ground.
‘OK.’
‘And it so happens that Bethan Williams goes missing just around the time that the SAS have a couple of platoons engaged on a survival and evasion training module. Right there, in the hills up around Llanglydwen. Now, we don’t have some kind of special hotline telling us what those boys are up to. And vice versa. They don’t know what we’re doing. So for maybe twenty-four hours, thirty-six even, we’re doing our stuff – looking for the Williams girl, going house to house, all of that – and they’re up on the hills doing theirs.
‘Anyway. It turns out that, back in Hereford, one of those SAS boys actually lives in the real world, because he hears about Bethan Williams on the news and thinks, hang on a bit, we’ve got two dozen of the country’s finest on the hills around that damn valley, maybe we could help out.
‘So. Conversations start. They agree to turn their survival exercise into something of practical value. They start looking out for us. They’ve got nightscopes, cameras, God knows what. And, of course, those boys are expert in camouflage and evasion and all that. They’ll find you, but you’ll never find them.’
Burnett stops, although his story isn’t finished.
I say, guessing, ‘They didn’t find anything. Bethan Williams never left the valley.’
‘Correct.’
‘But maybe she left before the SAS started looking. Maybe she just got fed up living at home, hopped on a bus to London, and was a hundred miles gone before anyone put out an alert.’
‘That’s what you’d think. What we thought. Except those boys on the hills had already collected a whole lot of pictures during their S&E exercise. They passed everything to us. We analysed it and – bam!’
‘Bam what?’ I say. ‘Bam who?’
‘Bam, footage of Len Roberts with Bethan Williams. Crossing a field up to some woods, at night. That was at a point where we’d already sealed off the roads. The SAS lads were all over the hills. There was no exit from the valley. None. Because of the communications issues right at the start of our whole co-operation process – you know, just boring things, like getting new instructions out to their units, getting their pictures downloaded and analysed – it meant we saw the pictures of Roberts and Williams too late to do anything.
‘Obviously, as soon as we saw the images, we grabbed Roberts and jumped on him hard. But it was at least sixteen hours after the pictures had been taken. He told us nothing, and those sixteen hours would have given him plenty of time to rape, kill and bury that girl. We kept watching the whole damn valley. Hills, roads, everything, for another two weeks just in case. Did the last week in total blackout, so it looked to every ordinary person like we’d just packed up and gone away. If the girl had just been holed up somewhere, waiting to run, she’d have run then. And she didn’t. Because Roberts had killed her.’
I nod.
Roberts is a countryman, of course, and one who knows that valley and those hills better than anyone. If it was just a question of him having the skills to evade the SAS – well, you’d have to allow the possibility. But taking Bethan Williams with him? A girl who didn’t really like those wilder country things? Not a chance.
I say, ‘And the file? The one I read. It’s because those SAS boys . . .’
‘Like to stay very well under the radar? Yes. Those files basically carry a truthful account of the case, except that they make no mention of SAS involvement. But they were there all right and they’re how we know that Roberts was the perpetrator.’
I balance all this out in my mind. It makes sense of why that file felt a bit phoney. It felt that way because it was phoney. A careful balance of truth and discretion.
And on the whole, yes, you’d have to say that Roberts was the most likely villain: the odds would certainly point in that direction. I can see that, yes, Dyfed-Powys were right not to attempt prosecution. They just had too little to go on. But I also think that, no, the evidence doesn’t prove what Burnett wants it to prove. The evidence only actually proves those things that Roberts has never denied: that he was close to Bethan, that she trusted him, that he sometimes prowls that valley at night.
We coppers like to have facts we can fit together. This man, that crime scene, this piece of DNA. Bish, bash, bosh. Evidence so tight there’s no wiggle room.
And here – well, the wiggle room, like it or not, is there. The facts almost, but don’t quite, prove a case.
I say, ‘You didn’t know she was some Ukrainian trillionaire when we found her. Roberts must have flashed up as a possibility then.’
‘Yes. But she hadn’t been interfered with. There hadn’t been violence. Those things didn’t sit with the Roberts/Williams case. And – ’ he wrinkles his face and narrows his eyes, the classic warning signs of impending Polician Humour – ‘she was clean. Clean and tidy. Roberts couldn’t have achieved that outcome even if he’d wanted to.’
That makes a kind of sense I suppose, even if I’m still pissed off with Burnett for holding back on me.
We fall into silence.
Burnett prowls. Mutters, ‘Wish they’d get a bloody move on.’
The office is mostly empty. An empty whiteboard. A window. Desk, chair, phone. And the phone rings. We both stare at it.
I pick up.
It’s the front desk. Telling us that the Mishchenkos have arrived. That they’re being d
irected down to the interview rooms.
I say OK. Hang up. Burnett stares a question at me.
I say, ‘We’re on.’
His grumbly discontent fades into a half-smile.
I say, ‘Time to beat up a couple of millionaire Ukrainians. Dyfed-Powys versus South Wales. Bet you we can hit harder.’
Burnett grins. ‘Who’s on the South Wales team? Who am I up against?’
I show him. Me. Five foot two inches of raw South Wales power.
Burnett laughs softly and play-punches me on the shoulder. It’s a push more than a hit and he doesn’t use his full strength, or anything like it. Even so, the force of the blow shoves me against the wall and I have to put out both hands to avoid falling.
‘Dyfed-Powys against South Wales, sergeant? You’re on. You’re bloody on.’
19
The interview starts the way all interviews should: with nothing at all.
We gather behind one-way glass and simply watch.
Present on our side of the glass: Burnett, me and a couple of uniformed constables, one from Burnett’s force, one from ours. Those people, plus also Tomasz Kowalczyk, our man in the print room. Tomasz is a native Polish speaker, studied Russian at school and university and, though he has no actual grounding in Ukrainian, swears to us that the language is halfway between the two.
We’re taping everything, of course, and will get it all properly translated in due course, but for now Tomasz is a more than handy substitute.
After five minutes, he tells us, ‘They complain about the chairs.’
Seven minutes: ‘Also no window.’
Eleven minutes: ‘They not like waiting.’ He laughs. ‘Stupid Ukrainian fuckers.’
I’ve never heard Tomasz swear before and I’m not quite sure what to make of it now. Partly, it’s just excitement at being allowed out of the print room, but presumably too one of those dark, Slavic enmities. One of those things that originated when some medieval king slaughtered some other king’s peasants. Or vice versa. Or whatever.
Something that Welsh history is entirely free of, anyway.
At fifteen minutes, Burnett says, ‘OK, let’s do it.’
I say to the constable, the South Wales one, ‘Get them coffee. Interview coffee, not the real stuff. And get them swabbed.’
He scurries off. ‘Interview coffee’ means the rubbish sort. A thin, brown, artificial fluid in a plastic cup that keeps looking like it intends to cut and run.
The guy delivers the coffees. Produces a couple of cheek-swabbing kits and asks the two principals to supply specimens.
A brief flurry of Ukrainian.
Tomasz: ‘They not like. Want to know what is for.’
In the interview room, Anna Tymczyszyn – mid-thirties, clipped, uptight – says, ‘My clients would like to know the purpose of these swabs.’
The constable ignores the lawyer and addresses the parents. He speaks slowly, as though speaking to simpletons. ‘It’s for identification purposes. To confirm the identification already made.’
More Ukrainian. Tomasz listens darkly but says nothing.
Tymczyszyn consents to the swabs, but tries to stipulate what the data can and can’t be used for. The constable gives a that’s-above-my-pay-grade shrug and collects the swabs anyway.
Volodymyr says, ‘When will this thing start? We’ve been waiting twenty minute already.’
The constable says, ‘Two minutes. Literally. Just two minutes.’
We give them another five, then Burnett says, ‘Shall we?’ and we start for real.
We go in. Introductions. Terse non-apology for the delay.
Volodymyr: ‘You can tell us about our daughter? What is happened to her?’
Burnett: ‘Yes.’
I get out a notepad and pens. ‘Sorry. Some boring preliminaries.’ Roll my eyes. ‘Can I have your full names, please?’
Take their names, ask them to spell them out, letter by letter. The name of their daughter. Their sons. Dates of birth. Place of birth. The three kids are born in Kiev, but the two parents were born out of town and I make them spell out their birth-towns letter by letter, make a mistake, then do it all over again.
‘Sorry.’
Passport numbers. The Cyrillic lettering confuses me and I take the wrong number and have to redo it.
‘Sorry.’
Burnett, who’s starting to enjoy this, calls for someone to take a copy of the passports. It takes two minutes for our guy to come back – he’s still behind the glass with Kowalczyk, and under strict instructions to do nothing fast. When he arrives, he takes the passports, tells us that the copier is broken but he’ll see if he can find one that’s working.
I make a kind of eek expression and mouth the word, Sorry.
Do that, then, timidly smiling, ask, ‘Was your flight over OK?’
Olexandra turns to her husband and says something in low, rapid Ukrainian. He doesn’t shift his glance from us, but does say, ‘We have come here, very open, very fast, because you have information for us. If you need passport and DNA, is OK too. But we do ask you tell us your informations. For many week, my wife is very fearing and now we just want to know everything.’
Burnett: ‘Very open? Good. Let’s start with that, shall we? In fact, let’s start right from the beginning, if we can. When did you last see your daughter, Mrs Mishchenko?’
Glance at husband, then: ‘At the end of September. The twenty-eight.’
‘Where?’
‘At home in London. We had a farewell supper. Volodymyr and I were leaving next day for Ukraine.’
‘Without your daughter?’
‘She is twenty-three. She has her own life.’ Her lips move as she realises that she got her tense wrong, but can’t bring herself to correct it.
‘So she didn’t accompany you. What did she do?’
Quick little shrug. A glance upwards and sideways.
‘She stays with friend in London. Then they go to Southampton. Idea is they stay on a . . .’
Olexandra doesn’t find the word that she wants, says it in Ukrainian, and makes a rocking motion with her hand.
I say, ‘Yacht? She boarded a yacht?’
Volodymyr, wanting to take control, says, ‘Correct. Yacht is belonging to a good friend, very safe.’ Olexandra, relieved to pass the burden to her husband, sits back. Touches the string of pearls at her neck.
Burnett doesn’t accept the buck-pass. Directing himself still to Olexandra, he asks for the name of the friend in London. The address. The phone number. How many days Alina stayed there. Whether there was phone contact during that time. When Alina moved on to Southampton. Whose car they went in. Who owned the yacht. The name of the yacht. The name of the owner. The name of the skipper. Who else was on board. Names. Contact information. Any phone details.
Olexandra speaks. I take notes.
We don’t go gentle. On the one hand, these are grieving parents and we need to act respectfully. On the other hand, these are parents who never reported their daughter missing and who, far from pouring out their unhappy tale to our open ears, seem unnaturally guarded and strategic about what information they care to give us. If they are withholding something – and it seems clear that they are – we’d be derelict if we didn’t work hard to get the information.
Because tired and irritated people are more likely to spill whatever it is they’re trying to hold on to, I allow my fumbles and misunderstandings to continue. Once, irritated, Olexandra reaches for my notepad and says, ‘Here. I can write.’
Burnett raises his eyebrows to their maximum extent and says, ‘You want to write? Do you want to conduct this interview? May I remind you, we’re only in this situation because we didn’t get a phone call telling us when your daughter went missing.’
He pushes his chair back and offers Olexandra the chance to swap places.
She looks tearful – has actual tears in her eyes – and throws a pleading look at Tymczyszyn. Mutters something in Ukrainian.
Tymczyszyn
says, ‘My clients are here of their own free will. Please, you have promised to share your information with us. My clients are understandably anxious and they had a long flight to be here with you. My clients want to be as helpful as possible, but they do ask for whatever further information you can offer.’
‘For example?’
A quick rat-a-tat-tat of Ukrainian, then, ‘Was Alina interfered with? Had she been sexually molested?’
‘No. Not that we could tell, and certainly not shortly prior to her death.’
‘But she was murdered?’
An interesting question that. I feel the sideways dart of Burnett’s eyes at me, but he addresses Olexandra.
‘Mrs Mishchenko, may I ask why you are assuming murder?’
She flicks her eyes at her husband, who says, ‘Our daughter was missing. We were very concerned. We fear the worst.’
Burnett says, enumerating possibilities on his thick fingers, ‘Car accident. Heart attack. Drug overdose. Falling off a yacht. Joined a cult. Run away with a new boyfriend. Oh, I don’t know, lightning strike, we’ve had those before.’ He watches the two parents and lets the room swell with silence. ‘Yet you assumed murder. Why?’
Volodymyr starts to speak, but Burnett interrupts him.
‘Mrs Mishchenko?’
In a tiny voice, she says, ‘We don’t assume. Just worry.’
Burnett nods, like that was a sensible answer. ‘Ah, yes. You were worried, so you naturally assumed your daughter was murdered.’ Again, he lets the silence expands. Only cuts it off when he sees Tymczyszyn about to leap in.
‘Mr and Mrs Mishchenko, your daughter was not murdered. She had a lung condition which placed a strain on her heart. She may well have felt some breathlessness, perhaps a little chest pain. Then, I’m afraid, there was a complete failure of the right ventricle. Death would have been very swift and, I expect, completely painless.’
There’s a quick exchange between husband and wife. Some look, definitely, of surprise, even perplexity. Then more rapid-fire Ukrainian. Then Tymczyszyn comes back with her line about her clients being present of their own free will and listing a whole host of further questions.
The Dead House: Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller (Book 5) (Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller Series) Page 14
