Good People

by Ewart Hutton

  ‘I know the owner. I’m sure he won’t want to press charges.’

  ‘Someone was drunk in charge of a stolen minibus last night.’

  He pulled a fat face and shrugged.

  ‘Where are they?’ I asked.

  He leaned his face in towards mine, lowering his voice. ‘I know these people, Capaldi.’

  ‘If you haven’t been able to make contact with the owner yet, how did you come by the passenger list?’

  He flashed me a pitying smile. ‘We’re a small community. We know who the lucky bastards are who can get hold of tickets to a rugby international like that. And the operative word here is “community”. Sometimes you have to take the sensible line. I know them all, I can vouch for them personally: they’re good people. Not one of them has a criminal bone in his body.’

  ‘It’s still taking and driving away. Driving under the influence. Maybe more, if the driver decides to stay mean.’

  ‘He won’t,’ Emrys announced confidently. ‘And, after the rollicking I’m going to give them, none of them will be doing this again.’ He spread his hands, trying me out with a reasonable-man-to-reasonable-man smile. ‘Okay, they were wrong. But that would have been the drink, the excitement of having been in London. It would have been meant as a bit of fun, nothing malicious.’ He shook his head. ‘And they’ll stick together. Even I’ll never find out which one of them actually drove it away. You’re not in your city now. There’s a time and a place for the heavy-handed route and this isn’t one of them.’

  It was a big speech for Emrys. This was obviously important to him. Credibility issues, perhaps. ‘Where are they?’

  He tried out a grin. ‘In their beds I assume. Getting ready to wake up and realize how lousy they feel.’

  I recognized that he was offering me an opportunity here. The chance to play Cottage Cop, ingratiate myself into the community, show them that I didn’t always have to be seen as an aloof and hard-ass outsider.

  ‘What about the woman?’

  He frowned. ‘We don’t know for sure that there was one. That could just have been the driver trying to make it worse for them …’ He raised his hands to stop my protest. ‘Okay, I promise you this, if there was a woman on that minibus with them last night, she’ll have been treated with absolute courtesy and respect.’

  ‘So where will she be now?’

  ‘Wherever it is, she’ll be safe. I can guarantee that. I expect she’ll probably have been offered hospitality for the night. It’s not like the city, women don’t have to fear for their bodies or their lives.’ He smiled smugly. ‘We don’t lose or misplace our womenfolk around here.’

  Womenfolk … He actually used the word. As if he was describing a separate species that could be displayed in pens for admiration and grading. I used a spluttered cough to cover my astonishment.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘I’ll make you a deal.’

  He inclined his head to listen.

  ‘If you can convince me that everyone who was on that minibus last night is safe and sound and where they’re meant to be, I’ll walk away and leave you to wrap it up your own way.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll take that deal.’

  ‘And that includes the woman.’

  He smirked. ‘If she exists.’

  I left him to get on the radio, and went over to take a closer look at the minibus. There was a dent in the front offside wing that could have been historic, and a new scratch on the driver’s door that cut through the dust patina.

  At the rear I had a hunch, and dropped to a crouch to study the exhaust. I moved in close; the uniforms had already corrupted this area, and I couldn’t make it worse. Using the long serrated blade of my Swiss Army knife, I probed inside the pipe. When I pulled it out a set of vehicle keys fell on to the gravel.

  This fitted in with the careful way that the minibus had been parked. The keys had been left for us to find. Emrys was right. Someone was trying to signal that there was no malicious intent in this.

  I dangled the keys at Emrys as I walked round to the side door, but he was occupied with the radio and didn’t see me. The two uniforms, who had been circling the minibus with me, keeping it as a shield between us, looked like they thought I was fucking Merlin when they saw the keys.

  I always carry a couple of supermarket plastic bags in my coat pocket. Generally, they’re for shopping, but occasionally they come in useful in situations like this. I unlocked the minibus door, and, using my handkerchief on the handle, slid it open. I put the plastic bags over my shoes before I climbed in.

  Stale cigarette smoke was the main olfactory make-up over the background of synthetic upholstery and diesel. I sniffed selectively. No vomit. No dope. No girls’ stuff either, or I just wasn’t good enough to pick it up.

  I trawled the interior slowly. Some rubbish on the floor, a couple of beer-bottle caps, a crumpled potato-crisps packet. This didn’t look like a vehicle a bunch of drunks had stumbled out of.

  I found it tucked under the seat in front of the back seat. I felt the tickle again. Bad news arriving. Regine Broussard had also been in possession of a plastic carrier bag.

  I pulled it out carefully. This had been well used, creased and bearing the faded imprint of a butcher in Hereford. I looked inside. Paco Rabanne aftershave and Calvin Klein underpants both boxed in their original packaging.

  ‘Capaldi …’

  Emrys was at the open door.

  ‘I’ll take that.’ He held his hand out.

  I passed him the bag. For a moment I mistook his expression for fury. Then I realized that the torsion in his face went with anxiety.

  ‘None of them are there … None of them got home last night …’

  ‘Have you any idea what conditions are like up here?’ I asked the duty officer at headquarters in Carmarthen over the radio.

  ‘I can’t authorize a helicopter search.’

  ‘Yes, you can.’

  ‘I need senior officer clearance.’

  ‘Call DCS Galbraith.’

  ‘It’s a Sunday,’ a note of panic rising in his voice at that prospect.

  ‘And this is an emergency. I have seven people missing up here in conditions of extreme exposure. One of them is a young woman. You take the fall if any of them die or suffer serious injury.’ I let that doom note resonate for a moment before pressing down on the exaggeration pedal. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. I’m talking mountain conditions here, an enormous wind-chill factor, snow, a warren of forestry trails to be covered.’ The last bit, at least, was true.

  ‘Is a helicopter any use if it’s snowing?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s passing over,’ I said quickly, ‘but the wind’s getting colder.’

  ‘Okay,’ he came to a decision, ‘I’ll set it up, but it’s your responsibility. I am only acting on information received.’

  It’s only accounting, I told myself, the budget must have an allocation for such emergencies. I raised a thumb of acknowledgement to Emrys, who was down at his own car, on the radio to his boss, trying to get more people in for the search.

  But where to start? I traced the course of the minor road with my eyes until it disappeared into the forest that rolled outwards and onwards for hectare after hectare. New growth, old growth, clearances, logging trails, abandoned trails, and the bastard, shape-shifting magic trails that I always ended up getting lost on. The imminent prospect of moving into that forest held no appeal.

  The imminent prospect of a call from Detective Chief Superintendent Galbraith was even less appealing.

  I had a lot to blame Jack Galbraith for.

  For a start, he had rescued me. After my career in Cardiff had effectively gone down the tubes, he had stepped in and offered to have me in the Carmarthen Division. The Wild and Woolly West, as we used to say in Cardiff. I had thought about it when I had gone in to clean out my desk in that strangely empty squad room. After they had told me that it was safe to surface from my “emotional” leave.
Why was he taking in a burned-out and redundant “hero”? Jack Galbraith did not have a reputation as a philanthropist. Had someone in high places called in a big favour? Or was he setting up an even bigger one, to be redeemed at some future date?

  ‘I’ve been informed that you used to be a good cop, Capaldi,’ he had told me on that first day of my official reincarnation in Carmarthen. When I had been born again as one of his men. ‘That’s why you’re here with me instead of wearing a rinky-dink security uniform and patrolling the booze aisle in some shanty-town supermarket. I’m giving you another chance. See if you can get back some of that good judgement that you occasionally used to demonstrate.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ I had replied humbly.

  ‘Look at this.’ He walked across his office to the map of Wales that hung on the wall.

  I looked. He tapped the map, a drummer’s rhythm. I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to be looking at. He was tapping the bit in the middle, the empty bit, the bit God gave to the sheep.

  ‘Do you know how much it’s costing … to send men out from here …’ he rapped the pen on each of the divisional headquarters, then came back into the middle again ‘. . . to here? Every time a case comes up?’

  ‘I can imagine.’ I nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Overtime, petrol, hotel bills if they have to stay over.’

  ‘And you’re paying out for unproductive time with all that driving,’ I added helpfully. I would have kept my mouth shut if I had known what was coming.

  ‘Exactly. You’ve hit it right on the head there, son. Unproductive bloody time.’ He sat down on the edge of the desk. A power move. Looking down at me, nodding at the question before he had even framed it. ‘So what are we going to do about it?’

  I didn’t even pretend to think that I was being invited to advise on strategy here. ‘I don’t know the answer to that, sir.’

  ‘I’m going to try an experiment, Capaldi.’

  I gave him my best fresh, interested look.

  ‘I’m going to put a man in there. A resident detective, someone who can cover the routine crap, so back-up only gets called in when it’s absolutely necessary.’

  Something plummeted. I felt like a specimen butterfly watching the mounting pin descend. ‘You’re surely not thinking of me for this, sir, are you?’

  He grinned. It wasn’t meant to be friendly. ‘I’d have thought you would be grateful for any chance.’

  ‘I’m straight out of the city, sir.’

  ‘And you fucked up good there, didn’t you?’ He didn’t embellish. Didn’t remind me that I was responsible for the messy death of a man. He didn’t have to; the memory still kept me on familiar terms with the Hour of the Wolf most nights.

  ‘But I wouldn’t know how to operate out there,’ I protested, not faking my bewilderment.

  ‘Don’t fret your head about that, Capaldi, No one fucking does.’

  We cordoned off the minibus with incident tape, and set up the command post there. With all that country to cover it was as good a place as any.

  We had a mountain-rescue team on its way down from Snowdonia, volunteers from Forestry Services, and police teams with dogs already working their way into the forest. Inspector Morgan, Emrys’s boss, had turned up and was now running the uniform end of things. Apart from some filthy stares, he kept away from me, and left me in charge of the communications with the helicopter. Which was ominous. Had me wondering whether perhaps there wasn’t an emergency budgetary allocation after all.

  My mobile rang. A number I knew only too well.

  ‘Capaldi …’ the voice boomed.

  My stomach clenched. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We’re on our way.’

  The wind had dropped, the rain had thinned to a fine suspension. It wasn’t quite the Ice Queen blizzard that I had invoked. ‘I don’t think there’s any need, sir. There’s nothing to do but wait, you’ll just get cold and wet up here.’

  Jack Galbraith chuckled darkly. ‘Don’t think you can call up a fucking circus, Capaldi, and not invite the chief paymasters. I’m bringing DCI Jones up with me. If my Sunday’s fucked I may as well spread the misery.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied snappily. Bryn Jones was one of the few cops in Carmarthen who hadn’t treated me like an AIDS carrier when I had limped in damaged from Cardiff.

  ‘Give me the background,’ Galbraith instructed.

  I laid it out for him. Emrys Hughes couldn’t expect low profile now, so I nudged up the spin of the hijacking to six booze-fuelled guys and an unknown but vulnerable woman. Seven people missing in the hills. I played down the discovery of the neatly presented minibus. That didn’t fit in so well with the dark-tale storyboard.

  He was silent for a moment, and then I could just make out indistinct conversation at the other end of the line.

  ‘You’re wrong.’ He came back on the line.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘We think you’re wrong. This group isn’t the sort to be involved in anything truly sinister. You’ve been watching too much redneck massacre shit.’

  ‘It’s the woman that I’m concerned about, sir.’

  ‘The men don’t fit the gang-rape mould.’

  ‘What do you think I should have done, sir?’

  ‘Waited.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, you’re breaking-up …’ I cut the connection.

  That was an unofficial rebuke. Was it going to end up turning official? Had I overreacted? I thought hard about it. No. Even Emrys Hughes had been spooked when he realized that none of those good people of his had made it home. But where had they made it to?

  The helicopter’s call sign squawked over the radio. ‘DS Capaldi – we think we might have a sighting for you.’

  ‘Think?’

  ‘You’re looking for seven people?’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘We’ve only got five here.’

  ‘What about stragglers?’

  ‘I’ve circled. There’s only five.’

  ‘Is one of them a woman?’

  ‘Sexometers aren’t standard operating equipment.’ I could hear the laugh in his voice. ‘And from this high up I can’t distinguish tits.’

  Two of the party apparently missing, and this funster thinks it’s a joke. I was tempted to tell him to check his mirror if he wanted to be able to distinguish a real tit.

  2

  I got to the location first. I needed to stay ahead before Morgan could pull rank and swamp me. I had to cheat to make sure of it. Knowing my luck with the weirdness of forestry tracks, I got the helicopter pilot to call the turns and guide me in.

  I stopped the car as soon as I saw them.

  Five men. Even from this distance I couldn’t mistake them. I felt the bad tickle in my kidneys again. Somewhere in the night we had lost the woman. One of the men, too, by the look of it.

  I let them come to me. I wanted time to observe them. They were making their way down an incline on a forest track between new-growth fir trees. All were dishevelled. Some of the faces seemed vaguely familiar. The two at the front, similar in height, had the look of brothers. The older-looking of the two had his mouth set in stock chagrin, the other one was experimenting with damping down his smirk, trying to tamp some regret in.

  They both met my stare. I had the impression that they had been practising.

  The three following behind were having a harder time of it. The one in the middle, an enormous guy, had his shaved head drooped, and his arms draped around the shoulders of his two companions, who were bracing themselves to keep in step with his lurching pace.

  The big shaven-headed guy was wasted. The other two were using the effort of supporting him as an excuse to look anywhere but my way.

  I heard vehicles pulling up behind me, car doors opening. I didn’t turn round. My car was blocking the track so no one could get past. I concentrated, trying to read an explanation. The only consolation so far was that there was no spilled blood in evidence.

  ‘Where have you been,
Ken?’

  I was suddenly aware of Emrys Hughes standing beside me.

  Ken – Mr Chagrin, the older of the two who looked like brothers – shook his head and pulled his mouth into a tight grimace of shamed apology. ‘We’re really sorry to have put everyone through this, Emrys.’

  ‘What happened to you?’ Hughes asked entreatingly.

  ‘We spent the night in Gordon’s shooting hut. Up by the old dam.’ He pulled a wry, regretful smile. ‘We were abandoned.’

  ‘Where are the rest of you?’ I pitched in.

  ‘Sergeant –’ Emrys and I both turned instinctively. Inspector Morgan glowered at us. ‘This is not an open inquisition. I want these men to have medical attention as a priority. And then they’ll be taken down to Dinas and given hot food and dry clothes before we even think about asking questions.’

  ‘We need to know about the others, sir,’ I protested. ‘There could still be lost or injured people up here.’

  ‘It’s just us, Inspector. There’s no one else, and no one’s hurt,’ Ken said penitently, then gestured back towards the big slumped guy, ‘Paul just over-indulged a bit.’

  ‘What about the woman who was with you?’ I demanded.

  He smiled apologetically. ‘I expect she’s back in Cardiff by now.’

  ‘Where’s Boon?’ Emrys asked, before I could ask Ken for clarification.

  ‘Sergeant Hughes, Sergeant Capaldi, that will do!’ Morgan shouted angrily.

  We stood back to let the five men shuffle past us like a file of train-wreck victims, paramedics coming up to meet them. The conscious ones gave Emrys Hughes a shamefaced smile as they passed. No one looked at me.

  ‘When do I get to talk to them, sir?’ I asked Morgan.

  ‘You don’t, Sergeant Capaldi.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘DCS Galbraith’ – I could tell that it hurt him to say the name without spitting – ‘is diverting directly to Dinas. He will interview them himself. And he didn’t request your presence,’ he added, clawing back a little consolation from my expression.

  I couldn’t get over it. Suddenly no one was worried any more. By my reckoning we still had two missing persons to account for. But, since these five had turned up without any severed heads in string bags, the consensus appeared to be that everything was sorted.