by Ewart Hutton
I could guess the reasons. Hughes would be calling to berate me for going to see Ken McGuire and Paul Evans. Bryn was probably calling because Emrys Hughes had got his boss Morgan to lean on Jack Galbraith to clap the restrainers on me.
Donna and Colette.
I wrote the names in my notebook again and underlined them. Sally had called them Townies. Tough street kids who could look after themselves. I tried to shut it out, but the stereotype dropped down through the trapdoor. Cigarettes and chewing gum, unfit and overweight. Tattoos. But no kid called Dwayne or Britney in a pushchair – yet.
Or perhaps there was now. Maybe that was the future that they had run away into.
I made a note to go and see Joan Harvey at the Sychnant Nursing Home. What intrigued me was how a couple of girls from a background like that had independently found their way into the boondocks in the first place. How had the prospect of Ursa Major in the night sky ever managed to supplant the One-Stop Shop and neon lighting?
It was one of those drab and listless days at this time of year when daylight had given up trying to lead an independent existence by two o’clock in the afternoon. It was time to shut down the office. Time to return from North Wales.
I walked into The Fleece with my car keys conspicuous, the echt traveller, stretching the ricks of the journey out of my neck.
David Williams interpreted the sign language and brought a coffee over to the bar. ‘Emrys Hughes wants you to call him,’ he informed me.
‘How was he?’
‘Agitated.’
‘Happy agitated or mean agitated?’
‘He looked pleased with himself.’
Which probably meant that he had been given permission to tell me that I was in deep trouble.
‘What do you know about the Sychnant Nursing Home?’ I asked.
He looked at me for a moment, trying to work out the angle. ‘It processes the elderly. Not much trade for you there, I would have thought. Unless …’ He leaned forward over the bar, his voice dropping to conspiratorial: ‘Unless you’re going to start issuing exhumation warrants?’
‘Don’t be so ghoulish. I’m just asking. What’s its reputation?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know too much about it. It’s not Rolls-Royce, but it’s not the sort of place that chains the residents to the radiators either.’
‘Do you know of any young girls who have gone missing around here?’ I tried to keep it matter-of-fact.
He laughed. ‘No, but I’ve got a lot of customers who are still wondering where the hot spring chicken they married disappeared to.’ He looked up over my shoulder, his eyes flicking a warning at me. ‘Afternoon, Emrys.’
I turned slowly. David had been right: Emrys Hughes did look pleased with himself. ‘You’re a hard man to contact,’ he told me.
‘I’ve been away, in Caernarfon. I thought you knew.’ I waited for him to contradict me.
He smirked. ‘You’ve missed the news then.’
‘What news is that?’
‘The news that means you can stop harassing my citizens.’
I looked at him, trying to fathom it. Was this a secret society thing? Was he a party to the version that Trevor Vaughan had told me? That the whole thing was a cover-up to get Boon Paterson running free. ‘Amsterdam?’ I probed.
He stared at me distrustfully, wondering whether I was trying to work some cruel urban wind-up on him. Then the cockiness sprang back. ‘The prostitute from Cardiff – she’s verified the story. They found the telephone number they thought they’d lost. Gordon McGuire got me to call her, and she’s corroborated their story.’
I couldn’t believe it. My mouth hung open. I must have looked like a guy miming the involuntary inhalation moment after being kicked in the balls.
He flashed me a big fuck-you grin. He had mistaken my expression for chagrin. It wasn’t. It was amazement. I already knew that the prostitute story was pure hokum. Tony Griffiths had told me about Magda. Trevor Vaughan had confirmed it.
Why had someone felt the need to reinforce the lie?
7
Bryn Jones confirmed it when I called him from my car. Her name, real or acquired, was Monica Trent. A thirty-two-year-old white female working out of a walk-up flat over a bookmaker’s in a street off the road from Llantrisant into Cardiff. Strictly by appointment. No kerb crawlers, no random johns on street corners. It was a suburban operation, she kept it tidy and discreet, and didn’t get bothered by Vice.
She disturbed me.
Not her personally – I didn’t know her. But the fact that someone had felt the need to spend money or call in a favour to bolster a story that no one but me had been questioning.
Were they playing with me? Did they know that Trevor Vaughan had confirmed my suspicions that the prostitute story was a fabrication? Were they pushing Monica Trent across the board to counter any attack that I was preparing? But that’s where it went screwy. They had to know that I had nothing to attack them with.
So why go to all that trouble?
Unless they were shoring-up against the possibility of something really nasty oozing out between the seams. Was Monica Trent a caulking agent?
I smiled to myself at the unintended pun. I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the rim of the steering wheel. Why do this when Trevor Vaughan’s explanation had virtually reassured me? My head shot back. Because Trevor hadn’t been there … He had been asleep. Completely out of it. He had given me the story that had been reported to him. He only knew what he had been told.
Or was that not quite true? He had seemed more than just uncomfortable when he had been talking to me about that night. A couple of times he had shown definite signs of disturbance. Manifestations of evasion or anxiety? I hadn’t probed deeper at the time because I thought that they were resonations of his sexual distress. Could it have been more than that? Had Trevor found out something up there that he wasn’t meant to know? Something that he had kept from me? Something that had disturbed him?
Too many questions and only one person to answer them.
‘Yes …’ His mother’s voice was snappy and curt. Still answering the telephone with a suspicion for the instrument that she must have picked up from her parents about fifty years ago.
‘Mr Trevor Vaughan please?’ I asked in a smooth, plump voice. I had already checked that his father’s name was Harold.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Irfon Machinery Supplies – we’ve got a promotion on a new range of hedgecutters,’ I said breezily.
‘We don’t need one.’
‘We’re offering a free, no obligation demonstration on your farm. Totally free.’ I repeated the magic word that usually captured a farmer’s interest.
‘Wait a minute.’
I heard a muffled conversation. She was probably instructing him to get me to commit to a decent length of hedge trimming for their free, no obligation demonstration. ‘Hello?’ Trevor Vaughan came on the line.
‘Hello, Trevor, it’s Glyn Capaldi …’ I waited out the silence for a moment. ‘Don’t hang up,’ I warned into the void.
‘What do you want now?’ He had lowered his voice.
‘Who’s minding you tonight?’
‘No one’s minding me.’
If that was true, they were probably relying on his parents to stick close and raise the alarm if I appeared.
‘Make some excuse that you have to go out. I’ll pick you up at the end of your drive in half an hour. And don’t call anyone,’ I instructed.
‘I don’t want to see you. I’ve already told you more than enough.’
‘Half an hour,’ I repeated.
‘Didn’t you hear me? I won’t be there.’
‘If you’re not, you’re fucked, Trevor.’
He was silent again for a moment. ‘Are you threatening me?’ he asked, trying to hike some strength into his tone.
‘Yes.’
It wasn’t the answer he was expecting. He had to re-string his approach. ‘If you hit
me, I’ll sue you.’
‘I’m not going to hit you.’ I waited for a beat. ‘I’m going to let the world know that you’re a fairy.’
‘That’s a lie!’ he spluttered.
‘I’ll bet a lot of people may have their suspicions confirmed.’
‘That’s malicious slander,’ he retorted furiously, but it didn’t quite carry the conviction, as he had to pitch it in a whisper.
‘Half an hour,’ I said, snapping my phone shut dynamically, and crossing my fingers.
He was alone in the bad light. A forlorn figure with his thin hair drifting, wearing an old fawn duffel, a drooped and baggy pair of jeans, and work boots with the metal toecaps shining through. I heard a bunch of rooks cawing when I leaned over and pushed the passenger’s door open for him.
He stared at me sullenly, but got in. ‘You’re a bastard. You know that? A mean and vindictive bastard.’
I ignored him and drove off.
‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked, looking out mystified, as if the view from my car had caused him to shift dimensions.
I continued to ignore him. It was easier to play it hard and heartless without speaking. He got the message and retreated back into his sulk. I headed confidently for the forest.
‘Where are you taking me?’
His voice startled me. I had got used to our silence. We were on a track winding up the hill and deeper into the trees. He was looking out of the window with a curious interest now.
‘We’re going up to the hut,’ I said, deciding that I could afford to ease back on the tough-cop pedal a touch.
‘That’s where I originally thought you were going.’
Something in his inflexion sparked a doubt. ‘What do you mean, originally?’ I asked.
‘You took a wrong turn a while back,’ he said, inclining his head behind us.
I let him direct me from there. It took some of the edge off of my power, but not as much as turning us into Hansel and fucking Gretel, lost in the woods, would have.
The darkness was near total at the hut, only a spooky half-light that gave the treetops, listing into the wind, an otherworldly dimension. No birds. Just that wind soughing through the gorse and the young birches.
He stood outside, his hands rammed into the pockets of his duffel coat. ‘Where is this supposed to lead us?’ he asked.
‘Down memory lane.’
He shrugged.
‘Do you know Monica Trent?’ I asked.
He dropped his eyes. ‘I hadn’t told them that I told you about Boon,’ he said, without looking up.
‘And that I knew that Monica Trent wasn’t their Miss Danielle?’
He nodded.
‘Why did they do it? Why have they backed up the lie?’
‘I don’t know. They didn’t tell me until after they’d done it. I couldn’t then say that I’d already told you what I had.’
‘I think it’s time to tell me a bit more, Trevor.’
His eyes shot at me, a flash glance crossed between startled and calculating.
‘Let’s start with the lights that were here. What can you tell me about that bit of prior preparation?’
‘Gordon organizes vermin shoots in the woods. It’s a sort of corporate hospitality thing, for some of the people who use Payne, Dyke and Thomas.’ I caught a note of disapproval. ‘They crash around up here, blasting at squirrels, crows and pigeons, and then they use the hut for boozing afterwards.’
So, it didn’t have to have been premeditated. They could have just met Magda at the filling station. They already had the infrastructure in place here. But someone had disappeared the lights.
‘What happened to the lights? Why weren’t they around in the morning?’
He shook his head. He hadn’t thought about it, and it still didn’t interest him. ‘I don’t know. Maybe Gordon has somewhere he stores them.’
I didn’t pursue it. ‘Talk me through it,’ I said. ‘You arrive here – then what?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Gordon went in first with a torch. We unloaded the beer, and then we went inside when he turned the gas lights on.’
‘Go on.’ I nodded towards the door.
He pushed it open. I followed him through with a big flashlight. Things had changed since I had last been here. Both doors leading off the vestibule were open at a different angle. It could have been forestry workers. It could have been another one of Gordon McGuire’s shooting parties. Or it could have been people looking to clear up something that they might have left behind. I thought of the crumpled tissue that I had found. Had there been something else that I’d missed?
‘The girl threw a fit when she saw the state of the place,’ Trevor commented over his shoulder as I followed him into the larger room, the torch beam providing him with a looming shadow. ‘It wasn’t really serious, she was still laughing, but I got the impression that things didn’t seem quite as much fun now as they had on the minibus.’
I squared the room. Looking for omissions. But nothing seemed to have been removed.
‘Gordon found a broom, and told her that if it offended her so much she could do something about it. It was a joke,’ he added quickly. ‘He wasn’t being mean. But she took him up on it and swept the floor. As best she could, anyway.’ He went thoughtful, turning slowly, trying to locate the memory. He pointed into a corner. I shone the light, illuminating nothing but dirt and the hut’s geometry. ‘Paul crashed out over there. That was when Gordon came up to me and said that it looked like I was the only unattached male still left standing.’
‘So you made your excuses and went to bed?’
‘More or less. I went exploring and found the other room.’
‘Did you take the bracken in?’
‘No, it was already there. A big pile of it. That was one of the attractions.’
I didn’t comment. I didn’t want to block his flow. But I did make a mental note to continue to wonder what Gordon’s clients, wired up for a drinking session after shooting squirrels, would want with a big bracken bed?
‘I said that I was too drunk and tired, and that I was going to try and get some sleep.’
‘And when you woke up in the morning, they told you that Boon and the girl had run off into the sunrise?’
‘More or less. But it wasn’t like they had run away. Everyone helped with it.’
I nodded. I walked round the room again slowly, raking the skirting board with the torch beam, conscious of him watching me.
‘Are you satisfied now?’ he asked, breaking the silence.
I pivoted and shone the torch at him. ‘No.’
‘What more can I say?’ he implored, squinting at the light.
‘Something went sour.’
He shook his head. Too fast. ‘No …’ He took a breath. ‘They would have told me.’
I spread my arms, taking in the room. ‘You have five drunk guys at the end of a long day. Okay, discount Paul Evans. Four guys in a highly charged and unpredictable state. You also have an attractive young female.’ I made a stirring motion with a big imaginary spoon. ‘This is not good chemistry. There is no natural law that says it has to go wrong. But oh so often it does.’ I looked hard at him. ‘And I think you saw or heard something, Trevor.’
He couldn’t hold my eyes. He shook his head and turned away, walking for the door. I let him go. He had a crisis of conscience to resolve.
Outside, in front of the hut, the transitional light had sucked the detail out of him. He was just a dark column. The wind now included a distinctly damp chill in its composition. I let him hear me approach behind him.
He turned slowly, his head down. ‘I wanted to believe them when they told me that everything was all right.’
‘What made you think it might not be, Trevor?’ I asked softly.
He looked at me directly, something going beyond sadness in his expression. ‘I am not a disloyal person.’
‘I know that.’
‘I woke up when I heard the arguing. It was louder
than the music. A CD player of Paul’s that we’d taken with us,’ he explained.
‘Who was arguing?’ I prompted.
‘I couldn’t tell. Just raised voices. The girl was in there too. Sounding upset.’
‘As if she was being hurt?’ I asked, trying to keep my tone clinical.
‘No. More like she was trying to reason or restrain.’
‘Could you make out what they were arguing about?’
‘No. It was just noise.’
‘Did you go and see what it was about?’
He shook his head guiltily. ‘I wanted to pretend that it wasn’t happening.’ He looked at me sheepishly, his words struggling out hesitantly. ‘Did you ever do that? In bed at night as a child, when you heard your parents arguing?’
I nodded. ‘You just want to be able to fix whatever has gone wrong between them.’
He smiled, grateful for the empathy. ‘That’s right. It was like that. I just lay there and willed them to stop. And, eventually, they did. It all wound down, went below the level of the music again.’
‘You went back to sleep?’
He nodded. ‘I didn’t think I would. Then it was the absence of noise that woke me. Everything was quiet. I thought that everyone must have fallen asleep. I had to go outside to the toilet. After all that beer. It was so quiet that it felt safe again.’
I smiled at him. ‘The family restored?’
He nodded. ‘But it wasn’t. Paul was still crashed out in the same place. The girl was in another corner, fast asleep in her sleeping bag. But the others weren’t there.’
‘The minibus?’
‘Still parked where we’d left it. I saw it when I went outside. It was really cold now, starting to sleet, it wasn’t a night to be out walking in the woods.’
‘Is that what you thought they were doing?’
‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know where they were. Then, it was one of those flukes of sound: I heard them. It wasn’t voices, just a sense that …’ He searched for an explanation. ‘That there were some people filling a space out there. I followed the hunch, and eventually caught up with them.’
