Good People

by Ewart Hutton

  We were so intent on the moment that neither of us recognized the noise.

  I dropped back into the world first. ‘That’s your radio,’ I shouted at him.

  It took him a moment to come back down and join me. His hand went automatically to the radio, then he remembered the stand-off and glared at me malevolently, and turned away before he answered, walking out through the open barn doors to keep the call to himself.

  I didn’t have time to investigate my injuries. He swivelled in the yard. ‘It’s the hospital,’ he announced, his voice aggrieved. ‘The doctor wants you there. There’s something he thinks you should see before he finishes his preliminary examination.’

  Dinas cottage hospital was another example of the architectural legacy that some particularly joyless Victorians had left scattered about the area. The drear, dark, Gothic stone building had once been a refuge for fallen women.

  The porter who covered mortuary duties was called to come and pick me up from the shabby reception hall. I recognized him when he appeared. A member of one of the drinking cadres in The Fleece, who I knew to nod to simply as Gary. I hadn’t known his occupation.

  Gary led me through a series of corridors that made the reception hall seem jaunty by comparison. He didn’t talk, just kept turning his head from time to time to make sure that I hadn’t been spirited away.

  Dr Christy Samuels was waiting for me. A big man with white hair and a craggy red face, he unravelled himself out of his chair and stood up when I came into the room.

  ‘Good to see you again, Sergeant Capaldi,’ he said, shaking my hand.

  I reciprocated. I had worked with him professionally a couple of times in my past life in Cardiff. He had practised in the Valleys as a GP and a police doctor. After retiring to the Dinas area, he had kept up the role of police doctor on the sporadic, part-time basis that the level of crime here engendered.

  ‘We’ve bagged his stuff for your forensic people, should you decide that you’re going down that route.’ He led me over to a table where a couple of clear-plastic evidence bags held Trevor Vaughan’s clothes and items from his pockets. Another one held a length of green baler twine, the three strands spliced, looped and knotted. I picked up the bag. The noose had been severed.

  ‘There was too much swelling, I had to cut it to get it off,’ Dr Samuels explained.

  The noose had been tied with a series of running clove hitches. A simple slip knot. It would have tightened round his neck as soon as the pressure of his weight was applied. Effective, and unsophisticated. A farmer’s knot.

  ‘What’s the verdict from your preliminary investigation?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re shipping him off for post-mortem by the forensic pathologist. But, I haven’t seen anything to surprise me.’

  ‘Death is consistent with hanging?’

  ‘Totally.’ He glanced down at his notes. ‘Characteristic oedema of the neck with associated bruising. Presence of petechiae under the conjunctivae and around the preorbital region. Involuntary defecation and urination.’

  ‘Remind me about the significance of petechiae?’

  ‘Ruptured capillaries.’

  ‘Any bruising?’

  He smiled knowingly. He had seen his share of the results of violent encounters in the Valleys. ‘I had a good look. Some minor, healing, scar traces, similarly old bruising, the sort of thing you’d expect from someone who worked on a farm. Nothing that would indicate that there had been any sort of struggle.’

  ‘You checked his fingernails?’

  ‘Of course. Grime from various sources, probably lanolin, but no traces of human skin.’

  ‘Could he have been strangled, and then the hanging simulated?’

  He frowned, thinking about it, already starting to shake his head slowly. ‘It’s doubtful. Apart from the lack of bruising, there was no sign of subconjunctival haemorrhaging, which is an indicator of violent ligature strangulation. The post-mortem could determine if the hyoid bone has been fractured, which is another indicator, but don’t pin anything on that, he was too young for the two halves of the hyoid to have fused.’

  ‘You would be prepared to write this up as a suicide then?’ I asked.

  ‘Experience tells me yes. But …’ He hesitated.

  ‘Go on,’ I prompted.

  ‘This doesn’t change my opinion, but I think there’s something that you should see.’

  I winced. ‘The body?’

  He smiled sympathetically. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Grey and stiff. I had seen too many corpses. They went with the smell of bad chemicals and the cold dank room that he led me into. Trevor was stretched out almost naked on the stainless-steel table. A mass of swollen and discoloured tissue rose from his neck to his ears like a mock horse collar. But he wasn’t Trevor any more. He was an absence, something useless now.

  ‘Well?’ Dr Samuels asked gently.

  I collected myself. What was I meant to be seeing?

  Almost naked. . .

  I went closer. I had thought that he had been wearing a pair of incredibly brief swimming trunks. Now I wasn’t so sure. They were light purple and wet and would probably dry to lilac, with a small, repeating flower pattern in white. His flesh was swollen around the waistband and the legs of the briefs.

  ‘Is there any medical significance to the swelling?’ I asked.

  ‘No, they’re just way too tight,’ Dr Samuels explained.

  ‘These aren’t men’s pants.’

  ‘No, I didn’t think so either, that’s why I wanted you to see them.’

  ‘Jesus, they must have been uncomfortable,’ I said, thinking out loud. Starting to wonder what the true significance of this was. ‘Can we get them off of him?’

  ‘Not without cutting them.’

  Would I be destroying a set-up that we might need to study carefully later?

  He read my mind. ‘I’ve already taken photographs.’

  ‘Okay.’ I stepped away to let him at the body. He used a pair of surgical scissors and eased the briefs off, releasing a waft of trapped faeces.

  ‘Can we wash them?’ I asked.

  He grinned at my discomfort. He scraped the bulk of the faeces into a sterile bag. ‘Just in case they don’t find enough of the stuff inside him when they come to do the post-mortem,’ he explained, turning on a pillar tap.

  Young girl’s pants. They would have been brief on a sixteen-year-old. It was unthinkable that Trevor could have filched or borrowed them from a mother like his. Even a thin guy like him would have struggled to put these on. And why today of all days? Or had this been a regular secret kink? Suddenly I had to know if this was special. Had Trevor Vaughan worn these today specifically to send me a message from the grave?

  I went back to the anteroom and called Emrys Hughes.

  His voice registered a sulk when he realized who was calling. ‘I hope you’re calling to apologize,’ he grunted balefully.

  ‘No, Sergeant Hughes,’ I said coldly. ‘I’m calling to get you to do your fucking job properly and stop acting like an emotional dwarf.’

  ‘You can’t talk to me like that …’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ I said, cutting in over him. ‘You are in major trouble if I decide to report you for assault and obstruction. I’m giving you one chance to act professionally and redeem yourself.’

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked suspiciously. I was grateful to hear cowed in his tone.

  ‘Go up to the house. I need you to check Trevor’s room carefully. As quickly as you can. I need to know if you find any women’s underwear.’

  ‘You have to be fucking joking …’ His voice swelled ominously.

  ‘Act professionally, for God’s sake,’ I yelled at him. ‘That is an instruction, not a fucking whim. I am talking imperative here, this is information that is vital.’ I snapped the connection closed, hoping that it punctuated my urgency and impatience.

  He called back five minutes later. His tone was still sullen, but, under it, I was grateful to hear a
grudging hint of submission. ‘I’ve checked. I didn’t find anything other than men’s stuff.’

  ‘Good.’

  He cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry I pushed you.’

  ‘Loyalty will fuck you over, Sergeant.’

  ‘Not something you’ll ever have to worry about,’ he replied snidely.

  I ignored it. ‘I want one more favour, and then we’ll forget about this.’

  ‘What favour?’

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ I said, hanging up on him, not realizing that I was going to be calling it in far sooner than I had expected.

  Unless he had destroyed the others, or had a hidden cache, these were Trevor’s one pair of special pants. It had to be significant that he had worn them today. It wouldn’t have been his way to go out in one brief flare of controversy. He would have known that I would be called into this. Had this been his message to me? If so, what had he been trying to tell me?

  As a sad aside, the pants convinced me that Trevor had been the only one responsible for his death. The jump off the ladder had to have been his own doing. But who had been out there, pushing at his psyche?

  When I got back into the mortuary, the pants had been spread out, two halves hinged at the crotch, the deconstruction looking like a strange, textile Rorschach test. The doctor and Gary looked at me expectantly. There was something I was meant to notice.

  It was on the label, in what was probably ballpoint pen, faded after repeated washing. But still recognizable as the letter ‘W’.

  ‘Who labels their underpants?’ I said, thinking out loud.

  The other two looked at each other, wondering whether they were meant to contribute.

  ‘Someone with sisters,’ I said, starting to complete the thought process, ‘or a mother they want to keep away from their things. Or someone who’s simply proud of the act of possessing … “W”? Winifred? Wanda?’ I looked at the others questioningly.

  ‘Wendy?’ the doctor volunteered.

  ‘Wilma?’ I threw in. ‘Willow?’

  Gary shook his head, concentrating hard, but unable to contribute.

  ‘Gary, you live here, do any of these names ring any bells with you?’ I asked, playing on his one strength as a local.

  He thought hard about it. ‘Wendy,’ he said at last, looking at me, pleased with himself. ‘Wendy Evans. Bill Evans the builder’s daughter.’

  It locked into place. ‘Paul Evans’s sister?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Does she still live at home?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not any more. Not since she ran away with her history teacher.’

  Oh Jesus …

  More planets swung into spooky conjunction.

  Malcolm Paterson, Sally’s husband, Boon’s adoptive father, had run away with Wendy, Paul Evans’s sister. And somewhere down the line Trevor Vaughan had acquired a pair of her pants.

  Why?

  9

  Emrys Hughes’s expression was a compound of embarrassment, perplexity and hostility. ‘Why me?’ he pleaded again, looking despairingly at the flimsy lilac pants in the sealed evidence bag that he was holding with the same reluctance as he would a live eel.

  ‘Because, as you keep insisting, you know these people.’

  ‘Dirty stuff like this doesn’t happen here,’ he protested miserably. ‘I don’t want to have to ask the Evanses if these were Wendy’s pants. I don’t want to have to explain to them where we found them.’

  ‘It’s upsetting for everyone. But they’ll talk to you. They trust you.’ The look on his face made me doubly glad that I was delegating the task. The Evanses were big, slow bastards with smalltown mores. I knew the mentality: any stranger turning up with a message connecting their little girl with the whiff of pederasty and cross-dressing was likely to be treated as a carrier of the same infections. And I had already virtually accused their son of rape. Emrys was in for a hard time, but their enraged virtue would probably not turn physical on him.

  ‘We also need to talk to Wendy. Ask the family if they have any contact details.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s common knowledge, no one’s heard from either of them since she ran off with Malcolm Paterson.’

  ‘I’ll get Carmarthen to put out a bulletin on her. Call me as soon as you know anything,’ I said, leaving him with a fatherly pat on the back.

  Sally answered the door in her dressing gown again. She stared at me for a moment, her lips clenched tight, beginning to shake her head before she spoke. ‘Oh, Glyn, what a terrible, terrible thing …’

  I nodded in concurrence, and walked into the hall. She closed the door behind me. ‘Oh God, give me a hug,’ she cried, holding her arms open. I went into them. ‘Poor, poor Trevor,’ she intoned mournfully.

  ‘I know, I know …’ I soothed, putting a light rocking motion into our connection, the slowest of shared, sad dances.

  She broke away gradually, and dabbed at her wayward hair, but didn’t adjust the opened neck of her dressing gown. ‘Thank you,’ she said softly. ‘I needed that.’

  ‘Any time.’

  We let the moment hover.

  ‘Any word from Boon?’ I asked.

  She shook her head, giving me a brave, practised smile. ‘Did you find him? Trevor?’ she whispered.

  ‘No. He’d already been taken to the hospital when I was called in.’

  ‘Could it have been an accident?’

  I shrugged. ‘We have to wait for the coroner to determine that.’ I wondered how stiffly that had come out. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be evasive.’

  ‘That’s all right, I understand. I shouldn’t pry.’ She touched my elbow. ‘Go through to the kitchen, I’ll make us a drink.’

  I went down the corridor in front of her.

  ‘Oh God, Glyn –’ I heard her concern in the intake of breath.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, turning.

  She steered me quickly to a chair at the kitchen table and made me sit. ‘There’s blood on your jacket – on your shoulder.’ She went to the sink and turned on the hot tap. ‘Take it off, and your shirt,’ she instructed over her shoulder.

  I took off my jacket. By craning my neck I could make out the blood on the back of my shirt. It had dried into the wound, and I felt it tugging painfully as I tried to ease my shirtsleeve off.

  ‘Whoa …’ She stopped me, placing cotton wool, a bowl of hot water, and a bottle of antiseptic on to the table. ‘You’ll just start it bleeding again if you do that.’ She dipped cotton wool into the bowl and started sponging round the wound, slipping out a mischievous little laugh when I winced. ‘This is nasty. What happened?’

  I recalled the pain I had felt when Emrys Hughes had pushed me against the barn wall. I must have hit one of the rusty nails they used to hang stuff from. I gave her a stoic grin and shook my head. ‘I don’t know. I must have bumped into something in Trevor Vaughan’s barn.’

  She looked at me sceptically. ‘You should really have a tetanus shot for this.’

  I winced again as she freed the cloth from the wound. Deftly, she pulled the shirt off and tossed it in the direction of the washing machine.

  ‘I need that,’ I protested.

  ‘Not in that state. I’ll lend you something. Now just sit still while I try and clean this up.’

  The irony was not lost on me that I had just come from a hospital where no one had noticed the injury. I sat as still as I could, conscious of her fingers working on my back, and the moist warmth of her breath on my neck. I felt self-conscious and exposed, aware of my body as something white, lumpy and exuding musk, but, at the same time, appreciating the intimacy that had been created.

  ‘You’ve got good skin,’ she said, stretching her fingers across to the base of my neck.

  ‘For a man my age?’

  ‘I didn’t introduce any qualifiers.’

  I looked round at her. She smiled down and blushed. I saw the nervousness there, but also a spark, pheromones stirring, her own curiosity reki
ndled. The smell, the taste, and the fit of the other. I realized that it had probably been a long time for her as well. She gently smoothed out the dressing, and, almost imperceptibly, I felt her filling up the space behind, me, the back of my head almost nestling between her breasts.

  I swore inwardly. Because I was going to have to spoil it.

  ‘Sally?’

  ‘Mm …’ she murmured behind me.

  ‘I have to ask you about Wendy Evans.’

  The moment snapped. It was like an anvil dropping on to a picnic table, shocking the partygoers into the memory that there was real weight in the world. She walked around the table to face me, her expression grim. ‘What does she have to do with anything?’

  ‘She’s Paul Evans’s sister. I’ve only just found out that it was her your husband went away with.’

  ‘What does she have to do with anything?’ she repeated coldly.

  ‘I’m sorry, I wouldn’t be asking this if I didn’t think it was important.’

  She turned and left the kitchen. She returned carrying a sweatshirt. It was pink. She was punishing me. She threw it across the table . ‘Cover yourself.’

  I struggled into the sweatshirt. It was tight on me. I had an image of how ridiculous I must look. She didn’t smile. She stared hard, challenging me to see how much longer I dared to continue sitting there abusing her hospitality and care.

  I owed her the truth. Some version of it was going to be out there shocking the community before too long anyway.

  I faced into her stare. ‘Sally, when we found Trevor Vaughan he was wearing a pair of Wendy Evans’s pants.’

  The thought was too left-field; her face crumpled, trying to get a grasp on it.

  ‘There are connections I need to know about.’

  She pulled a chair out clumsily and slumped on to it, facing me. She shook her head, demonstrating her incomprehension. ‘I don’t understand … Was he dressed up as a woman?’

  ‘No, only the pants.’

  She frowned. ‘How do you know … ? That they’re hers?’

  ‘Her mother’s identified them. They were part of a set she bought on a school trip to London. She took the others with her when she …’ I paused, trying to come up with a softer way to put it.