Unsafe Convictions
Page 36
‘You don’t need to check,’ the doctor said gently. ‘He’s definitely dead, even if I can’t say why, although it’s more than likely to be natural causes of some kind. Anyway, the autopsy will tell us.’
‘When did he die?’ Janet asked.
The doctor glanced at his watch. ‘A couple of hours ago at most, say between two and two thirty. Now I really must be off, so I’ll leave you to it.’
She heard his feet pound down the staircase, crunch over the gravel and away, then close behind her, felt Edith’s short panting breaths lift the hairs on her neck.
‘Did he sign it?’ Edith demanded. ‘Shall I call the undertaker?’
Edging her out of the room, the cloying smells sickening, Janet said: ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Harris, but we’ll have to inform the coroner. The doctor can’t determine the cause of death.’ Closing the door on the dead man’s eyes, she added: ‘Is he your brother? Only your daughter called him “Uncle Ned”.’
‘Of course he isn’t! And why do you have to involve the coroner?’
‘It’s standard procedure in cases of unexplained death,’ Janet said, wearily. ‘And the forensic team will have to examine the room. Nothing’s been disturbed, has it? They’ll need to know.’
‘Disturbed?’ Edith’s voice rose. ‘Of course it hasn’t!’ She paced the landing, then back, and stood close beside Janet, breath rasping, eyes hectic. ‘And don’t take any notice of Phoebe! She’ll make a mountain out of a grain of dirt!’
‘She hasn’t said anything, except that he’s dead.’
‘She will!’ Edith insisted. ‘Believe me, she will!’ She laughed, a sound like a horse in pain. ‘She’s already said somebody must have killed him. Isn’t that completely ridiculous?’
2
‘The ground’s sweating,’ Dewi Prys observed, elbows on the window sill of the CID office. ‘It smells like that tramp we had in the cells a few years back.’
‘So?’ Janet asked.
Watching a clutch of women fighting to board a bus, laden with plastic carrier bags from the new German supermarket, he added: ‘So, arguably, the earth’s a big body crawling with people the way we’re crawling with microbes.’
‘That’s hardly an original thought.’
‘It is for me.’ He swiped at a dead wasp, curled elliptically on the white paint, then unfastened another shirt button. ‘There’s not a breath of wind, everything’s covered in dust, and if the weather doesn’t break soon, we’ll run out of water.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous!’ Janet snapped. ‘God, I wish you’d stop moaning. You get on my nerves! You’ll be complaining about the cold in a couple of months.’
‘Probably,’ Dewi agreed. ‘Christmas isn’t far away, is it? Has your pa written his Yuletide sermon yet?’
‘I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen him since I came back from holiday.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I haven’t.’
‘Seen your mother?’
‘She gets on my nerves almost as much as you. Nothing but questions, one after another! “Been anywhere nice, dear?”, “Met any nice people, dear?”, “Got anything planned, dear?”’
‘Your pa probably puts her up to it.’ Dewi smiled. ‘You should give her something worth reporting.’
‘Such as?’
He grinned. ‘A red-hot intrigue with Mr McKenna?’
‘That’s not funny!’ She flushed.
‘You fancy him, though. Don’t you?’
‘You’re unbelievably adolescent!’
‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much,’ Dewi taunted. ‘Or whatever the saying is.’ Drifting away from the window to straddle a chair, he gazed at her thoughtfully. ‘Mind you, that bitch Denise probably put him off women for life. Why doesn’t he get a divorce and get shut of her properly?’
‘You’re needlessly nasty about her. She could be well rid of him, for all we know.’ She pushed aside her report on the demise of the old man in Glamorgan Place, and stretched. ‘Is he expected in today?’
‘Don’t think so. He’s just back for Griffiths’s retirement do.’
‘I hope he gets the promotion.’
‘It’s supposed to be a foregone conclusion.’ He admired the arch of her body as she stretched again. ‘And as soon as he moves up the ladder from Chief Inspector to Superintendent, there’s room for an enterprising detective constable like me who’s passed his sergeant’s exam.’
‘The questions must have been particularly easy that day.’
‘You’re bitchier than usual at the moment,’ Dewi said, rising from his seat, ‘so I presume it’s that time of the month. Anyway, I’m off to see a man about a car. Ring me if you want anything.’
‘You’re buying a new car?’ she asked, trying to ignore the jibe. ‘What sort?’
‘One that doesn’t blow its guts apart every time I try to start the engine.’ Lingering by her desk, he scanned the half-written report, then asked: ‘How was Edward Jones related to Edith Harris?’
‘Third cousin twice removed, or somesuch. He was a sort of lodger.’ She brushed away a tiny withered leaf which had drifted through the window and settled on the desk. ‘It’s a shame his own GP’s on holiday, because the locum obviously couldn’t certify cause of death. Mrs Harris was really upset when I said we’d have to notify the coroner, and I thought she was going to throw a fit when uniform arrived with forensics.’
‘Can’t be helped,’ Dewi said. ‘D’you think they’ll find anything?’
‘It’s probably natural causes. Heart attack, or something. He wasn’t young.’
‘No signs of violence? Nothing suspicious?’
‘According to Mrs Harris, he didn’t have an enemy in the world.’
‘People say things like that when they’re trying to pull the wool over your eyes.’
‘That’s almost exactly what her daughter said.’
Retrieving her pen, Janet added: ‘She’s called Phoebe.’
‘And why should Phoebe say that?’
‘Because she likes drama, apparently, and a natural death is far too prosaic.’ She shuddered gently. ‘She gave me the shivers. She’s fat and sort of lumpy, and she dresses like a bag lady, and she’s got these really strange eyes which look right through you, so if the old man was murdered, she probably did it.’
3
Draughts of hot air riddled with the smell of exhaust fumes billowed through the car’s open windows as McKenna waited for a break in the traffic hurtling down the road outside the main gate of the police headquarters.
‘I’ll never see this place again unless I drive by specially,’ Owen Griffiths commented, craning his neck to look back at the tall grey building roofed with a forest of antennae. He wiped a bead of sweat from the end of his nose. ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.’
‘Either’s good medicine at the right time.’ Beside him on the rear seat, Eifion Roberts unfastened his collar button, loosened his tie, and fanned himself with the ends. ‘Mind you, you’ll have a laugh taking that cheque to the bank. How much did you get?’
‘More than enough for two holidays.’
‘Then somebody’s pleased to see the back of you, because at one time, you’d only have got the gold clock, whereas you got both.’ Prodding McKenna’s back, Roberts said: ‘I’ve never understood why folks get clocks when they retire. Do you?’
‘It’s a subliminal message,’ McKenna offered. ‘“Watch this space, your end is nigh.”’
‘God, you’re cynical!’ Roberts commented. ‘Still, it’s as well, ’cos if your masters’ smiles and sycophancies were anything to go by, you’ll be filling Owen’s boots come Monday.’ Smirking, he went on: ‘You’ll look more fetching in uniform, so you might score once in a while. I’m told women find power a real turn-on.’ He nudged Griffiths. ‘Isn’t that a fact, Owen?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’ Griffiths’s voice was plaintive. ‘A purple past must be nice, though, mustn’t it? Something secret and special and all y
ours to think back on.’
‘See?’ McKenna felt himself prodded again. ‘Owen won’t be the only one missing nearly every boat to set sail. Get yourself a life while you can. You must be so short of the necessary your guts turn somersaults every time a bit of skirt passes by.’
‘Oh, be quiet!’ McKenna snapped, ‘and stop bouncing on the seat. I don’t have reinforced suspension!’
‘I’m on a diet, I’ll have you know.’
‘About time, too!’
‘As I’ve said before, I’ll find vinegar in your veins when I come to cut you up,’ Roberts said. ‘And fag smoke invading every cell in your body.’
‘And what makes you so sure you’ll have the pleasure of me on your mortuary table?’
‘Because I’ve calculated the amount of fag smoke gunging up your innards already, so don’t get cocky just because you’re younger than us.’
‘You two bicker like children,’ Griffiths said irritably. ‘And always about the same things. It’s very boring!’
‘Excuse us!’ Roberts winked at McKenna in the rearview mirror. ‘We’ll try to confine our puerility to the beach. We should be there soon.’
‘And why are three grown men going to the beach?’ Griffiths wondered. ‘What’ll we do there?’
‘Well, I’m going to buy myself a bucket and spade, and play in the sand,’ Roberts said.
‘And I could paddle, couldn’t I?’ Griffiths added.
‘You could even take off your shoes and socks first,’ McKenna suggested.
‘And what will you do, Michael?’ Roberts asked. ‘I’ll watch,’ McKenna replied, turning off the expressway towards Llandudno.
*
Bedazzled by the glitter of water against a sky of almost tropical blue, McKenna sat cross-legged on a tartan rug from the car, Griffiths beside him with sand encasing his wet feet and clinging to the fuzz of grey hair on his shins, and a white handkerchief, knotted at each corner, covering his pate. Near the water’s edge, Roberts dug vigorously with a yellow spade, gouging a channel to carry the tide into the moat around his lop-sided edifice. Every so often, he smiled winningly at the two near-naked young women stretched out nearby.
‘He’s quite brazen, isn’t he?’ Griffiths said. ‘Still, I suppose seeing so much raw flesh still on the move is bound to get him over-excited.’
McKenna grinned. ‘He’s in his element.’
‘Second childhood, more like,’ Griffiths commented. He looked down at his own disarray and smiled ruefully. ‘You might say we’re both in our dotage.’ He sighed. ‘But I’ve had my day, I suppose. A short one, but sweet in its own way. It’s just a pity it seems so distant and hazy, like childhood.’
‘I can imagine you both as kids,’ McKenna said. ‘Dressed in sailor suits and sun-hats, playing on some beach half a century ago.’
‘Eifion, perhaps, but not me.’ Griffiths smiled gently. ‘My parents couldn’t afford holidays, so I was sixteen before I saw the ocean. I saved every penny from my job shifting cinders at the railway yard and took a cycling trip to Devon and Cornwall.’
‘You must have had days out. Your place was quite near the coast.’
‘Summers went by bringing in the harvest, then battening down the hatches and praying for a kind winter. We didn’t travel the way people do these days, and anyway,’ he added, grinning, ‘we only had a tractor, and I don’t think my mother would’ve taken to arriving at the beach in the trailer my dad used for his muck-spreading.’ Watching the pathologist’s castle collapse into its moat, he asked: ‘Your ancestors worked the land too, didn’t they?’
‘They worked it to the bone. Some of the Irish peat lands are as bleak as moonscapes now.’
‘You’ll feel at home in Wales, then.’ Griffiths smiled.
After a long silence, McKenna said: ‘I’ve never felt at home anywhere. I’m Welsh to the Irish, Irish to the Welsh, and trouble either way to the English.’
‘Come on! Your dad was Anglesey born and bred, like you.’
‘Maybe so.’ He picked up a marbled pebble, and rubbed it clean of sand. ‘But the past always catches up with you.’
‘What past? I imagine your grandparents left Ireland to escape from something, like every other emigrant. Poverty, oppression, whatever.’ Griffiths paused, then added: ‘Or to look for something better, like Dick Whittington, although nobody’s ever found the streets of Holyhead paved with gold, except our latter-day drug peddlers.’
‘One of our kinfolk was executed by the British after the Easter Rebellion in 1916, and there’s no escape from something like that, or what it means.’ He frowned, massaging the pebble. ‘And when my parents took me visiting our relatives across the water, I used to wave my toy gun around with the rest of the local kids, but we’d be playing “Irish and English” instead of “Cowboys and Indians”. So what does that make me?’
‘The sum of your history, like the rest of us, so quit bellyaching about it!’ A huge dark shape eclipsed the sun as Roberts loomed over them, and dropped the bucket and spade by McKenna’s feet. Filthy, sweat-stained, face ruddy with exertion, he went on: ‘I haven’t played on the sand for donkey’s years, and I’d forgotten how bloody tired you get, so I’m going for ice creams. Who wants what?’
‘You’re on a diet,’ Griffiths said.
‘It starts tomorrow with my hols, and you can’t have an afternoon on the beach without ices.’ He smiled down at McKenna. ‘Why don’t you take off your shoes and socks, like Owen here, and go for a paddle. Loosen up, man! Get your feet wet, for once in your life. It’ll do you no end of good.’
To download the book and continue reading click here.
Table of Contents
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Part Two
Chapter One
Part Three
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Part Four
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Part Five
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Six
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Part Seven
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part Eight
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part Nine
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Part Ten
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Part Eleven
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapt
er Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Part Twelve
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Part Thirteen
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Part Fourteen
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Part Fifteen
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Sixteen
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Part Seventeen
Chapter One
Extract from The House of Women by Alison Taylor