by Rhys Bowen
* * *
“So what did you think?” Watkins asked Evan as they drove up the hill again. “Any possibility he could have done it?”
“Possible, but not probable,” Evan said. “Can you see him using that dainty little pistol? He showed you what he uses—a bloody great shotgun. I can see him bashing Ted over the head, the way the colonel was bashed, but not shooting him like that. For one thing, Ted would be on his guard with Sam. His expression showed that he was completely taken by surprise.”
Watkins nodded. “What about her then?”
“Gwyneth? I wouldn’t have thought she had the nerve. She comes across to me as a timid little thing.”
“But not as innocent as she wants us to think,” Watkins said. “She had clearly thought about the money aspect before we got there. Her surprise and delight were too phony. And it’s likely she’s going to be quite a rich woman.”
“But why choose that particular evening when everyone was out and about for the meeting?” Evan asked. “Most nights you could walk up the village street at ten and not see a soul.”
“You’ve got a point there,” Watkins said. “So it had to be someone who wanted to make sure Ted didn’t go through with his grand scheme for the adventure park—which points to Evans-the-Meat again, I’m afraid. We’ll have to let the D.I. know about him.”
Evan nodded. “We don’t really have a choice, even though I’m pretty sure he didn’t do it.”
* * *
“Well done, lads.” Detective Inspector Hughes slapped his hand on the desk with a rare display of enthusiasm. “I think we’ve hit a hole in one. I knew there would be an easy answer to this. Now all we need to do is find just one fingerprint or one little clod of mud and we’ve got him. The lab boys are almost done up there, and I’ve made good and sure they’ve got everything for analysis.”
“I bet you have, sir,” Watkins said dryly. Evan stopped himself from smiling.
“So what about a spot of lunch?” D.I. Hughes suggested. “Do they do a decent meal at your local pub, Evans?”
“If you like meat pies and sausage rolls,” Evan said.
The D.I. shuddered.
“They don’t have much lunchtime trade,” Evan added apologetically, “Harry-the-Pub can’t cook. Neither can Betsy.”
“Then we better get on down to Caernarfon. They do a decent fettuccine at the Prince of Wales.” The D.I. was still looking pleased with himself. “I think it might be a good idea to take our belligerent butcher down with us for questioning. That usually puts the fear of God in them, doesn’t it? Go and bring him in, Watkins.”
“Bring him here, sir? Now?” Watkins asked with a glance at Evan.
“Of course. I want to get this case squared away.” D.I. Hughes snapped. “What are you waiting for?”
“Sir, I really don’t think he’s your man,” Evan said cautiously. “I know it looks bad for him, but—”
“Nonsense, constable. What more do you want? He tries to kill Ted Morgan in full view of a whole room full of people. He has to be dragged home, drunk. He admits sneaking out to go to Morgan’s house later. He had the motive. He had the opportunity.” He looked up at Watkins and Evan with a satisfied smile. “There may be promotions in this, who knows. Go on then, bring him here.”
“You’d better come along, Evans,” Watkins said. “And bring the handcuffs. He might not come quietly.”
“I don’t think for a moment that he will come quietly,” Evan said as they left the D.I. in the station. “I’d probably put up a struggle if I was being arrested for something I didn’t do.”
Watkins moved closer to Evan. “Don’t go overboard with this loyalty thing, will you? You know what the D.I.’s like when he’s onto a hunch. The only way to make him change his mind is to find someone who had a better reason to kill Morgan. And you could be wrong, you know.”
“You mean Evans-the-Meat might have done it?” Evan asked. He shook his head. “Killed Ted maybe, but he’d never have bashed the poor old colonel over the head. He thought a lot of the colonel and he was so excited that the colonel had found the ruin, too.”
But somebody wasn’t, Evan thought, as they waited to cross the street. It was possible that somebody hadn’t wanted that call put through to the archaeologists in the morning—someone who wanted to stop any kind of development or publicity at all in Llanfair, be it a famous ruin or a new hotel complex. Was there anybody who fitted that description?
* * *
“Oh no, not again!” Evans-the-Meat looked up with a resigned scowl as the two policemen came back into his shop. “What is it this time?”
“The D.I. wants to talk to you,” Watkins said. “Over at the police station.”
“Let him come and talk to me here. I’m busy,” Evans-the-Meat growled.
“You’re wanted at the station, Evans,” Watkins said. “Now.”
Evans-the-Meat’s face flushed scarlet. “Who do you think you are, ordering people around. It’s not the bloody gestapo here, you know.”
“You’re wanted for questioning, Evans,” Watkins said, “and we need your fingerprints. So get moving.”
“But I told you what happened last night,” Evans-the-Meat said, his voice rising. “I told you I went to Ted’s house but I didn’t go in.”
“And now you can tell that to the D.I.,” Watkins said.
Evans-the-Meat’s hand gripped at his meat cleaver. “Look, I’ve told you I had nothing to do with Ted’s death. I’ve got nothing more to tell you, so for Christ’s sake leave me in peace to get on with my work.” He started chopping pork ribs with violence. “Go on. Bugger off,” he added.
“Have you got the cuffs there, constable?” Watkins asked. Reluctantly Evan produced the handcuffs.
“I don’t want to have to do this, Gareth,” he said to Evans-the-Meat. “Why don’t you just come quietly, eh?”
“I tell you I didn’t do it!” Evans-the-Meat yelled. “I’m not going anywhere. I know my rights. You can’t touch me without my lawyer being present.”
“You’ll get a chance to talk to your lawyer soon enough, I expect,” Watkins said. He took a step toward Evans-the-Meat with the handcuffs open and ready. Evans-the-Meat’s eyes darted around the room like a trapped animal. “No!” he yelled. “You’re not handcuffing me!” His hand half raised the meat cleaver.
“What seems to be taking so long, sergeant?” D.I. Hughes’ crisp voice made them all start. He stood in the doorway eyeing the butcher with distaste. “Resisting arrest, is he? Foolish move. Put the cuffs on him and then drive him straight down to HQ, Watkins. I’ll talk to him there.”
Evans-the-Meat lowered his arm and went limp, like a deflating balloon. He looked down in horror as the cuffs were snapped onto his wrists. “Don’t do that,” he pleaded. “What will my customers think if they see me taken off to jail? You know what people are like. I’ll lose all my trade. I’m an upright citizen. Ask Constable Evans. He’ll tell you, won’t you, Evan bach?”
“Don’t make it worse for yourself, Gareth,” Evan muttered. “Just go down there and answer their questions. If you’re innocent, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Oh no? I’ve heard how the police get confessions out of people when they’ve got them alone in a cell. Torture chambers, that’s what they’ve got down in Caernarfon. Don’t let them take me down there, Evan. You’ve got to help me, man.”
Evan winced as Evans-the-Meat was crammed into the backseat of Sergeant Watkins’ squad car. Evan could hear him yelling as the car drove off. He felt slightly sick.
Chapter 15
Evan sat at his desk and stared at the wall. After the morning’s activity the silence was oppressive. He couldn’t forget the butcher’s panic stricken face and still felt in some way responsible for letting him down.
At last he got up and went outside. A brisk wind was blowing from the high peaks, sending clouds like puffballs across the sky. Evan glanced at his watch. It was well past lunchtime but he no longer felt hu
ngry. Having missed his breakfast, he had been starving by midmorning and had to get a couple of packets of crisps from Roberts-the-Pump’s snack bar. If he went home now, he knew that Mrs. Williams would have a gargantuan plate of food congealing in the oven for him, and she’d be waiting to ply him with questions, too.
On impulse he climbed over the style and started up the sheep path to Owens’ farm. The wind blew in his face and snatched his breath away but he kept on climbing steadily until he had passed the farmhouse and the village lay below him. How neat and tidy it all looked from here, he thought. You’d never think it was a place where murders took place.
None of the events of the past few days made sense—a stranger breaking into Annie’s house and stealing a gun that killed another man who had just moved here. An old colonel being hit over the head after he discovered an ancient ruin, and Evans-the-Meat taken to jail as the prime suspect.
Evan sank down onto a large rock. It was covered with gray-green traces of lichen and warm in the sun. He wished that Bronwen were up there with him. When he talked things through with her, he was able to see them more clearly. But Bronwen was teaching school and he was alone, looking through a complete fog.
Evans-the-Meat. That’s where he should start. Why was he so sure that the butcher hadn’t killed Ted Morgan? He had threatened to. He had even tried to. He had admitted going to the bungalow. And if that little gun had been the only weapon available, why couldn’t he have picked it up in a fit of rage and pulled the trigger? But how would he have got hold of Annie’s gun in the first place? How would he even have known Annie owned a gun?
Evan’s gaze swept the hillside, then he suddenly froze. Someone was climbing up the path toward him, moving quickly. From the long skirt that billowed out behind her, it could only be one person. It must be some sort of emergency, Evan thought. They had sent her to find him. He got to his feet.
“What is it, Bron?” he called.
She started in surprise. “Do you make a habit of rearing up from behind rocks, Evan Evans?” she asked with a nervous laugh. “You almost made my heart jump out of my throat.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you must be looking for me.”
“Looking for you?”
“I thought they’d sent you to get me because something had happened.” Evan felt his face flushing. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” he added. “It is Tuesday, isn’t it?”
Bronwen smiled at his confusion. “Half-day holiday for parent conferences. I’m supposed to be down there, going through report cards, but I had to take a quick break.”
“Funny, I was just thinking about you,” Evan said.
“That’s nice.” Bronwen’s cornflower blue eyes met his.
Evan nodded. “I was thinking how I’m always able to see things more clearly when I can talk them through with you.”
Bronwen sat on the rock. “Alright. Try me.”
“You’re supposed to be meeting parents.”
“Not for an hour.” She patted the rock beside her. “Come on. Sit down. I’d like to help, if I can.”
Evan sat. “I suppose you heard that Ted Morgan was killed this morning?”
Bronwen nodded. “And that they took away Evans-the-Meat, hollering and yelling.”
Evan sighed. “He was the obvious suspect. Everyone saw him threaten to kill Ted last night.”
“But you don’t think he did?”
“I didn’t think so,” Evan said. “Now I’m not so sure. I was just thinking—what do I really know about him, apart from being a rabid Welsh nationalist and having a hot temper and liking good beer?”
“Why did you think he hadn’t killed Ted Morgan?” Bronwen asked. “Just loyalty?”
Evan shook his head. “It wasn’t his type of crime. A little pearl handled revolver. A bullet between the eyes?”
“You think Evans-the-Meat would have cut him in half with the cleaver?” Bronwen suggested. “Or throttled him with his bare hands?”
“More likely,” Evan agreed. “And only when he was good and drunk and his temper was up. Not later, when he’d cooled down. But now I’m wondering, Bron. Annie Pigeon reported a prowler. What if that was Evans-the-Meat? He told me his wife is away a lot. What if he is the kind of man who peeps through windows at attractive women?”
“It would be easy enough to slip from his place to her back yard through the bushes,” Bronwen agreed. “But surely people would know. Everyone knows everything in a place like this.”
“Maybe it’s just Annie he’s after,” Evan said. “A sexy woman suddenly arrives in Llanfair when his wife is away? She’s the type that turns heads.”
“So I’ve noticed,” Bronwen said dryly.
Evan ignored the comment and went on. “And maybe Annie wasn’t quite telling the truth when she said that she’d forgotten about the gun.”
“The gun? It belonged to that woman?”
“She said she’d forgotten she owned it. She suggested the prowler must have found it when he broke in. But I’m wondering if she didn’t take it out when Evans-the-Meat was watching, so that he knew where to find it when he needed a weapon to kill Ted Morgan.”
“It’s possible,” Bronwen agreed.
“The one thing that doesn’t make sense is the colonel.”
Bronwen looked up, surprised. “The colonel?”
“Evans-the-Meat would never have killed him, would he?”
Bronwen’s eyes opened even wider. “You’re saying that the colonel was killed? We all thought it was an accident.”
“We kept quiet about it until now. We didn’t want to alarm anybody. But someone hit the colonel over the head and pushed him into the river.”
“And you don’t think Evans-the-Meat could have done that?”
Evan shook his head. “He liked the colonel, didn’t he? Besides, he was excited that the colonel had just discovered the site of an ancient ruin and that Llanfair might soon have its own historical monument.”
“But he didn’t want more tourism, remember.”
“That’s not a strong enough reason to kill the colonel. He might have wanted to stop Ted Morgan’s theme park, but that was different.” He paused, trying to remember clearly. “Besides,” he added, “Evans-the-Meat couldn’t have killed the colonel. He was in the pub long after the colonel left. I’d swear to that.”
“Which must mean that there are two killers, within two days, in a little place like Llanfair. That doesn’t seem likely.” Bronwen pushed her hair out from her face and started to get to her feet. “I’m sorry, but I really should be heading back. My first appointment is at two-thirty. Freddie Price’s mother. I’ve got to find a way to tell her politely that she spoils her son.”
Evan smiled and stood up too. “We’ve all got our own problems. I’ll walk down with you.”
They started down the trail.
“So what are you going to do?” Bronwen asked over her shoulder.
“I don’t know. As Sergeant Watkins said, if I want to remove Evans-the-Meat from the prime suspect list, I’ve got to come up with someone better.”
“Like who?”
Evan shrugged. “The ones who benefit from Ted Morgan’s death are his sister and brother-in-law. But they didn’t even know the colonel. And they didn’t know Annie Pigeon and they didn’t know that she owned a gun.”
“What makes you so sure that you’re looking for a local person?” Bronwen asked. “If both the colonel and Ted Morgan came from London, why wouldn’t their killer have come from there too? I’d get the London police to start looking into their lives down there.”
“The D.I. has already started that ball rolling,” Evan said. “All this has nothing to do with me, really. I found the bodies and called in the detectives. Now I’m supposed to go back to being the village bobby and mind my own business.”
“But you’re not going to, are you?” Bronwen flashed him a challenging smile.
“I’d like to find out the truth for myself,” Evan admitted.
&nb
sp; They had reached the path leading to the schoolhouse. Bronwen paused. “I’ll help any way I can. You know that, Evan.”
“Thanks, Bron. See you then.”
“I’m looking forward to Saturday.”
“Saturday?” For a second his mind was blank.
“The Italian restaurant. Don’t tell me you’d already forgotten. Our first real date?” She looked hurt.
“Oh no. I hadn’t forgotten. It’s just I’ve had so much on my mind, these past few days. The Italian restaurant—that will be nice.”
“You sound as if it’s a visit to the dentist,” Bronwen chided.
“No, really. I’m looking forward to it too,” Evan insisted. “I’ll look out my good suit.”
Bronwen laughed. “The one you only wear for funerals? It’s just dinner, Evan. Nothing more serious.”
She tossed her long braid over her shoulder and strode out toward the back gate of the schoolhouse. Evan smiled as he watched her go. This reluctance to get involved with a woman again was stupid, he told himself. It was about time he got out there and started enjoying life. Forget about a murder investigation that was none of his business …
* * *
He was glad when the clock ticked around to opening time at the Red Dragon. There had been no more word from HQ and Evans-the-Meat hadn’t reappeared. Evan hoped the butcher hadn’t got himself into deeper trouble with his loose tongue. For once he had a good excuse for going to the pub. Most of the other men would be there and one of them might know something. One of them might even be the murderer, and murderers were supposed to be cocky, weren’t they? They enjoyed talking about the crime and asking how the police were coming along in their investigation. Evan would be alert for any of that.
The main bar was almost empty. Betsy was standing alone, lost in thought. She was dressed, for once, in a simple flowery dress with short sleeves. A shaft of sunlight was falling on her, giving her an aura of innocence and purity which she didn’t often possess. Evan stood for a second, watching her. Maybe he had been too hasty in deciding that she wasn’t his type.
As if sensing his eyes on her, Betsy looked up and smiled. “Rough day, eh, Evan bach?” She began filling a pint mug without being asked. “Here, get this inside you. It will make a new man of you, although I can’t say that there was much wrong with the old one,” she added, her eyes travelling over him with approval.
