In Guilty Night

by Alison Taylor

  ‘I’m sorry about what I said to you on Sunday.’ McKenna moved to the lee of the wall, and lit a cigarette. The wind whipped away the smoke, and made the tip burn bright. ‘And I’m sorry you were dragged out of bed later on. I had to be sure you weren’t responsible for the fire.’

  ‘I’ve no quarrel with the kids at Blodwel.’

  ‘Ronald and Doris have gone on the run.’

  ‘They can’t hide. Not from Arwel.’

  The cigarette burned away, consumed by wind. Carol touched his arm, smiling. ‘Wasn’t he beautiful? He didn’t need anybody’s money for that.’ Her hand rested on his sleeve, and the fingers began to pinch the cloth. ‘He was the light of my life, but in my heart, I knew he’d go away.’ The fingers stilled, but kept their hold. ‘We feel things like that, don’t we? Do you?’

  ‘I feel things I can’t explain or understand.’

  Carol nodded, and the fingers fluttered. ‘He wasn’t like other kids, you know. When we played in the sunshine, his shadow had a light inside it. The teacher said it was a trick of the light you could see anywhere on a bright summer day, but I’d still rather believe God made him different.’ The fingers fretted at his sleeve, and she smiled again. ‘Am I going mad, d’you think? Or was I always mad?’

  ‘Perhaps madness is like being the one-eyed man in the realm of the blind,’ McKenna said gently. ‘And you’ve light of your own, under this black grief.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not like Arwel.’ She gestured to her swollen belly. ‘All the world knows I’m just flesh and blood.’

  ‘When’s the baby due?’

  ‘In May. It’s a lovely month, isn’t it?’ She pushed herself away from the wall and began to walk down the path, the last vestige of the light of day rosy on her face. ‘Arwel said babies are miracles, even the ones like Pryderi, and he pitied the Elises, because they’re too selfish to realize.’ She shivered. ‘Mam’s forgiven me for hitting her, but will God forgive me for trying to kill a miracle?’

  ‘He’ll understand.’ McKenna took her thin arm in his own. ‘Have you thought of a name yet? If it’s a boy, might you call him Arwel?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Carol stopped. ‘There couldn’t be another Arwel for me. Dafydd would be nice, wouldn’t it? And Morfudd for a girl, because Dafydd ap Gwilym loved her all his life.’

  ‘He said she was baptized by May.’

  ‘I know.’ She smiled, luminous still. ‘Have you seen that big green poetry book? I gave it to Arwel for his thirteenth birthday, because he only had that kiddie’s book with the picture of the man with a harp.’ She grinned briefly. ‘He’d pinched it from school. You won’t tell, will you?’

  ‘I won’t tell.’ Loose gravel slipped under his shoes and clattered down the path. ‘Mrs Elis found the book at Bedd y Cor. Would you like to have it back?’

  Carol nodded, then turned to look where her brother lay under six feet of cold earth, the white wreath glowing in velvety darkness. ‘I’ll come here often, and I’ll bring my baby.’ She leaned against him, taking short careful steps on the steep path. ‘D’you think Arwel might walk with us sometimes?’ She smiled again. ‘On a bright sunny day, there might be another shadow beside mine and my baby’s and it might have a heart of light. You can never know, can you?’

  ‘No,’ McKenna said. ‘You can never know.’

  She stopped once more, but the grave was no longer in view, only the dark silhouettes of leaning obelisks and threshing yew trees in their sight. ‘I don’t pity the Elises,’ Carol said. ‘They can buy anything, so they think everything’s got a price.’ She walked on again, still leaning against him. ‘You think I’ve let her buy me and my baby, don’t you?’

  ‘To be honest, Carol, I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘I want my baby now I know there’s nothing to be ashamed of.’ Stopping again, she stood before him, a thin hand on each of his arms, her fingers fretting at his sleeves. ‘Mam says Mrs Elis might’ve offered me money out of kindness, but nobody’s like that, are they? I think she’s trying to make up for Arwel.’

  ‘Why should she need to do that?’

  ‘They played with him, like they play with Mari. Mr Elis took Arwel on trips and played at horses with him like kids play with dolls and Teddy bears.’ Letting go of his arms, she walked towards the cemetery gates. ‘He didn’t do any of it for Arwel, you know. It was all for himself. He doesn’t deserve any pity, and she should be ashamed of herself for letting him be like that.’

  A small group of sightseers waited outside the cemetery, heads bowed under the wrathful noise of the bells. McKenna held the door of a long black car while Carol climbed in, to sit beside her mother and father, then hurried to his own, fearing to see the church tower blown apart by the monstrous pressure within.

  ‘You look dead in your shoes.’ Owen Griffiths examined McKenna’s face. ‘What an awful day! And those bells! Rhiannon’s paid for a full peal of something called Grandsire Triples. The ringers’ll still be hard at it at teatime.’

  ‘A muffled peal is a tribute.’

  ‘Is it? My scalp wanted to crawl right off my skull.’ Griffiths riffled through the list of telephone messages. ‘Rhiannon said we’d be welcome at Bedd y Cor for the funeral meal, which was very magnanimous in the circumstances. She waited ages to speak to you. What were you and that crazy girl talking about for so long?’

  ‘Arwel mostly. Carol seems the only person able to rejoice that he lived.’ McKenna lit a cigarette. ‘What did Rhiannon want?’

  ‘She asked about the vehicles, so I said we’re investigating new material, and probably wouldn’t keep them much longer.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘She’s resigned.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘From the chair of social services committee and the council.’

  ‘She’s been expecting the sack since we questioned Elis.’

  ‘She’s done it off her own bat, because she noticed the stink of something very rotten in the borough, and wants to discuss her “shift of perspective” with you, because you’ll understand better. As you reckon folk know more than they think, she’s probably right.’

  ‘Nice to have one big gun firing on our behalf, isn’t it?’

  ‘There’s no need for sarcasm,’ Griffiths chided. ‘You’ll feel more charitable after a good night’s sleep. I’ve sent your minions home, because they were up all last night and most of the night before. Jack wanted to come back, but he’s got a nastier cough than I ever heard on you, and he doesn’t touch the tobacco.’

  ‘It’s all the passive smoking he’s forced to do.’

  ‘It’s the bugs getting to him when he’s down. I’ve never known him so miserable.’ Doodling mindlessly on a sheet of headed notepaper, Griffiths added, ‘I told him to follow Denise’s example and take a holiday over Christmas.’

  ‘And I’ve told him the same, but I doubt he’ll take the advice.’

  ‘He’s fretting about those girls, isn’t he? Did you notice how strained they looked at the funeral? And they didn’t even know Arwel.’ Sighing, he tore up the paper and dropped the shreds into the waste bin. ‘You can’t get to grips with modern youth, can you? Can’t know what they’re thinking, or why, can’t know what they’ll do next. Has it occurred to you that Carol provoked the fire at Blodwel, never mind sending Ronnie and Doris off on their travels? How do we deal with that sort of power? And don’t say she won’t see it that way. She might not at the moment, but I’m sure she’ll be putting two and two together before long.’

  ‘She’ll see this collision of random events for what it is,’ McKenna said. ‘But that’s not to say the rest of the world won’t invest her with the power.’ He smiled. ‘According to Eifion, all perceptions depend on the judgement of the perceiver, not the perceived.’

  ‘He’s as barmy in his own way as she is.’ Griffiths frowned. ‘She alarms me, you know, because she’ll only answer to herself.’

  ‘She won’t cause any harm while her conscience sits firmly o
n her back,’ McKenna said. ‘At least, not to anyone who doesn’t deserve it.’

  ‘Scratch a Celt and find an anarchist?’

  ‘Depends on your perception of anarchy.’ McKenna lit a cigarette. ‘Call it giving God a helping hand.’

  ‘Pastor Evans’d say a mere mortal can’t know when God wants one.’

  ‘And Pastor Evans can’t know if God would want to judge a girl like Sian because she had a baby out of wedlock, but he takes it upon himself to condemn her in His name.’

  Griffiths began defacing another sheet of paper. ‘Scratch a papist and find some compassion, eh? There’s little enough of it warming the hearts of most chapelgoers. Peggy Thomas was telling me how people’ve treated them since Arwel died. Not a word of condolence, and most folk crossing the road rather than pass the time of day.’ He sighed. ‘I suppose they’re held to blame for Arwel dying.’

  ‘They’re held to be contaminated, and people cross the road because they’re afraid of catching their own death.’

  Arwel’s funeral merited a brief mention on the local teatime news. The cameraman made these extraordinary people look banal, McKenna thought, grief painted on their faces for the occasion, the dreadful thudding bells reduced to a vibrant humming beneath the reporter’s voice. The report occupied fifty-five seconds, followed by whole minutes on council overspending, where the director of social services justified his further negligence, and the councillors expressed outrage about wasted money.

  Shivering inside his padded coat, a tissue-wrapped bottle under his arm, Eifion Roberts arrived as McKenna put his empty milk bottles on the front doorstep.

  ‘I expected you to wait after the funeral,’ McKenna said.

  ‘Didn’t feel like it.’ Hanging the coat over the back of a dining-chair, the pathologist sank on the sofa, arranging his feet around the sleeping cats. ‘Harrowing, wasn’t it? You look more bloody awful than usual.’

  ‘I’ve had precious little sleep since Saturday.’

  ‘Arwel can sleep all he wants, but I don’t expect you’d fancy a swop.’ He unwrapped the bottle and unscrewed the cap. ‘Get the glasses, Michael.’

  ‘I don’t much feel like drinking.’

  ‘You can watch me, then.’ Tipping out a huge measure of whiskey, Dr Roberts added, ‘And you can shut up with your nannying platitudes about drink and the other little pleasures that stop mortal man putting an end to it all every so often!’

  ‘I’d no intention of saying anything.’

  ‘That’ll make a change, won’t it?’ Peering over the rim of his glass at McKenna, he said, ‘I was watching Elis at the funeral. He gawps at you like you’re some sort of saviour. Does he think you’ve mastered the art of walking on water? You should tell him even papists just wash in it, like the rest of us.’

  McKenna sighed. ‘Is this going to be one of those times when you do a verbal autopsy on anyone unlucky enough to cross your orbit?’

  ‘I got to thinking, that’s all.’ Dr Roberts gulped his drink. ‘Maybe it wasn’t very charitable to say Elis does bugger all. Did you know some Roman bod said he never let a day pass without writing a line? It’s fine when you know what you’re supposed to do with all this time, but what do I do? What’s my motto? “Never a day without a carve-up?”.’ Emptying the glass, he said gloomily, ‘Not much of a purpose, is it?’

  ‘Are you busy, sir?’ Dewi stood on the doorstep, a powdering of snow on his hair and shoulders.

  ‘I thought you’d be in the Land of Nod.’ McKenna retrieved milk bottles toppled by the wind, then closed the door. ‘Which is where I’d like to be. I’l bet Janet’s tucked up at the manse.’

  ‘She wasn’t half an hour ago.’ Standing at the foot of the stairs, Dewi gazed upon the pathologist, fast asleep on the sofa, half-empty bottle at his feet, two cats in his large lap. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘He will be. You can help get him home when you’ve said what you want.’ Sitting at the table, McKenna added, ‘What were you and Janet doing?’

  ‘Fighting over words, and it’s a bloody good thing she stormed off back to Daddy before I found the death verse.’ Opening Arwel’s book of medieval poetry, Dewi pointed out the number above each title, the printed numbers at intervals beside the lines, then showed McKenna the handwritten margin annotations, the underscorings of letters and numbers. ‘She got very snotty about council-house kids defacing books.’

  Rubbing his eyes, McKenna leafed through the book. ‘They’re not all marked. Maybe Arwel was learning some of them, or just fancied the imagery.’ Haltingly, he began to read the archaic language. ‘It’s very beautiful, isn’t it? Very fresh.’

  ‘Not all the poems are marvellous,’ Dewi said. ‘Still, I expect even Beethoven managed to write crappy stuff at times.’

  McKenna smiled. ‘Policing’s doing wonders for your cultural development.’

  ‘Obscuring my origins, you mean?’

  ‘Leave the bitchiness to Janet.’ Leafing again through the pages, McKenna said, ‘And never underestimate the intelligence of the uneducated. Carol sees things others miss. Her imagination’s not been smothered by learning, and neither was Arwel’s.’ He stared at one of the marked verses. ‘So what was he doing?’

  ‘Not wantonly vandalizing books, but Janet got so steamed up she wouldn’t even bother thinking about the combinations of letters and numbers he’d marked. If you ignore what’s not marked, these read like vehicle registrations, don’t they?

  Tossing and turning in bed, McKenna came to violent wakefulness again as the cathedral clock struck eleven, head and heart thudding. One heavy, one light, the cats lay on his feet, the black cat sporting a new silver collar. The other cat stirred as the owl called, winging over the sleeping city, and McKenna thought of the legendary Blodeuwedd, sprung from flowers and doomed never to know the love of mortal man. He thought too of Pryderi, the stolen child, whose name was fashioned from the word for worry, and whose legacy was vengeance.

  Wrapping himself in his dressing-gown, he crept downstairs to sit by the parlour fire. Immune to his terror, the cats slept on, sure that day would pursue night and that death dogged life, wise to the tensions holding all infinity in infinite balance.

  18

  The shrill note of the telephone roused McKenna from sleep, and as he groped for the receiver, he imagined again the acrid fumes of Blodwel alight. Instead of Dewi’s voice, sharp with urgency, he heard the soft breathy tones of Emma Tuttle, panting with fear.

  ‘The girls’ve gone!’

  ‘Gone where?’ He glanced at the bedside clock. ‘It’s past one in the morning.’

  ‘I know what time it is!’ Emma’s voice rose.

  The cats protested as he sat upright. ‘Was there another row?’

  ‘Not really. They wanted to go to Bedd y Cor after the funeral, but we said no. It’s not as if they knew the boy.’

  ‘They’re young. He was one of their kind.’

  ‘I think they wanted to see inside the poshest house in the county, as a matter of fact. Oh, why are we wasting time?’

  ‘When did they go out?’

  ‘I don’t know! They went to bed about eleven. Jack was already asleep, worn out after the funeral.’

  ‘And you?’ McKenna switched on the bedlamp.

  ‘Twelve? I did the ironing first.’

  ‘Did you check on the girls?’

  ‘Of course I did! They were reading.’

  ‘So they’ve been gone less than an hour.’ He climbed from the bed, back and legs stiff enough to snap.

  ‘There might’ve been a telphone call,’ Emma said. ‘Something woke me, but there’s nothing on the answering machine.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know! I went back to sleep.’

  ‘So what woke you again?’

  ‘I don’t know! Instinct, probably.’

  ‘Is there a recall number stored?’

  ‘I couldn’t think of anything except calling you.’ She sobbed.

  ‘Is Jack sti
ll asleep?’

  ‘I don’t want to wake him. He’s really not well.’

  ‘I know.’ Pulling underclothes and top clothes from drawers and wardrobe, he began to dress. ‘I’ll get your number checked now. What about the bikes?’

  ‘In the garage.’

  ‘It’s not only council-house kids who go off the rails,’ Dewi said.

  ‘I didn’t mean that, and you know I didn’t!’ Janet snapped. ‘I don’t see Inspector Tuttle’s girls that way.’

  ‘I don’t expect he does, either.’

  ‘Why should they want to run away?’ Janet demanded.

  ‘If we find them, you can ask, can’t you?’ McKenna said.

  Dewi snatched at the telephone on McKenna’s desk before the first peal rang out, scribbled numbers and notes on a sheet of paper, then dialled out. ‘There’s no incoming number stored, but somebody rang out at midnight forty-one to—’ He broke off to speak, gave instructions, and waited, the secrecy button activated. ‘Bettacabs. They’ve taken a fare some place. He’s asking the driver exactly where.’

  ‘They’ve gone to meet Gary Hughes,’ Janet shivered.

  ‘How d’you know there isn’t a rave in the mountains like on Penmon cliffs during the summer?’ Dewi concentrated on the dark narrow road, an unforgiving thoroughfare through the detritus of an Ice Age glacier.

  ‘Look at all that ice. And it’s snowing. You’d have to be out of your mind to go up there.’

  ‘Druggies usually are.’

  ‘You can be so stubborn.’

  ‘Mrs Tuttle’s stubborn, isn’t she? No way would she stay in the house.’ Dewi glanced in the mirror, at the lights of McKenna’s car behind. ‘I wouldn’t like to be in the twins’ shoes when we catch them.’

  ‘If.’ A volley of snow hit the windscreen, sheared from the mountainsides. Janet watched the car headlights swing up and down, glittering on cataracts of ice in crevices and gullies like black holes in a solid universe. ‘What do we do when we get to the village?’