Evan's Gate

by Rhys Bowen

  “Good idea,” Bill Edwards muttered. “So would somebody like to brief us on what’s been done so far? Our men have blanketed the entire area with posters. We’ve established a hot line number for tips. I understand that the boat search was negative. Now what about Interpol?”

  “Constable Davies?” Watkins asked, turning to her.

  “Right, sir. I’ve been in touch with NCIS and given them everything we have on the father. They’re going to contact Interpol and have the Russian police try to locate Sholokhov.”

  “But we don’t definitely know that he’s skipped the country, do we?” the other uniformed branch sergeant, Howell Jones, asked.

  “He hasn’t, unless he was using false identity documents,” Watkins said. “We’ve checked with the port authorities.”

  “The NCIS says that unfortunately false documents are too easy to come by these days, especially for those who mix in asylum circles. He could have bought himself a fake EU document, and then it would hardly have been checked.”

  “But we circulated a description, didn’t we?” Evan asked. “And the fact that he was traveling with a little blonde girl. That should have made him easy enough to spot.”

  “Could he have got out before we notified the ports?” Glynis asked.

  “Not very likely, is it?” Watkins said. “It was only two hours after Mrs. Sholokhov reported the child missing that we spoke to her, and we notified the ports pretty soon after that. Say two and a half hours—where could he have taken the child in that time?”

  “Manchester airport?” Bill Edwards suggested.

  Watkins shook his head. “Not with all the time it takes to clear security these days. It’s an hour and a half’s drive, then he’d have to park, check in, go through security. It’s just not possible in two hours.”

  “And do flights actually go from Manchester to Moscow?” Glynis asked. “Wouldn’t he have to go down to London for that?”

  “If he was smart, he’d be on a plane going somewhere else,” Evan said. He picked up a pencil and doodled along the edge of the pad in front of him—fierce black rectangles that looked like graves. “Maybe he’d take her to Frankfurt or Berlin and then rent a car and drive the rest. It’s easier to get through checkpoints with a car. In fact if I’d been him, I’d have taken her to Holyhead and across to Ireland.”

  “You’re probably right,” Watkins agreed. “But he hasn’t attempted to fly out of Dublin or Belfast yet, as far as we can tell.”

  “Then he has to be lying low in this country,” Glynis said. “We might have to wait until someone locates him.”

  “This all presupposes he has money,” Evan said. “Didn’t his wife say that he never held a job, and they lived in poverty? I’d imagine what he’s doing now requires a hefty amount of cash.”

  “You’re right there,” Watkins said. “But you never know how these foreigners work, do you? He could have had a whip-round among the other Russians who wanted to help him prevent the mother from getting custody.”

  “In the meantime, what about Ashley’s medicine?” Evan turned to Watkins. “Did you get the prescription?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it.” Watkins said.

  “Might it be an idea then to contact chemists and warn them to be on the lookout for someone bringing in this particular prescription ?” Glynis asked. “It’s not the most ordinary medication in the world, is it?”

  “We could do that, although if he’s had copies of her prescriptions and he’s been planning this for some time, he’d have filled them already, wouldn’t he?”

  “Yes, I suppose he would,” Glynis agreed. “In which case, we could find out where the little girl’s prescription has been filled recently. It might give us a clue as to where he is staying.”

  “That’s a smart suggestion, Davies. Can I leave that to you, then?” Watkins said.

  Glynis glanced at Evan and grinned. “I should learn to keep my mouth shut,” she said. “It only seems to get me extra work.”

  “I think it’s bloody brilliant,” Evan said. “If we find out it’s been filled somewhere else in the country, we’ll know right away whether he’s got her or not.”

  “Apart from that, any other suggestions?” Watkins asked.

  There was silence. A million thoughts were flying around in Evan’s head, but he couldn’t put them in order before Watkins went on. “Then we’ll just have to wait until someone contacts us—maybe tonight’s newscasts will produce someone who’s seen her. If the father’s in the clear, he might well come forward himself.”

  “What about the missing child database?” Evan asked, remembering one of the things he’d been thinking about. “You were going to look into it, Glynis. Did you manage to get Ashley added to it?”

  Glynis shook her head. “I inquired about it, but we can’t enter her. They only take children who are missing. If Ashley’s been abducted by her father, then she’s not officially missing. She’s a victim of a crime.”

  “I hate to think that we’re wasting precious time,” Evan said. “How did your interview with Mrs. Sholokhov go, sir? Did she tell you anything else that could be useful?”

  “Nothing really. It’s quite clear that she’s convinced her ex-husband has taken the child, and she knows he’ll take good care of her—she’s not worried about that, she says. But she’s terrified he’ll take the girl to Russia, and she’ll never see her again. That was about it. I pumped her on anything she might remember about the beach and cars parked at the caravan park, but she stuck to the story exactly as she told us. In fact she was very tight-lipped, and she only perked up when the TV reporter spoke to her. Then she was a real ham for the camera—wringing her hands and doing the whole grieving mother bit.”

  “Is the piece going to air tonight?” Evan asked.

  “That’s right. Six o’clock news.”

  “We’ll have to make sure we watch that, won’t we?” the roundfaced sergeant Jones said, with a wink to his mate. “Did they think you had star quality then, Inspector?”

  “Give it a break, Howell. We’re looking for a missing kid, for God’s sake. I don’t know what I’d do if my Tiffany were missing. I’d go bananas. I’d search nonstop until I found her. So I’m taking this one rather personally. Can’t say I feel like laughing, if you know what I mean.”

  “Sorry, sir. Didn’t mean to offend,” the sergeant muttered.

  Evan looked at his D.I. with approval. There was always an undercurrent of rivalry going on between the detective and uniformed branches, almost a resentment of the comparative freedom that the plainclothes boys enjoyed.

  “And, sir, you wanted me to get back to the media about her heart transplant and the medication once you’d spoken to the mother,” he said. “Shall I release that news to them now?”

  “Good idea, Evans,” Watkins said. “And apart from that, all we can do is wait. We’ve got our posters out, thanks to you boys,” he nodded to the two sergeants. “We’ve the child’s picture airing on newscasts across the country, and we’ve set the wheels in motion for the Russian police to start looking for him over there. I hope to God we find him quickly.”

  “And I hope that he’s the one who took her,” Evan said, “because the alternative is that a crazy person who takes little blonde girls has come back to the area.”

  “She was blonde too, the little girl you knew, was she?” Watkins looked up from his notes.

  “She looked almost exactly like Ashley—same little elfin face; long, blonde hair; very dainty.”

  Watkins sucked air through his teeth. “Bloody hell. So maybe your hunch isn’t so wrong after all.”

  Chapter 13

  Watching Sarah being dragged away by her brother had seemed like the end of the world to five-year-old Evan. He had feared that he would never see her again. Then he had started patrolling the borders of the Thomas property and found a good vantage point on some rocks where the hillside rose steeply behind the farmhouse. Perched precariously on the very top of the tallest rock, he c
ould look down on the back of the house. Sometimes, when the light was right, he could see into the kitchen and watch them eating a meal. Sometimes they came out to play badminton or croquet on what passed for a lawn, when they had chased off the sheep. Sarah was never allowed to play, of course. They made her hold the mallets, or pick up the badminton birds for them, but she did so willingly, darting out like a little bird herself.

  There were five of them, Evan discovered: Two big boys, one of whom had come to fetch her that afternoon, a middle-sized girl who sulked a lot and made a fuss about the others cheating, and a boy slightly older than Evan who trotted around obediently after the others. Sarah was the youngest. There were also two women who called them in to meals or warned them not to get their clothes dirty and two men who came down only at weekends. One drove an E- Type Jaguar and the other an Aston Martin. Evan wasn’t particularly interested in cars and too young to know about them, but some of the bigger boys in the village had seen them driving past and been impressed with the make and models.

  When the Thomas children were out, which was most fine days, Evan wandered the hills above his house, looking for evidence of the Twlwyth Teg. He was pretty sure that Sarah was wrong and fairies belonged with Father Christmas and the bogeyman—things you didn’t believe in anymore when you started school. His parents said that there were no fairies in the world any longer, but his grandfather wasn’t so sure. One never knew with the Twlwyth Teg when they’d show up again. They could stay in their kingdom underground for hundreds of years and then one day they’d pop up again, just like that. What nonsense you do tell the boy, his mother had said. You’ll have him believing your silly stories.

  But when Evan went for a walk the next Sunday with his grandfather, the old man showed him a fairy ring. See how the grass is greener, and it makes a perfect circle? That’s where they dance, his grandfather said.

  Have you ever seen them? Evan asked.

  Not I personally, but I’ve heard of people who have. There’s a young chap roams up on the hills, a bit soft in the head, I suppose, but he swears he saw them once. Little lights bobbing in the mist, he said, and when he got closer, he could see they were fairies.

  Evan couldn’t wait to tell Sarah this. As it happened, he had to wait until the next summer. Their holiday ended, they packed up the cars and drove away without his having a chance to speak to her again.

  Evan came out of the police station and stood breathing in the balmy evening air. A few days ago it had been snowing on the high peaks; now it felt as if summer had arrived. That was the local joke about Welsh weather—if you didn’t like it, just wait, and in an hour it would have changed. He wondered if the American anthropologist was still working on the hillside and drove quickly up the pass, hoping to find out what she might have learned. The first tourists of the year were wandering through Llanberis, having just ridden the train down from Mount Snowdon and now looking for somewhere to eat. He honked his horn as an American couple stepped out into the street, looking the wrong way for traffic. They jumped back and gave him an apologetic wave.

  As he approached Llanfair, he looked up and saw the shell of his cottage, but no sign of the American woman. No strange car was parked beside the road, and there wasn’t even a police vehicle around anymore. That indicated that she had finished her work and taken everything of interest down to the lab. Quick worker, Evan decided. Quick tongued, too, the way she had leaped on him without waiting to find out who he was. Bronwen would be amused when he told her.

  He parked the car outside the now closed police station and decided to take a look for himself at the grave site. Slanting rays of the setting sun bathed the hillside around him. As he paused for breath, he was conscious of the silence. Usually at this time of year, the mountain slopes would echo with the bleeting of lambs and the deeper baas of sheep. Now he could hear a lark singing high in the air, the twitter of small birds, even the drone of a passing bee. He wondered how many years it would be before the flocks returned to the hills and whether something as terrible as foot-and-mouth disease was lying dormant, waiting to happen again.

  The yellow tape was still across the entrance to his garden, where he had tied it, but the former grave was now empty, a little puddle of water pooling at the bottom, with no indication that a body had ever lain in it. When would they know that it was really Sarah? he wondered, and wished he had taken Dr. Telesky’s phone number. He had to know, one way or the other. He had to do what he could to speed this up. If it were a question of dental records or even of DNA testing, then they’d need to locate other family members. It occurred to Evan that this was something he could get a jump on at this moment, when he was too wound up to go home and relax. At least he could drive over to the Thomases’ farm and see if the old man was still alive.

  He ran down the steep slope, keeping his balance instinctively, as he had learned to do as a young child, climbed back into his car, and drove up the village street. He thought he saw the front door of the schoolhouse standing open, but he didn’t slow to make sure. The last buildings in the village, until you came to the Everest Inn at the top of the pass, were two chapels, Capel Bethel on the left of the street and Capel Beulah on the right. Evan looked across at the notice board outside Capel Bethel to see whether a biblical text had been chosen this week.

  On the billboard outside Capel Bethel were the words: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Praise him with cymbals and trumpets.”

  On the billboard opposite, outside Capel Beulah, there was also a text from the Bible: “If I have not love, my speech is no more than a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.”

  Evan smiled as he drove on. This war of the Bible quotes never ceased to amuse him, and no doubt all the villagers, too. It certainly kept the two preachers and their wives busy, when they were not finding other ways of attacking each other. At the top of the pass, where the road swung either right down Nantgwynant toward Beddgelert and the ocean or left to Betws-y-Coed, he stopped to admire the sunset for a moment. A layer of sea fog had formed on the horizon, and the red ball was being swallowed into it. He stayed motionless, watching, until an impatient hoot from a car behind him reminded him that he was at a junction. He turned left and drove away from the ocean.

  Something was going on at the old Thomas farm. A large tent had been erected in the meadow beside the farmhouse, and cars were parked all the way down the drive to the road. Some were even parked at dangerous angles along the hedgerow. Evan hesitated. Old Thomos Thomas had been a grumpy, introverted old man, with scarcely more than a curt “Bore da” if Evan’s family had passed him. He had talked about sheep over the drystone wall to Evan’s grandfather but had never come on a social visit that Evan could remember. So this had to mean that the farm had been sold to new owners.

  He was about to drive on when he changed his mind and turned into the lane leading up to the farmhouse. At least the current owners might know what had happened to the old man and where he might be found if he was still alive. The cars parked beside the house indicated that yuppies might have taken over. BMWs and a Saab and a Jag—no longer as long and sleek as the old E Type that Evan had so admired—were parked in a row. Evan squeezed in beside them. There was music coming from the tent. Evan went toward it, following another couple, the woman clinging onto the man’s arm as she picked her way in high heels over the grass.

  The tantalizing smell of barbecuing meat wafted toward Evan, and he saw that a spit had been set up outside with two lambs on it. Inside the tent the atmosphere was smoky and loud, with shouted conversation competing with a band playing Beatles music. A young man in a dog collar came up to Evan.

  “Hi,” he said. “You haven’t got a drink. Bar’s over there against the wall.”

  His accent was transatlantic.

  “Sorry,” Evan said, “but I’m not really sure what’s going on. Is it a charity event because I don’t have a ticket or anything.”

  “Then you didn’t get an invitation?” the priest said. “Do you liv
e around here? We tried to make sure we included everybody.”

  “No, I live in Llanfair on the other side of the mountains,” Evan said.

  “Ah, a gate-crasher then.” The man smiled. “Saw all the cars and decided to drop in?”

  “Not exactly. I’m with the North Wales Police, making inquiries.”

  The smile faded instantly from the man’s face. “Inquiries about what?”

  “A little girl who vanished twenty-five years ago. She was staying at this place. I’m trying to contact her grandfather, who used to live here.”

  “Still does live here,” the man said. “This is his eightieth birthday party, and I’m his grandson, Nick Thomas.”

  “Good heavens, Nick! I’d never have thought you’d have turned out …”

  “To be a priest?” Nick smiled. “No. I don’t think I was particularly saintly as a child. But then I’m not particularly saintly now. Do I know you?”

  Evan extended his hand. “I’m Evan Evans—the obnoxious little kid from the next farm who used to follow you all around and beg to play with you.”

  “Good God.” Nick laughed and shook his hand. “You’ve certainly changed, haven’t you? You were a skinny little thing in those days, and small, too.”

  “I finally grew when I started playing rugby. It was a case of getting bigger or being squashed.”

  “And you’re with the police force now?” The smile faded from Nick’s eyes. “You said you were here about Sarah. Are there any new developments then?”

  “There may well be,” Evan said. The band had just finished “A Hard Day’s Night” and Evan lowered his voice. “A child’s skeleton has been found. We think it may be her.”

  Once outside the marquee, Evan took out his mobile phone. He stood among the parked cars in the gathering darkness, hearing the music and laughter spilling out of the tent. “Evans here, sir,” he said, in response to the curt, “Watkins.”