by Rhys Bowen
“Evans, where the devil are you?” Watkins’s voice echoed through the car on the speakerphone.
“Just on my way in now, sir. I’ve been with Rhodri Morgan.”
“And?”
“He was away from his cottage all that summer. He broke his leg and was in the hospital, then with his daughter.”
“Well that’s one theory shot to pieces then. We’ve been more successful here. We’ve just found out that Ashley’s prescription was filled a couple of weeks ago in North Yorkshire—same area where we had the reported sighting of the child’s father.”
Chapter 24
It was eight-thirty when Evan opened his front door. He felt as if the day had gone on forever and tried to remember if he had stopped for a meal. He didn’t think so, apart from the Welsh cakes with Suzanne Bosley-Thomas. His stomach was certainly growling for food, and he wondered whether he could barge in on Bronwen at this hour. On school nights she was usually up to her eyes in marking papers and preparing for the next day. The other option was the pub. Betsy’s microwaved toad in the hole was better than nothing and certainly better than what he had in the fridge.
He pushed open his front door, then froze as he heard a noise coming from his kitchen. The door was closed and he always left it open. He moved forward cautiously then flung open the door.
“Evan—you scared the daylights out of me. You nearly made me drop this. What on earth was the James Bond imitation in aid of?” Bronwen demanded. She was standing at his stove, wearing an apron and holding a casserole in a gloved hand.
“I didn’t expect to come home and find anyone in my house,” Evan said. “So naturally I thought …”
“That the Mafia had invaded?” Bronwen was laughing now.
“Well, I am a policeman.”
“And you did give me a key.” Bronwen put the casserole on a mat on the table. “Is this liable to be a nightly occurrence when I’m married to you? Because I need to know whether I should be taking martial arts lessons now, just in case.”
Evan came over to her and enveloped her in his arms. “I’m sorry, cariad. It’s been a long day. I’m bushed and my brain is obviously not functioning.”
“I know you’ve been working very long hours. That’s why I decided to come over with the lamb cawl. Sit down. It’s all ready.”
“Bron, you’re a miracle worker.” He kissed her forehead then pulled out a stool.
“Tough day, was it?” She ladled out a generous helping of lamb pieces and vegetables, swimming in a rich brown gravy.
“Frustrating. We’re not getting anywhere.”
“So they didn’t manage to identify the remains as being the little girl you knew?”
“Not conclusively, but I’d say it’s pretty definite.”
“Well, that’s one piece of progress, isn’t it?”
“About the only one. Oh, and we may be getting somewhere with the missing child’s father at last. A man matching his description was seen in a remote area of North Yorkshire a couple of weeks ago. Now we find that the child’s prescription was filled in that same area.”
“So are you going up there?”
“I wanted to, but Inspector Watkins still wants to check out the father’s haunts in London first. We’ve got the North Yorks Police conducting a search for us up there and showing the photos around. If we get any confirmation of a more recent sighting, we’ll head in that direction.”
Bronwen frowned as she helped herself to the hot pot. “But wait a minute—two weeks ago is no good to you, is it? The child was safely with her mother until last Friday.”
“Unless the father was establishing a hideout in Yorkshire, planning for when he had a chance to kidnap her. He probably assumed they were still in Leeds and it would only be a short drive to North Yorks. He would have wanted to make sure he had enough of her prescription drugs on hand.”
“Did the chemist recognize him?”
“No, unfortunately the chemist couldn’t remember who picked it up. The signature is illegible. It may have been his young assistant who was behind the counter that day. The North Yorks Police will be showing him the photos we’ve sent them.”
“What about the address? Don’t you have to fill in the address on a prescription?”
“It was the child’s own home address.”
“And the child and her mother were already here at the caravan two weeks ago?”
“Yes, they were.” Evan paused to eat a couple of forkfuls, then chewed hard to finish a mouthful. “You know what else is interesting? The mother has left without telling us. Apparently she told the local police station, but she never contacted the D.I.”
“Do they know where she’s gone?”
“Home, she said. We’re checking that out, of course.”
“I can understand that,” Bronwen said. “If you’re sick with worry, you wouldn’t want to be stuck in a caravan all alone, would you? You’d want the support of loved ones.”
“If she has any loved ones,” Evan said. “I got the impression she didn’t live near any family members. But I suppose you’re right. If you’re really worried, you don’t think logically, do you?”
“So what happened when the family came to identify the child’s skeleton today?” Bronwen asked. “I imagine that must have been awfully hard for them.”
“It was.”
“Did anything come out of it?”
“Like what?”
“You suspected it might be one of them, didn’t you? You didn’t get any sense that one of them was guilty?”
Evan ate slowly before saying, “I really don’t know what to think, Bron. It just seemed so much of a coincidence that a second child disappeared when they all came back to the area for the first time. But now that I’ve met them again, I find it so hard to believe that one of them could have killed Suzanne. We were all little kids.”
“You should know better than anyone that kids do terrible things sometimes.”
Evan nodded. “Yes, but it’s just hard to equate any of those children I knew with a clever killer.”
“What do they think?” she asked. “None of them have had suspicions?”
Evan paused. “Now that you mention it, a couple of them did drop hints. At least I think they were trying to drop hints.” He ran through the conversations in his mind. Suzanne had surely hinted her suspicions about Val and Henry—more definitely about Henry and how it was strange that he hadn’t won the game of capture the castle. And hadn’t Val mentioned how strong Henry was and how he was the only one allowed out alone? Had they really been hinting that they suspected him, or was it just their desperate need to have this case solved at last?
“I presume they’ve all gone home now so you’ve lost your chance to interview them,” Bronwen said.
“No, actually they’re having a family dinner up at the Everest Inn,” Evan said.
“In that case, if you wanted to follow up on those hints, then it would seem like now or never, wouldn’t it?”
Evan looked up, a cube of lamb skewered on his fork. “You think I should go up there tonight?”
“It might be your only chance.”
“But what could I say? I’ve no authority to pursue this matter. I’d get in terrible trouble if they complained about me.”
“I don’t recall that ever hindering you in the past.” Bronwen met his eyes with a smile. “In fact, I’d go as far as to say that you deliberately went against your superior officers on certain occasions.”
“That was different. I was going against that pompous twit Inspector Hughes.”
“Inspector Watkins knows you well enough, Evan. If you start doing some investigating on your own, he’ll understand.”
“I’m not so sure. The old Watkins would have, but he’s into his ‘I’m the boss around here’ mode at the moment. Very touchy, in fact.”
“Then make it look as if you bumped into the family by accident,” Bronwen said. “Come on. Finish your dinner and then you can take me for a drink
at the Everest Inn.”
“At those prices,” Evan said with a chuckle, “you’ll be getting lemonade.”
The foyer at the Everest Inn was deserted when Evan and Bronwen came through the etched glass doors. A big fire burned in the fireplace. Soft music was playing.
“I hope they haven’t finished dinner and gone,” Evan said.
“If it’s their last night together, they won’t want to leave in a hurry, will they?” Bronwen slipped her arm through his. “Come on, let’s go to the bar and order drinks; then we can have them at that table by the fire.”
They settled on Irish coffees.
“This is really nice,” Bronwen said, looking around her with satisfaction. “We should do this more often.”
“Then you’d better find yourself a high-paying job, my love, because my policeman’s pay isn’t going to stretch to this more often.”
Bronwen smiled and sipped her drink. Evan studied her. She had grown up in this sort of life. Irish coffees at five pounds a head were probably nothing in her mind, even though she was only earning a schoolteacher’s salary at the moment. Would there come a time when she was dissatisfied with living humbly? Would she suddenly find that she wanted her old life back again?
As if she sensed what he was thinking, she looked up and smiled. “Come to think of it, there’s nothing here that we can’t have at home. We’ll get the chimney working at the cottage and we’ll have armchairs in front of a roaring fire and we can make Irish coffees every night and look out at a better view than this. I wish those stupid planning people would get on with it. I can’t wait.”
Evan looked up at the sound of voices and saw Mrs. Bosley-Thomas come into the foyer on her son’s arm. Suzanne hovered behind them. She was clearly ill at ease, her eyes darting around nervously as they crossed the foyer and exited through the front door. Evan rose to his feet, not sure whether to follow them. Bronwen was signaling him to go after them. However, he was only halfway across the floor when the door opened again and Henry came back in. He seemed preoccupied and didn’t notice Evan until he almost bumped into him.
“Oh, hello,” he said. “What are you doing here? Not looking for us again, I hope.”
“Not at all,” Evan said. “I live in the village. I bring my fiancée up here from time to time for a quiet drink.” He saw Bronwen smirk.
Henry nodded. “It’s not bad by Welsh standards, is it?”
“So your sister and mother have left, have they?” Evan asked.
“That’s right. Suzanne’s going to drive Mummy home tomorrow. It’s been a bit of an ordeal for her, I’m afraid.”
“Your mother or Suzanne, did you mean?”
“Mummy, of course. Everything’s an ordeal for Suzanne. She always has been a bag of nerves, poor thing. You remember her as a child, don’t you? Always having outbursts and completely overreacting. Always with a grievance about something too.”
He looked Evan directly in the eye for a second.
“I’ve never mentioned this before,” he said, “but that day, when Sarah—when Sarah went missing, we were playing that silly game. I spotted Suzanne. She was going down, not up to the castle.”
“She says she won,” Evan said.
Henry shook his head with a pitying smile. “Oh, I don’t think so. Truthfully, I can’t remember anymore who won, but I don’t think it was Suzanne.”
“Are you suggesting that your sister may have had something to do with Sarah’s disappearance?”
“Oh, Good Lord, no. Not at all. Nothing like that. I mean, that’s totally absurd. How could you ever suggest such a thing?” Henry laughed. He slapped Evan on the shoulder. “Good seeing you again, even if it was in such distressing circumstances. Must join the others in the bar, or they’ll wonder where I’ve got to.”
He strode across the floor, his leather soles making brisk tapping noises. Evan went back to join Bronwen.
“Well?” she asked.
“What a family,” Evan said. “It appears that the brother and the sister suspect each other.”
“And which one do you suspect?”
“I have no idea. I don’t think I can be the kind of detective I thought I was, Bron. I just have no idea.”
Chapter 25
“I didn’t like London the first time I came here,” D.I. Watkins said, as they inched forward through a traffic jam, “and I like it even less each time I come back.”
Evan, who had done all the driving, was concentrating too hard on avoiding other vehicles to talk. It had been a long, stressful drive through a rainstorm that had stalled traffic on the M4. He winced as a double-decker bus drew up beside him, seemingly only inches away. He noticed the sign to Shepherd’s Bush on the left and wondered how he’d ever get across to it. He had been feeling keyed up and uncomfortable since before they started that morning. Knowing that the Thomases were going their separate ways worried him. He had tried telling D.I. Watkins that they shouldn’t let the Thomases go but had been overruled.
“It’s not as if they’re going to flee the country, is it?” he had laughed. “Look, Evan, you said yourself that you can’t really believe one of them was involved. I agree with that. They were little kids and you said it yourself—they were distraught about losing her.”
All the way down in the car, Evan had chided himself for not acting. He should have acquired photographs of the Thomases and shown these around the caravan park. He should have taken their car numbers. He realized he could get these if he needed them, but he sensed that the window of opportunity had closed. Now they had gone home, and he’d probably never find out who had buried Sarah at his front gate.
He closed his eyes and slid in between a taxi and a van. The van honked at him.
“There, that was easy, wasn’t it?” Watkins said, as they pulled up outside a row of faceless, three-story Victorian houses. “Piece of cake, I’d say.”
Evan, who was sweating, glanced at him, opened his mouth, then changed his mind. “When you’ve got a driver who knows his north from his south,” he said.
“I don’t deny I’ve got a rotten sense of direction,” Watkins said. “Right. Number thirty-one. That must be the one with the letter box hanging off.” He opened the car door and got out. Evan followed him. The neighborhood was definitely what could be described as racially mixed. There was an Indian grocery on the corner. The small row of shops opposite contained a video rental shop with signs advertising films in a language that could have been Arabic, a Chinese takeout, and a curry-and-chips place. Three little West Indian boys were riding skateboards along the pavement. But the woman who opened the door had the hard, big-boned face of a Londoner.
“Mrs. Strutt?” Watkins said.
“What do you want?”
“We’re from the North Wales Police. We’d like to talk to you about your former tenants, Mr. and Mrs. Sholokhov.”
“The police have already been round here asking questions.” She stood, tree trunk arms folded over broad chest, defying them to get past her into the house. “I told’em’e don’t live here no more. And didn’t leave no forwarding address neither.”
“We know that the local police have spoken to you, but we have a few more questions we need to ask, if you don’t mind,” Watkins said. “There may be some things that they overlooked because it wasn’t their case and they didn’t realize what was important. Can we come in for a moment?”
She tried to stare them down. “I’m due at bingo in half an hour.”
“Then we’ll try to keep it brief,” Watkins said.
“Mrs. Strutt, it’s about the little girl who used to live here,” Evan said. “Little Ashley. Did you hear that she’s missing? Her mother thinks that her father might have kidnapped her. You’d want us to find her before he took her back to Russia with him, wouldn’t you?”
The hard face softened a little. “Nice little thing she was. Sweet as anything. All right. Come on in then, but I’m not missing the start of bingo.”
She led them into
an old-fashioned front room that looked as if it was never used. There were antimacassars on the three-piece suite, and the fireplace looked as if it had never had a fire in it. She sat on the sofa, leaving Watkins and Evan to take the uncomfortable, straight-backed armchairs.
“I told the other bloke everything what I know,” she said. “They lived upstairs for three years. They come here when little Ashley was one year old. I think they’d had a hard time finding a flat what would take kids.”
“And what sort of tenants were they?”
“Oh, not too bad, considering,” she said. “They had their fights, but what couple don’t? And he was a bit on the highly strung side like most foreigners, you know.”
“Did he work at all while he was here?”
“Odd jobs from time to time, but no steady work. His English wasn’t too good. But she worked, of course. They paid their rent regular enough, and he got money from the social services. If you really want to know, it made my blood boil. I said to Mrs. Finch next door—we’ve sweated and slaved all our lives and they hand out the public assistance to these bloody foreigners, pardon my French.”
“What sort of job did she have?” Evan asked.
“Hairdresser. She did quite well at it, I believe. The little kid was always nicely dressed.”
“What kind of parents were they?”
“Well, I can’t say you could fault them as parents, either of them. They both adored that child. You never heard either of them raise their voices to her, no matter how much they fought with each other. They were both dead worried when she had the operation. Didn’t leave her bedside the whole time, but she pulled through nicely and now she’s just like any other normal kiddy, running around and singing and playing.”
“When Mr. Sholokhov left here, did he talk about going home to Russia?” Watkins asked.
“We never talked much. I had a hard time understanding him on account of his poor English, if you really want to know. I think he just lost heart after she left him. And he was probably having a hard time coming up with the rent money. He just come to me one day and said the place was too big for him and he was moving out at the end of the week. Then he packed up his stuff and left.”
