Dead People

by Ewart Hutton

  ‘So he didn’t mind Greg turning up?’

  ‘He didn’t turn up, Owen brought him home. After that it was the three of them going around together instead of just Owen and Rose.’

  ‘She must have died young?’

  ‘It was a real tragedy.’

  ‘Illness?’ I asked.

  ‘No, a terrible accident. The Joneses and Greg were really cut up about it.’

  ‘The fight?’ I prompted, remembering what had started this line of the conversation.

  ‘A bunch of hippies were taunting them about being in uniform. Owen and Greg had had too much to drink and eventually laid into them.’ He smiled happily at the recollection. ‘Ripped the dirty layabouts apart, they did.’

  ‘And you let them off with a caution?’

  He looked at me entreatingly. ‘They’d been to a funeral. She was Owen’s sister and Greg’s fiancée. They were in mourning.’

  I nodded my understanding. ‘But I’ll bet you truly busted those hippies’ balls?’

  He broke into a big grin. ‘Damn right.’

  I let him go. And ruminated over the way he had talked about Greg Thomas. Almost as if he had been adopted as a local. Was it of any significance?

  The sound coming from the church after Emrys left was what I took to be the priest engaged in some sort of low incantation. I wasn’t that up on the order of service in the Anglican convention, but I assumed that this was a contemplative moment, and they weren’t all about to come bursting through the doors with their hands high in the air singing Hallelujah.

  I had time to put in a telephone call.

  I had first worked with Constable Huw Jones on a case involving a poisoned Montagu’s harrier, and, after a spiky start, we had come to like one another. Huw was a sensible cop who kept out of departmental politics, and was happiest up in the hills with something like a golden plover in the eyepiece of his binoculars.

  He may have spent half his time in the whin up to his knees in bilberries, but he had more perception of what was going on in the area than a combination of Emrys Hughes, Captain Morgan and a police radio grafted together into a new life form.

  ‘Emrys Hughes tells me that there’s no one dealing dope in Dinas.’

  I heard his low thoughtful laugh come down the line. ‘Sergeant Hughes is a very pious man.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘If he doesn’t believe in dope dealers then there aren’t any. If he believed in them he would have to face up to having a problem in his community.’

  ‘So he’s right, there aren’t any?’ I teased.

  He laughed again. ‘Only pagans fucking up other pagans. Not his concern.’

  ‘How about a pagan with the initials TB?’

  He was silent for a moment. ‘You’re not on a crusade, are you?’ His voice was serious now.

  ‘No, I just need some information.’

  ‘Good.’ Another silence. I hoped he was checking his notes. ‘The man you’re looking for is called Ryan Shaw.’

  ‘TB?’ I queried.

  ‘Tractor Boy. His nom de guerre. Our Ryan thinks himself cool and ironic.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘3 Orchard Close, Maesmore.’

  ‘Thanks, Huw.’

  ‘Do you want back-up?’

  ‘Do I need it?’

  ‘He’s got a mean streak. He puts himself up there with the hoodlums in Manchester he scores from. But only when he’s not in Manchester, of course.’

  ‘He wouldn’t stiff a cop?’

  ‘You’re going there as a cop who is overlooking his misdemeanours, remember. That is going to give him a certain sense of empowerment. He might try and screw you.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning.’

  Maesmore! I laughed inwardly. Ryan Shaw’s ironic streak was catching. It was a village about seven miles from Dinas that had never recovered from the collapse of the lead-mining industry. Shortly after my arrival in the boondocks I had been called out there to help the uniforms at a domestic that had spilled out onto the scrubby patch of grass at the front of some former council houses. A recollection of the good neighbours going at each other with missiles in the shape of abandoned shopping trolleys and springs from burned-out mattresses, with junked shock absorbers commandeered as impromptu cudgels.

  I jerked out of my reflections and sat up with a jolt when I saw that people were coming out of the church. I got out of the car quickly and went to the other side of the lychgate. People were milling around the porch, waiting their turn to say goodbye to the vicar. Umbrellas went up as they came out from under the shelter of the porch. In my hurry I had forgotten my coat.

  People looked at me curiously as they came past. Some nodded politely. Then I saw Mrs Evans in front of the vicar. The big man beside her in a grey suit had his back to me. He had a trilby in one hand, the other was patting the vicar familiarly on the shoulder. His hair was dark and bushy, and he had the build of a prop forward.

  They turned to leave. Mrs Evans saw me as she was putting her umbrella up. She put a hand on her husband’s arm to restrain him. He put his hat on, leaned down to hear what she was saying, and then looked at me.

  He was built like a man who didn’t give a fuck what deals he reneged on. More or less my height, about 1.9 metres, but that’s where the resemblance ended. He looked like he was made of dense meat piled onto denser meat. His face was florid, gruffly handsome, with the same meat theme, and a nose that had been broken more than once and had retained no memory of its original shape.

  She tried to pull him back towards the vicar, but he shook her hand off and strode down the path towards me. He smiled like a hungry man with new dentures.

  ‘You’re a persistent fucker, I’ll give you that,’ he announced loudly, striding towards me. Behind him I saw his wife blanch as his voice carried back to her and the vicar.

  ‘I need to ask you some questions, Mr Evans,’ I said, beginning to wonder if he was going to stop, or just walk straight over me.

  He pulled up short. He eyed me up and down, his expression a combination of amusement and contempt. I got the impression that this was his stock look, which he didn’t bother varying too much. ‘You’re getting wet, Sergeant.’ He put out a hand the size of an overinflated toad and propelled me backwards under the lychgate. He then quickly raised both hands to forestall any protest. ‘Just helping you to get out of the rain.’ It was a show of power.

  ‘You knew Evie Salmon, Mr Evans,’ I said, ignoring the assault. Complaining would just play to his agenda and give him an excuse to shove me again, to demonstrate that he had only been helping.

  ‘Of course I knew her, she helped my wife out.’

  ‘Did she ever help you out?’

  A mischievous grin kicked in. This guy was not dumb, he had picked up on my subtext. He leaned in close. I smelled the sort of aftershave that he wouldn’t have picked for himself. ‘I don’t fuck around on my own doorstep,’ he said in a tone that kept it between us.

  I smiled innocently. ‘So it would make sense to move her to neutral territory?’

  He shook his head wonderingly, only now grasping where I was going with this. ‘Turn that insinuation into plain English.’

  ‘You drove Evie down from Pentre Fawr on the day she left. You were the last person to see her in Dinas. Or were you more generous than that, Mr Evans? Did you take her somewhere farther?’

  He stared at me calmly for a moment before he shook his head. ‘Tough shit, Sergeant.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I didn’t like the small gleam that had appeared in his eyes. It looked disturbingly triumphant.

  ‘You’re wrong. I wasn’t the last person to see Evie.’

  I didn’t respond. I waited for the bombshell.

  He smirked. ‘After I dropped her off she walked across the square towards Clive Fenwick.’

  It felt like the tendons behind my knees had just been severed. ‘You know Clive Fenwick?’ I blurted uselessly.

  ‘Not too many Porsche Cayenne’s in
Dinas.’ My surprise and consternation delighted him. He summoned his wife. She took his arm and pointedly ignored me. As they both left, the last look he turned on me was, Crash and burn, fucker.

  Clive Fenwick!

  Evie and the Barn Gallery had come back into conjunction. Or had she never left it?

  I fought down the impulse to drive out there. I had just gifted Gerald Evans the opportunity to piss in my face, I didn’t want the same thing to happen with Clive Fenwick. I needed more information.

  I needed the yellow-haired boy.

  Orchard Close in Maesmore was another street of former council houses, but it was an improvement on the one I remembered from the tribal war. Some people here had bought into house-pride. A few tidy gardens, some front doors personalized, one house with a stuck-on stone façade. Saplings had been planted in the communal grass area; some of them had not even been snapped off.

  None of this makeover nonsense for number 3, though. A motorbike under a plastic cover on the front lawn, broken milk bottles by the doorstep, and a smashed television set that appeared to have died where it had landed. A pimped purple VW Golf with wide alloy wheels, a rear spoiler and a straight-through exhaust pipe that could have served as an escape tunnel, was parked outside, half on the pavement.

  I drove past slowly, making like an ordinary john who was looking for an address. Scanning the sociology as I went past. Realizing that I had been in too much of a hurry. I should have done some background checks here. Because these were semi-detached family houses. There was a real possibility that Ryan still lived with his parents.

  And that could have an effect on both of my options: bribery or strongarm.

  ‘Good afternoon. Is Ryan Shaw at home, please?’

  ‘What the fuck’s he done now?’ She was the Fat and Scary Mum from central casting, and had sussed me as a cop just from the way I had knocked on the door. Everything about her was loose, from the nicotine-blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, to the cheeks, jowls, chins and breasts, right down to the mauve two-piece leisure outfit.

  ‘I need to talk to him in connection with a murder enquiry.’

  ‘Fucking hell! He’s moving up in the world.’ She swivelled her head. ‘Ryan!’ she yelled. ‘You’re wanted. Wait there,’ she instructed me, pointing at the front step. She left me and went into the room opposite that had a television set the size of a garage door on the wall. There was a pram in the hall, and, I noticed, before she pushed the door closed, other baby-care accoutrements on the floor of the television room.

  Ryan came down the stairs fast, two at a time. He was a bobbing boy. Couldn’t keep still, body popping and sneaking glances at all the reflective surfaces. I couldn’t work out whether he was on amphetamines, or just speedy from a video game I had interrupted.

  ‘Who you?’ he asked, in a curious tone, but no surprise. He was in his mid-twenties, handsome in an amorphous boy-band way, with styled brown hair that lolled over his eyebrows, and he was obviously fixated on body image. He was wearing a tight sleeveless white singlet that showed off his muscle groups, tucked into baggy black sweat pants cinched tightly at the waist.

  ‘Glyn Capaldi, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.’ I didn’t produce my warrant card as I didn’t want to make it formal.

  ‘CID?’ he asked cockily, proud of knowing the lingo.

  I nodded. ‘DS.’

  His head bobbed in slow acknowledgement. ‘Heard of you. You got talked about. You the dude who weirded-out in Cardiff. Word is you topped a pimp.’ He made a slow-motion gangsta pistol charade to demonstrate.

  ‘Not quite.’ I wondered how this prat went down with the real scary guys he scored from in Manchester.

  ‘What you doing at my crib on a Sunday?’

  ‘I need your help, Ryan.’

  His eyes took on a cunning glint. ‘What kind of help?’

  ‘Can I come in to talk about this?’

  He inhaled audibly and wiggled his fingers in a pantomime of terror. ‘It’s like a fucking vampire, man. If I let you in then you can do all kinds of shit because I have given you some sort of invitation.’

  Okay, so I was going to have to do this on the doorstep like a double-glazing salesman. ‘You heard about the mutilated bodies we’ve found at Dinas?’

  He nodded. ‘You working on that one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m impressed. That must be some kind of disturbing shit to see.’ He didn’t sound impressed.

  ‘Evie Salmon was one of the bodies.’

  He clucked sympathetically. ‘I heard. A bad break. But if that’s what you’re here for, I can’t help you. Our paths never crossed.’

  ‘I need to locate a friend of hers, a yellow-haired boy.’

  He made a big show of deliberating. He even held his chin between his thumb and forefinger and gazed off into the middle distance. The bastard was taking the piss.

  ‘This is completely off the record, Ryan.’

  He dropped the goofy pose. ‘But it isn’t, is it? Nothing ever is. I do you this favour, assuming that I’m able to, and I’m admitting to something that perhaps I would be kind of crazy to admit to.’

  The guy was sharp. ‘You’d be helping with a murder enquiry. All the victims were missing their heads and hands. Evie Salmon was found cut in half,’ I elaborated, aiming for his sense of injustice. He didn’t need to know that I was the one who had done that last piece of butchering.

  ‘This dude must be some kind of a gruesome fucker.’ This time he did sound impressed.

  ‘I personally promise you that it will go no further. This is strictly between you and me. I just need a name and then I walk away, and you and I are good, and I will owe you a favour.’

  He leaned his head back, stretching his neck. It snapped forward again. ‘Forget about the future, man. Forget about owing favours. Let’s just say a straight five hundred here and now.’

  He was serious. ‘I can’t offer you that kind of money.’

  ‘Well that’s a real shame, because that’s the fucking price.’

  We stared each other out. He wasn’t going to buckle. He may have been prepared to haggle, but I couldn’t get into it, not at that starting price. For information that might turn out to be worthless.

  ‘You don’t want me as an enemy, Ryan. I could be bad for business.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ he let out a theatrical moan of fear, and then moved in closer to me with a scowl. ‘Learn the game around here before you try to put the threat on me. I provide a fucking service. You as an enemy don’t scare me, with the friends I’ve got.’

  So he was a snitch. That’s why the bastard was so confident. Which also put another possible perspective on why Emrys had denied knowing anything about him. And Huw Davies had intimated that he didn’t want me upsetting him. He was protected. Strongarm wouldn’t work. And he had set the bar on the bribery too high.

  I took a breath to suppress my rising anger. This self-satisfied, puffed-out sleazeball was getting to me. ‘That bastard who killed those people is still out there. He could do it again,’ I appealed to him, little knowing how soon this was going to appear to be prophetic.

  He gave me a look to tell me to catch up on the lunacy of what I had just told him. ‘In that case, if it’s going to make me a target, I’d be fucking stupid telling you anything, wouldn’t I?’ He waggled his forearms at me. ‘Like how am I going to manage my wanking without any fucking hands?’

  He shouldn’t have leered at me.

  I shoved the door hard. It caught him on the shoulder and toppled his balance. Before he could recover I had crossed the hall and crashed in through the door to the room opposite.

  ‘Is there anyone in this family with a thread of fucking decency?’

  The two women on the black leather sofa watching a game show on the enormous television looked round slowly and up at me.

  ‘People have died. Can you tell that heartless man of yours to stop thinking about himself for once?’ I addressed the young woma
n on the sofa, who was also large, with dyed-black hair and matching eyebrows and eyelashes, and was jiggling a chunky baby with a dummy in its mouth.

  She shared a glance with Ryan’s mother. Neither appeared surprised or upset by my intrusion. Invasion and drama were obviously not strangers in Ryan’s life. She handed the baby to Ryan’s mother who turned back to the television.

  She got up and flashed me an annoyed look. I waited for her to ask me to fill her in on the cause of my outburst. ‘Tell me if they win,’ she called back to Ryan’s mother, and left the room.

  I was sucked back to the television. It was mesmeric. Phantasmagorical colours filled the wall. The game-show host had a suntan like a cinnamon bun, and teeth like the polar icecap. Compared to this, my little television in Unit 13 was like one of those gizmos that creates crude pictures from magnetized iron filings.

  When she returned, the three of us, baby, Ryan’s mother and me, were absorbed in the adventures of a walking, talking yoghurt pot that was going to revolutionize our digestive tracts. I was strangely reluctant to turn away from the screen.

  ‘The name you’re looking for is Justin Revel and he hasn’t seen him for a long time.’ She reached out on automatic and accepted the baby that Ryan’s mother passed over the back of the sofa, a thread of drool still connecting them. ‘And for your information, he’s not my heartless man, he’s my waste of space fucking brother.’

  Ryan was not in the hall when I left. I warned myself to be prepared for flak from my colleagues, but I was pretty secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be making a formal complaint about illegal entry.

  It’s the women, I thought, walking to the car, the mothers and the sisters, who are still looped into the simple thread of common humanity. The warm glow didn’t last, though. History caught up with me as I got into my car. I remembered that it was also the women who had cut the genitals off the dead English soldiers after their defeat by Owain Glyndwr at the Battle of Pilleth.

  And the snow had started.

  Justin Revel.

  That name had to belong to an incomer family. I could have routed my enquiry through Alison Weir in Carmarthen, but I was reluctant to make this strand public at this stage, and I reckoned that a name like that should not be hard to trace. So instead, I drove back to my research facility in Dinas.