Each Man Kills

by David Barry

  In the empty frame were the vague shadows of the black hills beyond the town. Nothing else. Then he looked down and saw a shadow dart across the yard, heard the scratch of claws and saw the bushy tail as it scrambled over the fence to safety. He grinned. An opportunist. Like himself. No, not like himself. He was no opportunist. It was all going according to plan.

  ***

  As Ellis swung the car through the hospital gates, Lambert said, ‘Hear the sound of drawers being opened and closed, Tony?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Lambert chuckled. ‘I think that’s the hospital governor clearing his desk.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose the papers will be screaming for his resignation. Everyone’ll be after the poor bastard. He’ll be the scapegoat.’

  ‘Oh, don’t waste any sympathy on that incompetent. He’ll get what he deserves.’

  ‘Yeah, but I can’t help thinking it’s the system. I mean, all he did was try to get through to one of the inmates. He’s trying to understand them, improve their lives.’

  ‘Hang on a second. We are not talking about mental health problems here. Not your old biddy who talks to herself and yells at passers-by in the precinct. We are talking mega dangerous, as in highly unstable criminals who have committed serious acts of violence.’

  There was a pause as Ellis took a sharp bend with more acceleration than he intended and almost overshot the road into the opposite ditch. His tongue darted out and he wet his lips nervously. He remembered the piercing ring of the phone call at two in the morning, the herald of bad news. His mother had been killed outright, but his father had been cut by firemen from the bleeding wreck and died in the ambulance only a few minutes from the hospital.

  Lambert, knowing that Ellis’s parents’ death still haunted him after all these years, made light of the situation. ‘Careful,’ he warned. ‘Or I might have to go back and ask Wallace to drive.’

  Ellis grinned in the dark. ‘God forbid! Kevin thinks he’s Jason Bourne.’

  The car lurched, dipped and hit a great puddle.

  ‘Bloody rain,’ complained Lambert. He took a torch out of the glove compartment, and shone it onto the bundle of maps and letters in his lap. He held one up, squinting as he tried to glean anything that made any sense.

  ‘How d’you begin to decipher something like this?’

  ‘Well, if Evans can do it...’

  ‘Yes, but he knows where he’s heading. And something tells me he’s on a mission. This is all part of his plan.’

  ‘Back to the SAS/IRA connection you reckon?’

  ‘I don’t know. None of it seems to make any sense.’

  ‘How many miles d’you reckon he could cover in three or four hours, Harry?’

  ‘Twenty, maybe thirty, if he’s kept himself fit. If you were Evans, where would you go?’

  There was a pause while Ellis thought about it. ‘Well, I think I’d head for the city. It’s much easier to get lost in a city. He might head for Birmingham or Wolverhampton. They’re not that far away.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘You don’t sound convinced.’

  ‘I don’t know, Tony. I can’t help feeling that Evans has got some unfinished business here in Wales. OK. It might be easier to track someone down in a rural environment, but in Evans’s case...’

  ‘Because he’s trained in survival techniques?’

  ‘Yes. And those blokes can live off anything that slithers, hops or crawls. And I have a very nasty suspicion he’ll have a firearm stashed away somewhere.’

  ***

  From his hiding place, Evans stared across the field towards the main road. He was tired, having covered over thirty miles since his escape, so it took a while to sink in. He knew he had the right location. He had memorised it perfectly from the map. There was the village just off the main road. Not many houses, about sixty or seventy. A church, a pub and a small school, with a public footpath going from the church across the top of the field. It was definitely the right place. With one big difference. The oak tree and the lay-by had vanished. Now the area was being developed into a housing estate. Small starter homes surrounded by scaffolding, the windows not yet in place, spread across the land at the bottom of the field, and bulldozers and JCBs lay idle in the swamp-like conditions after all the heavy rain.

  Fuck his luck. So far everything had gone according to plan. Now he was without the Browning.

  He heard a dog barking from the direction of the church. Judging by the light, he guessed it must be about seven-thirty or eight, and the village was beginning to stir. There was a wood about half a mile over the hill, and this was where he could spend the day. He was nocturnal from now on, and it was time he went to earth.

  Chapter 17

  The Sunday papers were already on the streets by the time the story of Evans’s escape broke. But network television and radio used it as their headline news. BBC Wales, HTV and S4C put out special newsflashes, with a warning that Evans could be armed. During the trial, and because of the way Wilson had been relieving himself when he was shot, the Sun had dubbed Evans the KARZY KILLER and the fact that Wilson had been urinating while he was shot was mentioned repeatedly, giving the bizarre impression that people were not safe in their own bathrooms.

  Lambert was asked by the assistant chief constable to give a brief press interview, and he made his short statement around lunchtime on the steps outside police headquarters, assuring the public that Evans would soon be apprehended, but also warning anyone who spotted him not to approach him but to contact the police immediately. He gave short but courteous replies to their questions and adeptly avoided saying anything they didn’t already know.

  ‘How did it go?’ Ellis asked him when he returned to the office.

  Lambert shrugged. ‘I used the sort of police jargon they expect to hear and, in short, told them nothing very much.’

  ‘I hear Phillips is none too pleased that the full-scale manhunt hasn’t begun yet.’

  Lambert dropped his voice and leaned towards Ellis. ‘Phillips is a dickhead. I’m glad the chief constable’s got more sense than to listen to him. Evans is no fool. He’ll have gone to earth. Our fox will travel at night. Then we can let Phillips loose. Go boy!’

  Ellis grinned. ‘Come to think of it, he does look like a bloodhound.’

  ‘Not that good looking.’

  Lambert began flicking through his desk diary.

  ‘A thought has occurred to me,’ said Ellis. ‘Maybe Evans doesn’t have a motive.’

  Lambert looked up from the diary. ‘Round the bloody twist, you mean? Yes, I’d thought of that. There’s a full moon tonight. It looks as if Evans planned it this way. So if he is a sandwich short of a picnic, he’s remembered to bring the bloody mustard.’

  Ellis studied the ley line charts spread over Lambert’s desk.

  ‘What about these ley lines?’

  ‘They look like copies of copies. And if he is travelling from one megalithic monument to another, surely he must have known that by leaving these behind in the hospital we’d have found them, then all we have to do is post police at all the ancient sites within a certain radius and wait for him to show up. But something tells me it’s not going to be that simple. Still, I reckon she owes me.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Helen. My ex. She was into all this crap. Celtic wizardry.’

  ‘I thought that was when they beat Rangers.’

  ‘Ha-ha.’ Emphasising the soft C, Lambert said, ‘That’s Celtic, dumb-brain.’

  DC Wallace strolled nonchalantly into the office, hands in pockets, whistling lightly. His attitude immediately irritated Lambert.

  ‘I thought you were looking into Wilson’s background, Constable.’

  ‘I have. And I think I got a result.’

  Ellis looked impressed. ‘That was b
loody quick.’

  Lambert regarded him suspiciously. ‘Come on then, Constable. Enlighten us.’

  ‘Well, Wilson came from Tregaron originally. He came from a pretty rough family by all accounts. Always in trouble with the police. But for minor misdemeanours. Poaching, petty theft, receiving, that sort of thing. His father died in a road accident forty years ago. Staggered out of a pub one night, got in his car and ran it into a tree. His mother had run off six months prior to this with another man. Never been seen since. Wilson had a brother, and he and his brother inherited the farm from their uncle. His brother kicked the bucket ten years after they took over the farm. Nothing suspicious. A heart attack. Apparently, there’s no Irish connection anywhere.’

  Wallace jerked the lapels on his grey leather jacket, preening himself.

  Lambert congratulated him and asked how he had got the information so quickly. Wallace laughed and tapped the side of his nose.

  ‘Come on, Kevin. I have to know.’

  Wallace’s moment of triumph seemed to ebb. ‘Well, it was on the BBC news.’

  ‘What? How come?’

  ‘Apparently, they mentioned he was from Tregaron months back, after the shooting. I got in touch with the reporter and he filled me in on the details.’

  ‘So it was a nice easy result, Constable,’ said Lambert.

  Wallace’s face was deadpan. It was hard to know what he was thinking.

  ‘Still, it was a result, that’s the main thing,’ Lambert added.

  Although Wallace’s face remained expressionless, his eyes glowed briefly. Lambert was aware of the young detective’s childlike need for compliments; the craving for appreciation. But there was something desperate about the way Wallace always tried a little too hard to please which made Lambert and his colleagues feel uncomfortable and just a little bit irritated. Avoiding the young detective’s eyes, Lambert glanced down at the map on his desk and tapped his finger on the surface for emphasis.

  ‘I’ll see if Helen can shed any light on this. What I’d like both of you to do is to get me as much on Evans’s mother as you can. Past history. Everything. A.S.A.P. Oh, and Tony?’

  ‘Yes, Harry?’

  ‘Drop these charts off at Helen’s first, would you?’

  Ellis looked uncomfortable. ‘Wouldn’t it be better - I mean more appropriate - if you were to speak to her?’

  Lambert shook his head. ‘No, I don’t really want to see her. Things are...well, she likes you, Tony. Thinks the sun shines out of your arse.’

  Lambert walked over to a map, covering a large area of South Wales. Pointing his finger at a spot on the map, he said, ‘Here’s the hospital. We have no idea which way he may be heading. For all we know, the ley lines could be leading us up a blind alley, something he’s rigged up to mislead us. Now, supposing he escaped around one a.m. - we know it couldn’t have been earlier because one of the orderlies did his rounds and swore blind he looked in on him.’

  Ellis rubbed his chin thoughtfully, ‘He could have fooled the orderly. Filled the bed with something to simulate a sleeping figure.’

  Wallace chuckled. ‘Yeah, modelled a mask of his face. Or did I see that in a film?’

  Lambert tried to contain his irritation. ‘Never mind how he did or didn’t fool the orderly when he looked in on his cell. We have a rough idea of when he escaped. Now try to put yourself in his place. What would be his first port of call?’

  ‘Somewhere where he can get some warm clothes,’ Wallace suggested.

  ‘Yes, a clothing store,’ agreed Ellis. ‘And he knows it’s a Sunday, so any break-in might not be discovered until Monday morning.’

  Wallace clicked his fingers. ‘But not necessarily an ordinary clothes shop. He’s an SAS guy. He’d go for maybe an army surplus store.’

  ‘Yes, or a camping shop,’ said Lambert, staring at the map. ‘That way he can kit himself out with everything he needs. So how much ground could he have covered last night? He’s kept himself fit, we know. But it was raining and cloudy last night, so that would have slowed him down.’

  ‘And,’ Wallace added, ‘it would depend on whether he went across country or used the roads.’

  ‘He could jog much quicker along the road,’ said Ellis.

  Wallace gave him a condescending look. ‘I think it’s called yomping, my old mate.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That’s what the SAS call it. Yomping.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Lambert cut in. ‘We’re probably looking at a radius of thirty miles, top whack. Get on to the local police and get them to check all camping stores for signs of a break-in. At least this way we might get some idea of where he’s heading. Call me as soon as you get anything.’

  Lambert picked his mobile up from the desk and started towards the door.

  ‘You wouldn’t be going to Aberystwyth, by any chance?’

  ‘Got it in one. It’s just possible that Evans might have an accomplice. I’m going to check out his pen pal from the National Library.’

  Chapter 18

  Gwyneth Chandler’s detached cottage was high on the side of a hill, up a steep bank on a narrow road a few miles outside Aberystwyth. Opening her front door to let her cat in, she saw Lambert’s car pull up. Because she wasn’t expecting anyone, she thought the visitor was calling on one of her nearest neighbours, someone who lived in one of the four terraced cottages about twenty yards from her own. She picked her black cat up and it immediately turned its purr on like a motor. She tickled it fondly under the chin, watching as Lambert got out of the car. Making a quick appraisal of the visitor, she put her lips close to her cat’s ear and whispered,

  ‘Not bad looking. I thought my luck had changed, Bran bach.’

  The visitor looked up at her and began to climb the bank. ‘Miss Chandler?’ he called out.

  She looked surprised and let the cat down. As Lambert approached, he noticed the surprise change into an expression of unease. He flipped his ID open in front of her.

  ‘Miss Gwyneth Chandler? Detective Inspector Lambert.’

  He saw fear in her eyes and heard the shallow intake of breath.

  ‘Oh, God! What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s about Gary Evans. Your pen pal from the asylum.’

  Like air escaping from a balloon, she let her breath out slowly. ‘God! That’s a relief. I thought you might have been calling about my daughters. It’s half-term and they flew to Canada last night to be with their father. They’re a bit young really to be flying on their own, but...’

  Lambert smiled apologetically. ‘No, it’s nothing to do with your daughters. I’m sorry, Miss Chandler. I didn’t mean to alarm you. I’m sorry.’

  Gwyneth Chandler felt a sudden surge of anger. ‘And it’s Mrs Chandler, by the way.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he began, ‘I thought...’

  She caught him looking at the lack of a wedding ring on her finger.

  ‘We separated,’ she explained, testily. ‘We never divorced.’

  She stared back at him. There was a challenge in the look. A mixture of anger and sexual confrontation. Her eyes were cool green, diffused, the reflection of a forest in a lake. But also warm and teasing. She was, he guessed, in her mid-forties. Her attractive, auburn hair was soft and silky, gripped in Grecian style, upwards away from her face, although two wispy tendrils fell in front of her ears. She wore poster-red lipstick, which should have clashed with her hair but was somehow promisingly sexy on lips that were full and shaped into a letter M, as if she had sucked her thumb throughout her childhood.

  ‘About Gary Evans,’ he said.

  ‘What’s happened to him?’

  ‘You haven’t seen the news this morning?’

  ‘No. Sometimes I listen to the radio. But not this morning.’

  ‘I’m afraid Evans escaped
in the early hours. He may be armed - and certainly dangerous.’

  Her eyes widened with genuine surprise. ‘Dangerous? In all his letters he sounded so...normal. Harmless.’

  ‘How long had you known him?’

  ‘Since we started corresponding. Some time in late August.’

  ‘Not before?’

  A lightning flash in her eyes. She knew she was under suspicion.

  ‘No, of course not. I didn’t know him from Adam.’

  ‘What did he write to you about?’

  ‘Celtic history. Myths. Legends.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Did he tell you about his exploits in the SAS?’

  ‘I didn’t even know he was in the SAS. Although...’ She hesitated.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It was just an impression I got. Most of the legendary figures he talked about seemed to be Celtic warriors. It doesn’t surprise me that he was a soldier.’

  ‘Have you still got his letters? I’d like to see them.’

  ‘Of course. They’re inside. Would you like to come in?’

  She stood aside, holding the door open, and he entered. Although he was only of average height, he still had to duck to get through the small doorway. As she started to close the door, the cat, which had been rubbing itself against her legs, darted outside. She tutted at its fickleness before shutting the door, then explained a touch apologetically,

  ‘The hospital, when they asked me if I’d mind writing to him, told me he was a murderer. But that’s all. They didn’t tell me who he murdered.’

  ‘It was without any apparent motive. A drunken old farmer. A nonentity. A nobody.’

  Gwyneth Chandler frowned fiercely as if she was trying to remember something vital. Or perhaps she disapproved of the offhand way he had written off the victim of the crime. She moved across to a Welsh dresser, tugged open one of the drawers, and indicated an antique pine table in the centre of the room.