Constable Evans 02: Evan Help Us (23 page)

“No.” Evan shook his head angrily. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on the train, and I think she lured me to her house so that she’d have the perfect alibi while she did the killing herself.”

They joined a jostling crowd of arriving tourists and dodged past suitcases, strollers, and little kids.

“How did she manage that?” Watkins muttered.

“She got me to read a bedtime story to her child. I wondered at the time why she insisted on this particular story. She said it was the kid’s favorite, but it wasn’t. Now I know why—it was the longest one she could find. It must have taken me fifteen minutes to get through it and then, of course, the little girl wanted another one. All that time Annie was out of the room, supposedly downstairs opening a bottle of wine, leaving the girl and me alone to get to know each other better. That’s what she said. She would have had plenty of time to get to Ted Morgan’s bungalow, shoot him, and come back. No wonder her hand was shaking when she poured that wine!”

“But what about the colonel?” Watkins asked as they reached his car in the parking lot. “She couldn’t have killed him, could she?”

“I’m not so sure about that now,” Evan said. He was remembering the colonel blundering out of the pub in a panic, almost colliding with Annie who had just come in. “She could have been the person he recognized, not Ted Morgan, who was still in the lounge with his old cronies.”

“What motive could she have had?”

“The same as Ted Morgan, I’d imagine. What if she came here deliberately to kill Ted, sure that nobody would know her here or link her to him. Then she sees the colonel, who recognizes her as a girl from Taffy’s club. Now she’ll be tied to Ted’s death if the colonel blabs. He has to go. She left the pub right after him too.”

He climbed into the car beside Watkins, who said. “And you think she’d be more likely to confess to you?”

“It’s possible,” Evan said. “At least I’d like to find out why she did it.”

“She’s a cool customer and she wanted Ted Morgan out of the way. What’s the betting he’s the father of her kid? Maybe he had life insurance money settled on the child. Who knows?”

“Will you let me talk to her in her own home? Whatever Annie’s really like, Jenny is a sweet little kid and I’d hate her to be scared by having her mother hauled away in the middle of the night.”

Watkins sighed. “Alright. Go ahead and talk to her, but I’m putting a couple of men to watch her house. I don’t want to risk her doing a bunk during the night. And you might want to watch yourself too. If she’s killed twice, there’s nothing to stop her from killing again. We don’t know that was her only gun, do we?”

“I’ll be careful,” Evans said. “I’d like to think that I can persuade her to give herself up.”

“Just make sure she doesn’t persuade you to let her slip out through the back window,” Watkins said dryly. “Whatever happens, I’m bringing her in first thing tomorrow. Make sure she knows that.”

*   *   *

The cottage door opened a crack in response to the knock. Annie Pigeon’s suspicious face peered around it. A smile of disbelief spread across her face and she threw the door open wide.

“I couldn’t think who it could be, calling so late at night. Excuse the robe. I’ve just had a bath.” She was still smiling up at him, her eyes flirting. “I didn’t expect to see you—I heard you’d gone away for the weekend.”

“That’s right,” Evans said. “I decided to come home early.”

“What was it, business or recreation?”

“A bit of both,” Evan said. “I decided to go for recreation to a place that had been recommended to me.”

“Oh, what was that?” She was still relaxed, smiling up at him with innocent blue eyes. She was dressed in a fluffy white bathrobe and Evan found it hard to believe that he was confronting a killer.

“A place called Taffy’s Club. Only it seemed that the young lady I requested wasn’t available any longer. Pity really, her picture was still in the album.”

“You’d better come in,” she said. She glanced up and down the street. “Here, what’s going on?” she asked, her voice sharp now.

“You tell me,” Evan said. “That’s right. It
is
a police car parked over there. Your house is being watched, so don’t get any funny ideas.”

She touched his sleeve. “Evan, I can explain everything.”

“It better be good,” Evan said. He shepherded her into the living room and waited until she sat in the vinyl armchair. He perched on a fold-up chair in the corner.

“How did you ever find out?” she asked. Her face, without its usual mask of makeup, matched the whiteness of the fluffy robe.

“You must have thought I was very stupid,” Evan said, trying to control the anger in his voice. “I bet you couldn’t believe your luck when I rescued your daughter and you realized you’d got a tame village bobby who probably wasn’t too bright. You certainly worked hard enough on it, didn’t you—asking me to show you around, feeding me all that rubbish about how fond of me your daughter was so that I’d be fooled into reading her a bedtime story. I can understand now that you were setting me up, but using your daughter—”

“That part was true,” she said. “She thought you were the nicest man she’d ever met. She did talk about you all the time.”

“That was a lucky break for you, wasn’t it then? You had me trapped here—your perfect alibi while you went and killed Ted Morgan.”

“I didn’t kill Ted Morgan!” she exclaimed.

“Oh no? Where did you go then? A late-night stroll around the village with your gun in your hand?”

“You have to believe me, Evan. I swear it.”

“It’s not me you have to convince—it’s the jury. And quite frankly I think you’re going to have a hard time convincing them that you’re innocent when your prints are on the gun, you lured me here to give you an alibi, and you worked for Ted Morgan as a call girl. They’ll probably get you on two counts of murder in fact—”

“Two counts?”

“The colonel. He was a regular customer at the club. You recognized each other, didn’t you? You were scared he’d give you away. He was bound to put two and two together when you killed Ted, so he had to go. You left the pub right after he did. And you knew he was murdered when everyone else still thought it was an accident.”

“I saw Ted slinking back from the direction of the river,” she said flatly. “I thought I recognized the old bloke from the club in London, so I figured it out.”

“But you didn’t say anything to the police about it.”

“Do you think I was stupid? Ted Morgan wasn’t the kind of man you take chances with.”

“So you killed him.”

“I swear to you I didn’t. I wished him dead, but I didn’t kill him.”

“Then how come it was your gun, your bullet? There wasn’t ever a prowler or a break-in, was there. If someone had broken into your house, a gun would be the first thing you’d check on. You only discovered it was missing when we ruled out suicide and it looked as if you might be suspect number one.”

She slumped back into the chair, looking very small and frightened. “Okay, so I went to his house that night, but I didn’t kill him.”

“But you took the gun with you?”

“I wanted to frighten him.”

“To do what?”

“To leave me and Jenny alone.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “I really thought I’d managed to get away this time. I thought we’d be alright here and we could have a good life.”

“Don’t give me that,” Evan snapped. “You came here to kill Ted Morgan. You probably thought you’d get away with it because nobody would suspect you knew each other. What did you do—arrange a rendezvous to lure him here? I couldn’t get over how polite you were to each other when we met on the hill.”

“I didn’t know he was going to be here.” Her voice was almost a hysterical sob by now. “I got the shock of my life when we bumped into him on that hill. I had no idea—”

“Oh come on, Annie. You expect me to believe that?”

“I swear I didn’t know he was here. I knew he was Welsh and that was all. I had no idea he’d even left London. Then to get here and see him—I didn’t know what to do. I suppose I panicked.”

“And shot him.”

“No.” She gave a tired sigh and closed her eyes. “You probably can’t imagine what it was like and what it felt like to get away.” She sat up again. “I suppose I should start at the beginning. My mum died when I was a little kid. My father married again and my new stepmum didn’t want me around the house. She kicked me out when I was sixteen. I’d been taking dance lessons when my mum was alive and I had this dream of becoming a dancer. So I went up to London to get into a West End show. Of course, it wasn’t that easy, was it.

“Anyway, I met this girl, Glynis, at an audition. She’d run away from home and she was having a hard time too. So we got a room together and pooled money to buy food. Then she came home all excited one day and said she’d met this man from back home and he might hire us as dancers in this West End nightclub. Well, we were all excited. We’d been living on baked beans for a month and we didn’t have the rent. So we went to meet him and he was a real smoothy. He told us that we’d have to start out as hostesses and he’d move us up to dancers when he thought we were ready. He gave us stage names. I was Anita Dove, Glyn was Desirée St. Claire. Pretty fancy, eh?”

She closed her eyes again and sighed. “Of course, hostesses really meant prostitutes. We only found out that too late. I was still a virgin. So was Glynis. Taffy—Ted Morgan, that is—came into my room and raped me. When I cried afterward he said, ‘One day you’re going to get to like this. You won’t be able to get enough of it.’ Then he gave me something to make me feel better. It was coke. He liked to have all his hookers hooked, so to speak. That way you were dependent on him.

“Poor old Glyn. She really did get hooked on the stuff. She was in a bad way. She just couldn’t handle what we were doing. ‘If my dad could see me now,’ she said. She killed herself. Took an overdose. I found her. Poor kid—she was so homesick. She used to talk about Wales all the time and show me pictures. Remember that picture on Ted’s office wall? It used to make her cry. ‘That’s my home,’ she’d say. ‘That’s where I belong.’”

“And what about you?” Evan asked quietly.

“Me? I kept on going. I was really doing quite well, rising through the profession, so to speak.” She gave a twisted smile. “If you worked well, Taffy was nice to you. If you did something wrong, watch out. The one thing he didn’t let you do was leave. Girls who left had a habit of winding up dead.”

“But you left?”

“I had to, didn’t I? I always was the stupid one. After Glynis died I got really depressed and I went on this blinder—booze, coke, the lot. I was passed out all weekend. Of course, that meant I didn’t take my pill for three days. So guess who gets pregnant. Taffy was furious. He sent me to get an abortion. But I couldn’t go through with it. I mean, poor little kid, it wasn’t her fault, was it? So I climbed out through the back window of the clinic and ran away. I went as far away as I could and I wound up at a shelter in Manchester. They were nice to me there. They took care of me while I had the baby, then they found me a cheap place to live while I was on the dole. But it was a bad part of town and I was scared of how Jenny would grow up. The kids she started playing with—they were teaching her bad words and all that stuff.”

She looked down at her hands then slowly raised her eyes to meet Evan’s. “That’s when I decided to come here. It was Glynis’ paradise. Maybe it would be paradise for me too.” She paused and took a deep breath. “And then
he
showed up. I nearly died. I thought, There’s nowhere to run any more. I’ve got to stand and fight. So I went over there with the gun. I told him if he didn’t leave me and Jenny alone, I’d kill him. He just laughed and he took the gun away from me. He had that sort of power. I don’t know who killed him, but I’m glad he’s dead.”

She got up and walked over to the window, pulled the curtain back, then let it fall again. “You’re right. The jury will never believe me, will they?”

She paced around the room like a trapped animal. Then she stopped. “Look, Evan. I’m sorry I got you into this. I’m sorry I set you up. But it’s true what I said about Jenny. She said you were the kindest man she ever met. I think so too.”

Evan sat perched on the edge of the chair, fighting conflicting emotions. He wanted to get up, put his arms around her, and tell her that it was going to be alright. But he couldn’t. She had fooled him once before. How was he to know she wasn’t fooling him with a sob story this time?

“Is there anyone who could back up your story?”

“Not that Ted Morgan was alive and laughing when I left him,” she said bitterly. “And probably nobody would be willing to talk about what went on in London. They’re all too scared. Even though he’s dead now, they’d probably worry that someone would get them. Glynis would have told you. Me and Glyn—we would have done anything for each other.”

She reached down to the bookcase and picked up a photograph album. “This is the only photo of her I’ve got,” she said. “We went to Kew Gardens on one of those riverboats when we first met. We couldn’t really afford it, but it was such a beautiful day. We took a picnic. It was one of the best days of my life.”

She opened the book and pointed to a snapshot. Two girls were standing under a lilac tree in full bloom. They looked young and carefree, like schoolgirls on a class outing. Annie’s fair curls contrasted with Glynis’ long dark hair. Underneath she had printed, in girlish letters. “Me and Glynis Dawson. May 3rd, 1993.”

“One of the gardeners took it for us,” she said.

Evan got to his feet. “Dawson? Glynis Dawson, you say? And she came from around here?”

“Yes. Not from Llanfair, but down the pass at a place called Beddgelert. I’d like to have moved there, but it’s more expensive and upscale, isn’t it? Hey, what’s the matter? Where are you going?”

He was already halfway to the front door.

“Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back,” he yelled, slamming the door behind him.

Chapter 21

Night had fallen and the storm which had threatened earlier was now blowing in full force as Evan drove down the pass toward Beddgelert. Rain lashed against the windscreen and great gusts of wind buffeted the small car so that Evan had to fight to keep it on the narrow road. He was well aware that beyond that low wall there was a long sheer drop to the lake below. He tried to turn up the wipers but they were already going at full speed, unable to cope with the amount of water that streamed down the glass. The headlights cut a pitifully small arc of light into the blackness of the Nantgwynant Pass. Each hairpin curve appeared with alarming suddenness and each time Evan had the impression of swinging into nothing.