Dead People (17 page)

‘I’ll make it.’

The Apache in my soul was flexing his arms again.

I borrowed David’s old Land Rover. It was late-season snow – heavy, wet and unstable – and the magic went out of it as soon as it was stepped on and turned the colour and consistency of wallpaper paste. And it was hard to drive in, even with four-wheel drive, each tyre trying to slither off in its own preferred direction.

And Tessa had been right, it was snowing harder the higher I drove up the by-way. I had to drive on dipped headlights, the snow setting up too much of a dazzling reflective wall with main beams on.

Tessa had seen my lights approaching, and opened the door of her caravan as soon as I got out of the Land Rover’s cab.

‘Thanks for coming up, ’ she said, letting me in and closing the door on the weather. ‘I only hope I haven’t dragged you up here under false pretences.’

I wiped wet snow off my eyebrows and nodded at the other young woman in the caravan, who I recognized as one of Tessa’s helpers. Tessa’s caravan was smaller and older than mine, so why, I wondered abstractedly, did it seem more homely and comfortable?

‘This is Gemma,’ Tessa said. ‘Tell Sergeant Capaldi what you saw.’

‘I came out of the toilet tent –’ she gestured in the general direction – ‘and I saw someone peering in through Tessa’s window. I thought it might have been one of us at first, playing a joke, so I shouted. They turned round, and when they saw me they ran off.’

‘You managed to see in
this
?’ I asked, trying not to sound too sceptical.

‘It wasn’t snowing so hard then,’ Tessa answered for her.

‘When was this?’

‘The two women exchanged glances. ‘About three-quarters of an hour ago?’ Tessa ventured. ‘We had a quick look round outside, but couldn’t see anything. Then I thought I’d better call you, given what’s gone on down at Jeff’s site.’

‘Can you describe who you saw?’ I asked Gemma.

‘I think it was a man. I can’t be certain, though, because they were wearing a long parka-type thing with the hood up. But it was the way they ran off, it looked like more the way a man would run.’

I checked my phone. If I ran into trouble out there, I wanted to be able to call in the cavalry. There was a signal here.

‘It’s not very stable,’ Tessa said, reading my thoughts, ‘you’ll lose it if you drop too far off the ridge.’

‘I’m going to check outside.’

‘Do you want me to hold a torch for you or something?’ Tessa volunteered.

‘Thanks, but the fewer of us out there the better. And don’t worry if I don’t appear for a bit.’

‘Didn’t Captain Oates say something like that and never come back?’

‘Thanks, Tessa.’

She smiled warmly. ‘Be careful. I’ll have the hot chocolate ready.’

Tessa and her helpers had trampled the snow around the caravan into slush. I checked the big rear window. There was a large enough chink in the curtains to see inside. But why? What had Tessa got to do with this? Unless the guy was a voyeur. Some creep up from Dinas. But on a night like this?

I didn’t like the feeling this was giving me.

The snow was still coming down hard. I walked slowly out in the direction Gemma had indicated. I walked in a slow zigzag pattern until I cut across footprints that displayed the long stride of someone running. They were now partially filled, but with the slush imprint from the wet snow they were still distinct enough to follow.

The running stride continued at full stretch for about fifty metres then started to slow down, until the prints reached a point where their owner had obviously stopped and turned round to look back. To check if he was being followed? After this the stride-pattern shortened as he reverted to walking. I was actually tracking this guy, reading the signals. I was proud of myself, even though following footprints in this wet snow was as easy as following an airfield’s flare path.

It hadn’t occurred to me then that he might have wanted me to follow him.

The one thing I didn’t have was natural light. No horizon. Just a constantly shifting swirl of snowflakes ahead. The torch beam was fine when it was directed onto the ground, where there was contrast, picking out the prints, but when I raised it, all sense of distance and perspective vanished into a dance of interference. Nothing seemed real, there was no sense of substance, just an eerie blurring, like life inside a ghost signal. The guy could have stopped in front of me and I wouldn’t have known it until I walked into him. That thought slowed me down.

The tracks were keeping just to the wind-farm side of the crest of the ridge. He was using a sheep track to keep out of the heather and avoid the danger of tripping. Which was either very fortuitous, or he knew that this particular track was going to take him in the direction he wanted to go.

I decided that this guy knew the hill. You don’t just go traipsing off into a blizzard choosing random sheep tracks and hoping for the best.

Now that the first flush of excitement was over I was feeling the chill factor in the wind. I had a good waterproof jacket on, but my trousers were now soaked through from the knees down to my boots. But at least my feet were dry. I was aware of the dangers of hypothermia if I got too wet.

The trail was leading me farther and farther away from the road, deeper onto the moors. But the chances were good that he was still out there somewhere ahead of me. Still on the hill.

It gave me an idea. I dropped into a crouch with my back to the wind, undid my jacket, and pulled out my phone. There was just enough of a signal. I called Headquarters at Carmarthen. I explained quickly to the duty officer what I wanted him to do, and read out the names and numbers. It wasn’t exactly science, but it might serve to eliminate a name from the list.

I zipped up again and stood. I shone my torch ahead. The prints were filling in fast now, but at least the sheep track was still distinct through the heather. But this comfort disappeared a couple of hundred metres farther on when the heather gave out and was replaced by snow-covered scrub grass. There was now no defined track, no texture, just featureless white on the ground and flurry in the air.

But at least the footprints were still there, the trail turning back up towards the top of the ridge, where the ground levelled out.

And then I came to the edge of the world.

It was as stark and dramatic as that. The snow suddenly stopping, white becoming total blackness, with no transition.

But the footsteps continued into the black.

The stupid laws of fucking attraction. It was a yawning black void and I had this irrational compulsion to walk straight into it. Because he had obviously gone ahead of me, and how could I not follow? This was mano-a-mano bullshit, even though my sensible side was screaming at me to pause and work out what the fuck was ahead.

My concession was to move forward gingerly. I felt the first seep of the drenching cold on my feet.

The bastard had led me into a dew pond. He had marched straight in here. Had he known that I would be following him? Worse, was he out there somewhere now, watching me trying to pull my feet out of the freezing peaty mud?

I shone my torch full circle, trying to keep any trace of panic out of the motion. I couldn’t make out the far edge of the pond. To pick up his trail again I would have to walk its perimeter, scouring the ground for where his footprints emerged. Footprints that were fast filling in. And I didn’t know the size of the pond. And, even if I did find them, would my own return trail have vanished by then?

He had led me and left me stuck like an insect on fly paper, all options bar flight shut down.

Now the big question hit me.

Why?

I struggled back to Tessa’s caravan cold, wet and worried.

Why had he come out of cover? And why choose Tessa’s? Was there something here that had drawn him in? Or had he been deliberately trying to draw me out?

Or was I just being paranoid? Could it have been a lonely shepherd looking to spy on some bra-and-panties action, trying to get his rocks off ?

Either way I couldn’t take it to Fletcher or Jack Galbraith, as, in their books, with Bruno already dead, I had no business to be up here trailing a killer through a snowstorm.

Tessa opened the door to my knock. Her smile was one of relief. ‘I was starting to think about sending out the Saint Bernard.’

I climbed gratefully into the warm space, and realized as I did that it was the smell that was different in here. It was something feminine that cut the odours of propane gas and damp plastic.

‘Glyn, you’re frozen!’ she exclaimed as she caught sight of me in the light. ‘You’ve got to get those wet things off.’

I peeled off my coat, which was starting to drip. She took it from me and handed over a towel. This was softer than anything I owned and had its own fragrance. I understood then how much I was missing the peripheral grace that women added to everyday objects. I rubbed my face dry before I sat down to tackle my boots, only discovering how numb my hands were as I struggled with the laces.

‘Here, let me do that,’ she commanded, kneeling down in front of me. I winced with pain and relief as she rolled my sodden socks down and reintroduced my blanched and wrinkled feet to the concept of warmth. I glanced down. They looked like something that should have been on their way to the glue factory. They were my feet, but even I was repelled by the sight of them. I flicked a glance to gauge Tessa’s reaction.

She wrapped another towel around them, started to massage them dry, and smiled up at me unselfconsciously. ‘I don’t often say this to the boys on the first date, but you’re really going to have to get those trousers off.’

There should have been a romantic riposte to that waiting in the wings. More than, ‘I can’t just sit around here in my underpants, ’ which was all I managed to come up with.

‘Just wait there.’

She left me for a moment and came back with a pair of grey sweatpants. ‘They’re going to be a tad short, but they’ll be a lot warmer than those sodden things.’ I took them from her. ‘I’ll go and make that hot chocolate while you change.’

I peeled my trousers off and towelled my legs dry before I pulled the sweatpants on. The elasticised waist was tight on me, and my ankles were left stranded, but I was more conscious of the fact that my balls were now nestling in a crotch that had been last inhabited by Tessa. I quickly reintroduced cold damp thoughts before an erection came along to spoil this cosy fable.

She carried in the drinks and set them down on a table. ‘I had a call from one of your people,’ she said as she picked up my trousers and hung them on the back of a chair in front of the gas fire.

‘Did they leave a message?’

‘Hold on.’ She wiped her damp hands on her jeans before picking up a notebook. For some strange reason that gesture made me feel like we were sharing a small, comfortable and continuing domestic intimacy.

She looked at me expectantly. I nodded. She read, ‘Evans, no reply. Fenwick, no reply. Valerie Horne did answer, but neither husband nor brother available.’ She looked up. ‘Make sense?’

I nodded again. So, no eliminations this round, Any one of them could have been on the hill. They were all still in the picture.

‘Fenwick?’ she queried with a smile I couldn’t fathom. ‘Isn’t that the name of your new girlfriend?’ She sat down opposite me on the long banquette under the rear window.

I felt myself colouring. ‘Of course not.’

‘You looked pretty cosied-up together when I saw you the other night.’

‘She’d been drinking. I was driving her home to stop her using her car.’

She cocked her head sceptically.

‘She’s a married woman, Tessa,’ I protested.

She smiled sweetly. ‘So why wasn’t her husband doing the driving home?’

‘He’s abroad. In the Middle East.’

‘While the cat’s away?’

‘It’s nothing like that.’

She burst out laughing.

‘What’s so funny?’ I asked, nonplussed.

‘Your face . . .’ She tossed a small cushion at me. ‘So serious.’

We stared at each other for a moment. I felt the nervous flutter as I waited for something that might be construed as an invitation to slip onto the banquette beside her. Her expression turned curious. ‘Do you want to talk about what Inspector Fletcher was trying to tell me the other night?’

I hid my disappointment under a brave smile. ‘Not really.’

‘It’s the reason you’ve ended up here?’

I nodded. Her gaze didn’t lose its intensity. She wasn’t giving up. ‘I went soft,’ I said reluctantly. ‘I made certain judgements that my superiors deemed to be unprofessional. Basically, I allowed myself to be clouded by a sense of injustice. Which I was told was none of my business.’

‘Was that the official verdict?’

I shook my head. I was far enough removed from it now to be able to display a certain amusement. ‘Stress-induced breakdown.’

‘Is that what broke up your marriage?’

I frowned. It was my turn to look surprised. I had never mentioned Gina to her. She smiled at my reaction. ‘It’s a small town, Glyn. I heard talk.’ I used silence to keep up the pressure. ‘Okay, I’m curious,’ she admitted, ‘but it’s not prurient. I like to know what I’m getting into.’

‘The relationship went down the tubes long before that.’

‘And?’

‘Booze. As simple as that. I was drinking too much. I was fed up with being the outsider, so I was drinking to fit in. To be like one of the guys. Kevin Fletcher had managed it and was soaring ahead of me career-wise. But I was overcompensating. I was drinking to hide the disgust that I felt about myself for wanting to be like one of the guys. I was also doing it to avoid going home and having to face up to how I was screwing things up.’

She looked at me closely for a moment before she spoke. ‘I’ve seen you in The Fleece with a drink.’

‘I’ve learned to control it.’

‘AA?’

I shook my head. ‘Sanity. I realized that I really didn’t want to be one of the guys any more.’

She laughed warmly. ‘That works for me.’ She shifted over and patted the space on the banquette she had just vacated.

Just as I stood up there was a sharp and rapid knocking on the door. Her eyes met mine briefly. A flash of regret. Then she was off to open the door.