Good People (23 page)

He didn’t ask, just said that he would see what he could do. ‘Take care of yourself and behave responsibly,’ he finished gruffly.

I pondered the nature of the call. Morgan had obviously advised Carmarthen about the situation here. Jack Galbraith had had to offer to pull me out to cover his arse. By refusing, I was being the obstinate one.

But why hadn’t they just ordered me out? Since when had Jack Galbraith ever offered me a choice that he hadn’t loaded? So either he felt some deep instinctual rumbling that I might be on to something, or he just wanted to irritate the shit out of Inspector Morgan.

The phone rang again. It was too soon for Bryn to have organized the call to the children’s home.

‘Glyn?’

‘Sally. How are you?’ I let her hear my surprise morph into pleasure.

‘I’m fine. I’m calling to apologize for last night.’

‘You’ve nothing to apologize for.’

‘Yes, I have. I went all stiff and snotty on you. I want to make up for it.’

‘There’s no need.’

‘Yes, there is. I want to show you that I can be fun to be with. So, it’s Saturday, let’s do something together today.’

I winced. There was nothing I would have liked better, but I had already allocated this as too opportune a day to miss. ‘I’d really love to, Sally, but I can’t, I’ve got to work,’ I explained, hoping that she was catching my genuine disappointment.

‘Okay.’

‘We could go out again tonight,’ I offered.

‘I don’t think I want to.’

‘Ah, right,’ I replied, trapping my regret manfully.

‘I think we should stay in,’ she announced brightly, amused at having caught me out. ‘I’ll cook you a meal. Tell me, what would you like?’

‘Surprise me,’ I said gaily, lifted again.

I hung up, regretting the fact that I had already scheduled the day. But I had to try to talk to Zoë McGuire alone. And as it was a Saturday in winter it would be a safe bet that a red-blooded country boy like Gordon was either going to be watching or playing rugby, or else shooting the shit out of pheasants. Hopefully leaving the lady of the house free to receive interrogators.

Shooting would go on all day, but, to be on the safe side, in case rugby was involved, I would have to leave my visiting until the afternoon.

As it was, I had a piece of business that I’d been putting off while I’d been chasing my tail over Magda. The body of a Montagu’s harrier had been found on moorland about twenty miles away. A Schedule 1 protected species. It had been poisoned. The RSPB had been clamouring for a report. The uniforms up there had been doing what they could, now it was time to show my face in the wilds. At least it would stop me from being spat on in the street.

On the way over, a call came in from Bryn. The children’s home had, with some persuading, agreed to take a call from me. I pulled over before I got deeper into the hills and lost reception. The day manager was a woman this time, and not the dour bastard I had spoken to before. I gave her my name and the cipher phrase that had been agreed on to convince her that I wasn’t Captain Hook trawling for Lost Boys.

‘We’re taping this conversation our end,’ she warned me.

‘I’m okay with that.’

‘Just remember it,’ she warned, giving me an insight into their relations with the local cops. A war footing.

‘Colette Fletcher and Donna Gallagher – do you have any information you can give me on current or last-known addresses.’

‘I can’t give out that information.’

‘I don’t want it. Not the details. I just want to be reassured that someone knows where they are. That they are safe.’

That seemed to mollify her. ‘The names aren’t familiar. Probably before my time. I’m going to have to go into the computer.’

I watched a buzzard circling on a thermal while I waited. What would be outside her window in Manchester? Different worlds. Why had Donna and Colette opted to come back into this one?

‘You did know that these girls left here two years apart?’ she asked, coming back to me.

‘Yes. Have you got contact details?’

‘No. Both of them dropped off our radar when they left.’

‘Is that unusual?’

‘No, unfortunately. They’re legally adults when they finish here, and, even though we’ve been the nearest thing they’ve had to a family, a lot of them don’t give us another thought.’

‘What about Flower Robinson?’

‘What about her?’ Her voice went wary.

‘Has she dropped off your radar?’

‘What do you want with Flower?’ There was a protective edge to the question.

‘The same as Donna and Colette. I want to know that she’s safe.’

‘Are you suggesting that there could be a reason why she might not be?’ she asked guardedly.

‘Do you know where she is? Yes or no?’ I demanded abruptly, throwing command into my tone.

It startled her. ‘Yes. But –’

‘Good,’ I cut in over her, gliding back down to gentle. ‘And now I need to speak to her.’

‘I told you, I can’t give that information out.’

‘Okay, I appreciate that, but what if I give you my number? That way she can call me. I’d like you to tell her that it’s very important. Tell her I need to talk to her about the summer she spent in Dinas.’

‘Where?’

‘Just say Mid Wales. She’ll remember.’

She expanded on Flower after I gave her my number. She was one of their success stories. They were proud of her. Reading Sociology at the University of Manchester. Living independently in a hall of residence, but still helping out as a volunteer at the home. Turning into a rounded and socially aware human being.

But would she call me?

I couldn’t hang around to find out. I had to drive further up into the hills, out of telephone range, where I had a cop to meet.

Constable Huw Davies was waiting for me in his marked Land Rover. We had spoken over the telephone a few times, but we hadn’t met before. He was a tall, rangy man with thin fair hair and a pointed chin. He was wearing a nonissue yellow anorak over his uniform.

‘I’ll take you up there,’ he said in a local accent, breaking the handshake quicker than was necessary.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked, raising my voice as he walked round to the driver’s side of the vehicle. I was supposed to be in charge here, I wanted to implant a bit of control.

‘Up there,’ he said, opening his door, pointing to a rutted track that led to an amorphous rise of moorland.

He stayed as taciturn on the drive up. Responding to my attempts at conversation with a quizzical frown, which he usually accompanied with a clever flick on the steering wheel that precipitated a slew of violent lurches. I took the hint and kept quiet.

We stopped at a spot that would have made a great backdrop for a postapocalyptic film. Any actors playing survivors would not have had to search too far to find the motivation to play their future grim and hopeless.

It was a damp, spongy depression of mossy tumps and spiky reeds, fringed with burned heather. A flat, lifeless place. The sense of vertical was mocked by one bent, stunted and wind-whipped hawthorn. The breeze, as if it had read the script, wafted over a ruined cathedral smell from the charred heather.

I walked away from the Land Rover with the thin file containing the case notes. Pretending to consult them, I lifted my head to study random points on the horizon. I was aware of Huw Davies watching me. He didn’t know it, but this show was for his benefit. After a while I called him over.

‘Two holidaymakers from Kent reported it?’ I asked.

‘That’s right, hillwalkers.’

‘Busybodies?’

He cocked his head slightly, but his expression didn’t shift out of neutral. ‘I don’t get your meaning, Sergeant.’

I smiled pleasantly at him, tapped the file. ‘We both know that this wouldn’t have seen the light of day if a local had discovered it.’

He bristled. ‘Do we?’

‘Yes, we do. The bird’s carcass would have ended up in an incinerator or a lime pit. The ornithologists would have eventually noticed its absence, but no story to tell. Just a disappearance. A mystery.’

‘You don’t think this is a mystery?’

‘No, I know who did it.’

For the first time, he smiled. It made him younger. ‘That’s pretty impressive. Considering you haven’t been up here before.’

I shook the file. ‘Someone on this list did it.’

‘List?’

‘The list of names you provided. People with a relevant interest that I asked you to question.’

‘Didn’t you read my summary? No one we talked to had any knowledge of this.’

‘We can probably discount the farmers.’

‘We can?’

‘Yes, they’d only have had a motive if it was lambing time. So, that narrows it down to the gamekeepers.’

He looked at me searchingly for a moment before he nodded. ‘They’re not going to say anything.’

‘The toxin’s been analysed. Strychnine-based.’

‘You won’t find it.’

‘Private stock?’

He shrugged. ‘Off the record?’ he asked.

‘Okay.’

‘I can’t name names because I don’t have one. This is what’s come down to me. Basically it was an accident. The bird wasn’t targeted. Someone had baited a rabbit to get a fox that was going for his birds. The harrier took the rabbit.’ He opened his hands indicating end of story.

‘How do you feel about that?’

He looked at me appraisingly. ‘I feel pretty confident in telling you that it isn’t going to happen again. From now on, if someone’s worried about a fox taking his pheasants, he does it the hard way: he waits up and tries to shoot the bugger.’

‘Is that enforceable?’

He smiled wryly. ‘Ever see a Montagu’s harrier?’

I shook my head.

‘I used to watch that bird. It gave me a lot of pleasure. Let’s just say that word of my distress has got around.’

‘Okay.’ I nodded, letting him know that it was understood. I was getting good at this frontier justice. He offered his hand, and I shook it. I realized that I had passed some test.

‘I’ve been asked to ask you something,’ he said.

‘Me?’ I was intrigued. I didn’t think that anyone over this way knew me.

‘Yes, when word got around that I was meeting the detective from Dinas.’

‘Go on,’ I prompted, no longer surprised at the extent of the bush telegraph in these parts.

‘The farmer who died there recently … Trevor Vaughan?’ He waited for a sign of recognition. I nodded, not giving anything away. ‘He wondered if you knew anything about the funeral arrangements.’

‘Who wants to know?’

‘Bill Ferguson.’

‘Who’s Bill Ferguson?’

He nodded down at the file in my hand. ‘He’s on the list.’

I scanned the paper. ‘A gamekeeper?’ I asked, letting him hear significance.

‘An assistant keeper. For the Coyle Estate. He’s new this season. He’s not allowed to make the kind of decisions we’re talking about up here.’

‘How did he know Trevor Vaughan?’

‘I didn’t know he did until he asked me to ask you about the funeral.’

I told myself not to read too much into it. The guy might just be some kind of freak who made a habit of attending the funerals of suicides. For all I knew it could be a common gamekeeper’s pastime. But why hadn’t he approached the obvious sources? Why come to me rather than Trevor’s family or close buddies?

Did Bill Ferguson want to pay his last respects from a distance?

Huw gave me directions to the Coyle Estate. I couldn’t pass up a chance to find out what linked Bill Ferguson and Trevor Vaughan. I calculated I could get there, and still be back in time to see Zoë McGuire with a safe margin, assuming that Gordon was cooperating by following his own manly pursuits.

It was a big spread. The current owner was a fancy-price-tag London barrister. The house was a copy of a Palladian mansion with fucked-up proportions, set beside a river where they fished for salmon and trout. They shot pheasants, partridge and woodcock on the surrounding parkland and farms. Up on their moors they killed grouse. A veritable pleasure dome.

The shooters were returning to lunch when I arrived. A bunch of prats seated on straw bales on a flat-bed trailer being drawn by a tractor towards a big marquee that had been set up near the house. To a man they scowled at me suspiciously as I drove past.

I was headed off at the pass before I reached the heartland. A big man with a florid complexion in a waxed jacket and the sort of Wellington boots you need a mortgage to buy climbed out of a parked Range Rover and flagged me down.

‘I’m afraid this is a private shoot, old son,’ he announced with bluff, insincere, affability, standing above my open window.

I flashed him my warrant card. ‘I’m investigating the poisoning of a Schedule 1 protected bird.’

He wasn’t impressed. ‘Your people have already talked to our lads. Can’t help any more, I’m afraid. Nothing has changed.’ He gestured to the activity going on behind him. ‘And this is really bad timing. If you do have to talk to the boys again, call the estate office and make an appointment. Okay?’ he beamed at me dismissively.

My phone rang. I glanced at the display. A Manchester code.

His face clouded. ‘Turn that bloody thing off, will you? Show some consideration – we ask our guests not to bring mobile phones.’

‘Don’t want to spoil the sound of the guns, do you?’ I asked, turning away before he could answer. ‘Hello?’

‘Is that Sergeant Capaldi?’ A young woman, Manchester accent, the tone tentative.

‘Flower?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hold on a moment …’ I covered the mouthpiece. The man was glaring at me now, his face even redder. I shouted, ‘Fuck off, this is a private conversation.’ He started to remonstrate, but I drove away on to the grass. Another complaint going out to Inspector Morgan.

‘Flower, thanks for calling me.’

‘What’s this about?’

‘Your summer in Dinas.’

‘What about it?’

‘What stands out in your memory?’

I sensed a hesitation down the line. But didn’t push.

‘I thought it was what I wanted to do,’ she said eventually, ‘to be a beauty therapist. I thought working in Sara’s would be good experience. I didn’t realize it would be washing old people’s crinkly hair, and fetching them cups of coffee. And staying in that cruddy caravan. And hearing things outside making noises all night.’