Good People (25 page)

‘If you know where she is, why come here?’ I asked, trying to keep it friendly.

‘Because I want her back.’

Oh shit … Was I the blood price? Was I her troublesome priest? Damage me and she would let him lick her boots again? I tried backing away and stumbled into the sharp end of the dining nook. ‘It’s not worth it,’ I said soothingly. ‘If you hurt me you’ll be in real trouble.’

He looked at me incredulously. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, I want advice.’

I returned to repetition, it seemed safer. ‘Advice?’

‘What do I do? How do I get her back?’

I almost laughed. ‘I’m the last person to ask. I’m the one she left first, remember.’

‘The two of you were together for a long time. You understand her ways. What should I change in my personality? Should I hurt Grape Boy?’ He shook his head, closed his eyes, and winced painfully. ‘Man, I still love her.’

He had fixed on the bond that he imagined the shared knowledge of her gave us. We were united in loss, we had become the Brotherhood of the Dumped.

What could I do? My encounters with Mackay were inevitably painful, but we went back too far, and he was hurting. I couldn’t throw him out.

And then, just as I welcomed him into my tent, I realized the immediate consequence that the law of hospitality demanded. I was going to have to take him with me to Sally’s. And bring him back. God or Karma, the only entities who could have witnessed that salacious little smirk when I crossed the bridge, had fitted me up for it.

I called Sally and she was okay with including Mackay in the party. I checked the answering machine after that. Amongst the routine dross and a snarled message from Inspector Morgan was one from Bill Ferguson. He would be at home tomorrow if I wanted to call him with the details of Trevor Vaughan’s funeral.

We passed Mackay’s parked car in the taxi on the way to Sally’s. It had to be almost two miles away. The crazy bastard had put his shoes, socks and trousers into a haversack, and hiked all that way up my freezing river. In the dark.

‘Why this far away?’ I asked.

‘I got the impression that you might be trying to avoid me. I thought I’d use a bit of subterfuge,’ he explained, smiling apologetically.

It was a strange evening. Sally’s house, Sally’s meal, Sally as the sparkling and attentive hostess, and then we spend the time discussing my ex-wife. It was obviously cathartic for Mackay, and Sally encouraged the flow. At first I thought that she was only being kind, but gradually I realized that she was using the information to get some kind of proxy measure on me. Judge a man by the tackle that he straps on to his life. When she noticed that I had wised up to her agenda, she winked cheekily at me.

I kissed her on the doorstep. Our first proper kiss. Mackay waiting diplomatically in the taxi. Savouring that first licit, full taste and smell of the other.

‘Mmm …’ she moaned luxuriantly, her eyes closed.

‘I could let the taxi take him home,’ I whispered.

‘You could, but you won’t.’

‘Is that an order?’

‘He was the one you were jailed in Spain with, wasn’t he?’

‘How did you know?’

She pulled back, opened her eyes, and popped a round-mouthed kiss full on to mine. I recognized it as a dismissal. ‘He needs the company tonight.’

Mackay and I were silent in the taxi home. It wasn’t strained, it was just that we both had our own areas of reflection to retreat into.

Back in the caravan, I broke out the Scotch.

‘Nice lady,’ he observed, as he held up his glass to be filled.

‘I think so.’

‘You should have stayed.’

I shrugged. ‘I’ve got work to do tomorrow.’

‘It’s Sunday,’ he observed, slightly curious.

And this, I suddenly recalled, was Saturday night. A week had passed. I made a silent toast to Magda. Hoping she was in Ireland. To Boon in Holland. And to Donna and Colette. Wherever.

‘Are you okay?’ Mackay was watching me over the rim of his glass.

I dropped into the banquette seat, feeling the damp coolness through the big window on the back of my neck. ‘You’ve been trained for situations, haven’t you?’

He looked at me obliquely. ‘What kind of situations?’

‘Ever see any of the Dracula films?’

‘Sure.’ He nodded, waiting for the relevance to be explained.

‘What would you do if you were Dracula, and you saw the angry villagers coming to attack the castle?’

‘I’d leave by the back door. As soon as I saw the torchlight procession.’

Bruges?
I didn’t voice it. ‘What if you don’t have a back door?’

It took him a moment to realize that I was talking about the caravan. ‘Are you in some kind of trouble?’

I nodded. ‘Possibly.’

‘Anything to do with the marks on your face?’

‘No, that was a different kind of trouble.’

He laughed. ‘And Gina thought you were boring!’

‘Gina’s character-sieve only caught my defects.’

He smiled painfully. Newly discovered empathy. He studied me for a moment. ‘This is more than just about Sally’s son, isn’t it?’

I thought about it. This was a strange confessor to have. ‘A woman made an absurd mistake once.’

‘Such as?’

‘Stowing away on a boat that docked in Cardiff.’

He smiled, getting my meaning. ‘Of all the exotic places.’

‘Her name was Regine Broussard. She was Haitian. She went to ground in the city, living rough. We took a call that a black woman with a big bright headscarf had been seen getting into a white Transit van.’

He picked up on my reticence. ‘You must get calls like that all the time.’

I winced. ‘That’s why I ignored it at first. Then I got to thinking. Hookers didn’t operate in that neighbourhood. This lady was too exotic not to have been picked up on the radar if she was a working girl. By the time I got myself into fucking gear it was too late. Two scumbags from the Valleys had panicked when she started screaming at them in French that she didn’t want them to touch her.’

‘You got them?’

I nodded and closed my eyes. ‘And the saddest thing of all? Everything she had in the world was in a plastic carrier bag.’

‘Need any help with this one?’ he offered.

I opened my eyes. ‘What about your business?’

‘I have staff. They take care of things. And I owe you.’

I told him about the mood in the village. I kept it general, explaining it as a natural result of collective grief that had found some sort of relief by channelling its focus on the outsider. If he recognized it as bullshit, he had the grace not to let on. But I didn’t want him knowing about the group. Or too much about Magda. Not yet. I didn’t want him reading me as an obsessive. Apart from the security that his presence afforded, some instinct was telling me that I was going to need Mackay. What for, I didn’t know yet.

I was going to find out soon enough.

It was a semi-detached, estate cottage in the shadow of a massive wellingtonia tree. The next-door neighbour’s net curtains twitched as I walked up to the front door. Bill Ferguson had no net curtains to worry about, just what appeared to be a pair of old sheets drooping from plastic-coated wire in the front bay window.

He opened the door and presented me with a friendly, quizzically embryonic expression that was poised to shift to fit the emerging encounter.

‘Mr Ferguson?’ I held up my warrant card.

He nodded, showing surprise but at the same time something fitting into place. ‘I thought you’d telephone me.’

‘I was in the area.’ I gave him the Friendly Plod smile to cover the lie.

‘It’s Sunday.’

‘We never rest.’ I grinned to show him that it was a joke.

‘Come in,’ he said, opening the door and stepping back to let me through.

He was a tall man, lean, with a shaved head and trimmed beard. The exposed parts of him – scalp, face and forearms – were heavily tanned. I put him in his early forties, the dry skin and the lines on his face down to the weather he worked in. His eyes showed intelligence. I had been expecting someone coarser.

I followed him into the living room. The furniture was mismatched and threadbare, the only shiny things being a CD player and four, high stacks of discs. No television, I noticed.

‘Thank you for seeing me, Mr Ferguson.’

‘Bill. Please, call me Bill. And excuse the state of things. This crappy furniture comes with the place. It’s just too daunting to even start thinking about making improvements.’ Was I catching a pinch of self-mockery? Was this guy being ever so slightly camp?

‘Firstly, I am sorry about what happened to Trevor Vaughan.’

He pulled a face and gestured me into a chair, sitting down himself. ‘Me too. Can you tell me about the arrangements for the funeral?’

‘I will, when I know them.’

He looked at me sharply. ‘I thought that was why you were here.’

‘How did you know Trevor?’ I asked. ‘Through shooting?’

‘No, I don’t like shooting. Neither did Trevor.’

‘But it’s what you do?’ I prompted.

He shrugged. ‘It’s a sport to the people I’m employed to help. But it’s not my sport. Do you chase criminals when you’re not at your work?’ he asked with a polite smile.

‘Point taken.’

‘I first met Trevor at a concert.’ He thought about it. ‘Perhaps five months ago. At the chapel here. A male-voice choir from South Wales. He brought his mother and a friend of hers over to hear it.’

‘You like male-voice choirs?’

An amused look flickered until he realized that I had pitched it as a straight question. ‘I like all music. Especially choral. I got talking to Trevor in the interval. He told me that he was interested in classical music, but ignorant about it.’ He gestured towards the pile of CDs. ‘I told him that he was welcome to listen to my collection. I started him off on Handel, and Bach cantatas.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I was about to introduce him to Janáˇcek’s
Glagolitic
Mass.’

‘He borrowed your CDs?’

‘I offered, but he said that he would rather come over here and listen. He said the atmosphere was more conducive.’

‘Did you ever meet in Dinas? Trevor’s home?’

‘No.’

‘You were never invited?’

He took his time answering. ‘He was honest with me. He explained that his parents and his friends wouldn’t understand this interest we shared.’ He smiled. ‘He didn’t have to elaborate that they would find this friendship strange. With another man.’

‘Was there anything more to your friendship?’

He smiled wanly. ‘I’m getting over a ruined relationship, Sergeant. I’m not currently in the marketplace. I just enjoyed his company.’

‘Did Trevor want anything more from it?’

‘Why are you asking me these questions?’

‘I am trying to find out what drove him to do what he did.’

He nodded slowly, considering it. ‘I think that maybe he was attracted to me. But he was also frightened of sex. It was one of his problems. And he was a mild manic-depressive.’ He moved a hand to describe a sine wave. ‘Up, down, up, down …’ He let his hand tail off.

‘Did he ever give you the impression that he might have considered taking his own life?’

‘I was surprised and saddened to hear the news.’

‘But not shocked?’

‘No. Not shocked. As I said, his fear of sex was only one of his problems.’

‘Other contributory factors?’

‘I’m not a psychologist.’

I nodded. ‘I understand that.’

He frowned, trying to organize his thought process. ‘There was something tearing at him. Some inner conflict going on that he couldn’t resolve. He once asked me where I thought the line between betrayal and duty should be drawn.’

‘Betrayal of what, duty to whom?’

‘That’s what I asked him. He wouldn’t clarify; he just gave me one of his sheepish looks and dropped the subject. He should have been a Catholic. If anyone needed the release of the confessional, it was Trevor.’

‘When did you last see him?’

He thought about it. ‘Perhaps … Nearly two weeks ago.’

‘Did you notice any change in him?’

‘No. Same old Trevor.’ He jiggled his fanned fingers. ‘A little bit happy with the music and our talk, a little bit sad with his burdens.’

Another dead end.

‘But I did speak to him earlier this week. Over the phone. To arrange to meet tomorrow.’ He shrugged and pulled a melancholic expression at the futility of that arrangement now.

‘How did he sound?’

‘That’s the strange thing. He was happy. It was so obvious that I made a joke of it. I asked if he’d won the lottery. He had had some good news, he told me.’

And Trevor was happy the last time I saw him. ‘When was this?’ I asked, starting to see a seam opening. ‘When did he call you?’

He thought about it. ‘Wednesday night, I think.’

Wednesday night was the last time I saw Trevor Vaughan. We had investigated the hole in the forest, and found it empty. He had just realized that his suspicions about his friends had been unfounded. He must have called Bill Ferguson after I had left him. Spreading his joy.

So what happened to change all that? And so quickly? What causes him to squeeze himself into Wendy Evans’s panties on the following day and hang himself?

Oh fuck …

He saw my expression change. ‘What’s the matter?’

But I was already on my way out of there.

I called Mackay and arranged a place to meet.

Wendy Evans.

It had been staring me in the face all this time. I just hadn’t connected it. It was the flag that Trevor Vaughan had been waving at me. He had worn Wendy’s panties to specifically draw attention to Wendy, not to a suppressed gay guy in young girl’s underwear. I had been so busy trying to probe Donna and Colette’s time at the salon that I had overlooked the significance of Wendy also working there.

And Sally had mentioned that her husband had told her Wendy had been a damaged child.
Carrying a lot of weird emotional stuff around for her age
. And no fucking wonder. If I was right about this, at an age when her peers were obsessing over boy bands, she was being coached by Ken McGuire and Les Tucker in the class-A black art of sexual abuse and humiliation.

How had Trevor got possession of the panties? Wendy ran off with Malcolm Paterson about two years ago. Trevor had to have been holding on to them for at least that long. Had he found them? Had he been given them?