Good People (29 page)

I had left everything the way I had found it. I had even hammered the dislodged nails back into the bottom hinge of the door with the heel of my shoe. When I went back in there, with company, I wanted the place to look virginal. Unmolested. I wanted to be able to play it as surprised as anyone.

But first I had to set up a reason to get back in there. Which was making me jumpy. Ken and Les could return at any time and find what they had missed before.

I pulled over as soon as the signal bar on my phone twitched into life. Sally came on the line at the Sychnant Nursing Home. ‘What’s this about, Glyn? Couldn’t you sleep?’ Her voice chirpy and curious.

I clenched my eyes shut for a moment, wishing that this could just be about flirting. ‘Sally, please don’t read anything into this, but I’d like you to try to remember what Boon was wearing the last time you saw him.’

Her voice dropped off the happy shelf. ‘What do you mean, don’t read anything into it?’

‘Believe me, this is just routine,’ I lied soothingly.

‘What’s happened, Glyn?’

‘Nothing’s happened. Someone answering Boon’s description was seen in Holyhead.’ I fed her the story I had prepared. For her own good, I told myself. ‘We just need to check it out.’

‘You mean someone saw a young black guy?’ I heard her relax.

‘It probably passes for excitement in Holyhead. What can you remember, Sally?’

She went quiet. Thinking back on it. ‘He was up early. He had the trip to London for the rugby. Which is why I saw him when I got in from work. Normally, we’re ships in the night. I made him a sandwich for the journey.’ She went quiet again. ‘Nike trainers and olive-drab cargo pants. Drooped, the way they wear them now, showing the top of his underpants. God, it used to drive me spare, that. He always wore Nikes.’ I could tell from her voice that she was thinking ahead, using the description to ride into the memory. ‘I remember telling him to dress warm. More than just a T-shirt and a sweatshirt. He said his parka would keep him plenty warm enough. I didn’t argue, it was a good one, he bought it in Germany. Beige coloured,’ she added, remembering I was trying to fit a description.

‘What about the sweatshirt?’ I asked casually.

‘It was grey. The dreaded hood,’ she added with a laugh, ‘with some sort of logo.’

I forced myself not to prompt her.

‘S.W.A.T., I think. Whatever that means.’

‘That’s pretty comprehensive, thanks, Sally.’

‘Is that a match?’

‘I’ll have to get back to our people in Holyhead.’

‘If they confirm it, can we assume that he did go to Ireland?’

‘It would look like it.’

‘Is Graham staying with you?’

It took me a moment to get her slant. To remember that she was still in the world of romance and possibility. ‘No, I can come out and play again.’

‘When’s that going to be?’

‘I’ll call you later, after we’ve both had our beauty sleep.’

Oh Jesus, I thought, after we had shut down the connection, what kind of news am I going to have for her then?

I was itching to go for Ken McGuire. But, as the Den was in Les Tucker’s demesne, the only route that could work went through him.

Sara answered the door in her dressing gown. She looked surprised to see me, but not sleepy.

‘Go away,’ she said, without preamble.

I had already been to Les’s home address. A ratty bungalow beside the family timber yard. A couple of dogs had barked in the house when I drew up, but the lights stayed off. I drove back into Dinas. Sara’s place was a neat little Victorian villa. The lights were out here too, but Les’s pickup was parked in the street.

‘I need to speak to Leslie Thomas Tucker,’ I announced, hoping that the sonorous formality would stop her shutting the door in my face.

‘He has nothing to say to you.’

‘Who is it, babe?’ Les’s voice called out from behind her.

‘Go away,’ she hissed again.

She started to close the door, but I put my hand on it, and crowded up on her. ‘Les Tucker,’ I called out over her head.

He came to the door. I moved back on to the top of the small flight of stone steps that led up from the street. He glowered when he saw me. He was wearing a vest over his trousers and no shoes. Even as young as he was he had a face that you would have described as craggy. Pocked and fissured from adolescent acne. Short, wiry brown hair above a receded hairline that gave him a huge expanse of forehead, and a nose that was waiting for ravage to give it its full glory.

But he looked powerful. The guy worked in the woods every day, I reminded myself.

‘You’re trespassing,’ he told me.

‘Paul Evans told me all about the Den.’

‘Paul told you fuck-all.’

‘Where do you think he’s been all day?’ I asked, and caught the tiny flicker of uncertainty.

‘What’s he talking about?’ Sara asked, also picking up on that small change in Les.

‘Fuck off,’ he spat out at me.

‘Does Sara know what you did to Wendy?’

The door slammed shut in my face. I counted it off mentally, trying to imagine what was happening on the other side of it. It opened again when I reached fifteen. I braced myself.

The advantage that I had always had here was that I knew that he was going to try to hit me. I just couldn’t be sure when. That uncertainty disappeared as soon as I saw him in the doorway again.

He was hampered by rage. He wanted to shut me up. He was assuming that we were both equally surprised at this development. He flung a right at me, and followed through with a body charge, aiming to take me down the steps.

I wasn’t quite quick enough to avoid the fist, which caught the top of my left shoulder as I was turning away from it. I sidestepped the body charge and tripped him as he went past, so that he launched into the air, executing a clumsy parabola, before hitting the paving slabs at the foot of the steps.

He landed on his side. The air went out of him with a gasp of shock and pain. I kicked him surreptitiously in the belly to drop him on to his face, and straddled his back, pulling out my handcuffs.

‘Leslie Thomas Tucker, I am arresting you for assaulting a police officer.’ I had the cuff snapped on to one of his wrists when Sara landed on my back. She wrapped a forearm round my throat, using it for balance and purchase, while she dug her other hand into my hair and wrenched my head back. She was drenching me with spittle as she screamed something so close to my ear as to make it unintelligible. At least with her mouth open, I remember thinking, she can’t bite me.

I blocked the pain long enough to snap the free end of the handcuffs on to the wrought-iron garden gate. I was sensing Les coming back to life under me and I didn’t want two of them free and seething. Sara had wrenched my head back as far as she could, but her grip on my throat was getting stronger. I summoned the gods and stood up, staggering under the burden like an overextended weightlifter. Sara clung to my back, her knees straddling my hips for better grip. To an onlooker this must have looked like weird rodeo.

I was being seriously throttled. Starting to get light-headed as the air supply shut down. I made a feint of grabbing for the hand that was wrapped into my hair to distract her. It worked. I felt the twist in her body as she moved her defences, and I let myself drop backwards.

She went down on to a small rosebush, with my deadweight following through on top. The breath went out of her before her synapses could relay the pain from the rose thorns. She loosened her grip on my throat as her body realized that this was doing nothing to help its cause. I squirmed round on top of her to keep her pinned down. Her dressing gown had come loose, and I realized that I was holding her down with one hand on a naked breast. Fuck the niceties, I thought, this lady is dangerous. ‘For Christ’s sake, Sara,’ I yelled down at her, ‘I’m not the problem – you’re protecting a fucking child molester.’

She spat up at me.

I turned away and caught the flashing light bar as Emrys Hughes’s car turned the corner. Pointing a warning finger at her, I climbed off warily. She glared at me balefully, pulled her dressing gown closed, and sat up slowly, arching her back against the pain, her eyes closed, wincing. Les hadn’t quite made it past the groaning stage yet.

‘What the hell’s happening here?’ Emrys yelled sternly.

‘I’m arresting these two for assault.’

Emrys looked around, desperately hoping that I might be talking about someone else. He had caught the tail end of the melee, and knew that, despite his loyalties, he had to acknowledge that I was the good guy. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked Sara.

She stared up at him, hurting and sulky. ‘He tried to feel me up,’ she said, nodding at me.

Emrys looked at me.

I shook my head. ‘I want these two in the holding cell at the police house. You’d better get a doctor in.’ I leaned in close so that I could whisper. ‘If I hear that Ken McGuire finds out about this tonight, I’m blaming you.’

‘What’s this all about?’ he pleaded.

‘You took your time getting here.’

He frowned. Only just thinking about it. ‘You said there was a disturbance.’

‘There was. You just witnessed it.’

‘But you said you were at the scene of a disturbance when you called it in. How could you have known?’

I grinned at him. ‘Psychic powers.’

‘I’m woken up in the middle of the night because you have arrested some village boho for apparently demonstrating profound good sense by taking a swing at you?’

I was speaking to Jack Galbraith from the small office in Emrys Hughes’s police house. Bryn Jones had set up a conference call between the three of us.

‘I need a search warrant, sir.’

‘So Bryn informed me. Now persuade me.’

‘Les Tucker has a hut in the forest. He uses it with Ken McGuire. We’re going to find evidence in there that has a direct bearing on the disappearance of Boon Paterson.’

‘Who is your informant?’

‘I don’t have a direct informant, sir. I do have access to Paul Evans, who I’m sure will turn friendly when the evidence becomes incontrovertible.’

‘I hope that there’s no element of coercion in this?’ Bryn asked warningly.

‘None. He’s staying with a friend of mine in Herefordshire on a purely voluntary basis.’

Jack Galbraith growled. ‘But in the meantime we’re meant to put our professional reputations on the line for one of your hunches?’

‘It’s more than a hunch, sir.’

The line went quiet. Jack Galbraith and Bryn had cut me off while they talked among themselves.

‘Capaldi, if I am going to wake up a magistrate who owes me a favour, what guarantees do I have that all due procedures have been followed?’

Did he know? Had he guessed? ‘Do you want me to put something in writing, sir?’

He groaned audibly. ‘No, I do not want you to put anything in writing. I do not want to know about something before we’ve fucking found it. I do not want to be called into an office and asked to explain the startling prescience of one of my officers.’

‘Due to Tucker’s violent reaction when confronted, I have reason to believe that there could be quantities of illegal substances on the premises.’

‘That’s better.’

‘What was he actually confronted with, Glyn?’ Bryn cut in to ask.

‘He hit me before I could get to it, sir.’

‘Good point though, Bryn,’ Jack Galbraith acknowledged. ‘We won’t be specific, just go broad spectrum about grounds for suspecting illegal activity. And we had better get that warrant to cover his house and workplace as well. We don’t want any suspicions aroused by our pinpoint accuracy.’

We drove out to the Den in a Land Rover personnel carrier. I sat up front directing the driver, with Jack Galbraith and Bryn behind me. Les, in the company of Emrys Hughes and two big uniforms from Carmarthen, was in the rear compartment behind a heavy-duty wire-mesh screen. We had taken the handcuffs off. A shackled man behaves like a trapped man. We wanted Les flowing, we wanted to see his natural mindset, we wanted him to think that he could still use guile and cunning.

He played it affronted and disgruntled. Emrys tried to calm him down. The rest of us ignored him. But I was listening. Trying to catch his strategy. He couldn’t have known about the sweatshirt or it wouldn’t have been there for me to find. He had to be bluffing it out, running with the hope that we were not going to uncover the inner sanctum.

We drove right up to the Den, not having to worry now about leaving visible tracks. The Land Rover was fitted with big spots, which illuminated the place like a film set.

‘Isn’t this taking things a bit too far?’ Les protested, aggrieved, arms spread like a disgruntled Christ in his sterile suit.

‘It’s for your own protection, Mr Tucker,’ Bryn volunteered, his reassuring smile covering the fact that he hadn’t actually explained anything.

‘What do you expect to find in there, a nuclear reactor?’ Les asked, a thin dry crack in his voice under the sarcasm.

‘I don’t know, Mr Tucker. Is there any information you would like to volunteer before we proceed inside?’ Jack Galbraith asked pleasantly.

Les flashed a glance at me. How much, he would be wondering, had Paul Evans revealed? He shook his head. ‘No. There’s nothing in there.’

‘Are you going to open the door for us, Mr Tucker?’ Bryn asked.

I saw a flicker of raw hope spark in Les, before it dawned on him that this was just a courtesy. Saying no wasn’t going to stop this happening.

He tried anyway. ‘This isn’t just my place – a lot of people come here,’ he protested.

‘We’d like a list of names at some stage,’ Bryn informed him.

‘I’m not responsible for the things that get done in there.’

‘You are responsible for me getting fucking cold out here, Mr Tucker.’

There is something about Jack Galbraith’s voice that cuts through the shit. Les glowered at him, but stepped forward and unlocked the padlock.

The door screeched as it dropped even lower on to the bottom hinge that I had weakened. I had an anxious moment when Les glanced down at it. But it didn’t hold his attention. He was obviously used to the periodic collapse of the place. And he had other things on his mind.