Good People (32 page)

‘That depends. Why?’

‘Sheila and Sara. You see, it wasn’t Boon that she wanted to protect her, it was Ken and Les. She wanted Ken and Les to get her safely over to Ireland. She wanted to travel in a crowd. Boon was too distinctive to go with. Boon went on his own. She was happy to stay behind and wait.’

‘Where is she, Mr McGuire?’ Bryn asked affably. I sat beside him in the interview room across the desk from Ken and his solicitor, a slightly more senior version of the one who had sat in with Gordon. Bryn had opted to play the part of the Soft Cop. That suited me.

Jack Galbraith was currently in another room bracing Les Tucker with a young DC from Carmarthen that he was grooming. He would be playing both the Tough Cop and Soft Cop roles, she was there merely to observe and admire.

Ken folded his arms in a gesture of weary patience. ‘If you’re talking about the woman that we gave a lift to, we’ve already told you that. The last time we saw her was when we left her in Ponterwyd with Boon, on their way to Dublin via Holyhead.’

‘Are you very sure about that, Mr McGuire?’ Bryn asked kindly.

‘We’ve explained it enough times.’

‘You’re lying again, Ken,’ I cut in. ‘How many layers of shit are we going to peel off this time?’

‘Sergeant …’ Bryn remonstrated, smiling apologetically at Ken and the solicitor. But they were focused on me now, waiting for the next spout of malice. They didn’t see him slip the photograph from a folder out on to the desk, face down.

‘This is, chronologically, the first image that we have found on the laptop computer that was taken from Mr Tucker’s hut for analysis …’

That grabbed their attention. Their eyes whipped round on him, Bryn’s fingers splayed out on the back of the photograph as if trying to stop it from turning itself over.

‘Want to tell us about it, Ken?’ I probed mischievously.

He ignored me. Kept his expression impassive.

Bryn flipped the photograph over. The effect was anticlimactic. The image was blurred and incomprehensible.

Ken faked ignorance, only the solicitor was truly puzzled.

‘It’s a beaver shot,’ I explained to him.

He frowned, even more clueless.

Bryn obliged him by turning over another photograph. ‘This is from the same series.’

The solicitor gasped and visibly blanched. This time it was unmistakable. The camera was focused now, and the unseen woman had been persuaded to use her index fingers to stretch the lips of her labia, exposing the pink folds through the dark mat of pubic hair.

‘Whose snatch was that, Ken?’ I asked conversationally. ‘Monica Trent or Alexandrina? Or were you using random prostitutes in those days as well?’

Ken shook his head. ‘I know nothing about these, and I know nothing about the computer you say they came from.’

Bryn already had the next photograph prepared. ‘Perhaps this will jog your memory, Mr McGuire,’ he said as he turned it over.

‘Oh my God …’ the solicitor groaned, averting his head.

A young, naked girl was on her stomach straddling the contraption in the Rumpus Room. She was plump, and I didn’t recognize her from the photographs of Donna and Colette that Joan Harvey had shown me at the Sychnant Nursing Home. But in those, neither girl had been wearing that faraway fish look people take on when they are concentrating on working their mouth around an erect penis. This one belonged to Les Tucker. Ken, skinny and naked, behind her, had inserted himself into an orifice. The camera had been set on an automatic trip, and both men were grinning at it, cheekily triumphant, anticipating the countdown. But what, irrationally, infuriated me the most, was the fact that they both still had their shoes and socks on. They had not even had the sliver of grace to share the poor girl’s nudity.

‘Donna or Colette?’ I asked. We knew from the chronology that it couldn’t be Magda. And Emrys Hughes, who had had to be ordered to continue looking at the images, had eliminated Wendy Evans by identifying her in other shots. Interestingly, we had also found images of Kylie, one of Sara’s current employees.

‘She was a consenting adult.’

‘Who?’ I insisted.

‘Donna Gallagher.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘I have no idea. She wasn’t around here for very long. She moved away, and that was the end of the story. There is nothing illegal in what we did.’ He gave his solicitor a challenging look.

‘Wendy Evans was fifteen,’ I corrected him.

‘Not when she volunteered to play with us,’ he shot back. ‘She was over the age of consent then.’

‘It’s not exactly normal behaviour is it though, Mr McGuire?’ Bryn cut in, trying to sound like a sympathetic but slightly concerned uncle.

Ken gave a small, deprecatory shrug. ‘It is what it is. I admit, seeing it laid out on the table like that, out of context, makes it look a bit disturbing. But, essentially, it was just a piece of fun. It didn’t hurt anyone. And I’m fairly sure that the ladies enjoyed it.’

Bryn signalled me to keep control. He pulled a curious face. ‘But why?’ he asked gently. ‘By all accounts, you’re a happily married man.’

Ken responded to the softness with a conspiratorial smile. ‘Because you’re not going to do those sorts of things to your wife, are you, Inspector?’

I could have hit him. I felt Bryn’s shoe straddle my toes, amplifying his previous signal to stay backed-off.

Ken sensed my fury and helplessness. He cocked his head and gave me a look of concern that we both knew was pure twisted irony.

Bryn pulled out another photograph. Magda. Sitting on one of the twin beds in the Rumpus Room, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, smiling into the camera. I read bravery built into the smile. A tourist with her new friends.

He tapped the photograph and fixed Ken with a penetrating stare that moved the game up another level from his previous polite friendliness. ‘This is the young woman who was captured on the filling station’s CCTV camera getting into your minibus.’

Ken pretended to study the picture. He had to have known that this was coming. He had already had time to rehearse this. They must have realized that we had the resources to unlock the laptop’s secrets.

‘This isn’t Ireland, Ken,’ I pointed out, clawing back a little bit of self-satisfaction.

‘That’s very observant of you,’ he snapped, and then let his voice relax. ‘In fact, I’m sure you know that this was taken in the back room of the Den.’

‘So, you don’t deny that she was there?’ Bryn prompted.

‘Can we give her a name?’ I asked. We already knew, Gordon had told us. I just wanted to hear what Ken did to the sound of it.

‘Marta,’ Ken said, no emotion. ‘Her surname was unpronounceable. We took that photograph when we all went back to the Den to pick up the quad bike. This was after we’d been to Dinas to get Boon’s things.’

Something was wrong. We should have been smelling fear coming off him. He was too confident.

‘Of course –’ He didn’t quite snap his fingers, but he used his eyes and raised his inflexion to let us share his eureka moment. ‘That’s what I had forgotten … That’s where the blood came from!’ He smiled at us. It was meant to be apologetic, but he couldn’t quite hide the tip of a small cone of triumph. ‘I’d had a bit too much to drink that night. We all had. But it’s coming back to me now. Boon had a nosebleed. It dripped on to his sweatshirt. I think I even remember him taking it off. Somehow it must have got crumpled under the sofa. It was lucky that we’d already picked up his things, so he had another sweatshirt to wear.’

‘What caused the nosebleed?’ Bryn asked.

‘A violent sneeze, I think.’

‘And Mr Tucker can verify this?’

Ken smiled helpfully. ‘He will when he’s reminded. He was even further gone than me.’ He raised his hands playfully, enjoying himself now, shooting his solicitor a look of mock shame. ‘Not that either of us can remember who drove the minibus that night.’

‘And Marta was there when this happened?’ Bryn asked.

‘Sure. She’ll confirm it. If you can track her down in Ireland.’

I leaned forward across the desk to get closer to Ken. ‘I don’t think that Marta ever got to the Den that night.’

He laughed into my face. ‘You’ve just shown us the photograph, Sergeant. It’s your own evidence, for God’s sake.’

‘Your computer gives that photograph a later date,’ Bryn pointed out.

‘That was the date that it went on the computer. Not the date it was taken.’

‘I’m not saying that Marta wasn’t ever at the Den …’ I expanded cheerily.

He frowned momentarily, wondering where I was going with this. ‘That was the only night she could have been there. She went on to Ireland with Boon,’ he elaborated patiently.

I shook my head. Held his stare for a beat. ‘The minibus was never driven there. You took her somewhere else that night.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He looked to Bryn for an explanation.

I tracked two fingers along the desktop. ‘The only vehicles that were ever driven down to the Den were quad bikes. The minibus would have left tyre tracks. There were no such tracks. I think you dropped her off somewhere else. Perhaps you risked using Les’s bungalow for that first night. Before you brought her to the Den.’

‘Rubbish …’ he exploded, shaking his head vehemently.

‘But Boon went back to the Den with you. That’s why his sweatshirt was there.’

He shook his head. You get used to seeing people’s thought processes in interview rooms. His were quick. ‘We all went to the Den. We parked the minibus and walked.’

‘You seem to be packing a lot of activity into this night, Mr McGuire,’ Bryn observed dubiously.

‘Ken, it was a filthy night,’ I all but shrieked, ‘no one would have chosen to be out there in that weather.’

He nodded. ‘That’s right, the track was muddy, we didn’t want the minibus to get stuck.’

‘And I suppose Boon lugged a suitcase with him, in the freezing rain, wading through the mud, just in case he got a nosebleed and would have to change his sweatshirt?’

He flashed me scorn. ‘He changed when we got back to the minibus.’

‘I think you’re full of bullshit, Ken.’

‘It’s Mr McGuire to you. And I believe you have to prove that …’ He started to smile at his solicitor, and then I watched his eyes move to the small tape recorder that Bryn had just produced.

‘
You see, it wasn’t Boon that she wanted to protect her, it was Ken and Les. She wanted Ken and Les to get her safely over to Ireland. She wanted to travel in a crowd. Boon was too distinctive to go with. Boon went on his own. She was happy to stay behind and wait.
’

Bryn switched Gordon McGuire’s voice off. We both watched Ken. He just stared at the tape recorder.

‘What really happed with Boon, Mr McGuire?’ Bryn asked gently.

‘Where did you move Marta to?’ I asked, trying to match his tone. ‘Where are you keeping her now?’

‘Was there an accident?’ Bryn soothed. ‘Is that what you’re trying to cover up? We appreciate that accidents can happen. We are aware of panic reactions. I promise you, we are capable of understanding.’

Ken’s head snapped up to face us. He smiled. We had hoped that he would crumble before he realized our fatal flaw. But he had seen it. ‘Why don’t you ask Gordon?’ He threw it at us as a challenge. It was up and bobbing on top of the fountain now. The knowledge that Gordon had not been a party to the events that rolled out after they had left the hut in the minibus that night.

The interview was over.

We strengthened the SOCO team and split it into two. Jack Galbraith took one half to trawl Les Tucker’s timber yard, and Bryn took the other to do the same with his house. We had Ken McGuire’s farmhouse and outbuildings already secured to perform the same exercise.

Neither of them invited me along.

Jack Galbraith was angry and frustrated. Despite his Nobel Prize-winning skills in intimidation, he had not managed to get Les Tucker to veer from their story. He denied any knowledge of the sweatshirt in the Den, swore blind that he couldn’t remember any of the girls in the photographs, despite the fact that his erect penis featured in the mouth of one of them. When Gordon’s tape was played, he listened intently, looked up, and asked, ‘Who was that?’ Jack Galbraith’s fury was compounded by the fact that the stand-off had occurred in front of his current acolyte.

Les would have been acting under instructions. To play dumb and deny everything. Ken would look for the loopholes. We couldn’t keep them apart for ever; sooner or later he would be able to smuggle the new strategies out to Les.

I drove back up to the Den. I should have been catching up with the backlog on the day job, which would be piling up like faggots around a martyr’s pyre, but it was too mundane. I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate. I was hyped up, back in the land of sex and death that I had once inhabited, and I was hanging on to that territory.

Had we missed anything here?

I stood in the middle of the Rumpus Room, shutting the Contraption out of my imagination, trying to concentrate on anomalies. There was no evidence of any excavations or replaced boards. The blue-light scanner had revealed no concealed bloodstains, apart from some old residues of menstrual fluids on the Contraption’s leather and one of the mattresses. Plenty of hair and fibre samples. A cornucopia of them. But, even if we found a match to Marta or Boon, it wouldn’t help: Ken’s new line of defence was the admission that they had both been here before they were driven to their rendezvous with Ireland.

Marta had been here. I closed my eyes. Tried to smell her. But all I was picking up were mould spores and concrete dust.

I was looking for anomalies. I pictured the space in my head, and shifted my stance before I opened my eyes. So that I was looking at the creosoted wall.

An anomaly?

Why would they creosote an internal wall?

Because it was getting damp? The walls were built to square off the inside of a cave or quarry. Caves are damp. Creosote preserves the timber.

But why just the one wall? If the place was suffering from damp, why hadn’t they treated the other walls and the ceiling?

What else does creosote do?

I placed my palms flat against the planking. The creosote was streaked and faded, long-dried and soaked into the timber. This had been applied years ago. I asked myself again, feeling the dread-tinged excitement rising: what else does creosote do?