Good People (34 page)

Gordon had now been released, but there was no way that he would want to talk to me. Zoë might be prepared to, but not while she was sharing the same working environment as her husband. I wasn’t too sure of Sheila McGuire’s loyalties, but, as we were currently in the process of pulling the family farm apart, my presence might have been seen as rubbing salt into the wound.

It was a narrowing down of options that I would rather not have made.

Because in my last encounter with Sara Harris, she had been strapped to my back like a demented jockey, torn between trying to strangle me or ripping my head off.

Hoping that her attitude had mellowed in the interim, I stood outside A Cut Above long enough to let my presence be registered, and to establish that a bucket of hydrogen peroxide wasn’t about to come flying out the door at me.

I walked inside to find everyone in the place staring at me. The ladies of the town in the waiting area, the two young women behind the styling chairs, and the three women lodged in the chairs. All the ladies of the town looked eager, the two stylists looked nervous.

‘Good morning.’ I smiled to the room. ‘I’d like to speak to Sara, please.’

‘She’s not here,’ one of the stylists replied, the other nodding in jittery confirmation.

I smiled knowingly at the unattended woman in her chair, the good detective in me having already noticed that her hair was still dripping. ‘I won’t be long with her,’ I promised, and walked towards the rear storeroom.

‘You can’t go back there –’ One of the stylists tried half-heartedly to block me.

‘It’s all right, I know the way,’ I announced, sidestepping her. She shared a look of confusion with her compadre; they had obviously lost the pages of this particular part of the script.

Sara was in the storeroom. I had half expected her to have exited through the back door. She was still holding a wet comb. She glowered at me and waved it like a magic wand. ‘This is private property, you’re trespassing.’

‘I’m allowed to, I’m a police officer pursuing a line of enquiry.’

‘Fuck off,’ she snarled, condensing the message.

‘I need your help, Sara.’

‘Why would I want to help you?’

‘Because I think there’s a possibility that Les isn’t responsible for everything that they are going to try and throw at him.’

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. She digested it for a moment. ‘Are you saying it’s all down to Ken?’

‘No, this applies to both of them. But I need your help. You’re going to have to answer some frank questions.’

She stared at me intently, trying to work out if I was running a con on her. ‘Are you serious?’ she asked eventually.

‘Yes.’

She moved fast. For a moment I thought that she was going to embrace me. Instead, she hooked one hand into the crook of my elbow, opened the door with the other, and dragged me into the centre of the salon while I was still trying to work on my balance.

Our audience looked on, spellbound. The sight of me trying to fathom the steps of the reel that Sara had pulled me into told them that they were in for high drama. She now held her free hand up, as if to quiet the uproar that she was anticipating. ‘Sergeant Capaldi has just told me that my Les has been arrested under false pretences for a bunch of stuff that he hasn’t done.’

‘Sara, that’s not what I said.’ My protest was drowned out by the collective gasp from the audience.

‘Tell them,’ she urged, yanking at my elbow, ‘tell them what you’ve just told me. Tell them that they’ve arrested Les for things that he hasn’t done.’

The room went quiet, staring at me in expectation. I managed to free my elbow. ‘That’s not what I said, Sara.’

‘Yes it is. “Les is not responsible for the things they’re going to throw at him” – those were your very words.’ She addressed the entranced assembly with all the guile of a sharp barrister.

‘Some of the things.
Some
. . .’ I slowed the word down for emphasis.

‘They’ve fitted him up,’ she announced triumphantly, ignoring my protest.

The first phone call came about an hour later, while I was staking out the offices of Payne, Dyke and Thomas in the hope of seeing Zoë emerge without Gordon in tow.

It was Sally, her voice granular with anxiety. ‘Glyn, someone’s just called me to say that you’ve said that Ken McGuire and Les Tucker have been falsely arrested.’

Hell, that was quick. The Dinas grapevine had geared up to warp-speed.

‘Calm down,’ I soothed.

‘What’s happened? I thought you said that you had evidence on them.’

‘We have. They’ll definitely be charged, Sally, I promise you.’

‘So, why are they saying those things about you?’ She sounded confused, but calmer.

‘Things have been taken out of context.’

‘So, you’re not back at the beginning again? You’re making progress? Finding out what’s happened to Boon?’

‘It’s happening as we speak.’

‘But you’re not there? You’re not interrogating them?’ She tried hard not to make it sound accusatory.

‘I’m back out in the field. It’s what I’m best at.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I heard the catch in her voice as she tried to bring herself back under control. ‘I don’t mean to make such a fuss. It’s just … All this not knowing is wearing me out.’

‘Believe me, I understand. And I want to do anything I can to help.’

‘Can I see you tonight?’ She asked it hesitantly, aware of how frayed and unstable she must be sounding.

‘Of course.’

My phone rang again as soon as we had hung up. ‘It’ll be about seven o’clock,’ I said, answering it, assuming it was Sally calling back.

‘What’s that, Capaldi, a train arrival, or a prediction of the Apocalypse?’ Jack Galbraith asked.

‘I’m sorry, sir, I thought you were someone else.’

‘So, that wasn’t one of your Pronouncements from the Mount?’

‘I’m not with you, sir,’ I replied, confused.

‘Not one of your on-high declarations of innocence to the multitude?’

Oh fuck … I hadn’t expected Jack Galbraith to be hard-wired into the Dinas rumour mill.

‘That was a misunderstanding, sir.’

‘Fucking right it was. And a fucking big one, too.’

‘I was trying to get her to cooperate, sir.’

‘I despair of you, Capaldi,’ he groaned wearily. ‘You take us to a point where we think that you might be creeping back into the fold. Starting to look like a sensible copper again, making some astute calls, and then you go and throw it all away by turning back into Boy Fucking Wonder.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, it was just a misunderstanding.’

‘The essential misunderstanding is you talking to that woman in the first place,’ he observed harshly. ‘You get a rumour like this started and it makes it look like we’re involved in chicanery. You stay away from all of them now, Capaldi – the wives, the girlfriends, and the brothers.’

‘Yes, sir.’

So when Sheila McGuire rang, I knew that I should not be taking the call.

‘Sergeant Capaldi, I’d like to talk to you.’

‘Okay,’ I said quickly, before my career-preserving mode could cut in.

The rain was still in place. A couple of minibuses loaded with damp and dispirited search-team members were leaving the farmyard as I drove in. A few guys stared out at me as we passed, their looks seeming to suggest that their misery was my fault.

Sheila McGuire opened the back door. She was wearing a green sweater over a white T-shirt, tight jeans, and slipper socks bunched around her ankles. Her hair looked like it was escaping from a style, and her complexion was even more outdoor than I had remembered. She looked out over my shoulder at the departing minibuses. ‘They’re going to have a rough day in this weather,’ she observed. I could smell some form of alcohol.

‘Are they getting in your way?’

‘No.’ She shut the door behind us. ‘They’ve finished with the barns now, and they’re being taken out to trudge the fields. Poor sods. Come into the kitchen.’ She led the way. ‘They’re not going to find anything, you know,’ she said over her shoulder. I assumed that she wasn’t expecting an answer.

She gestured me to a seat at the long refectory table opposite the one with a glass of red wine and an open bottle in front of it. She took a glass out of a wall cabinet and raised it. ‘Join me?’

I declined with a smile and a shake of my head. She didn’t insist. She sat down and topped her glass up. Her smile was very slightly cocked, and she still wore a quizzical expression, as if she had forgotten that she had invited me here.

‘You decided to stay around?’ I asked. Something to break the locked moment.

‘It’s a farm, Sergeant, there are animals here that need caring for. I’m a farmer’s daughter, even though I’m in the process of debating whether I’m still a farmer’s wife.’

‘You wanted to talk to me, Mrs McGuire?’

‘Sheila. Please call me Sheila.’ She gave me a smile that fell just short of imploring. ‘At the moment I need to hear friendly voices.’

‘What did you want to talk to me about, Sheila?’

‘You seem to have jinxed us here …’ She looked at me enquiringly.

‘Glyn.’

She nodded. ‘Glyn. That’s right. I’d forgotten. Things have not been good since you entered our lives, Glyn. Trevor Vaughan has gone from us. Ken has done these awful things. Boon is missing. And that poor girl whose body they found …’

‘These things were in play long before I turned up,’ I reminded her gently.

‘I know that now, but I didn’t have to confront them then. Everything was unknown and excusable. I know that it’s a terrible thing to say, given all that’s happened, but ignorance really is bliss.’

‘There is still one young woman unaccounted for.’

She took a deep drink of her wine and nodded. ‘I heard. But I know nothing about her.’

‘And Boon?’

‘Was it Boon you were meaning when you told Sara that Ken and Les were innocent?’

‘You heard that too?’

‘You opened your mouth in Dinas, Glyn.’ She almost managed a grin.

‘Sara made a point of misunderstanding me.’

‘I wondered.’ She took another drink and held the glass reflectively in front of her face for a moment. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

‘Sara?’

She shook her head dismissively. ‘Boon.’ She put the glass on the table. ‘Whatever else he’s done, Ken wouldn’t have hurt Boon.’

‘They were all very drunk that night.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I can’t answer for Les Tucker, but I know for a fact that Ken wouldn’t have harmed Boon. And besides, Ken is a very controlled drunk. Ken always makes sure that he knows exactly what he’s doing.’ She let me hear the bitterness that drifted into that last statement.

‘I thought that Boon was Gordon’s friend?’

‘That’s how it started. That’s how Ken came to accept him in the first place. His young brother’s friend. A black boy was strange around here, especially for someone as conventional as Ken, but he got used to him. Got to like him, even.

‘And then Gordon and Les got involved with the rugby club. They started drifting away from Boon then.’

‘Didn’t Boon join too?’

‘I don’t know the story behind it. Nothing ever came to the surface. Let’s just say that Boon was never invited to join. Ken looked after Boon at that point, kept him in the group, stopped him feeling isolated. Paul Evans came on to the scene through the rugby club connection. Ken made sure that they didn’t cut Boon out, that if they wanted to associate with him and Trevor, Boon was part of the deal, he had to be included.’

‘Did Gordon hold any sort of grudge for that?’

She shrugged. ‘Who knows? I think Gordon might always have been a bit pissed off that Boon managed to go out with Zoë before he did.’

‘When was this?’ I didn’t let her see my mental notebook highlighting the entry.

‘They were young, a teenage thing. It was a long time ago.’ She poured the remainder of the bottle into her glass, drank it and stood up. I caught her momentary tussle with gravity. ‘Are you sure you won’t join me?’ she asked, taking another bottle from the wine rack.

I shook my head. ‘Don’t you think a cup of coffee would be more sensible?’

She grinned. ‘Probably.’ She held the bottle up to me before she opened it and poured another glass. ‘But I’m oiling the decision-making process. I just wanted you to know. About Boon. There are not many good things that I can think of to say about my husband at the moment, but that was one that I thought I should share with you.’

‘Did you ever suspect?’

She knew exactly what I was talking about, but she chose to hold a thoughtful frown in place. Eventually, she shook her head. ‘I’ve been looking back. Searching for any clues that I might have missed. And the answer is no. I thought that we were normal. Boringly so, when it came to sex.’ She looked me in the face, a faintly worried smile creasing her lips. ‘We are friends at the moment, aren’t we? You don’t mind me talking frankly?’

‘No. As long as you’re comfortable with it.’

‘Comfortable isn’t quite the word I’d choose …’ She shook her head sharply, dismissing the thought as a sideline. She had made some sort of a decision and she was sticking to it. ‘He never gave me even the remotest idea that he was interested in … Let’s call it the seamier side.’ She looked at me appealingly. ‘You would have thought that if things like that turned him on, he would have tried to instigate them. Or drop clues. Hints. Make some attempt to see whether I could be interested too. We were meant to be a couple. Couples are supposed to share things.’ Her mind went off on a journey. ‘I even tried once.’

‘Tried?’

‘To get him interested in branching out. We hadn’t been long married. We were still getting to grips with the bedroom side of things. Although I was already getting the impression that he wasn’t into experimentation. So I thought that perhaps he wanted me to take the lead. Anyway, one night I decided to …’ She smiled sheepishly. ‘How to put this delicately? I tried to move down south on him.’ Her head lurched slightly sideways and she pinned me with a fuzzy expression, looking for a reaction.

‘He didn’t want to play?’

‘He positively leapt away from me. You would have thought that I had been trying to bite the thing off, from the reaction it provoked. He moved so fast that he hit me hard on the face with his elbow. He said it was an accident, and I gave him the benefit of the doubt at the time.’ The face she pulled told me that she was no longer quite so sure. ‘And now I find out that he was getting his pleasure from sticking the bloody thing here, there and everywhere.’