In Guilty Night (21 page)

‘Who was scared?’

‘Dily, ’cos she didn’t know what’d happened, did she?’

McKenna watched the girl, who plucked at the loosening threads on her other sleeve, fidgeted with her clothing, glanced at Janet, then to the floor, then at the walls, and could almost see the chaos of thought and word, of hearsay and gossip in her mind, the jumble of events and nightmarish visions, understood only in that she felt their menace. He wondered if age would give her greater understanding, and thought she might stumble through whatever life strewed in her path, anaesthetized by the stupidity which bedevilled understanding.

‘If I say somebody hit me, you can’t take me back, can you?’ Mandy asked.

‘Did they?’

‘He punched me in the guts.’

‘Who did?’

‘That bastard Hogg!’ She spat the words.

‘Did anyone see him do it?’

‘What do you think?’ Mandy sneered.

‘Make a statement,’ McKenna said. ‘Then I can deal with it.’

‘What’ll happen if I do?’

‘A police officer will write down what you say, then a doctor will examine you for marks or injuries, and I’ll see Mr Hogg.’

‘When will you?’

‘Tomorrow,’ McKenna said. ‘Perhaps the day after.’

‘What about me?’

‘Social Services will have to find somewhere else for you.’

‘I’ve told you nobody’ll have me.’ Her voice was toneless.

‘What about foster homes?’ Janet said.

‘They won’t have me.’

‘How d’you know?’

‘Hogg said, over and over like a fucking broken record. “Nobody’ll have you!”.’ She mimicked Ronald Hogg. ‘“Nobody’ll put up with you!”.’

McKenna looked at his watch. ‘It’s getting late, Mandy. What d’you want to do?’

The girl shrugged. ‘Dunno. Whatever you want.’

‘I can’t leave you here for the night.’

‘What about this statement?’

‘You’re sure you want to make one?’

‘I suppose so.’

McKenna stood, stiffness in his arm, tightness creeping around his chest once again, slightly nauseous from hunger and cold and fatigue. ‘DC Evans will deal with it, Mandy, while I deal with Social Services.’

Gary crept around the cottage interior, lighter flickering in the draught as he moved slowly from parlour to lean-to kitchen, and thence to each of the tiny ground-floor bedrooms, where little sash windows were shrouded by half-drawn curtains, shutting out the luminous mountain night. His foot caught in the drape of a bedspread, and he stumbled against a chest of drawers, rattling ornaments and knick-knacks bestrewing the surface. Putting out his hands to save himself, he felt the grittiness of dust on his fingers.

From late morning until well beyond nightfall, he had lain watch in the lee of the mountain, waiting for people who never came, looking for the minute change at the cottage telling of occupation. As the sky above him darkened, pulling long shadows around him, he watched his hands turn blue with cold, limbs so numbed his only sensation was of cold flesh rubbing against clothing.

Crouching before the gas heat in the parlour hearth, he tried ten times to make fire before realizing it lacked a canister of propane, and crept outside to search the outbuildings, finding only junk and litter. Back indoors, he took out the last of the chocolate biscuits taken from his mother’s larder, and ate them, one by one, savouring each small mouthful. He found the stop-tap under the kitchen sink, leaping backwards as water gushed over his clothes and hands, cold as shards of ice, then sat before the unlit fire, on the edge of an armchair with squeaking springs, sipping the water, before going to the bedroom which looked out on the long snaking lane from the valley floor. He wrapped himself about with blankets, mustiness in his nostrils, and fell into exhausted sleep atop the rickety bed.

The telephone summoned McKenna from restless drowsing. Glancing at the mantel clock as he picked up the receiver, he thought vaguely of the vast aeon spent in dream-time, and the bare half-hour passed in reality while he slept.

‘I’m in a quandary,’ Eifion Roberts announced. ‘Young
Mandy’s got the sort of skin which marks easily, and she’s got a lot of marks on her torso, arms and thighs, all of which could’ve been caused when she squeezed through a very small window to escape Blodwel. On the other hand, there’s definite tenderness in the belly, as well as internal swelling, so she might well have been thumped. I can’t say yes and I can’t say no, although the lady doctor with me is inclined to say yes.’

‘Is she pregnant?’

‘Doubt it. She’s menstruating.’

‘She said she was when they picked her up.’

‘She didn’t. She said her name was Carol Thomas. Carol Thomas is up the spout.’

‘Who says?’

‘Mandy says. She borrowed a tenner off her this morning. The girl’s quite chatty, but she didn’t like your lady cop very much. Janet rubs her up the wrong way. Bit too sharpish, if you ask me. You need patience with Mandy’s sort.’

‘Did she make a statement?’

‘Claims Hogg gave her a beating because Janet caught her on a pub crawl.’ Dr Roberts paused, then asked, ‘You’re not sending her back to that hell-hole, I trust?’

‘Social Services will put her in a short-term foster placement, unless you think she should be in hospital.’

‘We can get her a bed. Put her out of harm’s way for a couple of days at least.’

‘Did she say much else?’

‘Not really.’

‘Make your mind up!’ McKenna said irritably.

‘She witters about this and that, but doesn’t seem to understand most of what goes on, and only knows enough to be scared half to death. There’s not much fire in her, just a bit of a flicker now and then, and it’s soon put out, like she knows how dangerous it is. She shows all the symptoms of the Stockholm Syndrome, like a prisoner of war. Robotic responses, semi-anaesthetized levels of consciousness, and almost total loss of will. Wholly typical of someone subjected for long periods to extreme stress and fear.’

‘Why won’t they speak to us?’ Jack demanded of his wife. ‘What have we done to them?’

‘We’ve done nothing, and as I don’t particularly want to speak to them, it’s no hardship.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ Jack protested. ‘Don’t you care?’

‘Why should I care about two selfish, spoiled brats who don’t know when they’re well off?’

‘Don’t be like that, Em.’

‘Don’t be so damned mawkish!’ Spots of colour burned on Emma’s cheeks. ‘You’re too bloody soft with them! They get away with murder!’

‘That’s not fair!’

‘
Fair
? What’s fairness got to do with anything in this life?’

‘She doesn’t understand how I feel.’ Jack hunched like an old man on McKenna’s sofa. ‘She doesn’t see the terrible things we see, so she doesn’t understand what could happen to them.’

‘Emma understands perfectly,’ McKenna said.

‘You’ve got little enough control over kids of that age, but once it goes!’ Terror haunted Jack’s eyes.

‘Perhaps they don’t need the control you offer. Growing up involves trying out strengths to learn about the weaknesses.’

‘I don’t know!’ Jack slumped against the cushions, shaking his head. ‘They’re so quiet, and it’s bloody eerie. When they’re shouting the odds and screaming, you know what they’re doing, but since you left, there’s just been a horrible breathing silence. God knows what they’re hatching!’

‘Nothing, I would imagine.’

‘What did you say to them? Em won’t tell me.’

‘Nothing much.’

‘Because if you said the earth was flat and the moon made out of green cheese, they’d believe you.’

11

The west wind, so long stilled by frosts from the east, began to rise in the early hours, thumping in the tall chimney of McKenna’s house. Half awake, he listened to the bare branches of the trees below his window creaking as the wind dragged them from the fastness of ice about their roots. The cat lay on his feet, curled in a ball, snoring gently, and he drifted back to sleep, to dream he floated on a raft of cloud, the moon and stars brilliant above him, shining silver gilt on the hair of the girl and boy who floated with him beyond the mountains and on to nowhere.

‘You wouldn’t credit it,’ Dewi said. ‘Bloody freezing for days on end, then what?’

‘Structural damage, the River Ogwen full to bursting, another landslip on the A5 past Bethesda, and all in the space of a few hours.’ Jack’s face was as grey as dawn light. ‘It was on the news.’

‘The River Adda’s flooded again, after all that money was spent on culverts and drainage. Caernarfon Road’s half under water.’

‘Britannia Bridge is no doubt closed, and the ferries won’t sail. So what? It happened last year, and the year before.’

‘It makes you wonder, that’s all,’ Dewi said. ‘We still can’t do anything about the weather.’

‘We can, actually,’ Janet offered. ‘I read in
The
Times
recently that artificial clouds are creating rainfall in drought areas. Experiments on thunderstorms and lightning are being done, too.’

‘I haven’t read that.’

‘I don’t expect you read
The
Times
, do you?’ Janet responded.

Flood water swirled about sandbagged diversion signs on
Caernarfon Road as McKenna turned up Penchwintan hill, joining a queue of early-morning traffic moving at snail’s pace out of the city, cars and lorries, buses and vans nose to tail. Breasting Port Dinorwic bypass after interminable delays, he saw sheets of torrential rain driven in from the sea, and flinched as water hit the windscreen so hard the wipers flattened themselves.

Carol Thomas ignored him as long as possible, busying herself about the shop, tidying shelves crammed with cups and plates, bowls and saucers, in pot and china and smoky glass. He stood by the door, raincoat unfastened, water streaming from his umbrella between the blue floor tiles. Watching her slender body in its dismal clothes, the beautifully moulded arms and fine-boned hands, the glorious yellow hair, he wondered if the man who planted his seed within her had also soiled her arms with disfiguring bruises. A High Street star, fallen from the firmament of grace.

‘Are you busy, Carol?’ he asked at last. ‘We need to talk.’

‘What about?’

‘This and that. Could you take a break?’

‘I don’t know.’ She turned to face him, little smudges of dust on her fingertips. ‘What d’you want?’

‘Mandy was arrested last night.’

‘Stupid bitch!’

‘She said you lent her money.’

‘So?’

‘You must’ve known she was on the run.’

Carol leaned against the counter, arms folded. ‘Going to arrest me for aiding and abetting?’

‘You know all the jargon, don’t you?’

‘You pick it up.’

Her eyes gleamed with a bright intelligence light years distant from the murkiness through which her friend would forever wade.

‘Mandy said you’re pregnant.’

‘Did she? Is that a crime now? Has that bloody government in London outlawed babies for girls like me?’

‘Not that I know,’ McKenna said.

‘So why’re you asking?’

‘I wondered if it had anything to do with Arwel.’

‘We didn’t love each other that way. Don’t judge everybody by the folk round Bangor.’

‘I didn’t mean that, Carol. You know perfectly well what I’m talking about.’

‘You don’t know yourself, so how can I?’ She smiled gently, the gesture bringing heart-stopping beauty to her face. ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘having a baby could be the making of me, couldn’t it?’

‘Who’ll look after it while you work? Your mother?’

‘You being funny? She didn’t do much by me and Arwel, did she?’

‘We found an exercise book with Arwel’s things,’ McKenna said. ‘He’s been making up crosswords, but we can’t work out the clues.’

She flicked a speck of dust from the counter. ‘Arwel was clever that way. He used his imagination. Pa said he used it too much.’

‘How so?’

‘He said Arwel made up things about folk.’

‘What sort of things?’ Was she at last trying to communicate with someone from an alien culture she had only learned to fear? He smiled encouragingly. ‘About whom?’

‘You’ll have to ask him yourself,’ Carol said. ‘Don’t smoke in here,’ she added, as McKenna pulled out his cigarettes. ‘There’s weedkiller and fertilizer and all sorts. You could blow up half the town.’

‘Don’t you smoke yourself? Arwel did, I believe.’

‘I don’t smoke and I don’t drink,’ Carol snapped, her voice waspish. ‘I just fornicate, but you already know that, don’t you?’

Fighting an umbrella blown inside out, McKenna battled along High Street, chased by a whirlwind of litter. He threw the ruined umbrella in a wastebin by the pedestrian crossing, and bought a replacement at a small chain store, handing his money to a wonderful oriental girl, who gossiped with her companion in guttural dialect, then crossed the road to a menswear shop, and replaced his sodden mackintosh with a waterproof drover’s coat which hung almost to his ankles. Wet coat folded neatly in a carrier-bag, he went for lunch at the restaurant opposite the bus station, and ordered chicken sandwiches and strong dark tea. He wondered absently if the ratty-faced woman at the next table, smoke from her cigarette curling around her dyed red hair and under his nose, might be Mandy’s mother, taking respite from her own chaos. Mandy’s
statement was in his briefcase. Ronald Hogg, she claimed, had hit her, thumped her in the belly, slapped her about the face, screamed at her, called her “fucking whore” and “drunken slut”, like her mother. Owen Griffiths fretted over the implications and judged his authority inadequate to empower formal interview of the alleged perpetrator, counselling McKenna to caution and prudence in the face of impending disaster.

‘Procedures are necessary,’ Griffiths had argued.

‘It’s not “procedures”,’ McKenna said. ‘It’s the Taffia.’

‘Don’t exaggerate. We’re not in America.’

‘If Mandy said some deadleg from a council estate bashed her, we’d be there with guns blazing.’

‘But Hogg’s a senior social worker, so we must be sure of our ground before we drop on him.’