In Guilty Night (23 page)

‘You want me to employ what Mr Tuttle calls my “common touch”, and talk to tarty Tracey at the chippy,’ Dewi said.

‘Tell her we’re very worried about Mandy.’ McKenna moved the telephone receiver to his good hand. ‘She might persuade the child to turn herself in, only don’t make any rash promises about rescuing her from Hogg’s clutches. And don’t take what Jack Tuttle says too much to heart. He’s under a lot of strain.’

Dewi laughed. ‘Water off a duck’s back, sir. I’ll start fretting the day he stops being sarky with me. He’d be under a lot less strain if he wasn’t psyching himself up over this promotion.’

‘I might not want Owen Griffiths’ job even if it’s offered, so there won’t be any promotions to be had.’

‘I said he’d be better off looking elsewhere, like Wrexham or Deeside. That’s more his home territory, anyway.’

‘And you wonder why he’s nasty with you?’

Dewi laughed again, then said, ‘Will you look for Gary tonight? Mountain Rescue could do a better job.’

‘The twins don’t know he’s up a mountain. They only know he was very good at navigating the wilds of Cumbria via the moon and stars, and that was on a supervised orienteering course. The Snowdon and Glyder ranges are rather different.’

‘Same moon and stars,’ Dewi pointed out. ‘And plenty of empty holiday cottages and shepherd’s huts to sleep in. I dunno where we’d start looking, though. Why don’t you ask Janet’s advice, sir? She reckons to know everything else.’

‘I’ve looked at places like that, sir.’

Bedecked with knick-knacks, crammed with buxom chairs and dark velvet sofas squatting on carved legs and claw feet which dug into the thick plush carpet, the manse drawing-room was stiflingly hot. A log fire blazed in the hearth, brighter than the lights of the chandelier. McKenna wondered if Pastor Evans owned the manse and its opulent fittings, or if the chapel simply thought the incumbent worthy of the best of livings.

Janet’s voice was tarnished by a little whine as she droned on in her own defence. ‘I got details of holiday lets from all the agents, and checked as many as I could round Bethesda, Gerlan and Mynydd Llandegai, then I did Rhiwlas, Bethel, Deiniolen, Llanberis, Cwm y Glo and Llanrug. I even went as far as Waunfawr and Rhyd Ddu.’

‘I don’t need a guided tour, Janet. I’m sure you were most thorough.’

‘A lot of the properties aren’t empty. The owners move to relatives or a caravan for the summer, and go back when the season finishes. There aren’t many second homes since the firebombing started.’

‘What about farm outbuildings and shepherds’ huts?’

‘The farmers check their own barns, and I thought it would be rather stupid to go into the mountains in this weather.’

‘That McKenna’s here again,’ Mari announced to her mistress. ‘Shall I say you’re busy?’

‘Does he know Mr Elis is out?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

Mari shrugged, standing mutely by the door. Rhiannon was struck by her expression: a mingling of disdain and weariness, and some other, more elusive, emotion.

‘Ask him to come back in the morning, Mari. Tell him I’m tired.’

‘What time shall he call?’

‘Ask him to ring Mr Elis after nine.’

‘What if he argues about seeing you tonight?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Rhiannon jumped from her seat and pushed past the waiting girl, to find McKenna by the front door, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets.

‘I don’t expect my husband back until late, Chief Inspector.’

McKenna smiled. ‘Ask him to call me in the morning, will you?’

‘Did you want anything in particular?’ Rhiannon asked. ‘I think you already know all we can tell you.’

‘Loose ends, Mrs Elis.’ McKenna smiled again. ‘I’ll see him tomorrow.’

12

‘You don’t go within spitting distance of Hogg, his wife, or Blodwel,’ Owen Griffiths said. ‘That’s an order. The director’s made a formal complaint about Jack’s visit to South Wales, accusing us of serious interference in a delicate casework situation. He also said it’s difficult to work constructively with us given some of the views you expressed yesterday, presumably on behalf of the force.’

‘I suggested his frames of reference could be misleading,’ McKenna said.

‘That’s an understatement, isn’t it? We’re being well and truly misled, sent off in every direction bar the right one. This complaint’s another diversionary tactic.’ Griffiths paused. ‘And don’t bother telling me I’m inconsistent. I needed time to decide if I was looking at a mountain you’d built out of a molehill, or a cover-up thicker than a fog off the Irish Sea.’

‘Everybody likes to cover up their mistakes,’ McKenna pointed out. ‘Social workers, doctors, police, lawyers, any profession where mistakes can cost money and reputations. At crunch time, the director’s thinking isn’t determined by professional ethics, but by what the council’s insurers want and expect.’

‘Darren Pritchard’s personal injuries could be worth a six-figure sum in the High Court, couldn’t they? And Mandy’s.’

‘Apparently, Darren wasn’t even marked. Like the rest of them, he’s lying.’ McKenna sighed. ‘And he may well be. Abuse is a bandwagon any child can jump on once it starts rolling.’

‘Don’t let people faze your thinking,’ Griffiths warned. ‘Arwel’s death and Blodwel might be entirely separate issues, but I’m quite sure we should be interested in both.’ He fell silent, then said, ‘I take your point about bandwagons, but children in care have a different kind of vested interest in
keeping shtum about abuse. Darren and this lad Tony are good examples of what happens if they don’t. For every kid lying or exaggerating about being abused, there’ll be another who isn’t. Nobody can hope to keep the lid tight on things for ever. They blow up in the end.’

McKenna smiled. ‘Before embalming came into vogue, coffins had vents to allow the gases of putrefaction to escape. The vents were closed at one funeral because of the stench, and the coffin exploded. The undertakers were successfully sued for breach of contract.’

‘Quite.’ Griffiths nodded. ‘Everybody comments about the stench at Blodwel, don’t they?’

‘Elis telephoned,’ Jack said. ‘He’ll be in about eleven, because he’s exercising his horse until then.’ Glancing at the rain squalling against the window, he added, ‘Wouldn’t fancy being out in this, would you?’

‘Horses must be exercised,’ McKenna said. ‘They get nasty otherwise, and end up with fat ankles, like Doris Hogg.’

Jack yawned.

‘Don’t you sleep at nights any more?’

‘I keep waking up in the small hours, heart pounding, brain racing, and dripping with ice-cold sweat. Everything’s a bloody nightmare!’

‘You’ve let everything get out of all proportion. The twins are a credit to you and Emma. And themselves.’

‘You think?’ Jack frowned. ‘I’ve been reading that social work literature you dumped on us. In the chapter on family dynamics, it says the rules of social engagement in some households resemble those of battle, and I thought, tell me about it! But the writer’s describing the classic dysfunctional family and its interactions.’

McKenna lit a cigarette. His arm and shoulder ached bitingly. ‘Writers write for their audience. Young women are fed nonsense about life being a bed of roses when they find the right bloke, and social workers are fed similar nonsense about what happens when the thorns on the same roses draw a bit of blood every so often. Your family’s functioned smoothly for years, so a glitch now and then doesn’t necessarily presage total disintegration.’

Eifion Roberts walked in, sat in the vacant chair beside Jack’s, and tilted its front legs from the floor. ‘Found those missing children yet?’

‘Weather permitting, Mountain Rescue will look for Gary, and we made contact with a friend of Mandy’s, so fingers crossed we’ll hear if she turns up.’

Dr Roberts grunted. ‘I’ve got contacts. I’m told things other folk haven’t heard as yet.’ His voice, weary and wearying, began to drone. ‘I’m told what some’ll be glad to hear, and what’ll make others despair.’ He let the chair fall back on all four legs, and leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees. ‘Don’t waste any more time or money looking for Tony Jones. I know exactly where he is.’

‘Where?’ Jack asked.

‘He was taken to Manchester Royal late last night from a secure unit outside the city.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Not a thing. He solved all his problems with the help of a broken bathroom tile, but he’s left a bit of a mess for others.’

McKenna sat in Owen Griffiths’ office, looking out on another aspect of the city, at slate roofs greasy with rain, litter dropped in bare trees by an untidy wind, and an old woman, clothing unkempt and ragged, struggling up the narrow street past the Three Crowns public house. Griffiths spoke into the telephone, his voice urgent, sharp with anger.

What happened, McKenna thought, to the life energy seeping from that old woman like water from a rusty vessel, and so violently expelled from Tony’s body? Where did it go? Her weariness and decrepitude visible to the most casual eye, the old woman’s life-force seemed fit only to sustain a rickety baby in the Third World. What driving urgency compelled Tony to incur his own extinction? And why did Arwel Thomas die? While McKenna knew neither boy, he could grieve for Arwel, the perceptions and memories of Elis and the ethereal Carol telling something of the boy’s essential quality, a service yet to be performed for the other. Glancing at Owen Griffiths, who talked now in muted heavy tones, he thought of Goethe, who suggested Mozart died not because his destiny was fulfilled, but to leave something for others to do in the long-destined duration of the world’s existence. Arwel’s death gave McKenna something to do, at least for a while.

Griffiths put the telephone receiver in its cradle. ‘Tony’s the second suicide in that secure unit in the past six months. They take kids from all over that nobody else wants, and charge the earth.’

‘Offenders and inadequates support a huge and very profitable industry,’ McKenna commented. ‘Manchester and South Wales police will report back to us, I hope.’

Griffiths nodded, rubbing his hand over his jaw. ‘And HQ say we can ask Social Service to explain how Tony came by the same kind of anal injuries as Arwel.’

‘As Jack said about Arwel, obviously not from sitting too long on the top of Snowdon.’

‘Don’t joke, Michael. Some things never have a funny side of any description. Dear God! Is there no joy left in the world? You switch on the TV, pick up a newspaper, and it’s nothing but war and disaster, poverty and cruelty, filth and perversion.’

‘One aspect of mankind’s natural state. The few grains of gold can still be found in the blood and dirt.’

‘Can they?’ Griffiths asked. ‘Where d’you find your joy, with no children, and not even a woman to your name any longer? Jack always said the girls were his pride and joy, after his lovely wife.’

‘They’re not at the moment, but Jack’s too concerned with the temporal to find compensation elsewhere.’

Mari Williamson, clad in tight black pants and rich black chenille sweater, admitted McKenna to Bedd y Cor’s discreetly sumptuous hall. The garments emphasized her pallor, gauntness taking an ugly toll on her youth.

‘Are you not well, Mari? You look pale.’

‘We’re all under a strain.’ Her voice was curt, her eyes wary. ‘When—’ The words stuck in her throat, and she coughed raspingly. ‘When will Arwel be buried?’

‘I don’t know. His body can’t be released yet. The inquest was adjourned.’

‘He’s dead. You’ve cut him up. What else is there?’

‘The matter of finding out who killed him, and where.’

‘He was in the tunnel.’

‘He was dumped there. He died somewhere else.’

‘Everybody wants him buried. They’d feel better. It’s not natural not to have a proper funeral.’

McKenna sat down on an ancient settle pushed against one wall, the long-case clock ticking softly. Mari sat beside him, hands clasped between her knees, eyes huge and dark in the pallid face. ‘It’s like he’s not properly dead. You know he is, but you can’t believe it.’ She shivered. ‘I’m afraid I’ll see him, wandering round the house and yard, wrapped in a sheet and
all bluey-white and horrible like the undead in a vampire film.’

‘He’d be no threat to those who loved him.’

‘You don’t know who he’d blame!’

‘He’d blame the person responsible for his death,’ McKenna said. ‘I worry that putting him in the ground will stop people caring. Grieving is a process of forgetting, but while Arwel’s in that mortuary drawer, everyone’s uncomfortable, like you.’

‘Why don’t you know who killed him? It’s days and days since you found him. Haven’t you got any clues? When will you know?’

‘It’s not a matter of when, it’s not a story where clues are laid out to be picked up one after another, it’s not a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces simply jumbled in a mess.’ He lit a cigarette, and leaned back, feeling old wood unyielding against his bones. ‘Something happens, but you don’t know why. If you know why, you don’t know who, and even if you know who, you can’t prove it. Murder tears holes in the neat orderly fabric we weave about life, exposing the chaos underneath.’

‘Are you making excuses for doing nothing?’

‘I’m being honest with you.’ He dropped ash in the fireplace.

‘You’ll never find out, will you?’ She stood, smoothing the sweater over her narrow hips. ‘Maybe you don’t really want to.’ Her voice was challenging.

McKenna too rose to his feet. ‘If people would tell me what they know, I might be able to put the pieces together, but nobody will. Not even you.’

‘Mari spends a great deal of time in tears these days,’ Elis commented. ‘Hard to believe there’s so much emotion under that cool exterior.’ He sat opposite McKenna, on a grey leather sofa in the cool grey room, a tray of coffee on the table.

‘I upset her.’ Since their last meeting, subtle changes had come over Elis’s face, disturbing the contours, scoring lines and painting shadows. ‘Was your visit to Germany successful? Your wife said you went to look at a horse.’

‘I looked at a number of horses, none of which took my fancy.’ Elis leaned forward to offer cigarettes. ‘How’s your shoulder?’