Simeon's Bride (15 page)

‘It rather bothers me, Mr Stott,’ he said, ‘that a person whom we have no reason to believe is other than law-abiding should be on such friendly terms with someone of Jamie’s background and inclinations as to lend
them a very expensive car. And,’ he added, watching Stott’s eyes, ‘it bothers me even more when the loan of this vehicle continues even after the car has acquired a new owner.’

Stott relaxed. ‘If Jamie is still borrowing the car, it’s nothing to do with me. Why don’t you ask the new owner?’

‘Oh, we will,’ McKenna said. ‘But right at this moment, we’re asking you.’

‘I’ve already said I can’t help you. I merely let the boy borrow the car once or twice, several years ago.’

‘How many years ago?’ Jack demanded. ‘And why?’

‘Two, three years ago …’ Stott said. ‘I sold it last year, as you no doubt know. And,’ he sighed, ‘if you really must know, Jamie borrowed it because he helped out doing odd jobs round the garden … in lieu of payment.’

‘Can’t you do your own gardening?’

‘I can. If I choose. And if I’m not too busy.’

‘Where did you meet Jamie?’ McKenna asked.

‘Where did I meet him? How on earth do you expect me to remember? I’ve known him for years, off and on.’

‘Funny,’ Jack observed. ‘I wouldn’t’ve thought your path would cross with his all that easily.’

‘Well, you’re obviously not local, are you? One knows almost everybody by sight, and most people to speak to. It’s a small place…. Or hadn’t you noticed?’ The smirk returned. McKenna, convinced the wrong questions had been asked, had not the most remote idea what might be the right ones. He regarded Stott, wishing he could simply walk from the room, drive from the castle, and expunge all thoughts of Romy Cheney and her past from his mind. Instinct insisted there was treasure here, if he found the right place to strike with his spade.

‘When did you get the car?’ he asked.

‘I can’t quite remember. Around four years ago. Why?’

‘Trade in, was it?’ Jack took the ball into his court.

‘No.’

‘Why d’you sell it?’

‘For a number of reasons.’

‘Name a few.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Because I’m a policeman, and I expect people to answer my questions.’

‘You may well be a policeman, but I’m beginning to think you’re a bully as well.’

Jack grinned wolfishly. ‘You’re too sensitive, Mr Stott. I’m asking you a perfectly reasonable question, and here you are getting all hoity-toity on me.’

‘Just tell us,’ McKenna sighed, ‘why you sold the car.’

‘It really is none of your business!’ Stott announced. ‘If you must know, it cost too much to run; I didn’t use it very often, and I thought it might end up stolen or vandalized if it was left sitting in the road. Does that satisfy you?’

‘Pity you didn’t think of all that before you bought it,’ Jack remarked.

Stott rose to his feet, anger shaking his wand-like frame. ‘You really are a bully!’ He stamped his foot on the carpet. ‘I’ve a good mind to complain about you!’

‘Councillor Williams will be more than happy to hear from you,’ Jack grinned. Stott turned on his heel, and flounced towards the door. ‘Mr Stott,’ McKenna called.

‘What is it now?’

‘Did the car have a gonk in it when you had it?’

There was a sharp intake of breath. McKenna could not tell if the greyness in Stott’s face was shock, or merely shadows in the deep recess of the doorway.

‘A what?’

Jack gave McKenna an odd look. ‘A Gonk, Mr Stott,’ McKenna went on. ‘It’s a coloured furry toy you hang in the back window of a car.’

Laughter, almost hysterical, brayed from Stott’s open mouth, as he faded into the darker shadow of the hallway. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about!’

‘A fat lot of use that was,’ Jack said. McKenna hunched over the wheel of the car, staring through the windscreen at early visitors wandering around the castle courtyard, furiously drawing on the second cigarette since leaving Stott. Jack opened the door to let out smoke. ‘I told you, he’s Jamie’s boyfriend. The neighbour’s probably another boyfriend … a bit of rough.’

‘Jamie’s not queer,’ McKenna said. ‘Stott’s another kettle of fish, though.’

‘Queer is another politically incorrect term. You’re supposed to say gay.’ Jack saw a scowl crease up the skin above McKenna’s long nose.

‘And what have homosexuals got to be happy about?’ McKenna snapped. ‘Shut up and think!’

‘What about?’

‘Stott … Jamie … the car. Blackmail.’

‘Jamie knows Stott’s got a boyfriend, so puts the heavy on him.’

‘It’s not illegal.’ McKenna’s eyes narrowed against the glitter of noonday sunshine bouncing off the car bonnet. ‘Stott could have thousands of boyfriends, and not be breaking the law.’

‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’ Jack said irritably. ‘Maybe he does it for money. That job can’t pay very well, and he’s a wife and kid to support.
His clothes aren’t very good quality.’

‘If he does, we’ll never find out,’ McKenna said. ‘You’re right about his clothes, but most people don’t dress up for work. We’d look pretty scruffy if we didn’t get an allowance. Look at the mess on some of the drugs squad.’

‘They’re supposed to blend in with the background … Maybe Stott likes little boys.’

‘Maybe,’ McKenna agreed. ‘And how’re we supposed to find out if he does? Stop all the lads in Bangor and say “Hey, kid, is Mr Stott giving you one every so often?”’

‘You’re quite vulgar sometimes, sir. Anyway,’ Jack laughed, ‘nobody does that sort of thing for love, do they? They want a big fat reward for their pains, as well as hush money.’

McKenna thumped the wheel. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? Money! Where did Stott get the money to buy that car?’

‘Never-never, like the rest of us, I imagine. And I’ll bet he sold it ’cos he couldn’t keep up the payments. Then again, it could’ve been a present from an admirer.’

McKenna started the engine. ‘Are we going to talk to Jamie again?’ Jack asked.

‘Not yet awhile.’ McKenna swerved violently to avoid a coach, laden with trippers, making its way up the winding narrow driveway. ‘Don’t want to give folk grounds to accuse us of harassment, do we? There’s too many beating a path to Councillor Williams’s door as it is. Anyway, I can’t see Jamie dropping himself in the shit.’

Jack leaned towards the open window, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the wind in his face. ‘Perhaps we could get them to grass each other up….’ He jerked his head back as a cloud of diesel fumes from the exhaust of a bus befouled the air. ‘Eifion Roberts reckons it’s all to do with money, doesn’t he? Who gets Romy’s millions?
Cherchez
la
cache
.’

‘I didn’t know you spoke French.’

‘Just a bit left over in my head from school. I was thinking of
cherchez
la femme.
You know, find the lady.’

‘We’ve already found her,’ McKenna said. ‘And another to be on the safe side in case we mislay the first. Is it
le
cache
or
la
cache
?’

‘I don’t know, do I? Doesn’t matter anyway, because with our track record, we’re not going to find it, are we? We don’t know who took all her furniture and clothes and personal bits and pieces from Gallows Cottage; we don’t know where it all is; we don’t know where her money is, even though every bank and building society in the country’s been circulated.’

McKenna turned into the yard at the rear of the police station and parked. ‘Swiss bank account?’ he suggested. ‘Liechtenstein? The Bahamas? We don’t even know if she had a solicitor, because she paid
off the other one in cash and went to earth.’ He slammed the car door. ‘Come on. Let’s do something!’

‘What?’ Jack trotted behind.

‘I don’t know, do I?’ McKenna snapped. ‘Get off our backsides and
cherchez
la femme
in the suit for starters.’

‘Are you sure you’ve looked in the right places?’ Owen Griffiths asked. ‘Have you explored every likelihood? We get too much flak as it is, and I don’t want to hear accusations of negligence about this woman.’

‘Press on your back?’ McKenna asked.

‘And the deputy chief. All wanting to know when we’re going to make an arrest.’ The superintendent rubbed his chin. ‘Never, probably, is the answer to that, only I can’t very well say so, can I?’ He tapped his pen on the desk. ‘You sure she wasn’t connected with the terrorists?’

‘Don’t see how. There’s a huge gulf between torching the odd holiday cottage and killing in cold blood.’

‘It happens in Ireland all the time.’

‘Yes, I know. And it’ll happen here sooner or later … Anyway, Special Branch would’ve hijacked the investigation if they even smelt a terrorist link.’

‘They would, wouldn’t they?’ Griffiths agreed. ‘Especially after you rattled their cage sending faxes over the Irish Sea. Have we ruled out that man who found the body?’

‘John Jones?’ McKenna asked. ‘Not necessarily.’

‘How’s that?’

‘No particular reason, except he’s a vicious little bugger and I don’t like his face or his mouth.’ McKenna stubbed out his cigarette, grinding the butt as if it were John Jones’s face.

‘That’s no basis for detection, Michael, is it?’

Dewi said to McKenna, rather gleefully, ‘Headquarters’ll weep when they see our phone bill. We’ve sent off hundreds of faxes, and been on the telephones for hours.’

‘And what’ve we got for all that trouble and money?’

‘Bugger all, sir. Which, to my mind,’ Dewi said, ‘means nobody official moved anything from Gallows Cottage, and Romy Cheney’s money isn’t lying idle in any bank. Whoever bumped her off shifted the gear themselves, and enjoyed themselves with her money. The woman in the suit would’ve needed help moving furniture. And a van. We
checked all the hirings within six months either side of when Dr Roberts said Romy was killed. Another big fat zero.’

‘Whoever’s getting at the money would need to forge her signature. Whatever name Romy was using.’

‘That’s not too hard. The banks don’t check half the time.’

McKenna stubbed out a cigarette. ‘We’ll press on, for the time being. You can take those ledgers back to Prosser tomorrow, and make sure he signs for them.’

‘Dr Roberts called. Said to tell you Rebekah’s to be put in the village churchyard, with an inscription in Hebrew on her gravestone. He reckons there’ll be a media circus at the funeral. And he wants to know how much longer Romy’s going to be left in his mortuary “wrapped in a white sheet”, as he put it, and “cold and unwanted”.’

McKenna sat on his back doorstep until full night shrouded the earth, watching over the cat at play in the little garden, feeling the heat of the day seep from the slate beneath him. Pulling his shirts and underclothes off the line, he buried his face in the fresh sharp scent on the cloth, and looked out into the distance at Puffin Island, a dark humped whale-shape in a sea the colour of ink, the light of Penmon Lighthouse flashing every sixty seconds to warn of jagged teeth of rock beneath water still as a pond. He wondered if he would be here in the winter, to see the city below through a tracery of bare branches, perhaps under snows come riding the back of the east wind.

He lay sleepless into the small hours, that time before dawn when the blood ebbs its slowest, when life is held by the thinnest thread, and thought of Denise, in whose company he had spent two hours of his life that evening, and for whom not a vestige of desire lingered in his heart, making him want to weep again for the loss of it. Wondering if he might be permitted to laugh in equal measure tomorrow for the tears shed tonight, he fell asleep at last, as a lone seagull took to the sky, calling its fellows to wakefulness.

Morning brought more clear skies, and sunshine gilding the last snows on the flanks of Tryfan and the Black Ladders. Dewi arrived early at work, finding McKenna in his office, sifting aimlessly through a printout of calls, trying to match them to the handwritten records kept in a battered lever-arch file.

‘Why don’t these two lots of paper bear any relation to each other, Constable?’ McKenna scowled.

‘They’re not necessarily supposed to, sir.’

‘Then what is the point of them?’

Standing obediently before the desk, Dewi wondered if they would all suffer the rough edge of McKenna’s tongue before the day were out. ‘The printout is an automatic record of all calls through the computer from HQ. That,’ he added, gesturing to the file, ‘is the log of calls answered where there might be a complaint arising. Sir.’

McKenna riffled the papers. ‘Is it complete?’ he demanded. ‘Is it accurate?’

‘I wouldn’t know, sir.’

‘Well, you should know! How on earth can we solve crimes if we don’t even know what crimes have been committed?’ McKenna slammed the file shut, and tossed it on to the floor. ‘What are you waiting for, Constable?’

Dewi vaguely recalled a wisdom about discretion and valour, saluted and marched from the room. Walking along the corridor to the squad room, he met Eifion Roberts. ‘You looking for Mr McKenna?’ he asked.

‘I am indeed. Is he in?’

‘Well, he’s in, but he’s not in the best of moods from what I could see.’

‘Never is, is he, Dewi?’

‘It’s bad form to bring your home troubles to work, Michael.’ Dr Roberts sat in his favourite chair, and raised its front legs from the floor.

‘Shut up and mind your own business!’

‘You’re a sour bugger, McKenna. When I come to cut you up, I daresay I’ll find vinegar in your veins instead of blood. Young Dewi was quite upset from your nastiness.’

‘I haven’t been nasty to him.’

‘You’ve not been nice to him, have you? You can’t blow hot and cold with people the way you do. You’ve got to be consistent. I take it you saw Denise last night?’

McKenna said nothing. He lit a cigarette from the stub of one only half-smoked, and hid behind the veil of smoke.

‘Ah, well. It’ll all come out in the wash, as they say.’

‘Is that another version of your little homily about everything being over one day?’

‘Maybe.’ Dr Roberts shrugged. ‘Maybe not. We’re all as fed up as each other, you know. Life is there to be fed up with.’

‘Why don’t you write a philosophical treatise, and give everybody the benefit of your great wisdom?’

‘You mean like your friend Socrates?’

‘If you like.’

‘I’ve been looking up Socrates, haven’t I? Trying to find out what he wrote about sex drives and lunatics. And do you know what I found?’

‘I’m sure you’ll tell me.’

‘Socrates never wrote a word.’

‘So? He said it, didn’t he? A lot of these things are word of mouth.’

‘You never admit you could be wrong, do you? How d’you know it wasn’t Aristotle or Plato or some other wop?’

‘It doesn’t matter who said it. It’s the idea that matters.’

‘I suppose.’ Dr Roberts regarded McKenna, noticing the stain of dark shadows under the fine eyes, the sunken look around socket and cheekbones. He said, his voice more gentle, ‘You know, Michael, the trouble could be that Denise isn’t unchained from her particular lunatic. Women and sex is a potent evil, if they let it get the better of them one way or another.’

Dewi found the message from Debenhams under an untidy heap of telephone messages sent to the CID office for filing by the switchboard, and decided to tell McKenna, whatever the reaction, that incompetence such as this sent crime astray. He dialled the store’s number, and asked for the buyer, who told him, her voice twanging with the accents of Liverpool, ‘Head Office accounts have got records of three sales of the jacket in size 16 on credit or store cards, but you’ll have to ask officially for the names. Ask for the senior accountant.’ From that man, Dewi suffered a lecture about confidentiality, about customer privacy, about the necessity of observing such rules, and waited patiently for the chance to request the information he wanted. He imagined him a little man, fat inside a pinstripe suit and stiff collar, perched on a high stool before a sloping desk covered in leather-bound ledgers, then realized the accountant would be, like himself, a slave to a bleeping electronic console. About to open his mouth, he found himself adrift in the sea of names on which this woman had made her voyage.

‘Perhaps you could give me the names of whoever bought the jackets, sir, then I can say if we’re interested in any of them.’

‘I can’t give out our customers’ names willy-nilly, even if it is to the police. Don’t you know who you’re looking for?’

‘We have to be most careful never to suggest anything to people. Not leading people where we want them to go.’

‘You know the ropes better than I do, I suppose…. These are the ladies who bought design number H766453291 in UK size 16, Euro size 42.’ Dewi scribbled frantically with his pen. ‘Number one.’ He supposed a senior accountant ate and slept by numbers, made love to his wife by numbers. ‘E-L-E-R-I M. Jones. How d’you pronounce that? She used a store card. Number two: Margaret S. Jones.’ Dewi’s heart leapt and plummeted back to earth. ‘She used Visa. Lot of Joneses round your way, aren’t there? Number three: M. Bailey. He or she used a Visa card as well.’

Dewi stared at the name he had written. ‘How is that last name spelt, sir?’

‘B-A-I-L-E-Y.’

Dewi drew in his breath. ‘Sir, could you give me the details for M. Bailey, please? Date of purchase, card number, and bank.’

‘She bought a skirt as well in the same size. On the 26 October three years – no, four years ago this October. Oh, and she bought three pairs of tights, and a scarf….’

McKenna left the car at the top of the track, and walked down to the cottage, passing through bands of bright light and deep shade where the sun broke through densely massed trees. As always, the woods were quiet, save for a bevy of crows clattering into flight as his presence disturbed their perch in one of the tall weedy trees. No other sound but the pad of his footfalls on mossy earth disturbed a silence almost strident in its intensity. Finding the cottage empty, he stood, hands in pockets, at the edge of the garden where it met the sea, watching tidal waters suck at the low spur of rock, smelling scents of seaweed and heady sea air, feeling on his cheeks the warmth of a west wind off the Straits. He saw them then, two heads poking above the top of the newly installed septic tank over to the right. He walked to the lip of the tank, and looked down on Wil and Dave, sweating in the warm sunshine.

Wil glanced up. ‘Hello. Didn’t expect to see you today.’ He frowned.
‘No trouble, is there? You’re not coming to tear the place apart, are you?’

‘No, Wil. Just something I want to ask you about.’

‘Right then. I’ll come out.’ He climbed up the small ladder resting against the side of the tank.

‘What are you doing in there?’ McKenna asked.

‘Sealing the joints so’s we can put the lid on. In the old days, we’d’ve had to build the thing, brick by brick. There’s something to be said for progress.’ Wil clumped towards the cottage, his Wellingtons sucking into the dewy grass. Looking down, McKenna could see a ring of moisture round the bottom of his own trouser legs.

‘How would you know when it’s full?’ McKenna was curious.

Wil laughed. ‘Your lavvy backs up! Mind you, I can see why the council insisted on the tank. If your drains just went straight out to sea, they’d back up every time the tide comes in.’

‘And what d’you do when it is full?’

Wil regarded McKenna assessingly. ‘Don’t know much, do you?’ he commented. ‘You call the council or the water board, and they send a truck round to suck it all out so’s you can start filling it again.’

Removing his Wellingtons at the back door, Wil padded in his socks to the Primus stove, to put on the kettle. ‘What d’you want to ask me?’

‘We’ve just found out some letters might have come here, addressed to a Margaret Bailey, or just an M. Bailey.’

‘Oh.’ Wil sat on his crate and lit his pipe. ‘That her real name, was it? Always thought the other one was a bit far-fetched, even for the English.’ He puffed smoke rings. McKenna watched them float slowly upwards towards the smoke-blackened beams of the ceiling, pierced by a shaft of sunlight through the dusty window.

‘No,’ Wil continued. ‘Not seen any letters at all. Not even that junk mail folks are so fond of. Why don’t you ask his highness at the estate office?’

‘I shall … all in good time. Have you nearly finished here?’

‘All but, provided folk leave us alone, and I don’t only mean yourself,’ Wil said. ‘Word’s got out about Rebekah … bloody tourists, wanting to be shown where we found her. Mostly Americans, I might add, rabbiting on about history.’ He tamped his pipe on the tiled floor. ‘Bloody obsessed with history, the Yanks.’