Simeon's Bride (19 page)

Hospitals and prisons were, thought McKenna, the noisiest of places, each with its own special noise, each with its own smell, which lingered on skin and clothing and taste buds long after departure. Here, the clang and screech of metal on prison doors and keys and floors gave way to the shuffle of feet and squeal of rubber wheels on linoleum; the smells of metal and sweat and despair to those of disinfectant and blood and faeces and sickness.

He awoke in the dead hours of morning, roused by hushed urgent voices, the squeak of unoiled wheels as a trolley rolled down the ward; his dream, of walking on a black shore where thousands upon thousands of human skulls crunched underfoot seared into memory, the taste of his own death sweet and heavy in the back of his throat, its dust dry on lips and tongue. He raised himself on one elbow, feeling the pull of a drip taped into the back of his left hand. Screens were drawn around a bed at the far end of the ward, and within a few minutes of arriving, an Asian doctor departed, followed by the trolley, its cargo hidden under a sheet whose hem billowed gently in a draught from the open doors. The screens were opened to a bed bare and empty, and a young nurse about to lift a large plastic sack with ‘Contaminated Materials’ written bold on its side.

McKenna lay back, wondering if the soul of his departed companion hovered still somewhere above his head, seeking exit and flight, released from a husk of a body collapsed with old age and mortal frailty. Eyes squeezed shut against wavering and fragmenting images of lights and windows, he felt a cool hand brushing away tears come of their own free will.

‘Did we wake you?’ a voice whispered. ‘I’m ever so sorry.’

A sweet-faced girl, too young to have sickness and ugly death soil her youth with its dirty paws, stood by the bed.

‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked. ‘We’re making a pot of tea, if you’d like some.’

He crawled slowly from the bed, finding his legs wobbling and weak. The nurse unfastened the drip, closed its tap, and told him to put his
arm around her shoulders. He shuffled like an ancient to the ward kitchen, and slumped into a chair.

‘I expect you’ll be glad to get home, won’t you?’ said his ministering angel, pouring boiling water into a teapot. ‘I’m sure your wife will be glad, as well. She’s very smart, isn’t she?’

Summoned by Jack, Denise had arrived in the early evening, shortly before Emma returned. She and Denise chatted over him, around him, past him, of odds and ends of gossip, a flurry of women’s talk, whatever hostilities might linger between them suspended for the sake of propriety in the face of sickness. Denise brought flowers, a bunch of blossoms like every other bunch bedecking lockers along each side of the ward, flowers grown especially for hospital patients, with no regard to season.

Emma left first, as was only right, he thought, with a few words about the cat, and the best wishes of the family. Denise lingered and fidgeted, glancing at the clock on the wall, then at her watch, watching for other visitors preparing to leave.

‘You don’t have to stay,’ he had said to her.

She smiled, rather patronizingly, and he wondered if she believed him weakened, vulnerable to whatever persuasion she chose to impress. His innards began their churning, and he vomited again, sparsely now, for his stomach was vacant. Saying she would return in the morning, Denise left. He stared after her, asking himself why there could be no catharsis of spirit as rapid and cleansing as that which his body had undergone.

The nurse placed a mug of tea at his side. She leaned against the worktop, sipping her own, content with silence or talk, whichever he chose, content, he thought, to continue giving in the full knowledge of little or nothing in return.

‘What happened earlier?’ he asked her, taking a sip of tea, and feeling scalding heat course down his throat and into his stomach.

‘Mr Jones finally went, poor soul. We’ve been expecting it for days. He was seventy-eight! Can you imagine being so old?’ She shook her head at the sadness and wonder of it all.

‘What was wrong with him?’ McKenna drank more tea, waiting for his insides to warn of imminent rejection.

‘Old age?’ She smiled her sweet smile. ‘He was diabetic, actually, and both his legs had to be amputated because of gangrene. Too much of a shock for his system.’

McKenna shuddered violently, mortality screaming through every fibre. ‘Oh, you’re cold!’ She rushed to place a blanket around his shoulders. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have let you get out of bed.’ She frowned, as if at her own stupidity.

‘I’m all right, really…. The old man….’

She stood over him, still frowning. ‘I shouldn’t have told you, should
I? We don’t think sometimes. Drink your tea,’ she instructed. ‘There was nothing to be done for him, you know.’

Escorted back to bed, told to press his buzzer if he needed anything, McKenna drifted into fitful sleep as dawn broke over the mountains in the east, feeling hunger grope in his belly.

Dewi missed McKenna, the empty office down the corridor underscoring the absence of its occupant, the loose end on a chain of command Dewi saw running clear between himself and McKenna. Jack was merely a kink in the chain, hopefully soon to be straightened out. He had rushed through the office earlier, snapping instructions to show the photograph in the village, before leaving for the Magistrates Court, where Dewi prayed he would be detained all day.

Calling the hospital to ask after McKenna, Dewi was told simply that the chief inspector was ‘comfortable’. The call transferred to Prosser’s ward, he was told there was no change. Dewi too felt guilt, not as strongly as McKenna, but enough to niggle his conscience into unease. He pulled Romy Cheney’s photograph from the file, stared into her eyes, then put the photograph into a clear plastic envelope.

Rain squalled against the car windscreen, blown in from the sea, leaving a faint crusting of salt against window trims, as Dewi turned on to the track to Gallows Cottage, and drove slowly down, mud spattering up the sides of the car. The cottage crouched low in misty air, and he had a fancy it was hungry, wanting another woman to send to her death with a rope around her neck. He sat in the car, and sounded the horn. No one came, nothing stirred, no shadow pushed its way through the drizzle. He sounded the horn again, before turning in a slow circle, leaving deep wounds in the sodden grass.

Parking near the lych gate of the village church, he donned an oilskin coat bought from Dickie’s Chandlery, and began the house to house, knocking on doors, showing warrant card and photograph, asking questions, receiving nothing in response. Mary Ann and Beti shuffled the photographs this way and that, held it to the dingy daylight, indulged in muttering and pursing lips and sorrowful head-shaking. Dewi drank his tea, hope draining as the tea drained to its dregs. Beti could not say if the woman might be the one she had seen in the car, nor the car the one she found in Turf Square. Mary Ann was more interested in McKenna. ‘And is that Prosser still out for the count?’

Looking from one to the other, thinking of reprisal for talking out of school, he said, ‘We’ve been hearing gossip about Mr Prosser, Mary Ann.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Her eyes were sharp. ‘What sort of gossip?’

‘Well, there’s talk he’s friendly in the wrong sort of way with another man.’

Beti snickered. ‘D’you mean that big girl’s blouse what works up at the castle? Everybody knows about them two.’

Dewi stared at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell us before? We’ve been running round like blue-arsed flies chasing this and that!’

‘Didn’t know you was interested, did we?’ Beti scowled frighteningly, a gargoyle slithered off its perch and come to life.

‘What’s Prosser and the other one got to do with this killing, anyway?’ Mary Ann asked.

‘Well, nothing, as far as we know.’

‘There you are, then,’ Beti announced. ‘Didn’t need to tell you, did we?’

Dewi eyed her, watching a little smug grin twist her mouth. ‘Prosser might have something to do with it, though.’

‘What?’ Mary Ann asked.

‘He just might know something we need to know, and we can’t ask him now, can we?’

Mary Ann smoked her cigarette. Beti put the mugs on a tray and hobbled into the kitchen, servant masquerading as house-guest, Dewi tempted to ask if she knew she was no better off here than with her husband. He stood up to leave, sensing undercurrents and atmosphere, mischief and not a little spite beneath the wide-mouthed amiability of the old women.

‘Why don’t you ask whatever his name is at the castle what you can’t ask Prosser, then?’ Mary Ann suggested.

McKenna looked ghastly, grey parched skin masking a death’s head on the shoulders of the living.

‘How are you, sir?’ Dewi asked.

McKenna smiled weakly. ‘Surviving. Any news?’

‘Nothing exciting, except I get the idea sometimes Mary Ann and her mates are taking us for a ride.’ Dewi hesitated. ‘Any idea when you’ll be back in work, sir?’

‘I’m being let out of hospital today, I’m told.’

‘Where will you be going, sir?’

With a sharp glance at the young constable, McKenna said, ‘Home, of course. Where else?’

‘Is Mrs McKenna coming for you then?’

‘Mrs McKenna? No, she’s not. I’m going to my own home, Dewi.’

Dewi flushed bright pink with embarrassment. He stood up. ‘I’ll be off then, sir. Hope you’re better soon.’

‘Dewi?’ McKenna called after the fast retreating back. ‘D’you think you could come around five to drive me? My car’s not here.’

‘No problem, sir. You won’t be up to driving anyway, and it wouldn’t do to risk ending up like Mr Prosser, would it?’

Trefor Prosser stirred in his hospital bed, eyelids fluttering like the wings of a butterfly too weak to depart its chrysalis. Behind the quivering membrane, memory stirred, great draughts of despair and fear breaking the calm surface of unconsciousness into heaving peaks. He moaned, and turned slightly to one side. The nurse in charge of ICU watched the monitor, saw brain waves suddenly leap into frantic rhythm, before subsiding to a steady flow of mountains and troughs, and wondered what disturbed the poor little man, what terrors might lurk in the night of the brain, knowing Trefor Prosser would not be the first human soul willingly to exchange the bright hard world for the comforting arms of unconsciousness. She walked quietly down the small ward to where he lay again on his back, tears glistening on the pallid flesh of his cheeks.

‘I don’t see how we can avoid talking to Stott, sir.’ Jack was adamant.

‘You’re on dodgy ground.’ Owen Griffiths was equally sure. ‘We can’t just ask him if he’s being blackmailed, can we?’

‘What about that bloody car?’

‘There’s no evidence the car’s connected with this woman’s death, is there?’

‘No, but it’s connected with Jamie, and whatever he puts his oar into is usually very bad news for somebody.’

Griffiths looked ill at ease. ‘We’ve not got very far, have we? And I doubt McKenna’s got any more ideas than you have.’ He rested his elbows on the desk and his chin on his hands. ‘I think we should call it a day, Jack. There’s pressure coming from on high, and a deal of it because a certain councillor reckons we’re harassing innocent citizens, to say nothing of wasting expensive police time.’

‘And we all know who that is, don’t we?’

‘We can’t afford any more bad press. I don’t like politicking any better than you, but it’s a fact of life. There’s flak right left and centre about costs and efficiency.’

‘I suppose that’s why we get sent to the sorting office to collect suspect packages, is it?’ Jack asked.

Griffiths sighed. ‘We’d already had the bomb squad out three times, and it costs more than you and I take home in a year every time they show their faces.’

‘So as long as we save a bit of money, it’s all right for some poor copper to drive through Bangor with a bomb in his car, and it’s all right for us to sit here with any number of bombs in the building, so long as we don’t try to open the envelopes.’

‘Looks that way,’ Griffiths agreed. ‘You see my point? I know all this goes against the grain, but we’re no nearer putting a name to whoever
killed this woman, and quite frankly, no one seems particularly bothered about her anyway. All we’ve done so far is upset a lot of probably innocent people. And we shouldn’t forget what happened to Prosser, either.’

‘Is that an order, sir? Mr McKenna won’t be too happy.’

‘There’ll be plenty to keep him occupied when he comes back. And yes, it is an order, so get a disposal certificate from the coroner’s office, and find out if her man-friend is willing to foot the bill for the funeral. If not, the council can pay. I daresay there’s enough in her bank account to cover it.’

‘And how can the council get at the bank account to pay for its rightful owner’s funeral when it’s still being used, apparently by its rightful owner?’

‘I don’t know, do I? McKenna can sort that out! And you can take that mulish look off your face! You should’ve learned by now that when certain people tell you to jump, all you do is ask “How high?”’

Alone in the CID office, Dewi chewed a sandwich and riffled through the papers accumulated around the death of a woman who had used names, he thought, not as a statement of identity, but as devices behind which to hide. He thought of her simply as Simeon’s Bride, a name most descriptive of her fate, of the loneliness and despair and horror she must have known in those dark woods for the last few seconds of her life, and wondered how she had offended God or man to warrant such a punishment.

The last piece of paper to go into the file was a copy fax to the council, confirming the release of her body. Driven by some need he did not understand, Dewi telephoned Dr Roberts at home.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Roberts groaned. ‘You’ve found another woman hanging in the woods.’

‘No, sir, nothing like that. We’ve been told to release the body. The disposal certificate’s already here.’

‘Hallelujah! You’ve found who killed her, then?’

‘Afraid not, sir. We’ve been ordered to stop looking.’