The Disappeared (21 page)

'Oh.
Right.' Madog rubbed his temples.

McAvoy
gave him a moment, glanced at Jenny, then said, 'Someone else has spoken to you
about this, haven't they? You're among friends now, Frank, we'll start with
that, shall we?'

Madog
looked up at Jenny. 'What happens with this information?'

'It
helps me to find the truth. And if there's criminality involved, it may be used
to assist a prosecution.'

'You
are the coroner?'

'You've
seen Mrs Cooper's picture in the Post, Frank. Check out her website - she
hasn't even had herself airbrushed.'

Madog
nodded. 'OK. Only your friend told me he was a detective. That's the only
reason I spoke to him. He threatened to charge me if I didn't.'

McAvoy
said, 'I apologize posthumously on his behalf. He was good to his wife and
kids.'

Jenny
opened the legal pad she had waiting in front of her, 'All right, Mr Madog -
when you're ready.'

'It
was like I told your man way back when - I saw a black Toyota, two white fellas
in the front, about eleven o'clock at night. One of them, the driver, was kind
of thickset with a shaved head. The passenger had a ponytail.'

'What
age were they?' Jenny said.

'Thirties
. . . And the two lads in the back were both Asians. Bearded, but young looking
- teenagers almost.'

'What
made you notice them?'

'I
suppose they seemed scared. One of them looked at me with these big brown eyes
almost like he was trying to say something.'

'Did
anyone in the car speak to you?'

'Nothing.
Not a word. That's another thing - you usually get a thank you. I make a point
of being cheerful to the customers . . .' He paused to recall. 'No, this fella
had a face like thunder. A real tough nut.' He swallowed, anxious. 'But it was
the other one who came after me.'

Jenny
glanced up. 'What?'

'About
a week later. I was leaving the house with my granddaughter. Six years old she
was at the time. I was taking her home to her mammy's on a Saturday afternoon.
We'd got in the car outside the house and this fella with the ponytail knocked
on the passenger window. I wound down the window and he leaned in, smiling, and
said, "Anyone asks, you never saw us." Then he brings out this can of
orange paint and sprays it all over my granddaughter's hair. She was screaming.
He didn't stop . . .' Madog shook his head. 'I had to wash it out with
turpentine. Took all morning.'

'You
didn't report this to the police?' Jenny said.

Madog
said, 'If you'd've been there you wouldn't ask that. I'm telling you, he was
spraying that paint and smiling:

'But
did you tell all this to Mr Dean?'

'Not
the paint bit. I swear to God, to this day even my daughter still doesn't
know.'

'This
man must have really scared you,' Jenny said.

'Yeah,
he was like a . . . like—'

'The
devil in disguise?' McAvoy said.

'You
shouldn't take that kind of crap from people,' McAvoy said. 'You're the
coroner, for God's sake - more powers than a High Court judge.'

'Hardly.'

'Look
'em up. If you'd got the balls you'd use them.'

Jenny
glanced across at him as she swung the Golf back up the slip road to the
service station. He was good-looking in a battered kind of way, but not a man
you'd trust to mind your handbag. There was something of the con artist about
him: the suit was good, but you couldn't be sure if that wasn't all there was
to him.

'So
what are you going to do? This guy with the ponytail sounds like an evil son of
a bitch. A real professional, thought all the psychology through. Spray paint
on a kiddy's head - sweet Jesus.'

'I'll
get my officer to take Madog's statement and call him as a witness.'

'And
what are the jury going to do with that? You've got to find this Toyota surely,
and the ponytail fella.'

'A
black Toyota? There must be thousands of them.'

'You'd
be surprised. Probably only a few hundred the same model. Break them down
geographically. There aren't many places you'd be going over the old Severn
Bridge to get to - all the road does is head up the border country.' He slammed
his hand on the dash for emphasis. 'You've got to find out who these people
are, not give them a chance to get away by wheeling Madog into court before
you've tracked them down. I'll give you a hand, it's got my blood up again.'

Jenny
thought about it. His passion was infectious. 'Maybe it wouldn't hurt. Most of
the jury didn't look in any hurry to get back to their day jobs.'

'That's
the way.' He grinned. 'Good girl.'

Jenny
turned into the near-empty car park, her mind swimming with questions about who
the men in the front of the Toyota might have been. But could she even be sure
Madog was telling the truth? She glanced at McAvoy again and realized she
didn't know what to believe in his presence, he seemed to alter reality around
him. She wouldn't be able to think straight until she'd got away. She pulled up
next to his car.

'Buy
you a coffee?' he said.

'I'd
better not. Work, you know—'

'I
took you for a free spirit, Mrs Cooper.'

There
was suddenly an atmosphere between them. The way he was looking at her with
smiling, perceptive eyes, he seemed to know her, to reach under her skin. She
felt hot and mildly panicked.

'Another
time. I'll be in touch . . . And thanks.'

McAvoy
nodded as if he understood the many reasons for her reticence entirely. He
reached for the door handle, then paused. 'Oh, I forgot to mention it to you -
standing in the inquest yesterday, I remembered Mrs Jamal once saying she
suspected Nazim had a girlfriend.'

'She
knew about Dani James?'

'No,
I think she was talking about earlier, months before that.'

'She
hasn't said anything to me.'

'Ask
her.' He smiled, said, 'God bless,' and stepped out into the freezing wind.

Alison
was still smarting from the premature adjournment of the inquest. Jenny guessed
that she'd had Pironi on the phone asking what the hell was going on, and that in
the conflict of loyalties Pironi had won. She had evidently spent her first two
hours at work tidying: her office was immaculate apart from the overspilling
tray on the corner of her desk reserved for Jenny's messages and mail.

Sorting
the critical items from the merely urgent, Jenny ignored her officer's
frostiness and told her about her trip to the toll plaza with McAvoy. Alison
listened, unimpressed, as Jenny announced that she had decided to make finding
the Toyota and its occupants a priority before resuming the inquest.

'And
when might that happen?' Alison said.

'I
thought we'd agreed Monday.'

'Have
you any idea how long it takes to get any joy out of the vehicle licensing
people at Swansea? It's like Stalin's Kremlin.'

'I
was thinking we might go through the police - they're hooked up to the Swansea
computers, aren't they?'

'They're
snowed under already. Believe me, I've used up all my favours, Mrs Cooper, and
more. It's got so even my ex-colleagues are dodging my calls.'

'It's
probably best Bristol CID don't know about this one, seeing as they were so
closely involved in the original investigation.' She could sense Alison's
hackles rising. 'I'll call DS Williams over in Chepstow, see if I can't
persuade him to give us a hand.'

'I'm
sure he will,' Alison said with feeling. 'He'll leap at any chance to do down
the English police.'

'Who
said anything about doing them down?'

Alison
looked up from her computer screen. 'I told you what I think of Alec McAvoy. He
went to prison for fixing witnesses - he made a career out of it. You can't
expect me to believe someone he suddenly pulls out of a hat.'

'Madog
seemed very sincere to me.'

'Do
you really believe he wouldn't have gone to the police if what he told you was
true?'

'What
possible interest could McAvoy have in interfering with this inquest?'

'Do
you want my honest opinion, Mrs Cooper?'

'Fire
away.'

Alison
unleashed. 'Before he was struck off he was cock of the walk, the flashiest,
richest criminal lawyer in town. He didn't only think he was above the law, he
thought he was the law. When we caught him out he happened to be representing
the missing boys' families. It suited his purposes to say his arrest was
political - they were his only clients who weren't hardened villains with form
longer than a donkey's dick, as we used to say. Now he's using this inquest.
Think about it: he'll dredge up evidence to support his claim that he was the
victim of a conspiracy, get the media behind him, and before you know it the
Law Society will be pressured into letting him back on the roll.' Alison looked
at her imploringly. 'He's a clever man, Mrs Cooper, but rotten to the core. He
doesn't give a damn what happened to those boys - this is someone who built his
reputation representing gangsters, rapists, murderers.'

'All
right,' Jenny said. 'Point taken. But I have to check the car story. And I need
you to take a formal statement from Madog.'

She
retreated to her office with renewed doubts about McAvoy. Alison's outburst
began to explain some of the unease she'd felt in his company. There was
something about his powerful aura that frightened her. It wasn't just the
uneasy fragility of a disgraced man clinging to tattered shreds of dignity, it
was his cast of mind, the unnerving sense that there was a part of his humanity
missing. The business with the bollards and the truck: he was reckless,
inviting trouble and not giving a damn for the consequences. But when he'd
looked at her . . . there'd been an eruption of heat in her chest and a
sensation that shot straight down between her legs. It almost shamed her to
admit it.

Burying
these thoughts, she reached for her address book and turned up the numbers of
DS Owen Williams, her contact across the border. She caught him during his mid-
morning break. They'd spoken maybe three or four times since the Danny Wills
case and on each occasion he'd been delighted to hear from her. He listened
carefully as she explained that a witness 'had come to light', neglecting to
mention McAvoy, and asked whether he could help trace all black Toyota MPVs
that may have been in the vicinity of the Severn Bridge on a June night eight
years ago.

'I'd
be ab-so-lutely delighted,' Williams said in his exaggerated Welsh lilt.
'Anything to help my favourite coroner, especially - as I presume - you can't
trust the Bristol police not to do an honest job for you.'

'Some
of the officers involved in the original investigation are still in place.'

'You
don't have to tell me any more, Mrs Cooper. You know I'd trust a Bangkok
brothel keeper sooner than any one of those English bastards.'

Jenny
had barely put the receiver down when the phone rang and Alison came on the
line saying she had Mrs Jamal on hold.

'OK,
put her through.'

Jenny
braced herself. She was greeted by the sound of inconsolable sobs.

'Mrs
Jamal? This is Mrs Cooper. What can I do for you?'

The
sobbing continued, Mrs Jamal unable to speak except to mumble something that
sounded like, 'I don't know ... I don't know.'

Jenny
wanted to ask about McAvoy's memory of her mentioning a girlfriend, but the
moment wasn't right. She seemed simply to need to have her grief heard and
acknowledged.

Jenny
offered what few words of comfort she could and heard herself say, 'I promise,
I won't rest until I've lifted every stone to find out what happened to your
son.'

With
the sharpening of her symptoms over recent days, Jenny was beginning to dread
the long hours between office and sleep with no alcohol or tranquillizing drug
to soothe the mental sores. As the adrenalin subsided, the intangible fear
ascended as surely as if the two were balanced on a pair of old-fashioned
scales. Her desire not to let Ross see how she was feeling intensified the
pain. She had staked her relationship with him on a promise that she could
cope; that what she wanted more than anything else was to have him share her
home until he went away to university. It hadn't been easy for him to move out
of his father's house - David's disapproval had been largely silent, but all
the more crushing for it - and his decision to trust her left her feeling that
their cohabitation was a long, drawn-out test of her ability as a mother and of
the truth of her recovery from emotional collapse.

She
pulled up outside Melin Bach and sat in the darkness summoning strength. She
knew she could hold it together, at a push, but she lacked the energy to be
light or joyful. Her weakness infuriated her. She'd been better off with
tranquillizers; at least they'd allowed the illusion of control. Part of her
wished she could just go inside and go straight to bed, sleep through it and
wake to her pills next morning, but there was dinner to cook, conversations to
be had. Suddenly she felt as if she had an impossible mountain to climb. She
reached for her beta blockers, snapped one in half with her teeth and
swallowed.