In Guilty Night (13 page)

‘Your wife looks very glamorous,’ he said, as McKenna closed the front door. ‘Very cosily posh in her new coat. An early Yuletide gift from her admirer, d’you think?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t care to ask.’

‘Did you care to ask if she knows Elis?’ Roberts sat on the chesterfield, drawing a protest from the cat, a louder one from
the springs, holding his hands to the fire.

‘He doesn’t mix socially.’

‘Won’t be much use as Lord Lieutenant then, unless Councillor Rhiannon does enough mixing for both of them. Stupid woman! Fancy letting herself be fobbed off over that Hogg and his nasty habits.’

McKenna hovered over him. ‘D’you want anything in particular? Not to be churlish, but I’m tired. No one had much sleep last night.’

‘I won’t keep you from your lonely bed too long.’ Roberts eyed the sling on McKenna’s arm. ‘You want to get that off before the circulation seizes up, never mind the muscles.’

‘The hospital said a week. The ligaments were badly wrenched.’

‘They’ll be healing.’ He stood up. ‘Let’s have a look.’

McKenna bit his lips to quell a screech of pain as the pathologist removed the sling, pulled the stiffened arm straight, and began a vigorous massage from wrist to shoulder and across the back of the neck.

‘You’re all knotted up,’ he commented, kneading and pummelling, digging thumbs into the hollows beneath McKenna’s shoulder-blades. ‘I rang the lab today. Arwel’s blood tests aren’t ready, but a good DNA profile came from the semen traces in the body. What about the site search?’

‘Hundreds of tyre tracks,’ McKenna said, words punctuated by the rhythms of Eifion Roberts’s hands. ‘Enough litter and other rubbish to silt up Menai Strait.’ He coughed. ‘No sign of Arwel’s clothes, or anything else useful. How long will the blood tests be?’ His own blood began to course through atrophied muscle and tissue.

‘A few days.’ Roberts held McKenna’s arm at the elbow and gently rotated the shoulder. ‘Are you making any progress?’

‘We’re eating our way through the
tartine
de
merde
.’ McKenna winced. ‘Had another big slice today.’

‘What’s a
tartine
de
merde
?’

‘In polite terms, a manure pie. Voltaire said—’

‘Voltaire!’ Dr Roberts squeezed McKenna’s upper arm and pushed the humerus into the socket. ‘You’ve a head full of other folks’ words. Have you no thoughts of your own?’

‘You’re hurting!’

Roberts blithely continued his manipulations. ‘It’s all very well citing others, but Voltaire wasn’t necessarily always right because he was Voltaire, even though he wasn’t far wrong
about the English shooting an admiral from time to time to keep the others in line.’ He peered down at McKenna. ‘You tend to upset the folk with the big guns a bit too often.’

‘We’re in Wales.’

‘I don’t recall the Welsh ever being slow to borrow when it suits. You should watch your back.’

Hands deep in pockets, face shrouded by a thick scarf, Janet traipsed slowly along the High Street, irritable and despondent, precious off-duty hours wasted in pursuit of local youths frittering away time in bars and on street corners. She asked about Gary Hughes and Arwel Thomas and Darren Pritchard, about Blodwel and its master, and lost count of the faces staring blankly, mouths shut like traps, the backs insolently turned.

Bright lights swagged around the porch of The Black Spaniard bar promised warmth at least. Crossing the road, she was almost felled by two girls lurching on to the pavement, holding each other, giggling and snorting. The brassy-haired hussy in a tiny skirt, her legs pimply with cold, pushed past in a draught of cheap perfume and expensive liquor. Cloudy hair stippled purple and gold and pink by the lights, lipstick staining her pointed teeth; the other girl simply gaped.

‘What are you doing here?’ Janet demanded, catching her arm. ‘You shouldn’t even be out, never mind pub-crawling.’

The other girl pushed Janet in the chest. ‘Fuck off!’

‘Shut
up
!’ Mandy whispered. ‘She’s a cop.’

‘So?’ The blonde girl stared at Janet. ‘She can still fuck off.’ Shoving and pushing, she tried to pull Mandy from Janet’s grasp. ‘She’s not done nothing, so fucking mind your own fucking business, Miss Piggy!’

Janet elbowed her away. ‘Shut up, like Mandy says, you loud-mouthed bitch!’

Anger blazed in eyes fringed with lashes improbably thick and stickily black. ‘One more step,’ Janet warned, ‘and one more word, and you’re done for assault.’

The girl spat on the ground. Mandy whimpered. ‘Go away, Trace.
Please
! Go away!’

Tossing her head, her hair so sticky with spray not a wisp moved, Tracey clattered down the road, stopping after a few yards to gesture obscenely to Janet. Mandy sagged against the wall, snivelling, licking her lips with the huge purple tongue.

‘Oh, be quiet!’ Janet snapped. ‘What the hell are you up to?’

‘You won’t tell I was in a pub, will you?’ Mandy whined.

‘Are you on the run?’

‘No!’ Mandy stared, aggrieved.

‘I’ll hear the same from Blodwel staff when I take you back, will I?’

Mandy smirked and licked her lips. ‘Mr Luvvyduvvy said for me to be back by half ten. I’m getting the bus.’

‘Who’s “Mr Luvvyduvvy”? Who said you could be out at all?’ Janet demanded. ‘You’re not allowed out without staff.’

Mandy giggled, drink rising to quench her earlier fears. ‘Who told you that crap?’ She belched and put her fingers to her lips, giggling again. ‘Staff let us out so they can sit in the office jangling.’

‘And did they let Arwel go out?’ Janet asked, her voice quiet.

Mandy slumped further down the wall, her legs beginning to buckle. ‘Him and Gary and him what got sent all the way to South Wales before we got up.’ She giggled again, nodding her head wildly like a silly ornament in the back of a car. ‘Sexy Gary and sexy Arwel came back with lots of fags and lots of cash, and bitchy Doris took it all….’ Her eyelids blinked, and she lurched towards Janet, gulping convulsively. ‘I feel dead sick, miss.’

Averting her eyes from steaming vomit running in the gutter and swirling against kerbstones glittering with frost, Janet hauled the weeping, whining girl towards the telephone box by the railway bridge. Pushing Mandy inside, she squeezed in behind, and dialled McKenna’s number. A strange voice answered, snappish and male. ‘Who wants him?’

‘DC Evans.’

‘Thought it might be somebody else,’ Eifion Roberts grunted. ‘It’s for you,’ Janet heard him say.

‘I’m sorry to bother you, sir,’ Janet said. ‘I found Mandy on a pub crawl with another girl. She says she’s got permission to be out. What shall I do with her? She’s just been sick all over the road.’

‘Has she really?’ McKenna said. ‘Does she look ill?’

Mandy stared vacantly, face waxen, bluey lips gasping, eyes sunk in shadowy sockets rimmed with navy-blue mascara, the smell of vomit on her breath making Janet heave.

‘She looks ghastly, sir. She might’ve had more than drink.’

‘Indeed she might,’ McKenna agreed. ‘I’ll send a car to take you to the police station. Dr Roberts won’t mind looking at her.’

Doris laughed harshly. Robert Lovell, the bearded man, Mandy’s ‘Mr Luvvyduvvy’, stood deferentially at her side, hands clasped in front of his genitals.

‘What’s so amusing about a drunken fifteen year old?’ McKenna demanded.

‘I told the social worker that girl can’t be trusted, but would she listen? “Mandy’s got to learn to cope with her freedom”, she said. Stupid creature! Those social workers don’t get dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to sort out the mess!’

‘It’s eleven o’clock,’ McKenna pointed out. ‘Hardly the middle of the night.’

‘Decent God-fearing people think so,’ Doris said sanctimoniously. ‘Even if you don’t.’

Crossing his legs, almost happy with the resurrection of his arm, McKenna lit a cigarette. ‘Contrary to what you and your husband led us to believe, Mandy says children often go out alone.’

‘You’ve no right to question her without us there!’

‘Her interests couldn’t be more compromised than they already are.’ McKenna blew smoke towards the ceiling, and Lovell tentatively pushed a metal waste bin towards him. ‘Others seem to be similarly compromised by your less-than-responsible attitude towards childcare.’

‘Get out!’ Doris shouted, so loudly, so suddenly, Lovell jumped. ‘I’ll ring the director if you don’t. I’ve got his home number. Get
out
!’

McKenna rose. ‘If that’s what you want. We’ll be back.’

‘Don’t you threaten me with your snide remarks! Wait ’til Mr Hogg finds out!’

‘There are limits to what can be hidden indefinitely, Mrs Hogg, however friendly you are with Councillor Elis.’

Striding down a path slippery with frost, McKenna heard the front door slammed violently. Janet shivered, fumbling with the car door. ‘Bitch!’ she muttered. ‘Bloody bitch!’

Thinking only of warmth and shelter and food in his belly to quell hunger gnawing at his innards like rats, Gary Hughes sat beneath the road deck which swooped over two massive stone lions, once guardians of the entrance to the long-vanished tubes of Britannia Bridge. Back against a concrete stanchion,
knees hunched up to his chest, his whole body trembled with terrible cold. If he picked up his bag and walked the couple of miles back home, his mother would ask no questions, for since his return from Blodwel, instinct warned she might learn what no mother ever wished to know. She cared for his physical needs, letting blind hope care for the rest, while Gary despaired of the dreadful wounding words thrown in her face which built themselves into a barrier too huge for mother or son to surmount. Her plea for help brought the social workers, but instead of demolishing the barrier, they erected their own edifice around the family remnants, a prison from which no one could escape. Idly, he wondered if the moisture on his cheeks was icy mist curling up from the dark foul waters of Menai Strait, or the tears of a child wanting his mother’s arms.

Rhiannon replaced the telephone receiver, disconnecting the number before it rang out. She sat in a silk-upholstered chair, silk-embroidered slippers on her thin elegant feet, and about her body, a peignoir of ice-grey silk chiffon, dyed marabou feathers frosting hem and cuffs and whispering with each breath she drew. She pulled suddenly at the neck of the fragile garment, disrupting its graceful silhouette. The slam of a door disrupted the quietness of the house. Mari, she thought, unable to sleep, restless with some misery or guilt. And what undermined her own resignation? Not the misery grown supple and familiar as the fingers which punched out the stream of numbers once more, or the guilt fostered out of duty. Again, she dropped the receiver before the number connected, contemplating the marriage she had come to view as love in altered circumstances, asking herself where that love ended and disgust began.

Mandy Minx vomited twice more during the night, crawling on all fours, from the room she shared with another girl, along scuff-scarred lino tiles to the lavatory. Her retching brought company the second time. Not the room-mate, who cowered under her quilt feigning sleep, but her own Mr Luvvyduvvy, who stood by the cubicle door, wrinkling his nose at the stench, his eyes on the young buttocks firm beneath the thin pyjama trousers.

‘You all right?’ he ventured, when the retching abated. Mandy leaned over the lavatory bowl, fingers clenching the rim, sweat-dark hair brushing the porcelain, a stream of bloody spittle hanging from her chin.

‘You’d best get back to bed.’

He moved to take her arm, and she wrenched away, rolling into the corner, one arm raised to ward off violence, the other wrapped about her body, comforting pain. Her eyes glittered with terror.

‘Hey!’ He jerked upright, suddenly recalling the long minutes Mandy had spent in the Hoggs’ flat after the police left, and before she reeled up to her room. ‘Don’t make a row. You’ll wake everybody up, then Mrs Hogg’ll be after you.’

Mandy shivered so violently the cistern rattled. He fidgeted, despairing of his ability to deal with the girl who crouched and glared like a wild animal. How did he come to be in this place in the dead hours of a dark November night? What skills could control these alien beings with the same brash fearlessness displayed by Ronald Hogg and his wife? Neither would stand inept, as he did, but would make this crazy child return to her bed, so that sleep might erase a little more of the terrifying time in this enclosed world, where he and his colleagues contained children threatening devastation, who functioned like wolf-packs or marauding cybernauts from a time beyond nuclear holocaust.

Would he be standing thus in four hours’ time, trapped by the vixenish creature crouched beside the lavatory, when Doris Hogg slip-slapped along the upstairs corridors in her bedroom slippers, dressing-gown trailing? Cook and cleaners would be at work, gossiping in hushed voices, clattering pans and banging metal buckets, swishing raggy stinking mops back and forth through rooms and corridors, leaving dirty shreds of rust-stained cotton under chair legs and door-frames and cupboards. The smell of frying eggs would seep through walls and floors, overlaying the other smell infesting every nook and cranny of the building. Fear coursed through his body like icy water when he thought of being found by Doris Hogg, of being found so wanting as she came upon them, he scratching at this thin beard, the wild-eyed girl wedged between wall and lavatory, blood spittle smeared over her face.

One hand rested now on the lavatory rim, the other slowly massaged belly and midriff, and violence contorted her face as he watched. She rolled over, body convulsing, and retched yet again, and he saw a dark stain seeping down her pyjama leg.

6

‘I don’t think they’re happily married,’ Dewi insisted. ‘What’ve they got in common? He’s taken up with horses and making money, and when she’s not being a big shot on the county council, she’s entertaining royalty or the like.’

Janet’s mouth hardened with irritation. ‘People shouldn’t live in each other’s pocket just because they’re married. Separate interests are healthier.’