In Guilty Night (17 page)

‘Out of how many?’

‘Eleven.’

‘You sure?’

‘Shut up in places like Blodwel and this dump, your world’s so small you know everything. Which staff’s on duty, what’s going on in all the meetings they have….’ He flexed his fingers, and massaged his disfigured knuckles. ‘You wouldn’t survive if you didn’t.’ He paused, struggling to give voice to instinct. ‘Nobody ever tells you anything, nobody ever tells you the truth, so you’re forced to live on your wits.’

‘There are eight children left at Blodwel,’ Jack said. ‘Who’s been moved?’

‘Who’s still there?’

Jack read a list of names from his file.

‘You want Tony. Tony Jones, from Llandudno.’ Darren sighed. ‘Not that you’ll find him there. God knows where Hogg sent him. Are you going to bugger off now? It’ll be dark very soon.’

‘We haven’t talked about Gary Hughes yet, or this Tony Jones.’

‘You must be a glutton for punishment. They say the same about me.’ Darren smiled again, and Jack wondered if others ever saw the person behind the label. ‘Gary went out, like Arwel and Tony, in the evening, and when I boldly asked Hogg why some could go out but not others, he booted me in the guts. I’m still pissing blood.’ Sighing again, he added, ‘I don’t know if Gary and Arwel and Tony liked going out, because they never talked about it, but Gary threw a wobbly one night. He’d been away all weekend, so we reckoned he’d sucked up to Hogg for home leave, and needed a talking to. We went to his room after Dilys fart-face’d gone to sleep.’

‘And?’

‘Poor bugger!’ Darren shivered, wrapping his arms around his body. ‘Poor sod! Somebody’d painted purple varnish on his toe-nails. He was sitting on the floor trying to scrape it off with a penknife, crying so much he couldn’t see, and saying he wasn’t a bum boy, no matter what anybody said, or anybody did.’

Stopped in his tracks south of Dinas Mawddwy by a blizzard of awesome magnitude screaming with demon force from the mountains, Jack pulled into the car-park of a roadside inn, struggled out of the car against a wind threatening to tear the door from its mounting, and ran, head down, into the bar. Lodged for the night, he telephoned Emma.

‘The weather forecast was bad before you left. Why didn’t you stay in South Wales?’

‘Because I wanted to get away!’ Jack shivered, sounds of the battering wind outside banging against his skull. ‘It’s a dreadful place, Em. Bare as a barn, and it costs two and a half grand a week for each kid! My God, what a racket!’

‘Talking of barns, a farmer near Pentir found someone in his barn this morning. Whoever it was ran away. It was on the local news.’

‘At least the place wasn’t torched.’ He coughed. ‘How are the girls? What did they do today?’

‘Cleaned out their room.’

‘About time, too.’

‘And they tried on Denise’s clothes. They’re only clothes, after all, and the twins look very smart.’

‘I’m too tired to argue, and you’ve made up your mind anyway. Only next time she brings her cast-off finery, say no, will you? I’d rather you all wore rags than clothes off her back. She’s little better than a tart.’

8

‘Jack Tuttle ran into a blizzard in Meirionydd on the way home last night,’ McKenna said. ‘His journey was rather a waste of time, as Mandy Minx neglected to tell us Tony Jones and not Darren Pritchard is the boy we want. Dewi Prys is out round Pentir, on the assumption Gary may be the barnstormer.’

Janet ground out her cigarette and immediately lit another.

‘Why didn’t you go to chapel this morning?’ McKenna asked.

‘I didn’t want to. I’m not a child. I don’t have to go every Sunday.’

‘The congregation might think something’s amiss if the minister’s family suddenly breaks the habit of a lifetime. Defaults on an obligation, as it were.’

‘They can think what they like!’

‘Is this a bid for independence, or is there a problem at home?’

‘There’s my father, so there’s a problem. He’s very uncomfortable about what I’m doing.’

‘This isn’t a pleasant job for anyone’s daughter.’

‘I mean he’s uncomfortable with himself. I asked him yesterday if he’s anything to tell us, and he got rather spiteful, like he does when you hit a sore spot.’

‘He can be uneasy without having compromising knowledge,’ McKenna said. ‘Child abuse provokes suspicion. Some innocuous incident in the past, which seemed trivial at the time, can suddenly appear significant. Perhaps he’s simply being cautious.’

‘Everybody’s being cautious!’ Janet snapped. ‘The social workers spout about confidentiality, the kids are terrified of everyone, the parents think we’re shit, and bloody Hogg and his wife rule the world!’

McKenna sighed. ‘We’ve no evidence that Arwel’s death is
connected with Blodwel, despite what we know of the place and the Hoggs.’

‘So what’s left?’ Janet demanded. ‘Elis? Can you really see him as a paedophile?’

McKenna saw Elis as ambiguous and intrusive, a man whose organizing principles were not of his own choosing. Parking on the forecourt of Bedd y Cor, arm and shoulder strained by the drive up St Mary’s Hill and down narrow pot-holed lanes, he sat for a moment, watching dusk wash over the distant mountains. Lights within the house spilt soft wedges of colour across darkening ground and on the gleaming enamel of the beautiful car parked by the entrance to the stable yard. Kinetic art, McKenna thought, regarding the car’s exquisite contours, like the music with which Elis filled his empty spaces, and the horses on which he tried to break for freedom.

Waiting by the front door, he heard the whinnying of a horse, the clatter of hoof upon cobble, and saw the prancing shape of the thoroughbred mare as she was led out to the field. The groom nodded.

‘Is anyone at home?’

‘Only the staff.’

‘I thought Mr Elis would be back.’

‘So did Mrs Elis. Reckon the weather’s held him up. There’s been snow, so I near. Won’t trouble us, will it? Still too bloody cold.’

‘Are you putting her out?’ McKenna gestured towards the fractious animal trying to shake her head from her keeper’s grasp.

‘Only so I can change her bedding without getting kicked to death.’ He stroked her neck, murmuring. ‘It’s her first foal, and she’s crabby as hell, ’cos she’s not quite sure what’s happening.’

‘When’s it due?’

‘No more than six weeks. She went to the stallion last January end.’ He stroked her again, running his hands over the swollen belly. ‘Should be a little beauty. Her for a mother, and sired by a Derby winner. Did you know?’

‘Mr Elis mentioned it.’

The groom laughed. ‘I’ll bet he did! The stud fee was more than this place is worth. He’s on pins waiting to see what he got for his money.’

The groom moved away, half-dragged by his fretful charge,
while McKenna perforce wondered if Elis thought money could buy a child as easily as it bought a foal.

Dewi waited in ambush outside the office. Walking through the door he held open, McKenna felt overcome by weariness, assailed on all quarters by demands for approval, protection, forgiveness, and other, deeper things to which he could not give name.

‘I sent you out.’

‘I’ve been out, sir. DC Evans has been back and forth a bit. She’s looking for Mandy’s mate Tracey. I came back to do some telephoning.’ He stood before the desk, waiting perhaps for an advance on approval.

‘So?’

‘So I called some of the South Wales homes off the list. I said we want to interview the Tony Jones from Llandudno who was admitted a few days ago. I didn’t think you’d mind.’

McKenna lit a cigarette, watching doubt begin to creep over Dewi’s face, and a smoke ring drift towards the dingy ceiling. ‘Depends on whether the outcome is a lot of flak and bugger-all else.’

‘There’ll be flak sooner or later, but I located him, so maybe we can get there before anybody puts the mockers on it by shifting him again.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Denbigh Hospital. Hogg put him in a secure unit near Swansea, they sent him to Denbigh yesterday.’

‘Why?’ McKenna snapped. ‘Why must I drag out every bloody detail?’

‘Apparently Tony claimed he’d been abused. The home contacted our Social Services and they probably told Hogg, because a taxi turned up first thing yesterday, with two great hulking blokes and a driver, and whipped him away. I rang the hospital. He’s on a locked ward, so it’ll be hard to see him without a doctor backing us.’

By six o’clock, when she would normally be preparing to accompany her mother to chapel, Janet was on the coastal expressway, pushing her new car to its limits and listening to a song about the Road to Hell, smoke from the cigarette in her left hand stinging her eyes. She had nowhere to go, no one to call upon and find welcome, her home frostier than the night outside the speeding car with her father’s disapproval and her
mother’s resignation. Passing the Talybont turn off at ninety miles an hour, she glimpsed a panda car with its lights doused. Lights suddenly blinding, it drew out in pursuit, and she pushed her foot on the accelerator, losing the hunters in a blaze of speed beyond the slip road to Llandegai.

She drove hither and thither, on and off the expressway, undecided and fretful, nothing to report to McKenna except failure and opprobrium, even less to say to her parents, but more opprobrium to receive. She circled Treborth roundabout twice before turning towards Menai Bridge. A few cars passed on the other side of Treborth Road, dazzling her eyes as they took the bends. House lights twinkled behind high conifer hedging on the steep slope near the Antelope Inn, and she thought how shell-like a house seemed when lit so, insubstantial and hollow.

She crossed the floodlit bridge, its reflection shimmering in the icy waters a hundred feet below, and drove towards Llanfairpwll, stopping by the lookout point to smoke two cigarettes, then fired the engine and retraced her tracks. Turning once more on to Treborth Road, she entered another world as the houses fell behind, and was engulfed by night and huge dark trees crowding down from the hillside to her left. Remembering tales of phantom figures rushing from the trees, she lit another cigarette, pushed another CD in the player, and watched the speedometer creep up to seventy miles an hour and beyond, tapping her fingers on the steering-wheel in time to Bad Medicine, savouring the smoke in her lungs and the sense of restrained power in the car she drove. She saw the figure too late, as it leapt out in her path. The car swerved wildly, careered over the white lines then back again, coming to rest with a terrifying thud against the steep verge. Air bags exploded in her face and at her side, stunning more than the impact, then deflated, exposing her to whatever lay outside the fragile shell of the car in which she cowered.

‘You lot are draining scarce economic resources.’ Eifion Roberts loomed over McKenna, his bulk darkening the small hospital lobby. ‘First you. Now her and the other one.’

‘David Fellows isn’t down to us,’ McKenna said. ‘Janet didn’t hit him.’

‘The silly mare smashed up thousands of quids’ worth of car because a rabbit jumped out on her. Good God! What next!’

‘It was a white hare, and you know the local superstition
about hares and souls and witches. Why don’t you go home, and annoy your wife instead?’

The pathologist sat down. ‘I’ll have a customer if Dai Skunk snuffs it. What happened to him?’

‘His mother made her monthly visit and found him collapsed in the bedroom, in a pool of blood. I’m waiting to find out if he’d been attacked.’

‘You pulling him for questioning over Arwel could’ve given folk reason to attack him.’

‘I know.’

‘Can’t be helped, you’ve a job to do. How is Miss Evans?’

‘Hysterical. Her father’s with her.’

‘He won’t be best pleased, will he? That one’s more arrogant than the God he claims to serve,’ Dr Roberts commented. ‘Toe his line, or suffer for it. He tried to stop Janet going to university, then put the mockers on her doing social work. She probably only joined up to spite him.’

‘He’s a typical Welsh patriarch. Maybe you recognize his characteristics because you share them.’

‘I don’t browbeat people the way he does.’

‘Is that fact or fiction?’ McKenna demanded. ‘How d’you know all this stuff you spout?’

‘Hush up!’ Dr Roberts warned. ‘Here they come.’

Slumped against the tall figure of her father, Janet limped slowly down the corridor. Completely ignoring the pathologist, Pastor Evans stopped in front of McKenna, and looked down upon him, sternly and unforgivingly.

‘I cannot help but blame you, Chief Inspector. Janet should have been at home, not driving all over the county when she’s obviously near exhaustion.’ He looked then upon his daughter, who hid her face in the folds of his dark grey overcoat. ‘See how shaken she is? I trust you won’t expect her back at work for a few days.’

Watching the retreating figures of pastor and child, Roberts observed, ‘Put you in your place, didn’t he?’ He chewed his bottom lip. ‘Notice how he pretended I don’t exist? He’s never forgiven me for doubting God’s mercy.’

McKenna stood. ‘I’m going to see about David Fellows.’

The pathologist rose, panting slightly with effort. ‘Wouldn’t bother, he was already in theatre when I arrived. You eaten yet, Michael? There’s a Lob Scouse in the oven at home. Just what a body needs on a night like this.’

The mattress beneath her lumpy with the impress of other bodies, Mandy rolled gingerly on her side, fearful of greater pain blazing along the pathways of her nerves. Dilys Roberts had opened the bedroom curtains before going to her own cubicle, letting night and tendrils of freezing air invade the room. Unblinking, Mandy listened to the porcine snuffling and snoring of the girl in the next bed, waiting for the noise to reach its peak. The girl gasped and grunted, then turned over on her face, and Mandy thought of the qualities of silence, the wide singing silence she knew as a child at her grandparents’ mountain farm, and the silence she knew now, charged with such strident tension.

Her grandfather died of cancer when Mandy was seven. Her grandmother sold the poor living and the flock of sheep to pay their debts, moved to a small flat where her night silence was engulfed by traffic roaring in and out of the industrial estate, and sank into misery and depression. The grandparents buffered Mandy from her mother’s excess of wantonness, and when Grandfather went to Heaven and Grandmother to limbo, the child was left in the Hell on earth her mother created, until the social workers found another hell in which to place her.