In Guilty Night (26 page)

‘You tend to be pompous at times, don’t you?’ Hogg commented. ‘I daresay a lot of policemen share my “archaic” view, but daren’t say so in these politically correct times. Interminable understanding’s the order of the present day, and much good it does us all!’

McKenna smiled stiffly. ‘Even if you’re right, theft in ignorance is a lesser crime than the wanton thievery which caused Tony and Arwel to die, yet there’s an enormous absence of guilt over that particular offence.’

‘You never knew either boy, but you’ve managed to fall in the trap.’

‘What trap?’

‘I’m glad you’re not in my job, Chief Inspector. Too many people identify with these children for personal reasons, and side with them against proper authority,’ Hogg said. ‘The children latch on to any weakness, then hold people to ransom when it suits, because they’re devious and corrupt and end up corrupting others. Deliberately. Those two certainly knew what they were doing.’ He took a thin file from the drawer, and flipped open the cover. ‘What’s hidden in that face, behind the perfect features and beautiful eyes? Grace? Truth? Inner beauty? Maybe beauty like that is enough in itself.’ He tapped his index finger on the photograph, and McKenna noticed a rim of dirt beneath the fingernail. ‘In a million years, you wouldn’t think there was wickedness in his heart. We didn’t, until we saw the damage he did. He mesmerized people, then poisoned them with his own corruption. He flaunted his power, just like his sister does. They use sex as a commodity, outside any moral context, to get what they want, and Arwel Thomas was a very greedy boy.’ Hogg shut the folder, and put
it away. ‘And very perverse. He couldn’t bear to see innocence around him, so he dragged others in his dirt.’

‘Who?’

‘Anybody and everybody. Tony Jones, for one, and, God help us, probably others too scared to talk. Why d’you think Tony Jones was moved? Why d’you think Arwel Thomas absconded? We found out what he was doing, and he knew we’d stop him.’

‘How did you find out?’

Hogg frowned. ‘Don’t interrogate me, Chief Inspector. I was doing the rounds early on a Sunday morning, and I caught them at it.’

‘And does your director know?’

‘Of course he does! While you’ve been upsetting all and sundry with your suspicions and persistent questions, we’ve been trying to sort out the mess and spare people’s feelings.’ Hogg sat back in his chair, tapping his fingers on the desk. ‘I’ve no time for Arwel Thomas’s parents, or his sister, but they don’t need to know he was buggering other kids, and Tony Jones’s parents won’t thank me for saying their boy was a pervert.’

‘Nor will such occurrences do much for your professional reputation.’

‘It’s on record I acted immediately.’ Hogg frowned again. ‘Don’t you understand children are capable of evil? Perhaps more than adults, because they’ve had less exposure to socialization processes. Arwel Thomas was like a filthy sickness, and God knows who else he infected. We’re having to ask little kids of eight and nine about things they should never know. And what do we do if he was HIV positive?’

‘And who d’you think corrupted Arwel?’

‘Elis was besotted with him, and I’ve wondered what the boy had that the elegant Mr Elis, with all his money and power, couldn’t find elsewhere.’ Hogg smiled bitterly. ‘But I’d be less than human not to wonder if Elis realized he couldn’t buy his way out of the scandal Arwel Thomas could make if he had all the money in the world.’

Her red-gold hair pulled in a pony-tail and bound with a crimp of cotton festooned with exotic flowers, Mandy lounged against the wall in the chip shop. Tracey waited for an old man to decide on his supper, while the old man’s dog, a little mongrel with a threadbare coat, whimpered outside, huddled
in the doorway under an onslaught of wind and lashing rain. As the old man went into the night, the little dog sniffing at the newspaper parcel in his hands, Mandy said, ‘I’m starving. Give us a bag of chips.’

‘Where’s your money?’ Tracey asked.

‘Don’t be a tightarse!’

‘Getting ready for life on the social?’ Tracey scooped hot golden chips in a tray, and speared them with a blue plastic fork. ‘The coppers are after you,’ she added, watching Mandy splash vinegar on the chips. ‘The young one with black hair and sexy eyes wants to know if you turn up.’

‘Don’t grass me up,’ Mandy whined. ‘They’ll put me back in Blodwel.’

‘They didn’t before.’

‘They won’t foster me out again now I’ve legged it.’

‘You should’ve stayed then. Why didn’t you?’

‘Doris turned up, didn’t she?’ Mandy stuffed a forkful of chips in her mouth. ‘She told the foster people to watch ’cos I tell wicked lies.’ She gobbled her food, ravenously. ‘She said I lied about Sir thumping me, and I’d lie about them doing something, so they got dead nasty.’

‘Tough,’ Tracey commented. ‘Nobody’ll ever believe Hogg hit you.’

‘The cops did, and that fat doctor.’

‘They don’t know you, do they?’ Tracey sighed. ‘You can’t doss at my place for long. Wouldn’t your Nain give you a bed?’

‘Our lady councillor’s beginning to look her age,’ Dewi commented. ‘Her make-up’s cracking like paint off an old picture. Have you noticed how Doris tries to copy her?’

‘Doris can try ’til she’s blue in the face, but people will always see her for what she is.’ McKenna poured boiling water in the teapot. ‘Rhiannon’s under a lot of strain.’

Dewi sat at the kitchen-table, aligning mugs and spoons in a neat row. ‘Does she knew about Tony and Arwel in bed together?’

‘So Hogg says.’ McKenna took chocolate biscuits from the refrigerator. ‘Discussions took place at the highest level as soon as Arwel’s inclinations were confirmed. The best professional expertise has since been harnessed to investigate whether Arwel or Tony assaulted other boys at Blodwel. Our clumsy flatfoot intervention served to make a desperately difficult situation virtually untenable.’

‘Who was butch and who was bitch?’

‘I didn’t bother asking.’

‘You don’t believe a word of it, do you?’

‘I can’t ignore the message because I detest the messenger. It’s entirely plausible.’

Dewi poured tea, tearing open the packet of biscuits. ‘The other kids reckon Tony and Arwel were OK, but kept themselves to themselves. Nobody found it strange they went out, because Mr Hogg said they could. Mr Hogg is like God,
ergo
his word is like God’s.’

‘Hogg is far more powerful than God. He exists in the flesh.’

‘He’s a wanker.’ Dewi munched a biscuit.

‘What did Rhiannon do while you talked to the children?’

‘Be motherly, say it was OK to talk, hold mucky little paws, wipe away the tears and the odd bit of snot.’

‘Who was crying?’

‘The one who had an abortion. She’s back in Blodwel, but she’s crying all the time ’cos people aren’t being very nice with her on account of her sinful leanings. Pastor Evans must be giving lessons, mustn’t he?’

Seated at a chipped formica table in Blodwel’s dining-room, hands cupped around a plastic mug brimming with weak tea, Rhiannon watched the three little boys, their crayons and colouring books neatly stacked, eating supper of jam sandwiches, mugs of the same tea beside them, and thought how hungry they looked, how forlorn and pale and starved. Every so often, one looked up from his food, to ask a question, to tell of a little pleasure or a tiny triumph in the battle of life, and she saw them like wrinkled little plants, almost withered to death for want of light. She wondered suddenly why these children scratched themselves so often, why faint ragged nail tracks disfigured their flesh and snagged their shrunken garments, why misery painted so eagerly on their tender skin.

Doris stood in the kitchen doorway. ‘Hurry up with your supper. Councillor Mrs Elis has to go soon.’

Rhiannon heard the intended rebuke, the implication that her presence disrupted precious routine. ‘They’ve almost finished.’

Doris pursed her lips, then returned to the kitchen. One of the boys waited until she was out of earshot, then smiled at Rhiannon. ‘Look what I’ve got, miss.’ A small heavy object dropped from his hand, clattering on the table.

Rhiannon stared. ‘Where did you get that?’

The child stared back, the smile dying on his lips, the light draining from his eyes. ‘I didn’t pinch it!’ he whispered.

‘Of course you didn’t!’ Rhiannon snatched the remnants of the smile, forcing it to her own lips and voice. ‘It’s just – just rather an odd thing to have, don’t you think?’

‘Sir said he could have it.’ One of the other boys intervened.

‘Sir?’

‘Sir. Mr Hogg.’

‘I see.’ Rhiannon touched the prized possession, felt the warmth of the child’s hand still there, and wondered fleetingly how vulnerable these children were to offers of warmth in any guise. ‘Where did Mr Hogg get it?’

‘Dunno, miss. He said it’s not real.’ The child giggled. ‘He chucked it at the back wall, dead hard, and jumped on it, and he said it’d’ve gone off if it was real.’

She picked up the object and saw scars on the casing where Hogg’s abuse proved his bravery, and felt a sudden shift of focus, as if this room, these boys, all the preconceptions and beliefs she held and trusted were shown to be distortions.

‘It’s got writing on it, Miss. Tiny, tiny writing on the side.’

Rhiannon nodded. ‘It’s very tiny writing. You’d need a magnifying glass to read it.’

‘Have you got a glass like that, miss?’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Sir hasn’t, either.’

Doris stood in the doorway again, crept silently upon them in her carpet slippers. ‘Bring your plates and mugs to the kitchen.’

Rhiannon gathered up the used crockery, and pushed past the woman, smelling staleness and nastiness about her. Doris watched as Rhiannon washed the plates and mugs, and stacked them to dry.

‘They usually wash their own pots. It’s not good for them to get waited on.’

‘I’m sure that doesn’t happen too often.’ Rhiannon dried her hands on a towel slung over the oven handle, tainting her flesh with the scent of Blodwel.

‘When will you be coming again?’ Doris asked. ‘Mr Hogg wants to know.’

McKenna hovered beside his chain store hi-fi system.

‘Don’t turn it down,’ Eifion Roberts said, drumming his fingers on his knee. ‘I know it’s Beethoven, but what?’

‘The Choral Fantasia.’

‘Much more fun than the Choral Symphony, isn’t it? Is Elis broadening your perspectives?’

‘My perspectives seem to be coloured by the sort of twilight Goethe described as a child of truth and untruth, ambiguous and misleading.’

‘I can get tired of all this intellectualizing around other folk’s ideas,’ Dr Roberts said, stroking the sleeping cat. ‘You don’t share enough with your colleagues. Owen Griffiths has a good brain, and not just for police business.’

‘He’ll be in bed.’

‘Jack won’t be.’ He jerked his hand from the cat’s reaching teeth. ‘Feisty little thing, isn’t she? Cats always sleep with one eye open and one claw ready. Jack daren’t close either eye at the moment, ’cos those girls’ve shown him what the sleep of reason conjures up, when he thought there were monsters enough in the waking hours. And Pastor Evans’s offspring can’t offer the female perspective ’cos she’s not at her best.’ He grinned. ‘A randy boyfriend would sort her out in no time. It’s a pity Dewi Prys can’t take to her. Have you tapped his irrational imagination yet? He gets places in no time the best police procedures never reach in a month of Sundays.’

‘Elis’s fancy car was outside Blodwel. Dewi said smashing Arwel’s head on the wing or bonnet wouldn’t leave a scratch.’

Mari heard the purr of the car’s engine and the soft crunch of wheels on gravel sodden with rain. Moving the drawing-room curtain aside, she saw water dripping from the bronzed leaves outside the window, and watched the car’s rear lights disappear behind the house, leaving a faint afterglow in the darkness. ‘Madam’s back.’

‘She’s late,’ Elis commented.

‘Will she want supper?’

‘She may have eaten at Blodwel.’

‘I doubt it. Madam’s too particular.’

Walking down the back hallway, Rhiannon heard her husband’s soft laughter and the lighter notes of Mari’s voice, and halted, watching shapes and shadows beyond the ornate door of traceried wood and acid-etched glass, thinking of the bare cold building she had just left, and the resonance of terror. Mari’s shadow flitted hither and thither, lingered lovingly behind the larger shadow, moved away but always returned, and Rhiannon considered the reality perceived within the
room, and all the other perceptions she embraced as real.

She leaned against the wall, beside a table littered with petal shards from an urn of great white and yellow winter chrysanthemums, husband and servant out of sight but their voices coming to her like whispers, and thought of the guises worn by children, imagining the little boys in Blodwel as baby birds crouched without shelter in a ruined nest, Arwel and Carol jettisoned and drifting, picked up by the rip tide and dragged further out to sea, and her own as a mighty thief who stole the peace in his mother’s heart.

But what, she asked herself, tumbling petal shards between her fingers, had that peace amounted to and depended upon? If, she thought, instinct was allowed to win the long conflict with guilt, she would know peace had depended on her husband’s love, a perception which was yet another distortion, a belief held because it held less pain. Elias turned his eyes elsewhere not for fear of what his love produced, but because the dead dark man, whose face and music haunted her days and filled her nights with ghosts, could be whatever Elias imagined or wanted, except the maker of demands, the harbourer of expectations. And what of the boy who came to keep him company? Head bowed, the scent of dying flowers almost nauseating, Rhiannon wondered if the boy with the face of an angel had shown his own frailty, in trust and love, and found he expected too much.

Mari stood by the hearth, clad in one of her mistress’s outfits that she had coveted with the greatest poignancy. Elias lounged on the Knole settee, smiling, and asked if she had eaten. Almost with the eye of an artist, Rhiannon noticed how his shadow flicked and danced around him in the firelight, yet was not only his shadow, but darkness seeping from him and lying across them all like the shadow of death.