In Guilty Night (30 page)

‘Why? What’s in it for her?’

‘It’s her way of helping the family.’

Stroking the sleepy cat, the pathologist said, ‘You and me’ll never belong to her elite, or Hogg’s, but we wouldn’t want to.’

‘Jack says he’s scum risen to the top.’

‘He’s that as well,’ Dr Roberts nodded. ‘Social workers and psychiatrists are an elite police force, doling out punishment in the shape of treatment when folk won’t toe that very rigid line between normal and not normal. Kids in care are supposed to be grateful for the relentless persecution offered by the likes of Hogg, otherwise they’re branded as mad, bad and dangerous to know.’

‘And some of them are.’

‘Hogg’s brand of treatment makes them worse.’

‘Maybe there’s no other kind,’ McKenna pointed out. ‘Damage limitation by containment might be the best we can hope for. Controlling these youngsters is a real problem.’

‘Control’s a bloody article of faith for social workers! Who says the kids are out of control?’

‘The people who look after them.’

‘Exactly.’ Dr Roberts drained his glass. ‘And who decides if you’re mad? The psychiatrists. Definitions dependent on the observer, not the observed. Like with young Ophelia in
Hamlet.
’
He reached for the bottle. ‘Put yourself in Ophelia’s place, adopt her frames of reference, and she’s not mad at all.’

McKenna grinned. ‘Tipple much more, Eifion, and you’ll have a congregation of vapours in your head.’

‘Oh, very witty! Is there anything you haven’t read? I bet you haven’t read about moral architecture, or an ethical manifesto for social workers, have you?’ Dr Roberts asked. ‘Ethics went down the tubes when folk twigged they interfere with our slithery progress through the gut of life.’

‘Can we change the subject?’ McKenna asked. ‘You put weird notions in my head.’

‘What shall we talk about, then? Heads?’

‘Why should I want to discuss heads?’

‘The sexton at Wahring Cemetery in Vienna was offered a small fortune for Beethoven’s head. How much d’you reckon Elis would put up for Arwel’s skull?’

‘Oh, give it a rest!’

‘What’s wrong with wallowing now and then in human misery?’

‘It’s a habit people get to enjoy. Elis loves his misery, according to Rhiannon.’

‘She’s probably jealous of it. You know how strange women can be.’ Dr Roberts frowned. ‘Perhaps she made a Druid sacrifice of Arwel, under the huge old oak you said grows by Bedd y Cor.’

‘Why should she?’

‘I dunno, do I? She’s a woman. Isn’t that reason enough?’

14

Owen Griffiths paced his office. ‘We could arrest everybody, line them up, and say “eeny-meeny-miny-mo” over and over until there’s only one left. That’s roughly how the Druids chose a sacrificial victim. Good God, McKenna! Don’t you know better than to listen to Eifion Roberts in his cups?’

‘We shouldn’t shut our minds to any possibility. He wasn’t drunk, anyway.’

‘I reckon you were both more than three sheets to the wind.’ Griffiths scowled. ‘I hope you’re not seeking comfort in the bottle. I’m not sitting in judgement, but marital break-up leaves no one unscathed. You tore up roots, parcelled up unique memories, so don’t pretend you don’t hurt.’

‘There was nothing of value to tear up or put away,’ McKenna said. ‘Denise is like someone let out of gaol.’

‘Nature gives women resources you wouldn’t imagine, so men can go to war as cannon fodder, and they stay home and rule the world.’

‘Rhiannon has resources, and extraordinary depth,’ McKenna said. ‘She might’ve seen Arwel as an intolerable threat to Elis’s fragile stability.’

‘But she’d have to be psychotic with jealousy to destroy someone he loved so much.’ He stared at McKenna, looking for signs of disintegration. ‘Jack Tuttle couldn’t’ve chosen a worst time to be ill. You look worn out. If Eifion slips up with his scalpel, you don’t hear a squeal of protest from his customers, but if you slip up on this case, there’ll be a howling from here to the English border and back.’

McKenna smiled. ‘What will I do when you retire, Owen?’

‘Miss me, I hope.’

Dewi placed two mugs of tea on McKenna’s desk, and a plate of sandwiches. ‘I saw Elis downstairs, with a polished-looking
bloke in blue pinstripes, carrying a briefcase.’

‘His solicitor, supervising the volunteered tissue samples.’

Dewi selected a cheese and tomato sandwich, and began to eat.

‘Why’ve you brought sandwiches at this time of the morning?’ McKenna asked. ‘Jack Tuttle isn’t here.’

‘I thought the weather might be making you hungry. This wind feels like it’s scouring your innards.’ Dewi shivered. ‘Why’s Elis here instead of kicking up an almighty fuss in court?’

‘Because he knows he’s nothing to fear?’

‘All the more reason. It’s a hellish trespass on his rights.’

‘I think he learned the hard way why he daren’t disobey authority. Have you been to Blodwel?’

Dewi nodded. ‘And had the pleasure of seeing
Herr
Grofaz
again. He was giving the bearded wonder a real tongue-lashing over something. I don’t know how folk put up with him.’ He dropped the little bullet on the desk, and it rolled, coming to rest against McKenna’s ashtray. ‘He had a tantrum with me when I asked for this, glaring and stamping and snarling: “What a fuss about a silly little toy!” Then he stomped to the sitting-room, and I heard the kid wailing, so I reckon Hogg’d snatched it off him, like a big playground bully.’

McKenna examined the scratches and peered at the tiny lettering on the case, then put the bullet in the drawer.

‘Hogg asked if we’d done anything about Elis,’ Dewi said. ‘I told him to route queries to the chief constable.’ Selecting another sandwich, he added, ‘He said we must bear in mind that people are cheaper than paintings or cars or horses, and whereas the rich are vulnerable to their own vices, the poor are vulnerable to the vices of others.’

‘How very subtle and perceptive,’ McKenna commented. ‘I wonder how he’d know that?’

‘He says he’s got a degree from the “University of Life”, which presumably justifies his general ignorance and lack of decency.’

‘Eifion Roberts thinks we react to Hogg and his kind the way people react to us.’ McKenna sipped his tea. ‘He’s become your latest
bête
noire
, Dewi, so watch yourself.’

Dewi grinned. ‘Talking of beasts, black or otherwise, I saw Beti Gloff hopping and hobbling down the road from Salem Village, so I gave her a lift. Mary Ann’s having meals on wheels and a home help ’cos of her rheumatics, so Beti was gabbing
and gobbing about the wonderful social workers helping the old folk.’

‘Social workers might do a lot less damage giving practical help instead of indulging in pseudo-psychiatry.’

‘I can’t imagine Hogg grafting. He’s only fit for spouting crap, fancying himself, and bullying kids. He’d be unemployable elsewhere. We wouldn’t even want him, would we?’

The engine of the old brown Cavalier from the police car pool fired at the fourth try, plumes of exhaust vapour snatched by the wind and torn to shreds. As Janet drove out of the village, the car heater blew cold air and petrol fumes in her face, and she cursed her own stupidity. Her own car, back at the factory, was unlikely to be returned before New Year, and only then if her father paid the bill.

The village street meandered along the valley floor, low stone houses roofed with steely-blue slate on little escarpments above the river. She overtook a green and white double-decker bus and passed a group of teenagers, sporting the shaven-headed caste mark of their type, and wondered if they came from the council estate opposite, or one of the tiny settlements straggling up the mountainside. Satisfied Gary Hughes was not among them, she drove on, fiddling with the heater, thinking of the poverty in her view and unable to imagine its reality. For her, poverty threatened if a whim could not be gratified immediately, or if, she realized with a jolt in her stomach, home comforts could not be replicated elsewhere. Her father’s stance was beyond comprehension, for the continuity of her family was unthinkable with an essential element missing. Even for the Thomases, already beached on the shores of misery, Arwel’s loss pushed hope further out to sea, for however tragic or ramshackle, the family formed the geography of living, her own like a sunlit island surrounded by third-world misery. Carol was a third-world girl, old before her time, trying to make the frayed and rotten ends meet as she watched them move further and further apart.

A tall young figure strode along the narrow verge, curly brown hair ruffled by the wind, hands deep in the pockets of a padded jacket. Janet slowed to a crawl, and leaned over to peer at the figure, the hair, the smooth young face with its rosy cheeks, trying to recall the contours of Gary’s face. The owner looked at her, then away, and walked doggedly on. She trailed at walking speed, passenger window open, the engine
knocking slightly, and the figure suddenly stopped and turned and said, ‘Sod off, you ugly dyke, or I’ll set the coppers on you!’

Standing at the front door of Bedd y Cor, McKenna wondered if Rhiannon would have the heart to decorate her home as Jack bedecked his own. The drive was bare, its gravel raked smooth, the lawns a livid yellowy-green in the stormy light. Dark clouds heavy with snow seethed behind the mountains, spilling huge shadows down the valley, and an icy wind poked fingers in the bronzy creeper, snatching a leaf now and then to toss on the gravel.

Aping her mistress in more than dress, Mari offered him a tight civilized smile, this control, her own article of faith, raking over the urchin heritage as well as yesterday’s distraught face.

‘Madam isn’t in.’ The long-case clock in the hall struck once. ‘Mr Elias doesn’t want to be disturbed.’

Beyond the echo of the clock, behind closed doors, McKenna heard another resonance. ‘Is that him?’

‘He’s been in the music-room since he came back from the police station. He hasn’t had lunch yet.’

‘I won’t disturb him, Mari.’ He took a small envelope from his pocket. ‘Would you give him this?’

She shook the little bullet from its hiding place, and gasped, control ebbing from her face. ‘Where did you get this? Mr Elias gave it to Arwel.’

‘I know.’ McKenna squeezed her trembling hand. ‘That’s why I’ve returned it.’

She snatched her hand away, and shook her head, as she had the day before. ‘You don’t understand! Where did you get it?’

‘One of the boys at Blodwel had it.’

‘Oh, God!’ Mari clutched the bullet, and wailed, all control gone. ‘Who had it? Where did he get it?’

‘Mrs Elis saw it the other night. She asked me to retrieve it.’

‘She doesn’t understand either!’ Mari snapped.

McKenna held her arm. ‘Will you stop talking in riddles?’

She pulled away. ‘Arwel always wore it.’ She examined the bullet, turning it over and over in the palm of her hand. ‘Who broke the pin?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then why don’t you find out?’ Her eyes glittered with rage. ‘I said Arwel
always
wore the pin!
Always
!’ Her voice rose, obliterating the music. ‘Anywhere it couldn’t be seen. It was his secret lucky charm.’ Tears began to fall, the notes of her voice
broken by sobs. ‘He said a silver bullet keeps werewolves at bay, and nothing bad could ever happen while he wore it.’

‘It’s very funny, Janet, even though I don’t much feel like laughing,’ McKenna said.

Janet blushed again. ‘No one’s ever called me a lesbian before.’

‘You shouldn’t kerb-crawl after teenage girls,’ Dewi commented.

‘I didn’t know, did I?’ Janet snapped. ‘I thought it was Gary.’

‘Gary’s not daft enough to walk round in broad daylight,’ Dewi said. ‘He lies doggo ’til the dead of night, then creeps out like a wolf on the prowl. Want to bet he’s tearing sheep apart before long?’

‘Stop baiting Janet,’ McKenna said. ‘You could’ve made the same mistake.’

Dewi grinned. ‘But she wouldn’t’ve called me an ugly dyke!’

Janet looked at him. ‘Quite a few names for you come to mind, and none of them very flattering.’

Darkness from the mountains already washed the streets of Caernarfon when McKenna parked on the quay beneath the castle walls. He climbed the steep short hill below Queen Eleanor’s Gate, and walked across Castle Square to the dingy little shop where Carol Thomas plied the wares of others. Wind swirled around him, caught between the buildings, slapping litter, and he felt the sting of sleety rain on his face.

‘She’s not in today.’ The youth in Carol’s place gazed blankly at shelves of clocks, all set to a different time. ‘She’ll be in Monday, I think.’ He frowned. ‘There’s a funeral, isn’t there? I’m not sure when.’

Retrieving his car, McKenna drove to the council estate, where children sat on walls, smoking and drinking from cans, or trailed like refugees in groups and braces up and down the ill-lit dirty streets, a whole generation displaced. Drawing into the kerb by the broken gate, behind a shiny new car which looked vaguely familiar, he thought the same internal collapse must threaten here as any inner city, and as a lone girl passed him on the pavement, eyes averted, he decided children were insufficiently valued for their impact on the world to be absorbed.

Washing snapped on the line at the side of the house, one leg of Tom Thomas’s pyjama trousers screwed up inside itself like
an amputee’s. Dim light shone behind thin curtains drawn at the window of the front parlour. Carol opened the door, smells of stale tobacco and soot eddying in the frosty darkness.

‘Mam and Dad are out.’ She looked over McKenna’s shoulder, and lifted her eyes to the sky.

‘Will they be long?’

She shivered. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Can I come in? It’s cold. You shouldn’t stand at the door.’

She took him to the back parlour, where a new layer of dirt sat upon the old, sooty dust furring the windowledge and skirting-board and furniture, and stood before the meagre fire, her hands clenched. Time had wrought swift change, McKenna thought, since he last saw her, changing the contours of her body, pulling her clothes awry. Her eyes held a strange expression, soft and dreamy.