This Thing of Darkness (4 page)

6

The next day. Tuesday.

I did interview Lockwood. Alone. Jon, coldly furious with me, checked the system, realised the entrepreneurial nature of our little excursion and flatly refused to have anything further to do with it.

All the same, I got what I wanted. Although she was lawyered up, there are times when that helps. I basically promised the lawyer, upfront, that if I got a truthful account of what happened, we would take no further action against his client. He told her to tell the full truth, and she, I think, complied.

Her story ran as follows. The pictures were stolen. Not by her. Not, in her opinion, by any member of her staff. She offered no explanation for how they were taken. The pictures were insured through an insurance company then owned by her then-husband. The company paid up in the regular way. Some months later, the now-divorced husband called up and said that his company had received an offer of the stolen work. If it was OK with her, he would go ahead and repurchase them. She said yes. A couple of weeks later, the pictures came back and she repaid the cash she’d received from the insurance company.

‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘That’s literally all.’

I asked her if she would be OK with me making a further visit to the house, ‘so we can potentially rule out any member of your staff.’

She said, yes, OK, she supposed so.

I finished the interview that night on a blast of positive feeling. Elation, excitement, something like that. The sort of mood which could have been quickly killed by a morning of data entry, but Ifor, bless him, is feeling headachey and reluctant to drive, so I get to spend my morning tootling up and down between Cathays, the crime scene and the lab in Bridgend. That still doesn’t make me part of the investigation – my only job is to log and transport bagged-up evidence samples – but at least I get to see the crime scene, get a feel for the crime.

The bit of riverside where the poor woman was left is scrubby and unwelcoming. Weak soil, low trees and the first fistfuls of marram grass, spiky and tough. A bad place to find yourself, beaten and violated. Blood on your knees, your mouth, your arms, your thighs, and no way back to the life you once had. No way back to the person you once were.

I wonder if I’ll ever meet the victim. If exhibits officers ever do.

I’m guessing no.

I wonder if Jackson will hear about my little escapade with Jon Breakell yesterday.

I’m guessing yes.

At one thirty, I’m done with my tootling around and I go to the print room to collect my picture of Kirsty Emmett.

It’s a wonderful image. Emmett’s shellshocked eyes and straggled hair, caught in blank inexpressive flash. I enter the dungeon with Emmett’s picture in my hand, Ifor’s stupid waterfall picture in my line of vision. And just stand there, gaping, gripped by a sudden uncertainty about whether I can manage this. Whether I can even get through the afternoon.

I ask Ifor where he’s got to with the data entry, hoping he’d have solid progress to report, but he tells me he’s been busy with SOCOs, or the lab. He’s not quite clear, but either way not a lot has been done. We work solidly all afternoon.

Cataloguing.

Collecting data.

Checking data.

Entering data.

Ifor looks over my shoulder, watching me at the HOLMES terminal. His mouth moves, but says nothing.

Exhibit code:
LES
-0903-122.

Exhibit description: Hair, suspected canine.

Collected: 18 March, 10.32.

Collecting officer: Kyle Bransby,
SOCO
.

Location: Layby, east side, code 10024.

Close-up photo(s): none.

Location photo(s): references
LES
-0903AM-100,
LES
-0903AM-102,
LES
-0903AM-104,
LES
-0903AM-108.

Bagged on site: Yes.

Log of collecting officer’s signature: Yes.

Special evidence preservation techniques used: none required.

Notes on condition: None.

Transport from crime scene: 18 March, 15.41.

Transport officer:
DC
Ifor Dawes (
EO
).

Log of transport officer’s signature: yes.

Exhibit transported to:
EO
storeroom, Cathays.

Index number:
HSC
-
LES
-0903-122.

Storage type: ambient.

Receipt confirmation: Yes.

I say, ‘We could get a really huge sound system in here. Play music really loud.’

Ifor says, ‘I don’t think so,’ and queries one of my location photo references.

I call up the photo in question and he says, ‘Oh yes.’

At three, I have a cigarette.

At four, I discover that if I press on the toes of my right foot hard with the heel of my left, I can cause myself enough pain that I notice it, even though I’m feeling spacey. I press as hard as I can until my leg gets tired. Then rest for fifteen minutes and do it again.

At five fifteen, I all but run from the building. Or would run, except that my foot is now quite painful and I have to try to keep my weight away from the toes, which isn’t easy.

Drive out to the Pengam Road. Go the long way round so I can pass the site where Kirsty Emmett was dumped. The van in which she was raped: that would give us everything. Owner ID, forensics, everything. If we found the van, we’d close the case in a matter of days.

But no van.

Drive on to a warehouse-style building which houses an indoor climbing wall, its interior all looming plywood walls and coloured fibreglass holds. The walls bulge inwards as they rise, the perspective troubling.

There are a couple of dozen people here, perhaps. Teens and twenties for the most part. A guy with short ginger hair and one earring has his top off. He’s attempting to climb a bit of abruptly sloping wall, but keeps falling off and muttering. His upper body looks like an anatomical drawing, sharply sculpted. A pattern of moving shadows.

A little café serves tea, coffee, basic hot food.

I get peppermint tea and an energy bar.

As I’m finding a seat, free of sweaty shoes, chalk, and climbing paraphernalia, a man bounds up to me. About my age. Six foot. Longish, blondish hair. A yellow T-shirt advertising some music thing and baggy shorts, the kind that has pockets on the thighs.

‘Fiona, right? I’m Mike. Hold on, grab a seat, I’ll join you.’

He bounds away. Gets a couple of bananas and a bottle of water. On the way back, he has a few words with Ginger One-Earring Guy, then slots himself into the seat opposite me.

‘Your first time here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you have gear? I can lend you some.’

There’s a smell in the space that’s mostly sweat, I suppose. A gym smell. I don’t go to the gym often, but when I do, I tend to do the more girly things. Cross-training. Some low-intensity aerobic things. Very occasionally the kind of classes that only prove to me how unfit I am. The smell here is more masculine, less feminine, less cross-cut with shampoo and body lotions and scented conditioners. But there’s also something outdoorsy about the smells here. Like rain on a wet sheepdog. Or that smell that tents get: damp socks and vegetation. Synthetic fabric under sunshine.

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You should try it, you know. One of those things, you don’t know whether you like it till you try.’

I think, everything is like that, isn’t it? Except that with me, I don’t always know even after I’ve tried it.

I say, ‘I think I’ve come to you with a stupid question.’

‘Fire away. I can handle stupid.’

‘I was going to ask you whether it’s possible to climb a sheer wall. But looking at all this, I can see it isn’t. You need holds.’

‘Yes, true, but sometimes holds don’t look like holds.’

Mike – Mike Haston – is the president of some Cardiff climbing club. This felt like a long shot before and a longer shot now I’m here. But I get out my iPad and show him photos of Plas Du.

‘This is the wall. It’s that window.’

He takes a look. Not just at one photo, but several. Zooming in when he needs to.

‘OK. So what’s the question?’

‘Could you – could anyone here – climb that wall to the window?’

‘Straight up, you mean? No. Not unless there’s a lot more there than I can see.’

‘There isn’t.’

‘Then no.’

I do my well-gosh-it-
was
-a-stupid-question face. One that gets plenty of use.

Mike says, ‘And it has to be straight up, right?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, it would be OK to use the corner?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then yes. I mean, you never know until you’re actually there. But the corner itself looks straightforward.’

He shows me what he means on one of the pictures. The stones – the quoins – which form the actual corner of the house project very slightly from the wall proper. An inch perhaps, no more, and all the joints chamfered in at about forty-five degrees. It’s the kind of stonework you get on public buildings, or on Georgian mansions desperate to advertise their costliness.

‘You could climb that?’ I ask.

‘
You
could probably climb it. I mean, not straight away, but spend a few sessions in here first, and . . .’ He shrugs. ‘It’s mostly just body shape.’

‘But that wouldn’t get me to the window.’

‘No, but then you’ve got this thing.’ His finger traces the line of a cornice, or sill, that runs the width of the wall, meeting the very top of the window opening along the way. He tries to get the picture in super-close-up, but it just dissolves into pixels. ‘You don’t have any idea of the actual profile, do you? I mean, in the end, it depends on whether there’s a real hold there or not.’

I don’t know. I haven’t thought to look. Nor any of my police colleagues, I’m betting.

I say, ‘Mike, you know what would be incredibly helpful . . .?’

He’s torn. Casts a longing look at the bit of overhanging wall, which his uni-earringed buddy has finally mastered.

‘This house, whereabouts is it?’

I give the name of the village, adding, ‘Just outside Llantwit.’

Mike hesitates, looks at his watch. It’s still the right side of six o’clock. Mike calls his friend. ‘Hey, Ginger Boy, what say we go and do some real climbing?’

Ginger Boy – Rhod, is how he introduces himself – assents reluctantly to Mike’s plan, which is, I think, to take a look at Plas Du, then go on to a nearby sea cliff.

We’re there by half-six. Daylight the colour of old washcloths, boiled and grey.

No one present, though I do knock first, the way we’re meant to.

Rhod stands around by the corner of the house, looking grumpy. He’s wearing baggy trousers and an oversized fleece, which makes him look underweight somehow, like those New Army recruits who were sent to the trenches in 1916. Sent to the trenches, then comprehensively slaughtered.

Rhod probably doesn’t know he looks like cannon-fodder, though, and just spreads an old beach towel under the corner. Shoes and socks off. Slips on some stinky-looking rock shoes. Something about the stonework displeases him and he rubs at the lichen with an old toothbrush taken from a loop on his chalk bag.

Mike gets some luridly coloured foam mats from his car. Arranges them against a possible fall.

When Mike is ready, Rhod stops picking at the lichen and swings onto the corner. Toes on the horizontal chamfers, fingers round the vertical edge of the block on the wall proper. He hangs his body away from his fingers, as though hinged.

Then – I don’t know – he simply pads up the wall. He doesn’t move particularly fast. Checks holds before using them. He still doesn’t like the bits of lichen and carries his toothbrush in his mouth, scraping away at the horizontals wherever they’re more weathered. But the stone gets cleaner as it gets higher and his progress becomes more fluent.

It wouldn’t even be true to say that he moves as though weightless. The opposite really: this whole game is a balance of weights and forces. But there’s something sprung in the way he ascends, as though there’s always a surplus of power, should he need it. Even the way he scrubs discontentedly at the chamfers is an advertisement of his confidence. The strength he keeps in reserve.

Two thirds of the way up, he asks Mike to adjust the matting, then climbs the last eight or ten feet to the cornice.

He examines it, in the sad light of a rainy spring. Makes no comment. Just adjusts his weight again, down-climbs a dozen feet or so, then jumps the short remaining distance to the mat.

‘Nothing there. Not really. Like the stone has this little matchstick edge along the top, kind of Llanberis slate style, but . . .’ He shrugs in a way which I interpret as meaning, ‘Not enough to tempt me to out on it, and not enough to tempt anyone sane.’

From below, I can see the cornice has a kind of rounded bit, a bulge, that runs the full width of the wall. I ask about that, but Rhod just shakes his head, and says, ‘No, it’s nothing.’