‘To hell with that. I’m going to arrest him for murder.’
Sara would know that a warrant wouldn’t be needed in those circumstances and he broke into a jog as he made for the property, Sara in tow.
He pressed the bell but didn’t hear any sound from inside so he tried again, pressing his face nearer the glass panel in the upper part of the door. Satisfied the bell wasn’t working, he thumped with a fist.
He listened intently but he heard nothing. Sara frowned.
‘Glyn Talbot,’ Drake bellowed.
Nothing.
‘Let’s go round the back.’
At the end of the terrace Drake found a narrow path leading towards the rear of the gardens. He hoped another path would cross the rear garden of each house. He was disappointed – it ran out into a piece of scrub wasteland. Then he looked over and saw the fencing marking out the rear garden of Talbot’s property. It meant scrambling over rough earth with thick weeds and knee-high gorse bushes. He set off, discarding his usual worries about damaging his brogues or dirtying his clothes. He had a killer to catch.
Sara kept up with him and eventually they reached the boundary fence of Talbot’s garden. ‘I can’t see anybody inside.’ Sara peered into the downstairs window.
In one corner Drake found a post rotten with age; he kicked it onto the ground and flattened the ineffective chicken wire stapled to it just enough to allow them to step over. He waved at Sara for her to go first and she manoeuvred carefully over the fence before he did likewise. They hurried for the back door.
Drake tried it: locked.
‘It seems almost pointless locking the door when it’s so difficult getting access to the rear,’ Sara said, looking up at the upstairs windows. She turned to scan the garden and the makeshift slabs that surrounded a shed.
If Talbot was an obsessive he probably left a key outside, somewhere safe. Drake tipped over various flowerpots, mostly plastic, brittle with age. Sara rejoined him. ‘The shed is full of crap – garden tools, a bike and some old chairs.’
‘He might have left a key somewhere.’ Among the rubbish littered around Drake noticed a wooden crate with slots for bottles; he had seen the same sort of thing in Harry Jones’s antique shop with a fancy price tag attached to it. He moved it to one side and under one corner was a rusty key. ‘Yes,’ Drake shouted, picking up the key like a prized possession and waving it in the air at Sara.
Seconds later they were inside Glyn Talbot’s decrepit kitchen. It had a putrid smell of stagnant water as well as the same mothballs from their first visit.
‘Glyn,’ Drake yelled, not expecting a reply.
‘This place stinks. Where the hell could he be?’ Sara said.
Both downstairs rooms had furniture fit only for a bonfire.
It didn’t take Drake and Sara long to go through the various cabinets, completing a cursory examination for the firearm they hoped to unearth.
They climbed the stairs. The bathroom hadn’t been changed since the 1940s.
The wardrobe and cupboards in the rear room were all empty so they turned their attention to the larger room at the front. Glyn Talbot’s clothes hanging in the wardrobe were cheap and old. The large, ancient furniture made the rooms feel small. But there was no sign of any Second World War revolver and back in the sitting room downstairs Drake began to think this was all a foolish mistake. Perhaps Glyn was simply an eccentric loner. Perhaps it was absurd to think of him as a killer.
He wrote articles for a local newspaper few people ever read.
Then it struck Drake that he must have a computer, or at the very least a desk and paperwork. He turned to Sara. ‘He’s got another house. There’s no evidence here of someone who writes historical articles. No computer, no printer, not even a shred of paper.’
‘How do you know he’s got another property?’
Drake stared at one of the clocks in the display cabinet he had seen on their first visit. Even his untrained eye could read the German lettering on its face.
‘Gerald Pugh told me. That’s where we’re going next.’
Chapter 37
‘Good morning, Inspector.’ Manon wore an apron and struck a busy, domestic tone. She gave Sara a quizzical smile. ‘Annie not with you this morning?’
‘I need to speak to Gerald.’
‘It sounds serious. You had better come in.’
Drake followed Manon through into the same room where he had spoken to Gerald the night before. The TV was blaring with a property relocation programme. Gerald seemed to be fast asleep, a full mug of tea on the table by his side.
‘Dad, wake up. That policeman is here again.’
As Gerald stirred Drake composed exactly in his mind how to ask for the information he needed. The old man blinked a few times before fixing his gaze on Drake and then, frowning, on Sara.
‘Someone different with you today,’ Gerald said before raising his voice. ‘Manon, put the kettle on.’
Drake shook his head. ‘Gerald, I’m really sorry but I can’t stay. I’m trying to contact Glyn Talbot and when we spoke last night you mentioned he had kept his grandparents’ house. Do you have that address?’
‘Have you tried Glyn at home?’
Drake’s body tensed, his chest tightened. He could hear Superintendent Price’s criticisms about wasting valuable police time and that it had been a wild goose chase to track Glyn Talbot when the killer was already safely in custody.
‘He’s not there.’
‘He’s probably in the library.’
Manon appeared in the doorway.
‘Annie would love a cup of tea.’ Gerald smiled at Sara. ‘And one for the inspector too.’
Drake turned to Manon, shaking his head in a kindly fashion before turning back to Gerald. ‘I’ll come back again, and you can tell me all about Llanberis from years ago. But today it’s really important that I contact Glyn Talbot. Have you got that address?’
Gerald looked disappointed. Drake could imagine how he valued company. He reached over and held Gerald’s bony arm. ‘You might even remember my grandfather – he was a farmer nearby. I do hope you can help me with that address I need.’
Manon cajoled her father until eventually they were able to give Drake an address. He couldn’t get out of the place soon enough and almost ran to his car, Sara following in his slipstream. They slammed the car doors; Drake accelerated away from Gerald Pugh’s home and up the side of the valley.
Nant y Mynydd was a detached property a little way back from the road. The front garden was a collection of random slabs of stone. Curtains were drawn tightly over the upstairs windows. The first owners must have thought the place salubrious compared to the nearby run-of-the-mill terraces, Drake thought.
Sara looked up at the property after leaving the car. ‘It looks empty, boss.’
A man pushed a woman in a wheelchair into the rear of a disabled access vehicle outside one of the nearest properties. They left the car and Drake joined Sara on the pavement as traffic passed him heading down into the village. Drake steeled himself for what was waiting for them inside.
‘Who was Annie?’ Sara said.
‘She’s a historian I met. She introduced me to Gerald Pugh.’ Drake made it sound very formal.
‘I see.’ Sara’s reply implied she read far more into Drake’s response than he had intended.
This time the front doorbell worked; he heard its chimes echoing inside. But as at Glyn Talbot’s other property, there was nobody home. He didn’t bother with banging on the door; he made straight for the gate to the rear he had noticed earlier.
He tried the handle of the rear door. Locked.
Lifting the various pots and loose slabs nearby didn’t turn up the key as they hoped. Sara and Drake peered into the window. ‘It looks deserted, boss.’
‘Let’s hope Gerald Pugh gave us the right address.’ Drake resumed his search for the back-door key. He imagined himself living in this close-knit community. Burglaries of properties like this wouldn’
t be commonplace. People knew each other, trusted each other. Drake could recall his grandparents leaving their front door open during the day even when they were working the fields or visiting a local shop. He surveyed the rear. At the far end there was an old black wheelie bin and a small brown composting caddie. He moved the black bin out of the way and upturned the smaller compost bin, which rewarded him with the sight of a key duct-taped to its base.
Moments later they were inside the kitchen.
‘Glyn,’ Drake shouted.
They stood for a moment. There was no reply nor the sound of any movement.
To his right an old Belfast sink stood on a plinth, and next to it was an ancient electric cooker rusty with age. Sara flicked open a tall larder cupboard. ‘Nobody has used these cupboards for years.’
Drake was the first to push open the door into a reception room at the rear and he did a double-take as he saw two mannequins standing in one corner. One dressed in khaki like an actor from a British Second World War movie and the second his German equivalent.
‘That’s spooky,’ Sara said, joining Drake.
On the table in front of them was a laptop and a printer attached to it.
Against one wall was a bank of shelving units converted into a makeshift library. Drake noticed books on Welsh history, the development of slate mining and several about military history. ‘This is where he writes his articles,’ Drake said.
In the front room a Bakelite radio stood on an oak veneered cabinet and on a side table alongside a wing chair was a black rotary telephone. A collection of newspapers laid out as a fan on the coffee table gave the room an authentic 1940s feel. Drake read the headline of the first about the progress of the Allied troops in Europe.
‘Let’s see what’s upstairs,’ Drake said, glancing at his watch, conscious time was marching on.
He called out Glyn’s name: again, no reply.
The carpet on the risers had worn thin and the handrail was loose as Drake and Sara made their way upstairs. They glanced inside the bathroom: it was much the same as they had seen earlier in Talbot’s property. Drake and Sara fumbled for their mobiles and found the torch function that illuminated the rear bedroom. Drake fingered a towel, dry and thin from countless washings, lying at the bottom of the bed as though it were ready for a visitor.
‘Wardrobe’s empty, boss.’
Drake heaved out the drawers from an ancient chest, each emptying a musty wooden smell into the room.
They entered the first of the rooms overlooking the front of the property. A corkboard covered the entirety of the wall to their right. Drake and Sara ran the light from their telephones along the contents.
‘This is all stuff about the bomb storage facility,’ Sara said.
‘You’d better open the blinds.’
Morning sunshine poured into the room and Sara and Drake squinted until their eyes became accustomed. They turned back to the massive selection of clippings, newspaper articles, reports, and photographs that made the patchwork of paper testament to one man’s obsession.
‘He must be completely mad,’ Sara said.
Drake nodded and snapped on a pair of latex gloves once he noticed a report from a company called DNA Direct stored carefully in a plastic pocket pinned to the far end of the corkboard. Drake suspected what the report was going to tell him but when he read formal confirmation that Glyn Talbot could not have been Matthew Talbot’s father he knew he had been right.
‘What is that, boss?’
‘What I suspected all along. Matthew Talbot isn’t Glyn Talbot’s son.’
An old map cabinet was the only piece of furniture in the room. Drake struggled with the top drawer as it caught. Eventually he yanked it out and stared down at maps of Llanberis and details about the old workings at Glyn Rhonwy.
Sara stood by his side as he opened the second and third drawers, revealing much the same contents as the first.
The fourth slid open more easily than the rest.
Drake gazed down in amazement at its contents.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Sara said.
Two pistols had pride of place on individual clean muslin cloths. Both looked like museum pieces. A label was attached to both. Drake found a ballpoint in his pocket and gently moved one so that he could see the writing. It had the words Dornier Do 17 Fliegender Bleistift and a date, May 1943, written in a neat hand. The second had a similar label, but the number and date were different.
What immediately worried Drake was the fact that between both pistols there was a space, empty apart from another piece of yellow muslin cloth and a label laid on top of it with the same details as the others – there was a third pistol.
Behind the pistols were tin cases with German stencilling and various logbooks kept neatly as though they were exhibits in a museum.
‘We need to arrest him, boss.’
‘We need to find him.’
Drake reached for his mobile and called Price.
‘Talbot has a firearm. Lives are at risk. We have evidence that Glyn Talbot is in possession of illegal firearms and that he had motive to kill Harry Jones and Heulwen Beard. I’m going to arrest him for murder.’
Price paused; Drake could hear his breathing.
‘And one more thing, sir. I need authorisation for an armed response unit.’
‘Of course. Ian, catch this madman.’
Chapter 38
‘Where the hell would Maldwyn and Sioned have gone?’ Drake leaned on his Mondeo and scrolled through his contacts for Winder’s number.
Sara made no reply. He wasn’t expecting her to.
She fumbled with something from the compartment in the passenger door. She offered Drake a can of soft drink and half a chocolate bar. He realised he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for hours. He took half in one hit and ate the snack quickly.
‘If the halfway house café didn’t offer the security Maldwyn needed they must be hiding somewhere else, somewhere more secure,’ Drake said, feeling the beneficial effect of the sugar hit his system.
‘I didn’t get much out of the Owen family about his friends,’ Sara said.
Drake called Winder. ‘No change, boss. I’m in the army museum and they haven’t seen Talbot since his last visit. Luned is down in the local library. He hasn’t been seen there either. He mentioned visiting the library in the university so I’m off there now.’
‘And Muller and Fiona Jones?’ Drake held his breath.
‘The Mullers haven’t moved and Fiona arrived back in the house half an hour ago.’
Drake let out a long breath. ‘Thanks, Gareth.’
Drake straightened. ‘Fiona Jones is back home now. Assuming I am correct that Maldwyn is the only surviving eyewitness to Heulwen’s murder by Talbot then Talbot will want Maldwyn dead. And if Talbot hasn’t found him already Maldwyn must be hiding somewhere, keeping Sioned safe as well.’
‘I’ll try calling some of his friends,’ Sara said.
Drake pulled open the car door. ‘In the meantime we go back and see the Owen family.’
By the time Drake reached the main road leading to Llanberis Sara had spoken to three of Maldwyn’s friends. She shook her head after finishing each call. ‘No luck, boss.’
Drake found himself in a queue behind a minibus hauling a trolley full of kayaks. There was no way he could overtake. He slowed, allowing a reasonable distance between him and the next car.
‘What does Maldwyn do for a living?’
‘He’s a joiner for a building company. There was no explanation for his absence this morning.’
Drake’s mind ran through the alternatives for how Maldwyn might protect himself and Sioned. On the opposite side of the road a builder’s merchant’s lorry craned a palette of blocks into a nearby building site. The driver had a long ponytail and the operation took Drake’s gaze as an idea formed in his mind.
‘Get hold of one of his workmates. Find out where they were working this week.’
Sara did as she was told and moments
later she was shouting into the mobile telephone. When he heard her ask ‘where are you?’, and repeated back the name Fox and Hounds, he changed down into third gear, tried to spot an opening to overtake but they were almost into the village so he didn’t bother.
‘I take it one of his pals is in the pub.’
Sara nodded. ‘I’m not sure you’ll get much sense from them. It’s a Friday afternoon, after all.’
After parking Drake and Sara trotted over to the pub. ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ by Johnny Cash played a fraction too loudly and Drake wondered if Talbot had watched any of his victims die. Five men in their early twenties gathered around a small, round table packed with half-empty pint glasses.
Sara went up to them. ‘Which one of you is Scott?’
‘That’s me, love.’ He gave her lascivious wink after scanning her twice, very slowly.
Bad start, Drake thought.
‘Outside, smartarse,’ Sara said.
They stopped on the porch area.
Sara stood close enough to Scott for him to smell her breath. She pushed her warrant card into his face and poked him in the chest with a forefinger. ‘Don’t try and be clever. I need to know where Maldwyn was working this week.’
Scott stared at Sara. Drake could see the conflicting immature emotions in his face. He wanted to challenge Sara but in the end decided to cooperate.
‘We were working on a new factory on the industrial estate. Clearing out old rubbish. Mal and me are both joiners – we shouldn’t be doing crap like that.’
‘And the week before,’ Drake said.
‘Dunno. I wasn’t working with Mal.’
Sara continued. ‘So who can tell us where he was working?’
‘Try Jack, the foreman.’ Scott made to push past Sara.
‘Not so fast. We need a contact number for Jack.’
Scott gave an exaggerated sigh, plunged a hand into a pocket and scrolled through his mobile. Then he dictated a number. ‘Can I go now? It’s Friday night, I want to get pissed.’
Drake made the call.
‘Detective Inspector Drake. One of your joiners Maldwyn Owen has disappeared and his life may be in danger. He could be holed up in one of the empty properties where he has been working. I need details of all the barely habitable properties where he has been working.’
A Time to Kill Page 26