by Rhys Bowen
“It’s just like the real thing, Tref. It’s lovely, just. I’m very proud of you. One day when we’re in Hollywood, I’ll let you paint the walls in my mansion and everyone will want one of your paintings. You’ll probably be more famous as a painter than I will as a film star.”
I laughed. “Get away with you. Such big ideas.”
She started dancing around. “But we have our ticket out of here now. Don’t you see? All we have to do is wait for this stupid war to end and then we’re away from this place for good.”
But the stupid war didn’t look as if it was going to end soon. The news on the radio was never good. More cities bombed, the London docks set on fire, our troops battling Rommel in the African desert. More telegrams bearing bad news to cottages in Blenau. My own time was getting closer. I tried not to think about it. I tried not to think about the painting and the row there would be when they discovered my copy. I tried not to think about Ginger with all those servicemen all day. The trouble was that I was working alone down a dark mine most of my life and all you do down there is think.
Chapter 21
The rain had eased slightly by the time the train returned, its piercing whistle echoing from clouddraped crags and invisible valleys. Evan stood impatiently behind the engine driver all the way down to Porthmadog, listening to the old man sounding off about hooligans and day trippers who ripped his seats to pieces and even tried to scratch their initials on the polished flanks of his beloved engines.
When the train finally stopped, the old man shook his hand. “Nice to have a bit of company for a change, I must say,” he said. “Sorry if it was a wasted ride for you, but I enjoyed it. Like I said—your man was leaning too far out as we went around a bend. Lucky to be alive, if you ask me. We’ve had cameras and handbags and kiddies’ dolls fall out before now and they usually end up a thousand feet below.”
Evan decided not to tell him that Grantley hadn’t been so lucky the second time around. He waited until the old man had gone back into the cafeteria before he tested his theory on the railway carriage. It worked exactly as he had thought.
His mind was racing as he made his way across the car park to his car. If Howard Bauer really had engineered Grantley’s death—why did he do it? Grantley and Howard had supposedly hardly known each other. Grantley had been Howard’s intern in the hopes of learning more about the business. Howard had agreed to direct this movie to do Grantley a favor. There was something wrong with the story, but Evan wasn’t sure how he was going to find out what it was. Were Howard and Grantley connected in another way altogether? Was this another gay relationship gone sour? And yet Howard had mentioned multiple wives and alimony complaints. Gay men married, but did they marry several times? So could it be something to do with drugs? Howard had asked if Grantley’s death was an overdose. Had he suspected that Grantley abused some kind of substance? Was he somehow linked in a chain of supplier, pusher, user?
Evan shook his head. There was no way he could pursue a broader inquiry like this without getting into serious trouble. He’d have to hand over the piece of folded paper to Sergeant Watkins and let him follow up on it while Evan went back to the village and Mrs. Powell-Jones.
Damn. He slammed the car door behind him, none too gently.
“You are feeling sorry for yourself, aren’t you, boyo?” he said out loud. “Must be the weather. And the important thing is that the killer is found. It doesn’t matter one bloody bit who finds him.” Having given himself this pep talk, he drove out of the car park and through the center of Porthmadog. The High Street was lacking its normal bustle, due to the rain. Women with head scarves, plastic macs, and shopping bags darted across the street and into the shelter of another shop, sometimes dragging reluctant toddlers behind them. Suddenly, another figure came out of the post office, stopped to turn up his collar and jam his beret more firmly onto his head before he walked out into the storm.
Without a second’s hesitation, Evan pulled over to the curb and wound down a window. “Hello, Howard. Going somewhere? Like a lift?”
Howard Bauer’s face lit up in recognition. “Are you driving back to the village? Boy, what a stroke of luck. I thought I’d have to wait for a bus.”
He opened the passenger door and climbed in. “Filthy weather. Is it often like this?”
“Most of the time,” Evan said. He grinned as he put the car into gear. “So what were you doing in Porthmadog?”
“I got a little stir-crazy up there,” Howard said. “I mean, it’s a nice place, that Everest Inn, but dead—like a morgue. So when the bellhop said he was driving down to Porthmadog, I asked if I could ride along. Not that there’s anything down here, is there?”
“What were you hoping for?” Evan asked.
“I don’t know. Movie theater? Internet café?”
“There are movie theaters in Bangor and Colwyn Bay, but I don’t think there’s an Internet café anywhere in North Wales yet.”
“Too bad. My damn roving feature won’t work for some reason. I’ve been without e-mail since I got here. It’s driving me mad, not being connected to the outside world.” He looked at Evan. “How can you stand it, cooped up in a dump like this?”
“Most of the time I stand it pretty well,” Evan said. “I don’t feel cooped up. Just sometimes.”
Howard shook his head. “I’m an L.A. kind of guy. I’m lost without my car and my freedom. How much longer do you think we’ll have to stick around here? I’d just as soon scrap the whole damn project and go home. It was Grantley’s thing after all, not mine.”
“Until you’re ruled out as a suspect, I should think,” Evan said, trying to sense some reaction from the man beside him. Be sensible, he told himself. If you are sitting beside a man who has killed, you’re at a distinct disadvantage. You have two hands on the wheel and a winding road to contend with. And if he really did kill Grantley, then he has to be damned strong.
Evan glanced at Howard’s hands. They were artistic, with long, white fingers. There was a signet ring on his little finger. His nails were immaculate. Were those the hands of a strangler? He forced himself to take long, deep breaths. Play it easy. Don’t jeopardize the investigation by shooting your mouth off, boyo. But he was bursting with curiosity. Howard Bauer just didn’t add up. Were those the hands of a man who enjoyed roughing it in the African bush? Who was famed for his tough documentaries of tribal warfare?
The road had passed through the last of the coastal settlements and was entering the narrow pass where the river Glaslyn flowed between tall cliffs. It was usually a somber place. Today, with the rain dripping from oak trees and running down the walls of rock, it felt overwhelmingly melancholy.
“So what were you doing down here today?” Howard asked pleasantly. “Getting some shopping done on your day off?”
“No, I went for a train ride,” Evan said. “You know, the little train up the mountain. The driver is an old friend of mine. I like keeping him company from time to time, especially on days like this when he has no passengers. He was glad of company today, I can tell you. Showed me exactly where that accident happened—you know, when Grantley fell out of the train. Lucky, wasn’t he? A few more inches to the right, and he’d have been a goner.”
He turned to look at Howard. The latter’s face was ashen. “Yeah. Damned lucky,” he said.
“My friend the engine driver reckoned there was something fishy about the whole thing. He says he’s never known a door to come flying open like that before. But I think I have to disagree with him. Some of those catches don’t really lock properly unless you slam them really hard—and if something was wedged into the lock—something as simple as a piece of paper … .” He glanced at Howard again. “I notice you’re not carrying your pad with you today, Howard. Don’t you need to make any more notes, or is it all used up?”
A big shuddering sigh went through Howard Bauer. “Oh my God. You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?”
“About Grantley falling out of t
hat train. I never really thought—I mean, it was just a crazy idea. I don’t know what made me do it. I never thought it would really work and then it did. He came flying out, like a rag doll. Oh my God!”
They emerged from the gloom of the pass. The village of Beddgelert was ahead of them. Evan began to breathe more easily. Here was potential help if needed.
“Why did you do it, Howard?” he asked.
Howard Bauer had buried his face in his hands. “It seemed like too good a chance to be missed,” he said. “I don’t know. I must have been crazy. I’ve never hurt anybody in my life. I just saw a chance to get him off my back and I took it. I’ve been sick with worry ever since, reliving it over and over again until I thought I’d go mad.”
“Why did you need to get Grantley off your back?” Evan asked quietly. They were in the center of the village now, driving between solid gray houses, over a sturdy stone bridge. “Was it something to do with drugs? Was he supplying you … . ?”
Howard laughed. “Drugs? No, nothing like that. Scotch is good enough for me. He was just an annoying little bastard. You saw him. If you must know, he was bugging the shit out of me. I have no idea why I ever said I’d do his stupid little movie. The moment I got here, I knew it was a mistake. So when I saw that that door didn’t shut properly, the idea came into my mind. I thought, If he falls out of the damned train, he’ll hurt himself and we can stop shooting and I can go home. They were all busy taking pictures of the locomotive. I folded up a piece of paper and jammed it into the lock to make sure it didn’t shut all the way. Then I got in the next compartment. I seriously never thought it would work. I don’t know what had gotten into me.”
“But it did work,” Evan said. “He almost died. Were you disappointed, Howard, that you hadn’t finished him off? Did you follow him up to the mine to complete the job?”
Howard shot him a look of horror. “Me? You think that was me? Jesus, there’s no way I could ever strangle anybody. I hate violence. I abhor it.”
“And yet you shot a famous movie about violence.”
“Oh yes. That. I wanted to show the evil of violence. The terrible destruction to lives.”
They had left the village and the road had begun to climb again, this time up the Nant Gwynant Pass to the junction at the crest.
“What I don’t get,” Evan said, “is why you didn’t just walk out if he was bugging you. You weren’t under any kind of contract, were you? You said you were just doing him a favor. Why were you doing him a favor in the first place if you found him so annoying? And why didn’t you just walk away if he got too much for you?”
“It’s a long story,” Howard said. “Let’s say it was part of the complicated relationship I had with Grantley—and nothing whatever to do with his death, okay? Can we leave it at that?”
“For the time being,” Evan said. So it looked as if Howard and Grantley were in some kind of relationship that had nothing to do with mentor and pupil after all. Was there anyone in this case who had not been romantically involved with Grantley Smith?
Now I’d finished the copy, a couple of small problems remained. I had to get the copy into the frame and back into the shed, and I had to decide where to hide the real painting so that it was safe. I thought about hiding it among the slate pilings in the mine, but I was scared there would be a flash flood, like there was sometimes, and it would be damaged. I wasn’t too keen about hiding it at home. My mother liked a good snoop. She’d even found the pin-up magazine I hid under my mattress once.
Ginger, as usual, was full of bright ideas. “Why don’t you hang it on your wall? You’ve got enough pictures there, so nobody would suspect anything. Might as well enjoy it while we’ve got it.”
It sounded all right in theory. So I went out and bought a cheap frame in Woolworths and I hung the Rembrandt between a Turner I’d torn from a magazine and a Frans Hals I’d picked up at a jumble sale for two and sixpence.
But once it was up there, it haunted me. I was overwhelmed by the enormity of what I had done. Then I reassured myself that I could put it back anytime I wanted to. In fact, I could even put it back and keep the copy if my conscience got too much for me. Ginger couldn’t tell the difference. Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to get out of Blenau and go to Hollywood just as much as she did. Above all, I wanted to be with her, basking in her glory when she became a big star. I tried to picture myself in Hollywood, lounging by one of those fancy swimming pools. I could picture her there, all right. But never me. It just seemed too impossible, even to dream about.
You’ve heard that saying about the best-laid plans of mice and men, I suppose. There was I, thinking that the security was lax, and waiting to pick the ideal day and good weather to get the copy back into the shed. But before I could put the copy back, the mine manager called us all together into his office. “I’ve got bad news, I’m afraid, boys,” he said. “The mine is closing.”
There was a collective gasp, then silence. Not one of those men dared to ask why. The manager looked at us with sympathy. “I got the directive from the owners this morning. It’s government orders, see. Slate’s not a high priority in a war, is it? Not much new building going on. Just a lot of destroying. So the government is sending you where you are needed for the war effort—they’re short of miners down in the Rhondda.”
“Coal?” I heard a man behind me exclaim. “You want us to mine that filthy, dirty stuff? Gets in your lungs, coal does.”
“And dangerous, too,” another man muttered. “Always having cave-ins down there in the bloody coal mines, aren’t they?”
“And they’re all South Walesians, too,” a third man protested. “Can’t speak a word of Welsh down there, so I hear. And they don’t wash.”
The manager lifted his hands. “Boys. Boys. It’s no good complaining. My hands are tied. I’ve been given my orders to close this mine, and you’ve been directed to report for work in the Rhondda. There’s nothing else I can say. We all have to do our part to win the war, don’t we?”
“I bet he’s not headed down some bloody coal mine,” I heard someone mutter behind me.
“So go and get any tools you’ve left down at the work face and then we’re shutting down,” the manager said. “Good luck, boys. Do your best for North Wales, won’t you?”
The other men filed out, muttering and grumbling. I wasn’t even thinking about being sent down a coal mine. I was in a panic because I hadn’t managed to return the copy to the shed. Now I’d never get a chance. When the National Gallery came to get their pictures, they’d find one missing.
I wished Ginger was at home, but she hadn’t had a weekend off for weeks. She said they were short-staffed and she had to work two people’s jobs and they gave the women with families the weekends off. At the time I believed her.
I didn’t know what to do. We got our tools, the big iron grille was closed, and the mine was shut down. My father was philosophical about the whole thing.
“Had to happen sometime, I suppose.”
“But, Tad—you don’t want to work down a coal mine, away from home, do you?” I asked.
He grinned. “Won’t affect me, boy. I’ve got a lung condition, see.”
He’d never mentioned it before. He saw my horrified face and grinned. “Comes from breathing slate dust all those years. They’d never send me down a coal mine with my dicky lung.”
“So what will you do?”
“Don’t worry about me, boy. I’ll find myself something to do. I wouldn’t even mind working at the docks, or one of the RAF stations.” He patted my shoulder. “It’s you I worry about, down a coal mine. Still, it’s not long until you turn seventeen. I reckon you can stick it out until then.”
Later that week, my father had a chapel meeting at our house. He was becoming a deacon, so I gathered. The other men in our front room were all miners, apart from the minister, of course. And the talk moved, as one would expect, away from chapel to the closing of the mine. Most of those men were being sent south, with me, and the
y weren’t very happy about it.
“I never thought I’d hear myself say this,” Howie Jenkins said, “but I’m going to miss the old place. We’ve had some memorable times, haven’t we?”
“Remember when Lloyd George came?” another man said. “Before your time, was it? My, but that was a splendid occasion. The town band played. I was playing the cornet, like I usually do.”
“And no doubt off key, like you usually do,” came the comment. Loud laughter followed.
“Was that right before the fire in 1922?”
“That’s right, it was. We all joked that now the Prime Minister had been, we could burn the bloody place down—there was nothing more to live for!”
“A fire down the mine, was there?” one of the younger men asked. “Bad, was it?”
“Oh yes,” my father said. “It was dreadful, just. It was the machinery in the lift that caught on fire, so there were flames and smoke all the way up the main staircase. If we hadn’t managed to make it to the back exit, I reckon we’d have all been goners.”
“We would indeed.” Old Howie Jenkins nodded.
I had been sitting in the kitchen, half listening to what they were saying. Now I came hurrying into the front parlor.
“I just heard what you said about a fire in the mine,” I said, as the men looked up at my entrance. “I never knew there was a back way out.”
“Never needed it, did you?” my father said. “In fact, I don’t think it’s ever been used since. But I imagine it’s still there.”
“Has to be by law, I think,” someone said. “You always need an escape route from a mine. Remember that, Trefor bach, when you’re down in the Rhondda. First thing you do is find out how you get out of the bloody place.”
“So this back exit is still there, at our mine?” I asked, trying not to sound too interested. “Where is it, then?”
They gave me a pretty good description of how to find it. First thing next morning, I was up at the mine. It was strange to see it silent and shut. There was a watchman on duty outside, but he was sitting in his but, not paying attention to anything other than his morning paper. I found the path they had told me about and the passageway into the mountain. There was a door across it, but I pushed it open without too much effort. They obviously hadn’t got around to locking it with the rest of the mine yet. I shone my torch on a narrow, dark staircase. Even a couple of years of working in the mine hadn’t prepared me for this. I had never been alone into total blackness. The steps were damp and uneven. I went down carefully, step by step. If I took a tumble now, they’d probably not find me for months. My, but it was spooky down there. No sound except the echo of my feet and the occasional drip of water into an unseen pool. My heart was racing a mile a minute. I was used to going up and down hundreds of steps every day of my life, but my legs felt as if they were made of jelly and I had to hang onto the wall for support.