Ragged Alice

by Gareth L. Powell

  When Sylvia brought over the tea, Holly put the paper aside and forced a smile.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Detective.” Sylvia took off her half-moon specs and rubbed them on the hem of her apron. Her glass eye stared up and to the right, making her look boss-eyed. She had dried egg on her sleeve and a chewed Biro behind her ear.

  “Have you got anything to tell me today?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The other night.” Holly motioned a finger at the glass eye. “You told me what your eye had seen.”

  “My eye?” Sylvia’s hand went to her cheek.

  “You said it had seen secret things that happened in the woods.”

  The woman blanched. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  The light behind her eyes was a pale, attenuated thing. It flickered in ways Holly didn’t understand. Instinctively, she drew back.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I meant no offence.”

  Sylvia pursed her lips. She flapped her hands as if searching for the right words. Eventually she muttered, “Enjoy your tea,” and fled.

  Holly watched the kitchen door flap in the poor woman’s wake.

  “Well,” she muttered, “that went well.”

  She opened the pot, stirred the contents, and then poured herself a cup of amber sunshine.

  Tea . . .

  She knew it had a reprehensible history, as tied to the shameful past of the British Empire as Volkswagen was to the Third Reich. But that hardly dented her enthusiasm for it. She was by all intents and measures an addict. Whatever else the day might bring, she couldn’t function without her morning dose. That hit of fragrance and steam, followed by that first scalding, leathery sip. If an evening’s worth of whiskey kept her from killing herself, it was the next morning’s tea that truly kept her alive.

  Her stomach grumbled. She could feel her metabolism rousing itself from its hibernation. But all she could think of was the case as it had presented itself to her: a deliberate hit-and-run, the driver mutilated and left in the town graveyard, and the butcher’s boy pinned to his slab by steel skewers driven through his eyes. It all made as little sense now as it had last night. But if Lao was right about the mayor having an affair with Lisa Hughes, at least it gave her a place to start.

  When Scott arrived, she asked him to run a complete background check on Ieuan Davies.

  “I want to know everything,” she said. “Prior convictions, known affairs, under-the-table payments. Everything.”

  “Yes, guv.”

  “And talk to Lao. She says she’s got dirt on him. Find out what it is. He’s a politician. If we’re going to question him, I want to be holding all the cards before the game starts.”

  * * *

  Davies wasn’t too happy about being called down to the incident room to be interviewed. When he arrived, it was in the company of his solicitor, a birdlike old man by the name of Greaves.

  Holly had cleared the room of all but herself and Scott. They took seats on one side of the main table and invited Davies and Greaves to sit on the other. A tape recorder sat in the middle.

  “Before we start,” Greaves intoned, intertwining skeletal fingers, “I would like to make it clear that my client is here of his own free will and has every intention of cooperating fully with your investigation.”

  Holly didn’t smile. “I’d expect no less.”

  “And,” Greaves continued, “we trust this conversation will be a mere formality, and that my client here will be under no suspicion whatsoever.”

  “Trust what you like.” Holly looked at her watch and started the tape recorder.

  “Interview with Ieuan Davies,” she said, and gave the date, the time and the names of the persons present. Across the table, Davies struggled to contain his impatience.

  “Is all this really necessary?”

  “You tell us.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means we have reliable information linking you to Lisa Hughes.”

  Davies glanced sideways at Greaves, who gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  “My client is prepared to admit a relationship with the young woman in question but played no part in her death, or the subsequent murder of either of the young men concerned.”

  Holly fixed the old man with a glare. “Come on,” she said. “You know the rules. You can’t answer for your client. And if you persist in doing so, I can and will exclude you from these proceedings.”

  Greaves pursed his lips. His pencil-thin grey moustache twitched. He was quite evidently unused to being spoken to in such a manner. “I am well aware of the regulations, Detective Craig.”

  “Then try to fucking act like it.”

  Holly shrugged off her coat and let it fall across the back of her chair. Underneath, she wore a simple black T-shirt, which revealed the collection of bracelets crowding her left wrist and the list of names written on the inside of her right forearm. The names were those of the staff and children who’d died at Hawk Road Primary School. She’d written them on in Biro the day after the event and had been going over them with a pen every evening before bed, to keep them legible.

  “Now,” she said, “how about we stop flirting and cut to the chase? Mayor Davies, did you kill Daryl Allen or Mike Owen?”

  Davies cleared his throat. “I did not.”

  “Where were you at the time of Daryl Allen’s murder?”

  Davies exchanged another glance with Greaves. “I was at home, asleep.”

  “And can anyone verify this?”

  “Since my wife left, you mean?” Davies’s cheeks flushed a deep and ugly red. “No, I was alone.”

  Holly saw the flicker behind his eyes and smiled. “You’re lying.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’re lying. I can tell.”

  Davies opened and shut his mouth like a fish hauled out onto a wooden jetty. Beside him, Greaves looked fit to burst, but a warning glare from Holly was all it took to make the old man shrink back.

  “Come on, Mr. Davies,” she said. “We both know that’s bullshit. Why don’t you tell us where you really were?”

  Ieuan Davies met her eye. He’d been the mayor here for decades; he wasn’t used to people questioning him. His defiance was a fragile thing. All Holly had to do was stay silent until he couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “Okay,” he said at last, his shoulders deflating, “I admit it. I wasn’t alone the night Daryl Allen died.”

  Greaves tried to put a cautionary hand on his client’s arm, but Davies shook him off.

  Holly leant forward. “Who were you with?”

  Davies took a deep breath and tipped his face to the ceiling. The overhead lights picked out the tears condensing in the corners of his eyes.

  “Mike Owen.”

  “The second victim?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were with him the night Daryl Allen died?”

  “Yes.”

  Holly sat back in her chair. This wasn’t at all what she’d expected, but she refused to let the surprise register on her face.

  “In what capacity?”

  Davies brought his eyes down to face hers. He looked haunted. “In a sexual capacity.”

  “So your alibi for the first murder is that you were too busy fucking the second victim?”

  Davies winced. “That’s . . . correct.”

  “And where were you when Owen was killed?”

  “What time was it?”

  Holly glanced at Scott, who checked his notes. “The pathologist estimates time of death for ten thirty,” he said.

  Davies slumped. “I was at a town council dinner until eleven.”

  “You have witnesses?”

  “Only the entire council, and anyone else who might have been in the lounge of the Red Lion.”

  Holly pushed back in her chair and rose. “Thank you, Mr. Mayor,” she said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  She sho
wed Davies and his solicitor to the front door. When she came back into the room, Scott was online, checking his emails.

  “We have the initial forensic reports on Lisa Hughes and Daryl Allen,” he said.

  “Anything unusual?”

  “They found some blue threads on Daryl’s clothing.”

  “What kind of threads?”

  Scott peered at the screen, reading. “The material most likely came from a police uniform.”

  “Who was first on the scene?”

  “Perkins.”

  “Christ.” Holly tipped forward on her toes until her forehead kissed the window’s cool glass. Surely the constable would have known better than to contaminate a crime scene? “We’re going to need to talk to him and find out if he touched the body.”

  “I’ll give him a call.” Scott picked up his phone but didn’t dial. “Oh, and there’s one more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Lisa Hughes was six weeks pregnant.”

  Holly broke away from the window and read the email over his shoulder. “Now, that is interesting,” she said. “Lao told me Lisa was working for Davies until a month ago.”

  “Do you think it could have been his child?”

  “That might explain why she argued with Daryl. It might even explain why Daryl killed her, and why Davies killed him. But once again, it doesn’t explain why Mike Owen’s dead.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Scott sat upright in his chair. “Perhaps Owen found out what Davies had done. They were sleeping together, after all. There could have been clues. Bloodstains, maybe. Whatever. Perhaps Owen found out and threatened to expose Davies, and Davies decided to shut him up?”

  Holly tapped a fingernail against her upper teeth. “That certainly sounds plausible.”

  “Should we call the mayor back?”

  “No.” She shrugged. “While I don’t deny it might be fun to drag him back here and try to browbeat a confession out of him, the fact remains that we don’t have a single shred of physical evidence linking him to any of the murders.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Holly made a face. Overhead, she could hear the pipes wheeze and clank as one of the hotel’s guests had the audacity to try and run a bath in the middle of the day.

  “Our jobs,” she said.

  10.

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, HOLLY’S superiors summoned her back to headquarters in Carmarthen to brief them on the state of the investigation. High-profile cases tended to make or break careers. With the media now starting to involve themselves, everybody in the chain of command was busy covering his or her arse. It was the same political, primate hierarchy bullshit that had almost torpedoed her career after the slayings at Hawk Road School. Everybody wanted credit for success, but nobody wanted to take responsibility when things went tits-up. If she hadn’t transferred back here before the knives came out, she had no doubt she would have been one of the officers scapegoated for the Met’s botched handling of the incident.

  As it was, she didn’t mind the drive. The sun was out. The hills and hedgerows were green. The verges were yellow with daffodils. And it was good to get out of Pontyrhudd for a few hours. As soon as she hit the main road, her chest felt less constricted.

  She followed the A487 south, passing farm tracks, old brick barns with corrugated iron roofs and the occasional lay-by. From time to time she caught glimpses of the sea to her right. During her years in London, she had forgotten how effortlessly and breathtakingly beautiful the Welsh countryside could be.

  The signs and road markings were all in English and Welsh. The terraced houses and shops lining the main street in Aberaeron had been painted pink, yellow, red, blue and green. Downshifting for the long climb out of the town, she passed a caravan park advertising vacancies, and then fields replaced the sea views as the road swung south, away from the coastline, and she changed onto the A486 and then the A465, winding her way down through the countryside to Carmarthen and the brick buildings of the HQ.

  * * *

  The meeting went pretty much as she’d expected it to. First they praised the work she’d done so far, then they expressed disappointment at the lack of immediate arrests, and finally the whole thing wrapped up with a series of veiled threats and a stern admonition to find closure as soon as humanly possible.

  The only person to express any kind of sympathy was her immediate line manager, Detective Superintendent Rajkumari Srivastava. After staying silent during Holly’s briefing, preferring to listen and take notes, she approached her in the corridor afterwards.

  “How are the people I sent you?” Srivastava was ten years older than Holly. Veins of silver ran through her dark hair.

  Holly leant back against the wall with her hands in the pockets of her coat. “So far, with the exception of Scott, they’ve been a useless shower of bastards.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a very fair assessment.”

  “It’s the only one I’ve got.”

  “And what you said in there about having a suspect but no evidence?”

  “All true, I’m afraid.”

  “No cards up your sleeve?”

  “Not this time.”

  Srivastava grimaced. “That’s a shame.”

  “Sorry.”

  The two women stood in silence. Finally, Srivastava said, “Do you think he’s going to kill again?”

  “Davies?” Holly shrugged. “I’ve no idea.”

  “If you get even the slightest inkling, I want you to bring him in.” Srivastava leant forward and lowered her voice to an urgent whisper. “I don’t want any more bodies, not with the media breathing down our necks.”

  Holly twisted her lip. “We got six lines in The Times.”

  The other woman was not amused. “And if there’s another murder, it will be twelve lines,” she growled. “And they’ll all say one thing. Can you guess what that will be?”

  “That it’s our fault?”

  “No.” Srivastava shook her head. “They’ll say it’s your fault. Yours personally. I’ll make sure of it.”

  * * *

  Holly wandered back to her car feeling as if someone had sucked all the air out of her chest. She was starting to think she might have been better off staying in London to face the music. At least then she could have stayed in her comfortable, book-strewn upstairs flat in Finsbury Park. She wouldn’t have had to leave her cats with friends while she searched for a place within commuting distance of Carmarthen. And she certainly wouldn’t have had to deal with the emotional fallout of returning to Pontyrhudd. She leant against the car and watched the sun dip low in the afternoon sky. Of all the places she could have ended up, what had possessed her to apply for transfer back to this end of Wales? She could just as easily have gone to Yorkshire or Scotland. Hell, she could have quit policing altogether and become a fucking waitress. Why on earth had she thought coming back here would be a good idea?

  * * *

  By the time Holly reached the turning for Pontyrhudd, dusk had stolen across the fields and hedgerows. The lights were on in the Galleon, but the valley behind it lay in darkness. She turned left, onto the road that led down to the town. As she did so, a pickup truck pulled off the pub’s forecourt and began to follow. She saw its lights in her rearview mirror but thought nothing more of it. Most of the Galleon’s regulars came from Pontyrhudd or the surrounding farms, so it was hardly a surprise to see one heading down the valley from the Galleon. And besides, with Srivastava’s words still ringing in her ears, Holly had enough on her mind.

  It wasn’t until the truck’s lights filled the interior of her car that she frowned. It had come right up to her rear bumper.

  “What the fucking hell are you playing at?”

  If the driver was local, he must know they were approaching a sharp bend. This was no place for him to try overtaking. She blipped her brakes twice, hoping to make him back off a bit. And, to her relief, the headlamps shrank in her mirror. For a moment, she was tempted to call Scott. He could get a
patrol car to meet them at the end of the road, and then she could arrange for the twerp to be breathalysed as he pulled into town. There had already been one drink-related death on this road in the past few days; perhaps she should make an example of this idiot?

  Ahead, the road veered right, hugging the valley’s contours. Black-and-white chevrons pointed the way. Holly downshifted from fifth to fourth, and then fourth to third. She was still concentrating on lining up for the turn when she was thrown forward against her seat belt as the truck rammed into her back end. The hire car slithered, and she saw the crash barrier approaching. Beyond it, all she could see was darkness. She hit the brake, but the truck was pushing too hard. Her left wing mirror splintered against a warning sign. Tyres squealed. Her car shook and rattled around her. The lights in her mirrors dazzled her. In desperation, she wrenched the wheel to the right. The car slewed around, but not far enough. They were moving too quickly. Her left wing crumpled and tore against the crash barrier. Glass exploded around her, and then everything tipped sideways as her car burst through into empty space.

  During her time as a uniformed police officer, Holly had seen enough road traffic accidents to know that in a rolling car, the driver’s head and neck were the most vulnerable to catastrophic damage. A head whipping to the side could snap vertebrae and sever a spinal cord. So in the second of sickening free fall available to her, she tucked her chin into her chest and wrapped her arms around her head. It was all she could do.

  11.

  WHEN THE CAR FINALLY lurched to rest, Holly found herself upside down in her seat, hanging from her belt. She thought she’d probably blacked out at some point but wasn’t sure. Everything had happened so rapidly. Through the shattered windscreen, she could see gorse and bracken. Thankfully, her car’s headlights were still working; otherwise she’d be in total darkness.

  “Fuck.”

  She reached up and pressed the seat belt release. The lock clicked and she fell onto the inside of the car’s upturned roof. Shards of glass rained around her, and the whole wreck groaned.

  Rather than bouncing and rolling all the way to the floor of the valley, it seemed her car had caught itself in a tangle of undergrowth. But now it was rocking and she wasn’t sure how securely it was held. One ill-judged move might dislodge the vehicle from its prickly cushion and send it and her cartwheeling to the bottom of the cwm. She held her breath until the creaking stopped. Then, moving as gingerly as she could, she scrambled through the broken side window.