Ragged Alice

by Gareth L. Powell

  As she moved, her left leg flared with pain, and she feared her knee might be broken. Glass fragments cut her hands. Gorse needles scratched her face. Her nostrils were full of the twin scents of freshly disturbed earth and leaking petrol. Thirty feet above, she could see the distended remains of the crash barrier against the night sky. Using her gloved hands and good leg, she hauled herself away from the car. If that petrol caught, she wanted to be far enough from it to escape the resulting blaze. Luckily, with the weather having been so shitty for the past few days, most of the vegetation had become sodden with rainwater and unlikely to catch unless subjected to the most extreme heat.

  “I should have stayed in London,” she muttered, wiping away tears and gritting her teeth against the pain in her leg. “You can’t fall off a fucking mountain in London.”

  A mile or so farther along the valley, she caught a glimpse of taillights winding their way down to Pontyrhudd. But all she could think about right now was getting clear of the wreck.

  And then, quite suddenly, the hairs prickled on the back of her neck, and she knew she wasn’t alone. A cloaked, cross-legged figure seemed to be sitting at the edge of her peripheral vision. But when she turned her head, all she could see were clumps of limp bracken. Nesting crows nagged and grumbled in the trees. A ragged cape swished against the skyline. A laugh so faint, Holly couldn’t swear she’d actually heard it. And then, as abruptly as it had arrived, whatever it was that had been on the grass beside her had gone. She couldn’t feel it any more. The grass was just grass, the bushes just bushes. And her leg was an ingot of molten agony. She dug in her coat pocket for her phone. Despite a starred screen, it still worked.

  Scott answered on the third ring.

  * * *

  “Who was that?” Jen sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes.

  “The new guvnor.” Scott swung his legs out from beneath the blankets. “She’s been in an accident.”

  He dialed 999 and ordered an ambulance, then looked around for some clothes.

  Through eyes narrowed against the bedroom light, Jen watched him pull on a pair of jogging bottoms and a hooded sweatshirt from his gym bag. She had been with him for four years now, and they had been married for one; she had become used to late-night phone calls. She understood they were a part of his job, but that didn’t mean a small part of her didn’t resent each and every time the phone rang and he disappeared into the night. She hated being left alone in the sheets, not knowing when he would be back, or what he might see while he was away.

  “What’s she like?”

  “The guv?” Scott opened his sock drawer and pulled out the first pair on which he laid his hand. “She’s all right, I suppose. A bit severe, maybe. Dresses like a tramp.”

  “Short skirts and that?”

  Scott laughed. “Not that kind of tramp.”

  Jen watched him grab his keys from the nightstand and a jacket from the back of the chair.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  “Always am.” He leant down and kissed her. “Don’t wait up.”

  She grinned and stretched like a cat. “Never do.”

  “Nos da, cariad.”

  “Nos da.”

  * * *

  The ambulance took Holly to the nearest A&E department, which was up at Bronglais in Aberystwyth.

  “Hello, love,” the consultant said when he finally arrived in her cubicle. “Do you speak English?”

  Holly nodded.

  “What’s your name?” He had a friendly smile, curly hair and a strong jaw speckled with dark stubble.

  “DCI Craig.”

  “Well, DCI Craig.” He made a note on his clipboard. “Let’s take a look at you, shall we? Are you hurt?”

  “My knee.”

  With difficulty, she removed her ripped and muddy jeans, and he examined her leg.

  “Anywhere else?”

  Holly held up her wrist. “I cut myself on some glass.”

  The consultant leaned in close. He smelled warm, as if he’d just climbed out of bed. He cleaned and dressed the wound and then shone a penlight in her eyes.

  By the time her leg had been X-rayed, it was almost four in the morning. The good news was her knee wasn’t broken. The bad news was the ligament behind it had taken some punishment. Somehow, she’d caught her foot behind the clutch pedal and her whole leg had wrenched sideways during her car’s cartwheel down the hillside. The consultant strapped her leg and prescribed her some painkillers, but she was still going to have to spend the next three or four weeks on a crutch.

  “And you’ve had a bit of a nasty shock,” he said. “I want you to try to take it easy for the next few days. Lots of rest.”

  Holly gave a snort. “Fat chance of that,” she said.

  * * *

  Scott drove her back to Pontyrhudd. The sky had started to lighten as they passed the site of her crash. Police tape festooned the broken barrier.

  “You were bloody lucky,” Scott said.

  Holly didn’t reply. Her bloodstream was full of codeine and paracetamol, and she was thinking of the presence she’d sensed beside her in the darkness. The presence every rational fibre of her being told her had been nothing more than a trauma-induced delusion.

  * * *

  Scott dropped her back at the hotel.

  “Do you need any help on the stairs?” he asked.

  Holly opened the car door and used the crutch to lever herself into a standing position. It hurt like hell. The sea breeze tousled her auburn hair. The sun would be up in an hour, and the gulls were starting to stir.

  “No,” she said.

  Scott blinked as if slapped. “I’m only trying to be helpful.”

  His soul glistened like a polished stone at the bottom of a sunlit rock pool. Holly looked down at him and bit back the reply she had been about to make.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, relenting. “I don’t mean to snap at you. None of this is your fault, and you have been very helpful already.”

  Scott stuck his bottom lip out, which made him look like a pouting schoolboy. “Okay.”

  “I mean it. Thank you for driving me back.” She forced a smile. “It’s just it’s going to take me some time to get used to this stick, and so I may as well start now.”

  Scott glanced at her crutch. He looked somewhat mollified. “Right then,” he said. “If you’re sure?”

  “Of course I am.” She jerked her thumb in a get-out-of-here gesture. “Now get back to your wife before she reports you missing.”

  Scott grinned. “See you tomorrow, guv.”

  Holly pushed the door shut and watched as he drove away. When his car finally disappeared around the bend at the end of the promenade, she turned and awkwardly hauled herself up the hotel’s front steps.

  Behind her, a pale moon had just set over the water, and the breeze carried the salt stench of the incoming tide.

  12.

  HOLLY FOUND IT DIFFICULT to get comfortable in bed. She couldn’t find a position in which her knee didn’t hurt, and the morning light shone through the curtains, making the room too bright. It was only the painkillers and the fact she’d been up all night that allowed her to eventually fall into fitful, agitated sleep.

  She dreamed of close-packed trees and river water babbling over black rocks, and woke around eleven and stared up at the hotel’s painted ceiling.

  Somebody in this town wants me dead, she thought. Running her off the road like that hadn’t been a warning. It had only been sheer luck the car hadn’t rolled all the way to the bottom of the valley. No, whoever had been behind the wheel of that truck had meant to kill her and make it look like an accident. And the only person she could think of who might want her dead was the person who’d murdered Daryl Allen and Mike Owen.

  Which might mean I’m getting close, she thought. And the only person she had so far interviewed as a suspect was Ieuan Davies.

  Had the mayor really tried to have her bumped off? She hadn’t been impressed with him when they first met, bu
t the only way to be sure was to have another conversation with the man.

  She rolled out of bed and pulled on a fresh pair of jeans.

  First things first.

  Leaning on her crutch with one hand and gripping the banister with the other, she hobbled downstairs in search of tea.

  * * *

  If Sylvia was curious about Holly’s injuries, she didn’t show it. She simply brought out a pot of tea and a rack of toast and placed them on the white linen tablecloth.

  “Nice morning,” she said, peering through the dining room window at the whitecaps out on the bay.

  “Mm-hmm.” Holly had never been great at small talk. She poured herself a cup of tea and added a dash of milk.

  “Yes,” Sylvia continued. “It’s a nice morning, but I think we’re going to have a bit of rain soon enough.”

  “Oh, have you seen the forecast?”

  Sylvia looked surprised. “Oh, good heavens, no. I never listen to the wireless.” She whispered the last word as if referring to something scandalous and immoral. “I’ve got to be honest with you: I can feel it in my eye.”

  “Your eye?”

  “The false one.” She tapped the side of her head. “It itches when there’s bad weather coming.”

  “Really?”

  “You mark my words.” The young woman wiped her hands on her apron. “It’ll be raining old ladies and walking sticks by three o’clock, just you wait and see.”

  Something out on the promenade snared her attention and a beatific smile stole onto her face. “Dew,” she said. “Will you look at that?”

  Holly followed her gaze and beheld Mrs. Phillips tottering barefoot in the direction of the hotel. The old woman’s pink feather boa writhed out behind her in the wind. She had one hand to her head, holding a silver tiara in place, and the other at her side, clutching her high heels.

  “Out carousing all night.” Sylvia’s tone dripped disapprobation. “Traipsing back here at this hour. Doing the walk of shame, I’ll be bound. And now she’ll be wanting one of my fry-ups, you’ll see.”

  She turned and bustled off into the kitchen, still muttering.

  Moments later, Mrs. Phillips stuck her tousled head around the dining room door and trilled, “Good morning, Detective!”

  “Good morning, Mrs. Phillips.”

  “I heard you had a bit of an accident last night.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  Mrs. Phillips gave an airy wave. “Oh, you know what this place is like, love. If you lose your virginity at lunchtime, someone will have found it and brought it home to your mam in time for tea.” She glanced at the crutch leaning against the back of Holly’s chair. “But you’re all right, though, are you?”

  “Just bruises and a torn ligament.”

  “Thank heavens for that. There’s been enough death and misery in this town of late.” And with that, she straightened her tiara, crossed the room like a galleon in full sail and barged her way into the kitchen.

  “Sylvia!” she called. “Get that bloody bacon on. My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.”

  * * *

  Scott arrived just as Holly was finishing her tea. With his hair gelled back and his jaw freshly shaven, and dressed in a light grey suit with a blue shirt and yellow tie, he looked annoyingly perky for someone who’d spent most of the night in a hospital waiting room. You’d never know he’d missed out on a good night’s sleep.

  “Bore da, guv. How are you feeling?”

  “I’ll survive.” She watched him hover uncertainly, shifting his weight from one polished shoe to the other. “What have you got to tell me?”

  Scott looked sheepish. “It’s about Mr. Davies.”

  Holly pushed her cup and saucer away from her and reached for her crutch. “If you’re about to suggest we bring him in for further questioning, I quite agree.”

  Down by the water’s edge, an old man was in the process of setting up a fishing rod and deck chair. On the promenade, a pair of seagulls bickered over the carcass of a dead pigeon.

  “That’s the thing.” Scott rubbed the back of his neck. “I think we can rule him out as a suspect.”

  “How so?”

  “The man’s been murdered.”

  13.

  THE MAYOR’S HOUSE WAS situated at the top of a steep lane and overlooked the town. From the front, you could see the sea. From the rear, fields and woodland and, in the distance, the outbuildings of the abandoned RAF base a couple of miles up the coast.

  His body lay stretched across the kitchen table. One arm dangled loosely. A shoe lay on its side. As with the previous two victims, his eyes had been punctured—this time with pencils—and an incision made in his abdomen.

  Holly let her weight rest on her crutch.

  “Who found him?”

  “The cleaner,” Scott said. “Her name’s Mrs. Andrews. She comes in twice a week to give the place the once-over. She found him when she turned up for work at nine this morning.”

  Holly’s eyes roved over the kitchen’s counters. A dirty plate lay in the sink, and a single mug sat next to the kettle, waiting to be filled.

  “So you’ve had people here since nine?”

  “Jensen and Potts secured the scene, and the forensic people have already been in. We just thought we should let you see the room before we moved the body.” A private black-liveried ambulance waited outside to transport the corpse to the coroner’s mortuary. Its driver stood out on the pavement, smoking a cigarette.

  “Is Potts the one that was being an asshole at the butcher’s shop?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Why didn’t you call me earlier?”

  “To be honest, we figured you could use the rest.”

  Holly decided to ignore that. “This cleaner,” she said. “She has her own key?”

  “And an alibi for last night. She was at the bingo until eleven.”

  “And what was the time of death?”

  Scott checked his notes. “As far as the doc can tell from a preliminary examination, somewhere between six and nine thirty. But I’m hoping to narrow that down once the pathologist takes a look at him. And the coroner’s going to want to take a look and all.”

  Holly frowned. “So Davies might already have been dead by the time I got run off the road?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Damn.” Holly massaged her forehead with the fingers and thumb of her free hand. She glanced back to the solitary dirty plate in the sink.

  “Where’s Mrs. Davies?”

  “Staying with friends in Cardiff, apparently.”

  “Has she been informed?”

  “An officer went round this morning to break the news.”

  “How did she take it?”

  Scott rubbed his jaw. “She wasn’t that upset by all accounts.”

  “Do you think she might be a suspect?” If Lao’s gossip was to be believed, the woman’s husband had slept with Hughes and Owen. Could all this be the work of a jealous, neglected spouse?

  “I’ll ask the Cardiff people to look into her whereabouts last night.”

  “Okay, and get the uniforms to canvass the neighbours, to see if any of them noticed anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Will do.”

  “And I want a full debriefing from Jensen and Potts.”

  “Yes, guv.”

  * * *

  Scott drove Holly back to the hotel, where, waving away all offers of help, she hobbled her way from the kerb to the incident room and collapsed into one of the chairs surrounding the central conference table. The rest of the staff were all out knocking on doors and looking for witnesses, and the room had the air of a recently vacated wedding reception, when all the guests have gone and the band have packed and left, leaving only hastily scribbled notes, half-eaten sandwiches, and the vague smell of Lynx deodorant.

  She threw her crutch onto the table and turned up the collar of her RAF coat.

  “Damn,” she said.

  She had
been certain Davies was the killer. But with him out of the picture, she had no one else. And she knew Srivastava would be breathing down her neck, pushing for a swift resolution. Now the town’s mayor had been whacked, the national papers were really going to start paying attention. Pontyrhudd was about to turn into a media circus, and all Holly wanted to do was crawl into bed with a bottle of bourbon strong enough to strip the enamel from her teeth.

  Scott went over to the kettle and made two cups of tea. He placed one in front of her, along with four sachets of sugar.

  “Thank you,” she said. He really had been quietly and unobtrusively helpful over the past twenty-four hours—sitting with her in A&E, taking care of the paperwork when all she could focus on was the pain in her knee, and then driving her back here at first light. And his soul was clear and untarnished as sunlight dappling through spring leaves. Where had all the guys like that been when she’d been in her early twenties? She gave him the once-over from the side of her eye. If she’d been a few years younger, she might have considered falling for him. But she was in her early thirties now; he was too young for her, and he was married. And besides, she was his boss. It had been a hell of a long time since she’d found anyone worthy of her trust, but trying to initiate any sort of relationship with this young man would be a mistake of epic proportions. All it would achieve would be to blemish the one thing that really attracted her to him—and after that, it would lose all point. No, she’d take his loyalty and she’d accept his friendship, but love was something to whose absence she’d long ago resigned herself. She just hoped his wife appreciated what she had. So often, youth was entirely wasted on the young. By the time you were old enough to know what to do with it, it had already slipped through your fingers.

  “So.” Scott nodded towards the whiteboard on the wall, where all the hand-drawn arrows pointed to a photo of Davies. “What’s the plan now?”