Simeon's Bride

by Alison G. Taylor

  ‘I suppose so. Anything to get you off my back.’

  ‘As soon as possible, I’ll send someone round to see you with a particular perfume for you to test. All I want from you is yea or nay as to whether it’s the one you didn’t like.’

  Allsopp laughed. ‘So I’m to expect some bloody great flatfoot with a bottle of scent, am I?’

  Dewi returned well after six o’clock, having left the suit with Dr Roberts. ‘I hate those women’s shops,’ he announced, sinking into a chair opposite McKenna’s desk. ‘They reek of perfume. You can smell it out in the street. Enough to choke a body.’

  ‘Mr Allsopp said one of Romy’s perfumes made him sneeze. But, of course, he couldn’t remember which one. Derbyshire police are getting a bottle of this Incarnat for him to smell.’

  ‘Have to find it first, won’t they? The girls in Debenhams had never heard of it, tried to sell me Estee Lauder instead. I tried Boots and the other chemists, but nobody stocks it in Bangor. Anyway, the suit.’ He flipped open his notebook. ‘This book’s nearly full, sir. Mostly with old women’s gossip.’ He pulled his tie loose. ‘Quite a bit warmer tonight than it’s been so far. P’raps there’s some proper sunshine on the way…. Debenham’s were eventually very helpful. The buyer said they’d stocked that particular outfit around three and a half years ago, just one consignment, and some of it sold off in a sale. Twenty jackets: three size 10, seven size 12, six size 14 –12 and 14 being the most popular sizes – and four size 16. Before you get too hopeful, sir, the buyer said there’s nothing to say the jacket was bought in Bangor. She thinks it was probably available nationally, but she’s going to ask the head office where the jacket was sold, when, and how many.’

  ‘And a lot of use that’ll be!’

  ‘It could narrow down the field, sir.’

  ‘We haven’t got a field!’ McKenna snapped. ‘We haven’t got anything, except a lot of gossip, a woman’s suit, two dead bodies, and sodding Jamie Thief and his borrowed car!’

  ‘D’you want me to see that Mr Stott?’

  ‘I haven’t decided what to do with him yet. You’re on lates today, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Off duty at ten.’

  ‘You’d better have your tea break now. I’m going home to feed the cat.’

  The cat ate in the kitchen, placidly crouched over a plate of fresh cod, while McKenna waited for a frozen lasagne to cook through, thinking he ought to buy a recipe book. He should telephone Denise, but decided if he did so now, the lasagne might burn, and if he waited until he had eaten, he would be delayed from returning to work. He needed time to think, to decide what to do, what to say, and sat forking food into his mouth, tasting little, thinking about women in general, that mysterious race, and Denise and Romy Cheney in particular. The cat sat at his feet, grooming herself fastidiously. Her eyes were brighter already, her coat developing a gloss.

  ‘Mary Ann wants you to go and see her, sir,’ Dewi greeted him.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She says there’ll be another murder in the village if you don’t,’ Dewi grinned. ‘It’s about Beti Gloff, but I only got half the story because Mary Ann was whispering into the telephone on account of Beti being in the next room.’

  ‘Oh, Lord above!’ McKenna ran his hands through his hair. ‘What next, Dewi? What next?’

  ‘Beti’s said to be mad with rage, sir, talking about knifing her old man. And it’s all to do with that article about her in the local paper today, although what I don’t know.’

  ‘We’d better go and see her, then. And on the way back, we’ll call in on Jamie’s buddy.’

  The telephone rang as McKenna was shutting the office door. Allsopp sounded weary. ‘No, I haven’t had a visit from any perfume-bearing PC Plod, Mr McKenna. I remembered all by myself without any help from anybody, because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since you rang, and that bloody smell’s been wafting under my nose like Romy’s bloody ghost was walking around beside me. And shall I tell you why, Mr McKenna? I’m sure you want to know. I’ve got a vase of flowers in my sitting-room, on the mantelpiece, and I’ve got the fire lit because Derbyshire’s a bloody cold place in April, and the heat from the fire’s bringing the scent out of the flowers, even though they’re greenhouse grown and don’t have all that much scent to them. They’re pink and white flowers, very pretty, and the heat’s making their petals go a bit brown already. And they’re carnations, Mr McKenna. That’s what the perfume smelt of. Carnations.’

  McKenna, almost jubilant, telephoned Jack, disturbing him from a nap in front of the television. ‘D’you realize what this means? Not only do we have the suit, an actual physical clue, but we can now connect it directly with Romy Cheney. What d’you think of that? Good, or what?’

  ‘I suppose so … not much use unless we find a woman to fit into the suit, is it? And why she stuffed it under the floorboards.’ Jack sounded gloomy. ‘I’ve just had a thought.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Suppose it wasn’t the woman who wore the suit who hid it.’

  ‘What’s that bit of garbled syntax supposed to mean?’

  ‘Well, suppose she witnessed what happened to Romy, so she had to be got rid of as well, and the murderer stuffed her clothes under the floorboards. This other woman could’ve been hung as well. She might be dangling from another tree in the woods, or a tree in some other woods. She might even be buried under the earth floor in that outhouse.’

  ‘I see,’ McKenna said slowly. ‘Why don’t you just come round and throw a bucket of cold water in my face? What am I supposed to do, eh? Search every sodding wood from here to Chester? Pull down Gallows Cottage stone by stone, then dig up Snidey Castle Estate looking for bodies which might or might not be there?’

  ‘There’s no need to take on like that!’ Jack whined. ‘It was only an idea!’

  ‘Mr Tuttle could have a point, sir,’ Dewi offered, as they drove out to Salem village.

  ‘I know he might have a point.’ McKenna had taken to grinding his teeth, Dewi noticed. ‘That is why Wil Jones is going to find Gallows Cottage being dug up in the morning, and why you and several other people will be spending the day bashing your way through the woods looking for bodies which probably don’t exist.’

  ‘I don’t mind, sir. I like being out in the fresh air.’

  McKenna drew to a halt by the school gates, now closed for the night, and turned to look at the young officer beside him. ‘I sometimes wonder if you’re not a bit puddled, Dewi Prys. That’s why you drive Jack Tuttle to screaming point at times. Well, it’s going to rain tomorrow. I could hear the trains clearly when I was having tea, and I can only do that when there’s rain on the way. So I hope you enjoy a bit of water with your fresh air.’

  ‘Funny you noticing that, sir. I thought it was only the old ones like my nain knew you hear further when there’s rain around. She reckons she can hear the cathedral clock if it’s going to pour down, and that’s at least a mile as the crow flies.’

  ‘Talking about crows,’ McKenna said as he locked the car, ‘look at that lot up there.’ Black shapes hunched along the spreading limbs of the tall trees, looking down on the cottages, the church, the graveyard, and the two men, darkening an already sombre sky.

  ‘And on the electric wires. Wonder what they’re waiting for?’

  McKenna shivered. ‘I don’t like this place. I came here the other day in brilliant sunshine, and it was no nicer than it is now.’

  ‘Nain says it’s evil ground. Folk reckon the church was built here to keep the badness under control.

  ‘Doesn’t seem to be working too well, does it?’

  Beti and Mary Ann sat in Mary Ann’s uncurtained window, one each side of a small gateleg table, like two geraniums in pots, McKenna thought, looking at them. ‘Pull up chairs for you and Mr McKenna, Dewi.’ Mary Ann said. ‘This is talk to make around the table.’ A pot of tea under a stained knitted cosy sat on a trivet in the centre of the table, a plate of custard creams and a
rrowroot biscuits and jammy dodgers beside.

  ‘There’s been trouble,’ Mary Ann told them, ‘between Beti and him, because Beti had her picture in the paper and people thought enough about what she was saying to put it in print. Bitter jealous, he is, because the newspaper people thought Beti and Simeon more interesting than him finding a poor body everybody knew was there for any fool to find.’

  ‘What’s he done, then?’ Dewi asked, taking the last of the jammy dodgers.

  Beti opened her mouth to speak. Mary Ann held up her hand. ‘You let me tell this, so we get it right. Now then. About Beti’s husband.’

  ‘Hasn’t John Jones got a name any longer?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘Of course he has! But he doesn’t deserve we use it for what he’s done today. The local paper came this morning while Beti was doing her early errands. That no-good was still indoors, and Beti says he hadn’t even sided the breakfast pots, never mind washed up.’

  ‘Yes?’ Dewi said. ‘So why’s Beti wanting to stick the breadknife in his guts?’

  McKenna watched Beti. She sat as stiff as one of the marble angels in the graveyard, only her eyes showing life, glittering with unshed tears in the light from Mary Ann’s parlour lamps.

  ‘He started on her, didn’t he?’ Mary Ann said. ‘In that horrible, sour, vicious way of his. Calling her wicked bad names and saying she was no fit wife for any God-fearing soul.’ Mary Ann took the cigarette McKenna offered. ‘When Beti tells him what she thinks of him, he hit her. Smacked her in the mouth.’ She sipped her tea, little finger crooked. ‘I know he’s not done anything wrong in your books, but he’s done something to offend God, and any decent-thinking person.’

  ‘Did he hurt you, Beti?’ McKenna asked the old woman.

  She turned towards him, looking with the one eye she could focus. Tears oozed out and slithered unchecked down the wrinkled cheeks, running into the deep creases at each side of her mouth, dripping off her little pointed chin. McKenna saw the darkness of bruising under age-grimed skin, seeping into a faint weal above the frayed collar of her blouse. Dewi squeezed her hands, rubbing the thin papery flesh, murmuring comforts. Mary Ann puffed smoke towards the ceiling. ‘She’s not going back there tonight. But I’m worried he’ll come looking for her, because he’s bound to know she’ll like as not be here, and I don’t know what might happen if he turns up. I’m fretted out of my mind over it.’

  ‘And what’s Beti going to do in the long run, Mary Ann?’ McKenna asked, asking himself why they spoke of and around Beti as if she were an incompetent.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mary Ann admitted. ‘This isn’t the first time he’s done cruel things to her … but it’s the first time Beti’s got off her backside, if you get my meaning, and not just taken whatever he dishes out.’

  ‘Better late than never, eh, Beti?’ Dewi pulled a folded handkerchief from his pocket, shook it open, and handed it to her. ‘Wipe your eyes, love. Mr McKenna and me’ll go and talk to John Jones.’

  McKenna stood up. ‘We’ll tell him to keep right away until you decide what you want to do. If anything crops up, ring the station. I’ll arrange for someone to come right away.’

  Beti’s mouth trembled with the vestige of a smile.

  In the car, McKenna picked up the telephone and punched out a number, ‘Who’re you ringing, sir?’ Dewi asked. ‘Social Services?’

  ‘No, I’m bloody not!’ McKenna snapped. ‘What d’you think they’d do with her, eh? They’d cart her off to Gwynfryn Ward, and lock her up because she’s threatening to harm that no-good!’

  While McKenna spoke into the telephone, Dewi sat quietly, gazing through the windscreen at the darkening sky above the church tower; half-listening, half not listening.

  ‘Can you do that, sir?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t it against regulations? We can’t very well get John Beti arrested over that body just because he’s clouted his missis.’

  Both men walked down the path towards Beti’s cottage, Dewi shining the torch, scanning the beam against tree trunks gleaming silver in the twilight, frightening small animals in the undergrowth.

  ‘John Beti won’t get arrested if he keeps his hands to himself and his nasty mouth shut,’ McKenna said. ‘And as nobody but you and me and the bodies in the graveyard is going to be knowing about it in any other way, it doesn’t matter if it’s laid down in the Holy Bible that you can’t do it, does it?’

  John Jones lolled in the room which served himself and Beti as kitchen and parlour, a can of beer in his hand, the debris of breakfast, lunch and tea littering the table. Dirty dishes overflowed the sink. The room smelt, of nothing in particular except dirty humankind, the smell of unbathed flesh and unwashed clothes, of sweaty hair and rancid armpits.

  ‘What do you want, Dewi fucking Prys?’ he demanded, as Dewi and McKenna walked in.

  ‘We’ve come to tell you to keep away from Beti,’ McKenna said politely.

  Beti’s husband smirked. ‘Setting coppers on me now, is she? Makes a change from that old witch up the road. And what am I supposed to’ve done to her?’

  ‘You insulted her,’ McKenna said, leaning over the man. ‘And you hit her.’

  ‘So what?’ John Jones said. ‘That a crime now, then, is it? Can’t a man keep his woman in order these days?’

  Dewi leaned against the door jamb. ‘Depends what comes of it. Depends what he does to her, John Jones.’

  ‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself?’

  ‘Why don’t you shut your mouth and give your arse a chance, old man?’ Dewi asked. ‘Listen to the chief inspector here. He’s telling you to leave Beti alone.’

  ‘So why don’t you both fuck off back where you came from? So I don’t have to complain to Councillor Williams about how I’m getting grief from the fucking coppers for doing nothing except find a body they’re too fucking slow to find themselves. Councillor Williams wouldn’t like to hear that. Not at all.’

  Dewi advanced into the room. ‘Well, old man, if you’re going to complain to Councillor Williams, you may as well have something to complain about.’

  ‘Dewi!’ McKenna warned.

  ‘Oh, come on, sir! He makes me want to vomit! Got the bloody cheek to make snide remarks about Beti, and look at him! No oil painting, is he? And the stink on him!’ Dewi looked John Jones up and down. ‘I pity Beti, I really do! Fancy finding that lying next to you of a night!’

  The old man leapt to his feet, lunging for Dewi. ‘Hwrgi!’ he spat.

  Dewi grabbed him by the throat. ‘No man calls me a whore’s dog!’ He shook John Jones, making his head snap back and forth on its skinny neck.

  McKenna pulled them apart, pushing Beti’s husband, furious as a fighting turkey cock, back into his chair, and holding Dewi at arm’s length. ‘Stop it! Both of you!’ He dragged Dewi towards the door. ‘Wait outside!’ To the old man, McKenna snarled, ‘You go within a hundred yards of Beti, and I’ll lock you up. D’you understand? And I won’t care how much trouble you or your fancy bloody friends cause!’

  He slammed the door behind him, and pushed Dewi down the path. ‘You bloody fool, Dewi Prys! Don’t ever behave like that again! D’you understand? My officers do not act like pit bull sodding terriers!’

  Dewi stood in the darkness of the path beside the graveyard, his face mutinous in the light from his torch. ‘I don’t care!’ he stormed. ‘The bloody bastard asked for it! He should be swinging from some tree with a rope round his ugly neck! How could anyone be so horrible to Beti?’

  ‘Dewi, Dewi!’ McKenna sighed. ‘They’re married to each other, aren’t they? You can’t know what goes on between them. Nobody knows what goes on in people’s marriages.’ They walked slowly up the path. ‘You’ve taken sides, and it’s not our job to do that.’

  Dewi stopped in his tracks and glared. ‘I always had you down for being a straight copper, Mr McKenna. If it’s not our job to take sides, what’re we doing here tonight?’

  ‘Crime prevention.’

  ‘Well, then!’ Dewi strode
off. ‘It would count as crime prevention if I’d smashed his shitty head into the wall, wouldn’t it? Sir!’

  McKenna leaned on the wall, delving into his jacket pocket for cigarettes and lighter. Blowing smoke into the musty night air, where it lingered just above his head like ectoplasm seeping from a nearby grave, he thought about the nature of the Celt, a subject on which Jack was given to rhetoric from time to time, of the opinion he dwelt among lawless feuding tribes. He could not grasp the ambivalence sleeping in the Welsh heart, could not understand the legacy of bitterness and sheer distrust left by centuries of oppression and injustice, and could not see why the thin crust of civilized behaviour might be shattered by that older legacy, the lessons of gangster politics and swift reprisal, learned from native forefathers. Jack never suffered the torments which might afflict McKenna or Dewi, could see nothing amiss in the fact that their role was to uphold and impose the law of a foreign government. And least of all would Jack ever understand the fear that rotted the Celtic soul, the fear that oppression only came to those who deserved it, to whom some defect of their deepest being rendered them fit for nothing else. McKenna finished the cigarette, and ground its glowing butt into a pile of leaf mould. Walking slowly up the night-shrouded path, glimpsing only a few faint stars between the overhanging trees, he wondered how long it might be before the afflictions of Ulster found root in the fertile soul of Wales.

  Trees rustled about him; he saw the ghostly shape of an owl flitting through the woods, felt the pulse of its huge wings on the air. Beyond the wall, will o’the wisp danced in the graveyard. Fool’s fire, McKenna thought, or perhaps the earthbound souls of stillborn children, hovering through eternity between Heaven and Hell. His shadow dogged his footsteps, as if come to life and whispering in his wake. His flesh crawled, waiting for the cold breath on the back of his neck, the icy fingers touching his face. He walked with a measured tread, refusing to look behind him, refusing to run. The round beam from Dewi’s torch danced in front of his feet. ‘Thought you’d got lost, sir,’ the boy said, leading the way back to McKenna’s car. As they strapped themselves in, he apologized. ‘I’m sorry I gabbed off back there, sir. That horrible old man made me mad.’ Peering through the back window of the car as McKenna drove out of the village, he added, ‘D’you know, sir, I could’ve sworn there was somebody behind you just now on the path.’