‘Where’s McKenna buggered off to?’ Eifion Roberts asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Dewi said. ‘He’d left when I got back. D’you want me to call him?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Just tell him I’m doing the autopsy on Jamie. I’ll get back to him.’
‘Should somebody come down?’
‘What for? Oh, you mean to sit in.’ He laughed. ‘There’s a poor young copper sitting right beside me, Dewi, getting ready to see his first cadaver sliced open!’
Dewi put down the receiver. The packets of drugs were on ther way to the laboratory for analysis, with other trace samples taken from the caravan and its surroundings, and casts of some of the footprints found in the muddy earth under the dripping trees of the copse. Dewi took the cheque book from its plastic envelope, looking at the creased and stained cover. Told the book had not come from a local branch of the bank, Dewi asked the manager of Romy Cheney’s bank in Leeds if it originated there, waited while the manager dithered and argued, finally conceded it would be no breach of precious confidentiality to answer the question, and promised to call back.
He was replacing the cheque book in its protective covering when he realized Jamie was probably the last to handle it: Jamie dead and cold and stiffening, supine under the pathologist’s scalpel, his lungs and liver and kidneys and heart wrenched from the dark secret place occupied since the moment of conception, and exposed to cruel light and probing eyes, mauled by rough hands, cut into slices and slivers by knives honed to wicked sharpness. Dewi felt a lurch in his belly, a coldness slice through him as of sharp steel. He sat at his desk, oblivious to time, to traffic grinding down the road beyond the window, and wondered what colour his own heart would be, imagined it flopping out before him, pulsing and blue-veined, trailing slimy blood as it danced its death throes, before becoming still, withering before his eyes until it was nothing more than a shrivelled heap. Dead. If his heart was dead, he too would be dead. And how did it feel to die? He thought of Romy Cheney and the dread in her soul when her killer bound her hands and placed the noose around her neck and Romy knew there could be no escape, and he could not comprehend such thoughts, such terror without vestige of hope, no more than he could travel to the furthest star in the heavens. And when Romy’s killer looked upon their handiwork, and knew the heart was stopped and the last breath from her lungs, and the last thought dead in her mind, and that person understood, in that instant, there was to be no going back, not then, not ever, from what their wickedness had brought about, had the killer, Dewi asked himself, understood the unimaginable enormity of what had come to pass? Had terror come to the killer then, with the knowledge that nothing could ever again be the same? How could a person go on living, he wondered, with such a burden in their heart and mind and soul, lying ponderous and crushing in every atom of their being? And what might a person do after killing another person, he thought? Go home, make a pot of tea or a cup of coffee, eat a meal, go shopping, go to work, watch television, read a book, go to the pub, make love, sleep, dream, wake up, take an aspirin for a headache, telephone friends, write a letter…? A sob caught his breath, and he prayed God had for once been merciful, and taken Jamie in his sleep.
Jack opened the office door to find Dewi slumped over the desk, head cradled on his folded arms.
‘Where’s McKenna?’ he barked.
Dewi raised his head slowly. Under the mass of curly black hair, his face was gaunt, and Jack thought he saw tears misting the blue eyes.
‘What’s the matter with you, Prys?’
‘Nothing, sir,’ Dewi mumbled.
Relieved of a tension he had not known existed by the concentrated effort expended in searching Stott’s house, Jack felt calmed, almost light-hearted. ‘McKenna been at you as well?’ he asked. ‘He’s not in the best of tempers this morning.’
‘I was thinking about Jamie, sir. That’s all,’ Dewi said. ‘We used to be together all the time when we were kids until my nain butted in when he started thieving. We still got together. Used to sneak off to the swings by the river, and go home separately.’
‘Why d’you always talk about your nain? Did she bring you up?’
‘Mam and Dad brought us up, but Nain sort of decides about things, if you know what I mean. Decides what’s right and what isn’t. Because she’s old.’
‘How come your parents don’t mind?’
‘Mam couldn’t say much, could she?’ Dewi said. ‘Nain’s her mam. And Dad knew when to keep his mouth shut, because his mother was Nain’s best mate.’ He smiled. ‘Those old women had terrible fights sometimes, over this and that … wouldn’t speak to each other for weeks, maybe months, and every Sunday after Chapel they’d come to our house for dinner, still not talking, and we had to relay messages backwards and forwards over the table while they sat looking daggers at each other.’ The smile faded. ‘Nain cried for weeks after the old lady died. She still takes flowers to the cemetery every Saturday afternoon.’
‘Everybody should have somebody to grieve for them, I suppose. Even the Jamies of this world. Maybe he wouldn’t be where he is now if his nain had looked out for him.’
‘He never even knew who his real father was,’ Dewi said bitterly. ‘And nobody would tell him, not even his mam. She reckoned she’d fallen in the family way after a Saturday night out. She told him she’d been with this man up against a wall at the back of the Three Crowns, and he made Jamie on her, and they were drunk, his mam and this man … When he was little, he used to cry about not having a dad, went roaming the estate asking kids with fathers if he could go and live with them, so he’d have a dad. And people called him a little bastard and told him to bugger off back to his tart of a mother. And sometimes, the other kids were told to throw stones at him, like he was a mangy dog…’ Dewi stared at Jack, his eyes glittering. ‘And now they all reckon he got what he deserved. I heard an old witch in the shop this morning say whoever got rid of him should have a medal.’
‘We don’t know anybody got rid of him,’ Jack said. ‘And we all feel guilty when somebody dies, because we only remember the good things about them, and the bad things we did or said. You’ll get over it. I want you to help me make an inventory of the stuff from Stott’s place.’
‘What did you find?’
‘Just about everything, because Mrs Stott was only too happy to show us. Furniture, clothes, underclothes, diary, jewellery – expensive stuff by the looks of it – ornaments – no pictures; I take it Mrs Cheney wasn’t overkeen on pictures – books, the books Allsopp told the chief inspector about, with Allsopp’s name as bold as brass on the flyleaf, and they would’ve been returned because our Gwen isn’t partial to Dickens, only she didn’t know where to send them. You wouldn’t credit such bloody cheek, would you? And we found a bottle of that perfume, almost empty. Absolutely reeks of carnations.’
‘Were there any letters? Or bank books or credit cards?’
‘No. Not in her name and not in Stott’s. And no money to speak of, apart from what she said was the housekeeping in her purse.’ Jack yawned. ‘I don’t know about you, but these early starts get to me. You must’ve been up half the night.’
Dewi shrugged. ‘Can’t we arrest her and do a body search? Unless she’s thrown anything incriminating, like that buckle Allsopp told Mr McKenna about, she must be carrying the credit card at least.’
‘What do we arrest her for? We can’t do her for stealing by finding because we’ve no proof all these weren’t given to her, just like she said, and the only person who could tell us is long dead.’
‘We’ve arrested her husband. Why not her?’
‘He hasn’t been charged, and we’ll have to let him go before long.’ Jack stood up. ‘I’m going for coffee. D’you want some?’
The bank manager from Leeds committed himself to the fewest words. ‘Stupid bugger!’ Jack slammed down the telephone, and gulped coffee. ‘He can’t tell us this and he can’t tell us that. He can’t tell us bloody anything because his client’s business
is confidential, and will we stop harassing him because he’s said more than he should’ve done already, and if it ever gets out he’ll be for the sack. Serve him bloody right!’
‘It was her cheque book, then?’ Dewi said.
‘Didn’t you hear me? He can’t tell us.’
‘If he can’t say because his client’s business is confidential, the cheque book must belong to one of his clients. And the only likely one is Romy Cheney.’
Jack grinned. ‘Well, that takes us a mite further forward, doesn’t it? Far enough to get an order to view the account. Anything from Dr Roberts yet?’
‘He rang earlier. He said – he said he’ll let us know.’
‘The sooner the better. We need to know what killed Jamie.’ Jack picked up the empty coffee mugs. ‘If somebody did kill him, we know who didn’t: Stott for one and Prosser for another, but knowing Jamie’s lifestyle, any number of villains could’ve taken him out. He had friends in bad places.’
‘I wonder where she was yesterday?’
‘Who?’
‘Mrs Stott.’
‘No idea. Probably sitting on one of Romy’s overstuffed sofas with her feet up, stuffing chocolates into her gob, watching telly and getting cramp in her fat bum … I noticed a satellite dish on the back wall.’
‘Did you ask her about the suit Wil found at Gallows Cottage?’
‘I wish you’d shut up about that bloody suit! More likely belongs to her husband than her.’
Chapter 31
In a quiet pub near Rhyl station, McKenna picked at a smoked chicken sandwich, then pushed it away half-eaten, lit a cigarette, and asked the waitress for a glass of whiskey. Downing the liquid in one swallow, he paid his bill and left. A chill wind swirled in the street, spattering rain on his face and coat as he unlocked his car.
He drove left from the promenade, towards the town’s sprawling suburbs: hundreds upon hundreds of red-roofed bungalows on curving streets behind sandy heathland crowning the sea defences. Wind whined and whistled past the open window, filling the car with salty scents and the smells of rain in the air.
Serena Kimberley inhabited a bungalow indistinguishable from all its neighbours: each detached, each set in a little plot of land, each with a patch of front lawn edged with borders, wrought-iron gates giving on to little driveways and a narrow view of back gardens with swings and rotary washing lines and glimpses of the railway line between London and Holyhead. No landmarks caught the eye, no points of orientation, no differences, except the occasional distinction of a red front door, or a blue one, each embellished with a cartwheel of stained and leaded glass, each bay window to the side of each front door dressed with curtain nets, frilled and patterned and looped and swathed, concealing life within from prying eyes without.
‘You should’ve telephoned,’ Serena said. A smile took any sting from the words. ‘Come in. Jenny’s in. Dreadful weather, isn’t it?’ He saw a pink plastic clothes basket on the kitchen floor. ‘The washing hadn’t been out ten minutes when it started to rain.’ She smiled. ‘With my son being away, I’d forgotten how much extra washing one teenager makes.’
‘How is Jenny?’ McKenna asked.
‘All right, considering everything.’ She led him into the room with the bay window, and lit the gas fire. ‘These rooms get very cold very quickly. Too much window, I suppose, as well as the house being below sea-level. Sit down while I make a drink.’
Returning with a pot of coffee and china mugs on a tray, she pushed an ashtray towards McKenna. ‘Jenny’s upstairs at the moment. Just say when you’re ready to see her. You know, people say,’ she went on, ‘that children are resilient, but I’ve never believed that. I think they hide a lot of their feelings, and the bigger the feelings, the more they get hidden. Especially the really painful ones they don’t know how to deal with. They do it so their parents and family won’t be hurt. I can still remember some of the agonies I went through, and not over anything more important than boys.’ She grinned. ‘You know, does he love me? Will he marry me? D’you know what girls do? They write names in exercise books instead of doing their homework.’
‘What names.’
‘Well,’ she said, pulling on the cigarette McKenna had offered, ‘if I fancied a boy called Jimmy Martin, for instance, I’d write down “Serena Martin” and say it out loud a few times, to see if it sounds like somebody I’d want to be. And when I got the shivers and wobbly knees over another boy, I’d do the same with his name.’
‘And did you ever fancy being Serena Martin?’
She laughed. ‘I met my husband in junior school, but it never stopped me looking elsewhere, just in case!’
How could one family, McKenna wondered, produce this bold and rather joyous woman from the same stock as the brother; she full of energy, he bequeathed little or nothing?
‘I wonder if Romy Cheney wrote names in books until she found one she was comfortable with,’ McKenna said.
‘Romy Cheney?’ Serena repeated. ‘It’s very silly name, don’t you think? Quite unreal. As if she couldn’t make up her mind what she was and what she wasn’t … It sounds like an anagram, or even something made up at Scrabble if you had too many Ys and not enough vowels.’
‘Your brother said he thought she was a fake.’
‘Well, with a name like that, I’m not surprised. He had a fairly normal reaction for once.’
McKenna helped himself to more coffee, his throat still dry from whiskey. ‘Doesn’t he have normal reactions very often?’
Serena sighed. ‘He’s always unsure about what to do. Always has been. Lack of confidence, I suppose, which is nothing unusual in itself, but if you live with the likes of Gwen for any length of time, and you aren’t very sure and confident to start with, any hope you might have of reacting normally, of just seeing things in a straightforward fashion, will go right out of the window.’ She took a biscuit, and bit into it. ‘I have never in my life come across anybody so twisted, so able to twist anything and everything into something nasty. And for no reason except that she likes to cause trouble.’
‘Did your brother or Jenny ever talk to you about Romy Cheney?’
‘Not in any detail. She only seemed to matter to Gwen, and it was a long time ago anyway.’
‘Why doesn’t Mrs Stott have a job? I understand she often complained about being short of money.’
Serena laughed. ‘Gwen wouldn’t work! She isn’t qualified for anything, and she’d never demean herself by doing an unskilled job. Anyway, if she went to work and admitted some responsibility towards family finances, she’d lose the biggest stick she has to bash Chris over the head with.’ Serena offered him a cigarette, and asked, ‘Didn’t you come to see Jenny? Shall I call her down?’
‘Not for a moment.’ McKenna stood up to look through the window, gathering his thoughts, playing for time, feeling as if enmeshed in a seafog, blundering along a cliff-top path. One more false step and he would be lost. Virtually sure Gwen had killed Romy Cheney, and Jamie too, for greed or spite or jealousy or fear, or simply because they crossed her in a way only she could explain and understand, he knew he could prove none of it, and the investigation, its people, its dragging load of misery, weighed him down.
‘Your brother told me Mrs Stott made a number of allegations about him.’
‘What allegations?’ Serena asked. ‘Who to?’
‘To Romy Cheney. Possibly to others.’ McKenna answered her second question.
‘What did she say?
‘She said he sexually abused Jenny.’ McKenna watched her face, her eyes. ‘She also said he allowed a friend of his to abuse the child.’
Serena leaned back in her chair, staring at McKenna. ‘You’re not serious!’
‘Unfortunately, I am. And I must discuss the allegations with Jenny. I have no choice.’ Serena continued to stare, her face drained of colour, eyes wide. ‘I would prefer,’ McKenna went on, ‘to talk to her with you present, although such a procedure is not strictly proper because you are argu
ably biased by your relationship to Mr Stott.’ He broke off, hearing pomposity in the words, as always when he was pressured or disturbed.
‘And what would be proper procedure?’
‘An impartial adult, usually a social worker, present for Jenny. A policewoman, and possibly a solicitor.’
Serena lit a new cigarette from the stub of the old. ‘Have you told social services?’
‘I don’t wish to involve other agencies unless it becomes unavoidable. And I don’t think Jenny should be caught up in the victim industry.’ He sat down. ‘It’s a growth industry in our recession-hit times, where any number of people home in on victims of alleged abuse, ostensibly offering support and counselling, and making sure history doesn’t repeat itself.’
‘What’s so awful about that?’
‘Nothing in theory,’ McKenna admitted. ‘Except the victims must play their part in keeping the industry going and, in order to do so, they must remain, as it were, locked into the time period in which the abuse occurred. Hardly beneficial to any healing process, is it?’ He watched Serena’s face. ‘I don’t think it will do Jenny’s emotional or psychological health any good if she’s forced into a situation where she must constantly repeat what happened to her – that is, if anything did – must let others examine and re-examine, analyse and re-analyse, the misery and trauma and distress in the minutest detail. And I don’t think Jenny should be forced, at this stage anyway, to consider the prospect of having to give evidence in court against her own father.’
Serena shook her head. ‘I can’t take this in. I really can’t! You say Chris actually told you Gwen made these accusations?’
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