‘Well, she can’t tell us where she was Sunday afternoon,’ Dewi pointed out. ‘Who’s going to believe she can’t remember?’
‘And can you remember exactly what you did on Sunday and when you did it?’ McKenna asked. ‘Of course you can’t, because it’s perfectly normal not to remember. She says she went for a walk round town. We can’t prove she didn’t.’
‘We’re questioning everyone within a two-mile radius of the caravan again,’ Jack said. ‘Someone must’ve seen her. She’s hardly invisible.’
‘If she was there,’ McKenna said.
‘There can’t’ve been many people around of a Sunday,’ Dewi added. ‘I mean, she had to get to the caravan in the first place, and I can’t see her walking. It’s all of five miles from here.’
‘Rather than snatch hypotheses from the air to fit your theories,’ McKenna said, ‘it would be more to the point to garner whatever facts are to be had.’ He pushed the documents and floppy disks towards Dewi. ‘Perhaps you could finish this job while Inspector Tuttle arranges a medical examination for Mrs Stott. Superintendent Griffiths should have the court orders by now.’
Dewi rubbed his eyes. ‘These computers send you cross-eyed, sir.’ He grinned. ‘I’d better be careful I don’t end up looking like Beti Gloff. I wouldn’t want the female likes of John Beti to be all I could get to share my bed!’
‘You’ve got a cruel tongue on you, Dewi Prys,’ McKenna said. Leafing through the printout stacked beside the computer, he asked, ‘What does this tell us?’
‘Dunno sir. I haven’t finished yet. Are you going to see Mrs Stott? She needs talking to, doesn’t she? She needs asking properly about Jamie.’
‘I’d rather wait until I have a few facts to drop in her lap.’ McKenna lit a cigarette. ‘I’m not too taken with the idea of letting her make a monkey out of me.’
‘I suppose not. If I were you, I don’t think I’d want to be talking to her anyway. I don’t think I’d be wanting to breathe the same air after what she did to Jamie.’ Squinting at McKenna, he added, ‘If headquarters even hear you’ve been smoking by the machines, sir, they’ll put you back in uniform. Back on the beat. As a constable. At the very least.’
‘You’re getting like Jack Tuttle.’
‘You’ve often said I could do worse, haven’t you? I mean, I’m not nagging, but why d’you think they stuck that big “No Smoking” sign on the wall over there?’
‘I don’t know, do I? Because smoking’s suddenly become politically incorrect? Because they’re miserable sods?’
‘Could be, sir. Then again, it could be because smoking’s bad for computers.’
McKenna grabbed his cigarette packet and slapped it on the desk under Dewi’s nose. ‘And where does it say so?’
Dewi picked up the pack, carefully reading warnings spelled out in large gold lettering. ‘It says “Smoking seriously damages health” and,’ he added, turning the packed over, ‘“Smoking when pregnant harms your baby”.’
McKenna snatched the packet out of his hands. ‘I’d better ring headquarters, hadn’t I, Prys?’ he raged. ‘Tell them we’ve got a pregnant bloody computer with lung cancer and emphysema at the very least, and it’s all my bloody fault!’
* * *
Where’s the chief inspector?’ Jack asked, looking over Dewi’s shoulder at the columns of figures and notations on the computer screen.
‘Having a tantrum.’
‘What’s that? What did you say?’
‘Having a tantrum,’ Dewi repeated. ‘Because I said he shouldn’t be smoking near the computer.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Dewi awaited the harangue about impudence and insolence and insubordination. Jack sat in McKenna’s recently vacated chair. ‘I’ve said the same myself, but he never takes a blind bit of notice. He’s addicted to the things. That’s the problem. In my opinion, for what it’s worth, smokers are addicts just as much as the morons shoving heroin in their veins.’ He flicked the edge of the printout with a pen tip. ‘Any of this any use to us?’
McKenna was getting back into his car when Christopher Stott inched open the front door of his mean little house, rubbing sleep and misery from his eyes.
‘I thought you must be out,’ McKenna said. ‘I’ve been ringing the bell for the past five minutes.’
Stott held the door open. ‘Come in, Mr McKenna.’ He shuffled into the room with the huge sofas and the ugly carpet. ‘I’ve been trying to catch up on my sleep.’ He smiled a little. ‘Your cells don’t exactly invite sound and restful slumber. Sit down. Can I get you a drink?’
Even in the midst of what must be the most significant crisis of his life, Stott had it in him to observe normal civilities. And even, McKenna thought, after being married to Gwen Stott for so long. ‘Some tea would be welcome.’
‘Smoke if you want,’ Stott invited, going to the kitchen. Clad in pyjamas and bedroom slippers, he resembled a frail elderly soul scouring the rooms and corridors of an old people’s home, with nothing left to do but wait for Death to come calling at the door.
‘Where did you think I might be?’ He leaned down to place a mug of tea on the carpet at McKenna’s feet, the sourness of sleep in his hair and on his breath.
‘I don’t know.’
‘No, I don’t either.’ A wan smile took any sting from the words. ‘I can’t think of anywhere I might be wanted at the moment.’
‘With your sister?’
‘I don’t think so. Jenny’s better off without me for the time being.’
‘What d’you call the time being?’
‘I suppose,’ came the reply, ‘until we know what’s happening.’
‘Yes, I see,’ McKenna said. He sipped the tea, hot in a solid earthenware beaker. ‘Do you know when Mr Prosser will be discharged from hospital?’
‘I spoke to him last night. He seems very much better, I’m glad to say, although he didn’t have much good to say for the hospital, which struck me as a bit ungracious, considering they no doubt saved his life.’
‘I don’t think it’s so much the hospital as some of the staff.’
‘You mean the psychiatrist? Trefor thinks he’s on the wrong side of the bars.’
‘Well, let’s hope he’s able to go home soon.’
‘Yes, let’s….’
‘Will you be able to go back to work?’ McKenna said eventually.
‘You mean, have I got the sack? No, I haven’t, although I can’t think why not.’
‘They don’t have any call to sack you. You haven’t done anything.’
Stott winced, as if the words were needles piercing his body. ‘Don’t you think I should’ve done something? Long before that Cheney woman came on the scene. If I had,’ he added, his voice harsh, ‘Jenny wouldn’t’ve had her innocence destroyed, and Jamie might still be alive.’
‘With the best will in the world, you can’t stop others from doing what they want.’
‘I didn’t have any will.’ The words were bitter. ‘I really find it quite odd for you to be trying to convince me I should let myself off the hook.’
‘What’s done is done, isn’t it? You won’t be of much use to Jenny if you spend the rest of your days wallowing in misery and might-have-beens and should-have-dones and whatever.’ He thought he might do well to heed his own words. ‘You and Jenny should simply discuss what happened, talk about why and how, shut it away and get on with living … leave it shut away, until it stops hurting, until it’s lost its power. It will, given time. You can be sure of that at least.’
‘I’m going to see Jenny later. What should I tell her about her mother?’
Stott no longer referred to Gwen as his wife, as if she were already divorced, in spirit if not in fact. McKenna wondered how Jenny now regarded her mother, if she had begun to weave from the cruel reality a romance to cover its ugly face.
‘Mrs Stott will be charged with the murder of Jamie Wright.’
‘Is that all? What about the other one?’
‘We have no evidence. None at all
.’
‘Neither do I, unfortunately,’ Stott replied. ‘And, believe me, if I had, you’d know.’
‘Mrs Stott has a number of scratches and bruises on her face and upper body. She claims they resulted from a fight she had with you late last week.’
‘Does she? I had no fight with her, Mr McKenna. I can’t prove it, of course.’ He smiled. ‘But then, neither can she disprove it … Marriages, eh? I’ll give you a statement, for what it’s worth to you.’
‘I shall need to take a statement from Jenny. She is, regrettably, a material witness. She knows her mother wasn’t in the house at the time Jamie Wright died. And, of course, the other matters….’
‘Yes,’ Stott nodded. ‘I know you’ve told me to shut it away, but while Jenny was visiting me on Sunday, and I was talking to you, and you were talking to Jenny and Serena, and I was sitting in that cell thinking the worst had to be over for all of us, Gwen was out there killing that young man, and the worst he’d ever done was nothing compared to what she’d set in motion. How do you shut that sort of thing away, Mr McKenna? How many years and years will go by before that kind of thing loses its power?’
‘I don’t know,’ McKenna said. ‘I don’t know what I should say to you, or what I should not say. I don’t know if I should tell you that we’ve been forced to consider whether Jenny should be regarded as a possible victim of sexual abuse by you and Mr Prosser, and dealt with accordingly. I don’t know if I should tell you I believe her, believe that neither you nor Prosser laid a finger on her, because I might be mistaken. I don’t know what I believe any longer, because there are so many untruths, so many improbables, so much deception, that no one can know, and I’m left with nothing to guide me except my instincts.’
‘I believe,’ Stott began, ‘that Gwen intended to tear our family apart.’ He stared at the carpet, traced the toe of his slippers round and around a bright orange whorl in the design. ‘She’s got her way. I don’t expect she’s where she intended to be at the moment. I think she had a dream of living with Romy Cheney, having the dust of the woman’s glamour drift on to her, being able to scuff her feet in it like you or I scuff through fallen leaves in the autumn … Maybe she killed her because Romy didn’t want her. I don’t know. I don’t know where Gwen will be this time next year. But I do know Jenny and I will not live together again.’ He took hold of his mug of tea, held it to his mouth with jittery hands. ‘Mud sticks, you see, Mr McKenna. It’ll stick on me and it’ll stick on Jenny. And even though I would do nothing to harm my child, she might begin to wonder, mightn’t she? She might begin to think, in the way that women do – this tortuous, frightening way – that Gwen did what she did because she saw, with her woman’s instincts, her mothering instinct, what lay at the heart of me; saw what I really wanted, even though I didn’t know it myself.’
‘You really shouldn’t’ve bitten Dewi Prys’s head nearly off because he told you not to smoke by the computers,’ Jack said. ‘I don’t know how you’ll cope when the whole building’s a non-smoking area. Why don’t you try to give up?’
‘Why don’t you try to give up being an old woman?’ McKenna snarled. ‘You could try minding your own sodding business at the same time!’
‘It is my business. What about passive smoking, then? I probably get through twenty a day just being in the same room with you.’
‘You know how to deal with that particular health risk, don’t you? By taking yourself and your delicate little lungs and your nanny bloody mentality somewhere else!’ McKenna bared his teeth. ‘By God, you’re sure to get a medal for political correctness, aren’t you? Did the chief constable take you aside at the last Lodge meeting and promise you one?’
‘I do not belong to any lodge!’ Jack shouted. ‘I don’t belong to bloody anything!’ He flung from the room, almost flooring Dewi Prys, who sidled through the door carrying sheaves of paper from the computer. He placed them on the desk, and dropped the bundle of floppy disks on top. ‘I’ve finished the first trawl, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m happy to say the computer didn’t keel over coughing its guts up, and it didn’t give birth, although it was labouring a bit by the time I finished.’
McKenna looked at the smooth innocent face and guileless eyes. ‘People can cut themselves if they get too sharp, Dewi Prys,’ he said. ‘And what did the computer produce for you? Was it worth the trouble?’
Dewi smiled. ‘It was well worth the trouble, sir.’ He pulled up a chair. ‘I’ve made notes to save going through every little detail.’
Stifling a yawn, McKenna felt the weariness of age within him, an age come before its time. He thought briefly of a holiday, of days spent in the company of Denise on an Aegean island, both of them alone with each other and the tedium of long acquaintance, then thought of being alone with Emma Tuttle in the hot dark nights of an island a million miles away.
‘What it all amounts to,’ Dewi was saying, ‘is that on the twelfth of December four years ago December coming, Margaret Bailey’s current account started to pay out regular sums of money by standing order into a deposit account at the same bank. There’s a tidy balance, and it’s earned a decent interest. Another current account was opened on the same day. There’s been money in and out of that: cash in, corresponding with cash out of Bailey’s current account, then cash out, mostly from machines in Bangor and Chester.’ He flipped through his notes. ‘The last deposit to the new current account was £500 in cash last week. The account in Margaret Bailey’s name is all but empty because the money’s gone to these others.’
‘What name are the accounts in? Stott?’
‘Oh, no, sir.’ Dewi smiled. ‘Both of them belong to Romy Cheney, according to the records. I reckon our Gwen’ll keep the shrinks busy for years explaining why she pinched a name not only off a dead woman, but off a woman she’s probably killed in the first place. Especially as it wasn’t Romy Cheney’s real name, and Gwen must’ve known that.’ He paused. ‘The bank manager’s been very obstructive. Quite deliberately bloody awkward from start to finish, making a gigantic fuss about confidentiality when we asked a few legitimate questions. I don’t think I’d want to be in his shoes when his bosses find out just how careless he’s been with Margaret Bailey’s money. And come to think of it, Jamie might not’ve been killed if we’d known about the money earlier. The cheque book, by the way, is an old one belonging to Margaret Bailey. Issued before she died.’
‘I wonder how Jamie got hold of it?’
‘Dunno, sir. He might’ve pinched it off Gwen Stott, for insurance, as you might say. It doesn’t really matter, because the cheque book ties him up nicely with Gwen Stott.’
‘It ties him to Romy Cheney,’ McKenna said. ‘And all we can say is that she didn’t kill him. Gwen Stott is out of that particular sequence, so we may as well ditch the cheque book as evidence.’
‘What sequence, sir?’
‘The dance we’re doing to Gwen Stott’s music. A minuet: two steps forward and one back.’
Chapter 36
McKenna stood at the wide bay window on the middle floor of his house, the cat in his arms, watching an exquisite dawn break in the east to bring in the first day of May. At the stroke of midnight from the cathedral clock, he had said “white hare” for luck, laughing at himself as he did so.
Beyond the wooded crest of Bangor Mountain, a sky so brilliant it seared the eye spread pink and gold ripples across the waters of Menai Straits. Gulls wheeled over the city, their wings tipped with light, settled on roof ridges and began calling and screeching, disturbing the still sleepy cat. High in the sky, the tailstream of an aeroplane turned to ragged pink streamers, dragged by the wind.
Summer would come soon, dulling the sparkle of spring green upon the trees, fresh new grasses in the parks and on the great sweep of hillside below the old university building. Under the trees there, bluebells cast a purply mist upon the ground, and on the mountain opposite, heads of bright yellow gorse shone from the bracken. McKenna loved the early months of the year, even F
ebruary, when bitter winds shrieked in from the east, snow riding their back and the scent and sense of distant lands upon their breath. The sap rose in his spirit as it rose in the earth, and fell prey as quickly to the decay of autumn and the barren spirit of winter, when sickness and weariness reconnoitred for the Grim Reaper, marking out souls for harvest.
He hoped to die on a fine spring morning such as this, his soul with the strength to rise to heaven, and knew that without understanding of mortality, there could be no joy in life. His time seemed to pass more swiftly with each week or month laid to rest, whole days disappearing in the blink of an eye, the sigh of a breath. Today was Thursday, yet like no time at all since he stood, Dewi Prys at his shoulder, in the sadness of Jamie’s caravan, and looked upon Death yet again. Craving for immortality grew apace with his years, even in those fleeting moments when the weariness of life became leaden and the beauty of final peace seduced the mind of man, but there was no child to carry his legacy into the future, no wife to mourn him, few friends to grieve. Bored, hungry for her breakfast and the sweet fresh air of morning, the cat struggled to be let free. He put her on the floor, and followed her tittupping tail downstairs, thinking it would be enough that he had lived and died.
‘Bloody paper!’ Jack complained. ‘Look at it. I’m surprised we don’t disappear under a paper mountain.’
‘Computers were supposed to stop the world being smothered with paper,’ McKenna said. ‘And save some of the trees.’
‘So why haven’t they? Why is there more bloody paper than ever before?’
Dewi sifted and sorted, glancing at Jack and McKenna. ‘Computers actually generate paper. Folk learned the hard way.’
‘Learned what?’ Jack asked.
‘Information gets lost in computers, sir. Data gets buggered up by power cuts and electronic memory blips and microchip faults. And if you haven’t printed it all off, you may as well kiss it goodbye. What shall I do with these court orders?’
‘How many are there?’
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