by Rhys Bowen
He was halfway down when it started to rain—not a fine misty rain, but big fat drops that soaked him in seconds. He regretted his decision to walk and was feeling a little sorry for himself as the large shadowy form of the Everest Inn came into view through the mist. As he dropped down to Llyn Llydaw he noticed someone was on the trail ahead of him, moving as fast as he was.
For a moment he thought it must be one of the policemen from HQ, coming down this way to make sure everyone was off the mountain. He increased his speed and saw that the person wasn’t wearing a uniform. He was wearing cords and a tweedy jacket. Where the trails separated, above the village, the man kept on going and headed for the Everest Inn. It was then that Evan recognized him—Major Anderson.
Chapter 13
As Evan watched, the Major ran the last few yards to the inn and disappeared through a back door. With only a moment’s hesitation, Evan ran after him.
Major Anderson looked up, startled, as Evan burst into his office. He had taken off his jacket and was now wearing a checked shirt.
“Oh hello, constable,” he said. “Nasty weather, what?”
“Just up on the mountain, were you, major?”
“Yes, I was, as a matter of fact,” Major Anderson said.
Evan glanced around the room to see if he could spot the major’s jacket. He was still out of breath and couldn’t come up with a good reason for asking to see it. Knowing the major, he wouldn’t show it without a search warrant anyway.
“Do you mind telling me what took you up there this morning? And why you were in such a hurry to get down?”
The major gave him a withering look. “I should have thought that both were bloody obvious,” he said. “I always go out for a morning walk if I can find the time. I like to keep fit, you know. It’s good for the image of the place. I headed back down as soon as it started raining. I wasn’t wearing rain gear and I was getting damned wet.”
“Yes, I see your point,” Evan said, feeling his own clammy clothes clinging to his cold body. “So you didn’t get all the way up to the summit?”
“Nowhere near,” the major said. “I don’t have time for more than a brisk couple of miles—up one side of Llyn Llydaw (he pronounced it Chlyn Chlydaw, making it sound more like a couple of sneezes than Welsh words) and back down again.”
“So you didn’t get as far as Glaslyn and you didn’t meet any policemen?”
“I say—what’s all this about?” the major asked. “I thought I’d heard that you’d captured that insane chap. I’ve been telling my climbers that it was perfectly safe to go up there again.”
“We captured the insane chap,” Evan said, “and then we found another body this morning. So either Daft Dai has confessed to something he didn’t do, or there are two murderers.”
The major cleared his throat. “So, uh, was this man pushed over a cliff too?”
“No,” Evan said. “I just wondered if you’d seen anybody acting suspiciously, major? Someone maybe with blood stains on his jacket?”
“No, good Lord, no,” the major said emphatically. “I passed nobody. Of course you don’t see much when the mist is down, do you? Another murder, you say? If this goes on, it’s going to ruin us. Who’s going to want to come here and risk being killed? You want to hurry up and catch him, constable!”
“We’re doing our best, sir,” Evan said. “And if we get cooperation from the public, it will go all the quicker, right?”
“Anything we can do to help, of course,” the major said, opening his hand wide.
“You can tell your staff to keep their eyes open for anything suspicious.” Evan focused his gaze on the major’s hands. “Torn clothing, blood spots, anything that could be used as a weapon—”
“Good Lord, man. That would incriminate most of us here. Climbers are always tearing their clothing and scraping their skin. And they all carry pocket knives, I should imagine.”
Evan nodded. “You’ve got a point there, major.”
“Even I’ve got a couple of cuts on my hands,” the major said, laughing easily. “Damned rope burn, actually. It’s these new Dacron ropes. They’re too thin for my taste.”
“All the same, we’d appreciate it if you made a note of any possible clue you found. It’s to your benefit as well as ours to get this solved quickly.”
“Quite,” the major agreed. “Now if you’ll excuse me, constable, I really must go and change these wet clothes, and I think you should do the same, before we both catch pneumonia.”
He put a firm hand on Evan’s shoulder and ushered him out of the room.
As Evan walked back to the village, he considered the possibilities. The major certainly had the opportunity to kill all three men. He knew before anyone else that Tommy Hatcher was missing. He had been hurrying down the mountain today. But why? What possible motive could he have? Evan decided to call Sergeant Watkins and have him check the major’s army record at the same time he checked the others. What if the major had been the officer held responsible for Danny’s death? If his promising army career had been cut short, would that make him bitter enough to kill off the men he held responsible for letting Danny die?
Evan went straight to the police station and left a message on Sergeant Watkins’ answering machine. Then he went home to change his sopping clothes.
“’Deed to goodness, what have you been doing to yourself then, Mr. Evans?” Mrs. Williams came rushing down the hall to greet him. There was no chance of sneaking into the house without her hearing the key in the lock. Evan thought she would have made a great police dog. She had a fantastic sixth sense that let her hear a footstep creeping past even when the TV was at full volume. “Look at you—soaked to the skin! Up the stairs with you and into a hot bath!”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Williams,” Evan said. “I just need to change into dry clothes.”
“A hot bath is what you need,” Mrs. Williams said firmly. “You’ll be catching your death of cold. Come on now, up the stairs with you.”
Evan had no choice. Mrs. Williams marched up the stairs ahead of him and had already started running the bath for him. Alarmed that she might stay and supervise, he thanked her profusely, ushered her out, and locked the bathroom door. After he had peeled off his wet clothes, he was glad she had insisted. He lay back contentedly, feeling the life coming back into his frozen limbs.
He was still luxuriating in the tub when his pager beeped at him. Sergeant Watkins was a fast worker, he decided; Evan hadn’t even expected him to be back at his desk yet.
He draped a towel around himself and ran to the phone.
“I didn’t think you’d be back for hours yet, sarge,” he said. “How did you manage to get back so quick? Fly?”
“How else,” Sergeant Watkins said with a chuckle. “I hitched a lift in the helicopter. No sense in getting soaked to the skin riding down in that blasted train. What’s this about Major Anderson?”
Evan told him.
“Interesting,” Sergeant Watkins said. “That’s definitely worth looking into. He’s only been here a little while, hasn’t he? Maybe he took the job deliberately, so that it would give him a chance to …”
“To lure men here and bump them off?” Evan finished for him. “It sounds a bit far fetched to me, sergeant.”
“I’d imagine the army makes a lot of blokes crack,” Sergeant Watkins said. “Who knows—maybe he was stationed in Bosnia or in the Gulf War. He could have gone off his rocker. Anyway, I’ve put through the request for his records and we’ll see what turns up, eh?”
“And when do you think we’ll know more about the other young chap?” Evan asked.
“They should be bringing the body down within the hour,” Sergeant Watkins said. “The helicopter went back with the police surgeon to bring him down. I’ll give you a buzz—just off the record, of course. I’ve already had a phone call from Inspector Hughes telling me to wait for him before I do anything more. And knowing him, that means butt out and leave everything to him except bringing him cu
ps of tea.”
“One of that sort, eh?” Evan said sympathetically.
“And a great believer in physical evidence,” Sergeant Watkins went on. “He reads too much Sherlock Holmes. He’ll probably have us out scouring the mountain for toothpicks and cigarette packets. I just hope we get the information we want from the War Office before he gets here. Then at least you can do some private snooping while I’m stuck making his tea for him! I know you’re dying to be in on this case!”
“I must admit I’d like to catch the man,” Evan said. “I’ll give you any help I can, sarge.”
“Great. I’ll call you back when I know anything more.”
Evan put down the phone. The bath was now too cold to be enticing, so he dressed in dry clothes, noticing that Mrs. Williams had already whisked away the wet ones. She might be annoying, but there were definite advantages to having a landlady.
It wasn’t until later that afternoon that Sergeant Watkins finally called back.
“Hello, sarge, I thought you might have been forbidden to talk to me,” Evan said. “Did the D.I. get back then?”
“He’s back all right,” Sergeant Watkins said. “And barking orders at everyone like the bloody army. And speaking of armies—I’ve got the information you wanted. I’ve got a recent address for Marshall in Manchester, which is definitely close enough to have popped over here if he’d needed to. Oh and I thought you’d like to know—the army has no record of a Major Timothy Anderson.”
“Is that a fact?” Evan couldn’t resist smiling. “Goes around calling himself major, does he? But that shoots down my little theory about his being mixed up in Danny Bartholemew’s death because he was the officer in charge. All the same,” he went on, “it might be worth checking up on him, don’t you think, sarge? A man who goes around calling himself something he’s not might just be doing it for a reason.”
“Possibly because he wants to give himself authority he doesn’t otherwise have,” Watkins said dryly. “It looks good on resumes, doesn’t it? But it wouldn’t do any harm to ask Scotland Yard to run a check on him.”
“Have you got any details on that boy who was killed this morning?” Evan asked.
“Yes we have,” Sergeant Watkins said. “Name’s Simon Herries. Student at Oxford. Came up here alone for a climbing weekend. Liked getting away on his own, apparently—real sort of outdoor type. Family lives in Surrey. Dad’s a solicitor. We spoke to the mother—very posh. Oh, and no family connection with the army.”
“That’s not much help at all, is it?” Evan said. “I don’t see how we could link him in any way to the others. They were all very much working-class lads. What would an Oxford student have in common with any of them?”
“Maybe we were right about this just being a horrible coincidence,” Sergeant Watkins said. “Maybe Dai really did push the other two over the cliff, or maybe somebody else bumped them off, and this was a different killer altogether.”
“But why kill a nice young chap like him?” Evan asked.
“Search me,” Sergeant Watkins said.
“Sarge, if your other murderer was hiding out on the mountain and this young bloke stumbled on his hiding place—he’d be desperate enough to kill wouldn’t he?”
“Maybe,” Sergeant Watkins said, “although you usually find that people who molest children don’t go in for violence in the rest of their lives. I can’t see him carrying around a knife like that, or slitting a throat. Stabbing in the back, yes, but slitting a throat—that takes guts and practice.”
“So we’re looking for someone who has killed before?”
“Or who was trained to kill?” Sergeant Watkins suggested.
“The army again,” Evan exclaimed. “Anyone who had done commando training would know how to slit a throat.”
“Pity about Major Anderson,” Sergeant Watkins said.
“So where do we go from here?” Evan asked.
“I can’t do much. The D.I. wants me standing to attention in case he needs me—needs a cup of tea, more like it. But you could do some checking on our Oxford student. We know he spent the night in the youth hostel in Llanberis. He’s got it stamped in his hostel card. You could find out who he talked to and if he was seen with anybody this morning.”
“Yes, I could do that,” Evan said. “He’d have a photo on his hostel card, wouldn’t he? Can you make me a copy of it? It’s useful to jog people’s memories.”
“Yes, I can do that,” Watkins said.
“I’ll be right down then,” Evan said, glancing at his watch. “And what about checking up on Marshall?”
“I’ve got the day off tomorrow,” Sergeant Watkins said. “How about you?”
“You asking me on a date, sarge?”
Sargeant Watkins chuckled. “You’re not my type! I thought I might take a drive in the direction of Manchester. I like to give my car a good outing at weekends. Care to come along for the ride?”
“Yes, I would,” Evan replied. “Thanks, sarge.”
“And Evans—just don’t mention it to anyone else on the force, okay? D.I. Hughes has scheduled a meeting for this afternoon to go over his plan of action, as he calls it. I don’t think he’d take kindly to us poking around on our own.”
“You don’t think you should put him in the picture as far as we’ve got and then get his blessing?” Evan asked.
“Good Lord no,” Watkins said quickly. “Methodical Hughes? I told you, he’s strictly by the book. He won’t get around to admitting there might be a connection with the other murders for a week or two, and the other case is still his number-one priority. I want to catch this chap while he’s still around to be caught; it’s all up to us, Evans.”
“I’m game,” Evan said. “See you tomorrow then. Who knows, maybe Marshall will confess, or give us the lead we want and we’ll have the whole thing sewn up before your D.I. can start on it.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Watkins chuckled. “Still, it’s better than sitting around doing nothing.”
When Evan hung up the phone, he opened the slim file he had assembled on the first two deaths. He took out the snapshot of Stew Potts and his wife. It wouldn’t do any harm to show that around too. Maybe someone would recall having seen Stew going up the mountain railway or talking to someone down in the town. He was a good-looking chap, Evan thought. If he’d gone into any of the local shops or cafes, the girls working there would definitely remember him. Especially if, as his wife hinted, he had a way with the ladies.
He drove down to headquarters and collected a copy of Simon Herries’ photo. He felt anger rising inside him again as he looked at the open, fresh face of the young man. Even in the small black-and-white snapshot he looked healthy and full of life. Who on earth could have wanted him dead?
Up in Llanberis, he showed the photo with very little success. The hostel warden remembered him, but said he had kept himself pretty much to himself. They’d had a noisy bunch in there last night—a party of German students who had got everybody singing. But this young chap had sat aside in an armchair, studying maps and making notes. One of the German girls had even teased him about it.
“You English are so quiet and shy,” she had said.
Simon had smiled. “Not all of us, only me,” he had answered and refused her invitation to join them.
The hostel warden couldn’t remember Simon talking to anyone apart from that one line.
Evan had no more luck in town. Nobody recognized him in the stores or cafes. The girl in the supermarket thought he might have come in there to buy prepackaged sandwiches, but that was that. He was the sort of person nobody would notice, Evan thought. He’d probably have had quiet good manners and would want to slip in and out of places with the least amount of fuss.
Although Evan was sure it was a waste of time, he went to show the photo to the booking office clerk for the railway.
“When are they going to let us reopen?” the man demanded even before Evan could explain the purpose of his visit. He had a shrunken,
sour-looking face and the thought flashed through Evan’s mind that he could hardly be the best choice to greet tourists all day.
“They keep coming here, expecting to take the train and there’s no trains running, are there?” he demanded. He had that belligerence of many small men. “We’ve got the place packed with tourists and they all want to go up the mountain and they’re all angry with me because we’re closed.”
“Not until we’ve had a chance to search the entire crime scene,” Evan said. “A man had his throat cut up there this morning. You wouldn’t want someone else to end up the same way, would you?”
“The place is swarming with policemen,” the booking office clerk said, frowning up at the mountain above him. “Nobody would be so bloody stupid as to wait around and be caught, would they? He’s probably miles away by now.”
“You didn’t notice anything peculiar about anyone coming down on the train, did you?” Evan asked.
“They already asked me that a dozen times,” the man snapped. “I told them that several thousand people pass through this station every day. I don’t have time to go studying each of them.”
“How about this lad?” Evan asked, producing the snapshot of Simon Herries. “Do you remember seeing him?”
The man shook his head. “No. Can’t say that I do.”
On an impulse Evan pulled out the photo of Stew Potts. “How about him?” he asked. “He was a big bloke. You might have noticed him.”
The clerk stared at the picture. “Can’t say that I remember him,” he said. “I saw her, though.”
Chapter 14
Evan glanced up sharply at the railway clerk. “Her? You saw this woman?”
The man nodded. “Last weekend, I think it was.”
“You’re sure it was her?”
“Pretty sure. Foreign, wasn’t she? Spoke with some kind of accent? Kind of tarty looking.”