by Ewart Hutton
I took a stool at the bar. David Williams, the owner, wasn’t around. That suited me fine. I leaned over the counter, took my glass down from its place on the shelf, put it under the beer tap and filled it. Self-service meant I could avoid the inclusion in my drink of stuff from the black plastic bilge bucket that stood under the pump, collecting everything from drips through pork-pie particles to the common cold virus.
David popped his head round from the serving area of the front bar. He came over, picking up his drink as he passed it. The two separate bars were a godsend to him. He could keep a drink active in each one, and work on the mistaken belief that his customers were only seeing the half of what he was actually consuming.
‘Scandal?’ he asked with a great big eager grin.
‘What have you heard?’ I closed the beer tap.
He pretended to look crestfallen. ‘You mean you’re not going to tell me?’
‘I want to hear your version.’
He checked to see who might be listening, then leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘The story is that they picked up a couple of hitchhikers on their way back from the match, supposedly without realizing that they were working girls.’ He raised his eyebrows, waiting to see if I would respond.
‘One hitchhiker.’
‘Just one?’ He sounded disappointed.
‘Go on,’ I prompted.
‘Whoever it was turned out to have a boyfriend with her. They tried on some sort of a shakedown, and then they took the transport and abandoned our boys up in the forest.’ He leered salaciously. ‘What we’re all wondering is, what went on up there that the boys wouldn’t want their loved ones to know about?’
He stood back and waited for my reaction.
I just nodded, noncommittal. It was a raggedy version, maybe deliberately so, but it was interesting that the group had managed to get their spin working for them so quickly.
‘You’re not going to tell me?’ he asked, disappointed.
‘I couldn’t improve on that, David.’
David and Sandra Williams were Dinas’s version of the Golden Couple. That status was still current only because any contenders to their throne had opted for a Bronze future in a bigger place.
David was also the nearest thing I had to a friend in Dinas.
‘I’ve seen some of those guys around,’ I said. ‘Tell me about them. Two of them looked like brothers.’
He didn’t have to think about it. ‘That’s Ken and Gordon McGuire. Ken’s the oldest. He got the family farm, Rhos-goch. A big holding out on the Penygarreg road, some hill country, but a lot of good river land.’
‘Good farmer?’
‘Yes, but you wouldn’t have to be on that land. A walking stick would sprout if you left it in the dirt long enough.’
‘The brother?’
‘Gordon’s an auctioneer with Payne, Dyke and Thomas.’
‘A lush?’ I asked, knowing the occupational hazard.
David shrugged. ‘Not as bad as some. Good at his job, though. He got a nice Victorian farmhouse when Ken got the farm.’
‘Who’s the big guy? Shaven head.’
‘Paul Evans. Works for his father, a builder up at Treffnant. He’s a really good rugby player. Awesome tackler.’
‘He looks like a dumbfuck.’
‘Paul’s okay until he gets a drink in him, then you want to keep away.’
‘Boon Paterson?’
‘Boon hasn’t been around for a while. He joined the Army.’ He looked at me, interested, picking up on a new twist. ‘I’d heard he wasn’t there. Was he?’
I shook my head. ‘Who are the other two?’ I had no real picture of them, just props swaying under Paul Evans’s weight.
‘Trevor Vaughan and Les Tucker. Trevor farms up in the hills, and Les has a pretty successful timber-felling business.’
‘Which ones are married?’
‘Ken and Gordon – the McGuires. Les has a long-term girlfriend though. Sara Harris, she’s a hairdresser in Dinas. You’d probably know her if you saw her.’
So Trevor Vaughan was the other bachelor. ‘Paul and Trevor, have they got girlfriends?’
He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t know. All I do know is that they both still live at home.’
‘What keeps them together as a group?’
‘Ken and Gordon, probably. Trevor was Ken’s best mate, Les was Gordon’s. They’ve just kept together from school. Paul and Boon got to tag along.’
I hadn’t seen Boon Paterson, so I had to exclude him from the mental line-up. Four of them fitted there, worked as a loose match. I could imagine them pictured in a local newspaper, a group shot of young rotarians handing over a large-format cheque to a good cause. But Paul Evans stayed out of the shot. Why were they associating with a lunk like that? What would a bunch of young countryfolk require muscle for?
I moved my hands in front of him as if I was drawing open a concertina. ‘In a range that spans monsters to saints, where would you place them?’
He smiled, not needing to think about it. ‘Customers.’
I returned the smile dutifully. But I couldn’t shake Paul Evans from my mind. Performing a function. Pinning down the shoulders of a woman whose face I couldn’t see. Her legs thrashing wildly. For the enjoyment of the others.
‘Capaldi, we still need to talk.’
Back at the caravan, and another message from Mackay. I reset the answering machine. I was almost tempted to call him. Get this thing over with.
I picked up the receiver. Then gently put it back down again when it occurred to me that my wife might answer it.
I picked it up again, dialling the Dispatch number, just remembering what Emrys Hughes had said about the embargo he had put on the news of the minibus discovery. The news that I was supposed not to hear.
‘This is DS Capaldi.’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’
‘Did Sergeant Hughes instruct you not to call me with an update on the hijacked minibus?’
‘No, Sarge – that was Inspector Morgan.’
I heard the laughter in the background. I smiled as I put the receiver down. It was good to know that I had support in lowly places.
3
Torches …
The thought of torches brought me out of a fitful sleep. They had to have had light.
I called headquarters in Carmarthen after breakfast. Bryn wasn’t around, but I got someone to check the transcripts of the group’s statements. Torches were mentioned. The story was that the pimp and the girl had made off with them when they did their runner.
But, according to Bryn, there had been no confrontation with the pimp. They had paid over the agreed fee up front when they arrived at the hut, and waited for the good times to roll. The girl had said that she was just going outside to use the minibus to prepare herself. Next thing they knew, both girl and pimp had managed to sneak off in the minibus.
Sneak off? I couldn’t see it. The guy could hardly have gathered up the torches without declaring some sort of intention. No matter how smashed you were, you would know the party was finishing when the lights went out.
It was like the parked minibus, the neatly stacked rubbish in the hut, the tart’s missing telephone number … Disturbances in the details. Their story was frayed at the edges. But the smell coming off it wasn’t bad enough for Jack Galbraith to keep it open. I recalled his parting admonition, warning me off any direct approach to the members of the group.
The upside of having to investigate crap cases in the boondocks that no one else wants to touch is that it gives you the autonomy to invent leads that will take you to wherever you want to be.
Which, on this Monday morning, was the service station outside Newtown where the minibus had filled up with diesel. And where they had managed to add Miss Danielle to the roster.
I showed the manager my warrant card and told him that I wanted to see the security CCTV coverage for Saturday night.
He looked at me warily, and for a moment I thought he was going to t
ell me that it had already been erased, or that the cameras were only there for show. ‘You people have already been to look at it.’
‘When?’
‘Last night.’
‘Two big guys? One wide, one Scottish and grumpy?’
‘Yes.’
So Jack Galbraith and Bryn had diverted here on their way home. Taking this seriously. But they hadn’t called me. If there had been anything on the tapes to justify action, they would surely have contacted me.
I persuaded the manager to run the tape for me, and settled down in front of the dirty monitor in the cleaner’s cupboard that he called an office.
I felt a small flutter of anxiety below my sternum. Crazy. I didn’t know this woman. She hadn’t existed for me thirty-six hours ago. And she was probably some junkie hag, back in Cardiff now, just where the story placed her. But we had made the same sort of mistake with Regine Broussard. I wasn’t going to let it happen twice.
There was no denying I was nervous. I was about to get my first sighting of her, and I couldn’t shake off a sense of something that shifted between romance and doom.
I fast-forwarded through the tapes to get to the point where the minibus arrived at the service station. Business was slow. The forecourt was empty when it pulled in, the CCTV image grainy and stuttering. The driver got out and proceeded to fill the tank. No one else got out of the minibus. No other cars there either, so no witnesses to trace through the DVLA computer.
It happened too quickly. She was there just after the driver screwed the fuel cap back on and walked out of shot to go and pay. I rewound and watched again. I hadn’t missed anything. She just appeared, no approach. It was as if the tape had jumped or stalled, editing that segment out.
I peered at the screen. It didn’t help. The picture quality was terrible. A baseball cap. Blonde hair bunched through the gap at the back. I moved in as close as I could, but couldn’t tell if it was the cap that I had found. Her facial features were a blurred soup of pinkish pixels over a knotted scarf tucked into a puffy, red, down-filled jacket. About a hundred and sixty-two centimetres, I gauged from the relation of her shoulders to the roof of the minibus. A large rucksack sagging one shoulder.
She was on the far side of the minibus from the camera. Head bent, as if she was in conversation with someone through the sliding door on the side. She tossed her head back, her face turning into the camera, the smile pronounced enough to register as a big, happy smudge. Then she slid her rucksack off, handed it into the minibus and climbed in after it.
I knew the rest of the story. She didn’t escape.
I had just witnessed a transaction. Something had been negotiated between the woman and some of the men in the minibus. But what? A lift or a fuck?
I went back to the counter. The young cashier glanced up from a magazine. She seemed tired, dark circles under her eyes, bad complexion, the mix of colours in her hair making it look like she had fallen into a chemistry set.
‘Were you working Saturday night?’
‘Some of it,’ she said, an edge of suspicion in her tone and eyes.
‘Can you have a look at this?’ I moved to the side to create enough room for her to get into the room and see the image that I had paused on the screen.
She stared at it blankly.
‘This is at half past nine. Did you see this woman getting into that minibus?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I was clocked off by then.’
‘Who was on duty?’
‘Him.’ She cocked her head towards the manager, who was stacking shelves.
I pulled a face in frustration. The manager had already told me that he hadn’t seen her.
‘Helly Hansen …’
‘You know her?’
‘No. Her jacket – it was a Helly Hansen.’ The covetousness in her voice surprised me.
‘I thought you hadn’t seen her?’
‘I saw her earlier, when she arrived. I’ve always fancied a jacket like that.’
I kept my excitement down. ‘You saw her arrive?’
‘It was busy. Something like half past seven, seven o’clock. People going into town for Saturday night, people coming home from a day out shopping. It got dead quiet after that.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Positive. If that’s the one you’re looking for, that’s when I saw her.’
At least two hours. What was she doing there two hours before the minibus picked her up? It was a blow. It tied in with the group’s story. That it had all been pre-arranged, that the girl had been there waiting for them.
Or did it?
If a pimp had brought her up from Cardiff, why had he arrived so early? Even a deep-city hustler would have to realize that a service station whack in the middle of Baptist nowhere was no place to drop one of his girls off to trawl for casual trade.
‘You should ask Tony Griffiths.’
‘What?’ I did an auditory double take.
‘You want to know about her, you should ask Tony. He was the one what brought her in.’
‘Bryn, she was carrying a rucksack …’ I could hear the plea in my own voice. Sanction this. Please make it so I can take this forward with an official blessing.
There was no response at the other end of the line. I was used to it. Where Bryn Jones was concerned, silence was a communications tool. He was a born moderator, always giving you the chance to reconsider what you had just said to him.
‘A rucksack, Bryn.’
‘I know. We watched the footage.’
‘Hookers don’t carry rucksacks.’
‘DCS Galbraith and I discussed that.’
‘She was hitchhiking.’
‘That’s an assumption. You’ve no evidence to support it.’
‘What would a tart be doing with a backpack?’ I asked, and immediately sensed the flaw in the question.
‘Sex toys, fantasy outfits, sleazy underwear, unguents, cosmetics, spermicidal jelly, Mace, condoms,’ Bryn enumerated, ‘and a big woolly jumper and nice warm tights, because she’s coming out into the cold night air.’
‘Bryn, she looked like a hitchhiker.’
‘That’s an emotive reaction, and you should know better. Face it, on that screen she just looks fuzzy.’
‘Those bastards are lying.’
‘Probably,’ he admitted calmly.
‘You can say that and just walk away from it?’
‘Yes, because we have no evidence of a crime having been committed. And yes, they probably are lying, because it’s normal behaviour when white middle-class males get discovered in flagrante delicto with a prostitute. It’s a function of the squirm reaction.’
‘Did Emrys Hughes hand in a bag?’
‘What kind of a bag?’
‘A carrier bag. I found it in the minibus. It had some aftershave and designer underpants in it.’
‘I expect he gave it back to whichever of the men had left it behind.’
‘Bryn, the bag was from Hereford.’
‘So? People travel to Hereford to shop.’
‘None of those bastards that I saw walking down that hill would have bought those things. They don’t fit.’
‘You’re speculating again.’
I paused, bringing myself back under control. ‘What if I could find the person who gave her the lift to the service station?’
He was silent for a moment. ‘Are we talking about a pimp?’
‘No.’
‘We would be interested in that.’ He paused. ‘DCS Galbraith has asked me to pass a message on to you.’
Which meant that Jack Galbraith knew that I would be calling Bryn. ‘And what would that be, sir?’ I asked, switching to formal.
‘Don’t blow this up into something it isn’t in an attempt to climb back on board the big ship.’
‘No, sir.’ I had a sudden flash of my fingertips clutching the gunnels with Jack Galbraith’s polished brown brogues poised over them. ‘I have to go, sir,’ I said, catching sight of the truck in
my rear-view mirror. I cut the connection and got out of the car as it approached, weaving to avoid the worst of the potholes in the lay-by. A small truck with a standard cab, but an unusually high-sided, open-topped rear.
The driver’s window rolled down. I assumed that the head that poked out belonged to Tony Griffiths. ‘I got a call from the office to meet someone here.’
I held up my warrant card. ‘They said that this was the best place to intercept you on your route.’
He looked at me suspiciously. ‘I don’t know you.’ He glanced down at my warrant card and scowled. ‘What kind of a name is that?’
I beamed up at him. ‘My parents embraced the spirit of Europe.’
He wasn’t impressed. ‘I don’t remember being the witness to any incident.’
‘I’ll come up,’ I said, swinging round the front of the truck before he had a chance to say that we were fine the way we were. I climbed into the passenger’s side of the cab. It was overheated, despite the open window, and smelled of something stale and bad that I couldn’t put my finger on.
His look of suspicion shaded off into new knowledge. He pointed a finger at me, pleased with himself. ‘I heard about you. You’re the city cop they shifted up here. What did they catch you doing?’ He grinned wickedly. ‘Kiddy-fiddling, was it – with a name like that?’
I overcame the urge to tip his face into the steering-wheel boss. I needed him.
‘What’s this about?’ he asked, still grinning, cranking the window back up. He was wearing a high-visibility yellow tabard over stained and crumpled blue overalls. He had dark oily hair swept back behind his ears, small but smart brown eyes, and a dark complexion that was accentuated by a heavy shadow of beard growth. The way he sat hunched over the steering wheel gave him the appearance of a small man, but the shirt and overall sleeves rolled up past his elbows revealed hairy and powerful forearms.
‘You’re not in any trouble, Tony. I just need your help,’ I said reassuringly, forcing a smile, keeping it friendly. ‘Saturday night, someone tells me that you might have dropped a female hitchhiker off at a service station on the Llanidloes road outside Newtown.’
‘I don’t pick up hitchhikers,’ he came back at me, deadpan. ‘We’re told not to. It’s against company policy.’