Good People

by Ewart Hutton

  ‘When she ran away with my husband,’ she finished it for me bitterly. ‘Okay, so what are these connections you need to know about?’

  ‘Do you have any contact information for your husband or Wendy Evans?’

  ‘No.’

  I nodded, accepting the finality of her answer and moved on. ‘Did you know that Trevor Vaughan was probably homosexual?’

  ‘I haven’t seen Trevor for a long time. And we were never that close. He was just one of the people my son hung around with. As a parent I wasn’t introduced into the workings of the circle.’

  ‘Boon never mentioned anything?’

  ‘I doubt that he would have said anything to me, even if he had suspected.’ She went back into memory. ‘Trevor was the quietest one. He was always in the background when they were together. Very polite, very nice. Quite awkward too.’

  ‘Were he and Paul Evans close?’

  She looked at me questioningly.

  ‘I’m wondering how Trevor got the opportunity to get close enough to Wendy’s things to steal a pair of pants. I’m assuming here that she didn’t give them to him herself.’

  She shook her head. ‘Trevor and Paul were two extremes when it came to personality. I don’t see them socializing together outside the group.’ She closed her eyes tight and winced audibly.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘It’s such a tragic image. Why? Why wear her pants?’

  ‘I think that he might have been trying to tell me something.’

  She looked hard at me. She didn’t smile. Okay, she wasn’t in the mood for smiling, but she didn’t pull any other face to ridicule the suggestion. She was taking me seriously. ‘Such as … ?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. It may have nothing to do with Wendy. She may just have been a random provider of underwear. But to get there, I need to know something about her. And I don’t know who else to ask.’

  ‘The Evans family?’

  ‘I want to continue living as a whole person.’

  It wasn’t much of a laugh, but it was progress. She stood up. ‘We can talk in the car.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You can drive me to work. You haven’t spoken to Joan Harvey yet, have you?’

  ‘I haven’t had a chance.’

  ‘The poor woman’s getting more and more upset. Ever since I told her that I’d mentioned Donna and Colette to you, she’s been worrying that perhaps she didn’t make enough of the right noises at the time. I think you should talk to her and put her out of her misery.’

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’

  She scowled. ‘Why not?’

  I stood up. ‘This particular shade of pink doesn’t work for me.’

  She nodded, and allowed herself a small smile. ‘I think I see what you mean.’

  We settled for a charcoal-grey wool sweater, which, under my jacket, wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. She was in a better mood when we got into the car. A shower had calmed her.

  ‘If I drive you there, how are you going to get back in the morning?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re going to pick me up and buy me breakfast,’ she stated matter-of-factly.

  I must have frowned involuntarily. Already worrying about where I was going to find somewhere suitable at that time in the morning in this culinarily bereft part of the world.

  She smiled and touched a finger lightly and briefly to my lips, as if removing a shred of tobacco. It felt like I had been brushed with a nettle. ‘Don’t be such a literalist, Glyn. We’ll take it where we find it.’

  ‘Breakfast?’

  The smile expanded. ‘What else?’

  I shook my head inwardly. I would never understand the bounce of a woman’s moods.

  I started the car. ‘You’re going to tell me about Wendy Evans?’

  A frown fluttered her forehead. ‘God, you sure know how to smooth-talk a girl, don’t you?’ I pulled away, leaving the timing of the silence up to her. ‘I know that I look like the obvious choice for this – the abandoned woman. But I really don’t think that I’m going to be much help.’

  I glanced round at her questioningly.

  ‘I never actually met Wendy Evans, in the sense of being introduced to her. I saw her. I knew who she was. Malcolm always pointed out the kids he taught. And he talked about her.’ She thought about it and laughed mirthlessly. ‘I never once thought, Look out for that one, there’s a threat in the making there. She was short, still baby plump then. I have a memory of her smoking a cigarette in that challenging way kids do, daring you to say something about it. She was probably trying to get Malcolm to think that she was exciting.’

  ‘It came completely out of the blue?’ I asked.

  ‘My husband left for work one morning and never returned. Separations don’t come much more sudden than that.’

  ‘You had no idea that a relationship had developed?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not that kind of a relationship. As I said, he used to talk about her. She was one of the kids that he felt sorry for. He told me that she was damaged.’ She eased out a brave smile. ‘You never worry about the damaged ones. Pity’s supposed to make you feel emotionally superior.’

  ‘How was she damaged?’

  ‘I don’t know precisely. I don’t even know if Malcolm knew in detail. It was a school thing, teacher/pupil confidentiality. I didn’t like to pry too much. I just remember him telling me once that he thought she was carrying a lot of weird emotional stuff around for her age.’

  ‘When did Malcolm go?’ I asked.

  ‘Just over two years ago.’

  ‘So, Trevor Vaughan had been storing those pants for at least that long.’

  She looked puzzled.

  ‘She took the rest of the set with her,’ I explained. ‘They were obviously special, she wouldn’t have left that one pair behind if she still had them.’

  ‘So, had Trevor been wearing them all this time?’

  ‘Impossible.’ I flashed on how the elastic had cut into his waist and thighs. ‘They were too small for him. He would have ruined them after the first couple of times. He had to have been saving them for something.’

  She pulled a face and shuddered. ‘That’s creepy.’

  Another thought hit me. If Trevor had been gay, a young girl’s pants would have been no kind of a turn-on. So, what if he had been hiding them rather than savouring them? To cover for someone? But why bring them out now to figure so prominently in his death?

  Because, where he was going, he no longer had to worry about the person he’d been protecting?

  Sally took me to the top storey of the Sychnant Nursing Home where Joan Harvey had her private quarters. ‘Seven o’clock tomorrow morning,’ she said quietly in the corridor. ‘I’ll see you in the car park.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘You’d better be.’ She knocked on the door.

  I half expected a parting kiss. I must have shown my disappointment, because she grinned at me knowingly as the door opened.

  ‘Joan, this is Detective Sergeant Capaldi – the one I was telling you about.’

  Joan looked to be in her early sixties, with fine lines fanning out at the corners of her mouth and eyes, slightly puffy cheeks, and a tired, intelligent expression.

  She shook my hand. ‘Please come in, Sergeant.’ A soft South Wales accent.

  We both watched Sally go down the corridor. ‘She’s a good person,’ Joan said. ‘I wish I could get her to take on more responsibility.’

  ‘She won’t?’

  ‘She doesn’t want it. She wants to feel that she’s only here temporarily. That there’s something better waiting just round the corner.’

  I didn’t say anything to Joan, but that was another thing Sally and I had in common.

  She led me into a spacious room in the slope of the roof, which managed to contain some big period pieces of furniture and a baby grand piano without feeling cluttered. I sat where she pointed me, in one of the armchairs.


  She sat on the sofa to one side of me and poured tea. ‘Sally has told me of your interest in missing persons.’ She passed me a bone-china cup and saucer that felt as fragile as wren’s bones.

  ‘She said that potentially you may have two?’

  She grimaced. ‘We didn’t think about it at the time, but I’m now wondering whether I might have been remiss in my responsibilities.’

  ‘Two girls who left suddenly?’ I prompted.

  ‘“Suddenly” implies a mystery, Sergeant. It didn’t seem like one at the time. It was just that we weren’t expecting them to leave. They didn’t give notice. They left sometime in the night or early morning. They did pack all their belongings, and it was the day after they had been paid. I’m trying to give you reasons why their departures didn’t concern us more.’

  ‘I understand. But weren’t they paid in arrears? Wouldn’t they still have been owed money in hand?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, and one of them more than made up for the value of that in what she took with her.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Colette Fletcher. I’ve put some things together for you.’ She leaned forward and took a photograph out of a file folder on the table. ‘That’s Colette,’ she said, passing it to me.

  It had probably been taken on the lawn outside the home. An unsmiling girl, in the pink Sychnant housecoat, with straight brown hair pulled back off a wide, pale forehead, propping up an elderly woman who was smiling into a distance only she could connect with.

  She passed me another picture. ‘This is Donna. Donna Gallagher.’ The same housecoat. But indoors this time, a shorter, plumper girl, fair hair in a ponytail, managing a smile, but self-conscious in front of the camera.

  ‘Did you report them missing?’ I tried not to sound accusatory. I was only interested in knowing if they had been logged somewhere.

  She grimaced. ‘I feel slightly awkward about that, Sergeant. I did contact the police in Colette’s case, to report the things that she had taken with her. I needed a case number, or whatever it is, for the insurance claim. As for reporting them missing, I have to say no. You see, as far as we were concerned, they weren’t missing. They had simply left our employment. They had exercised their right to go whenever and wherever they chose.’

  ‘You didn’t get in touch with the families?’

  She looked at me remonstratingly. ‘Of course I did. The nearest thing that they had to a family, at any rate: the children’s home that they had both come from.’

  I felt the tug. Unexpected information sliding home. New pathways of possibilities opening. ‘The same home?’ I asked, keeping my tone neutral.

  ‘Yes, but not at the same time. It’s in Manchester. I’ve put the details in the folder, in case you want to contact them.’

  ‘How far apart were they, time-wise?’

  She thought about it. ‘Off the top of my head, Colette was with us roughly five years ago for three or four months over the summer. Donna came about three years ago, again in the summer, and stayed till just after Christmas, if I remember correctly. The dates are in the folder.’

  ‘Could they have been running away from something?’ I asked.

  ‘When they left here, or to come here in the first place?’

  ‘Either.’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘I really have no idea, I’m afraid. They came here because they needed the work. I’m not aware of any problems with either of them that could have caused them to want to run away.’ She shrugged. ‘But then I didn’t know the intimate details of their private lives.’

  ‘Is there anyone here who might?’

  ‘I doubt that very much. We have quite a high rate of staff turnover. Apart from that, Colette kept herself to herself. Donna was slightly more sociable, but not much.’

  ‘What kind of girls were they?’

  She smiled wryly. ‘They came from a tough background, Sergeant. They had had to acquire the appropriate survival skills. They were much wiser in the ways of the world than the local girls. That’s why I was not unduly concerned when they left. I felt that it was voluntary, and that they were more than capable of looking after themselves.’

  ‘Would they have gone back to the city?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘I wouldn’t have said that either of those girls had been filled with the joys of Nature.’

  ‘So, why come here in the first place?’

  ‘For the work,’ she replied, looking surprised by the question.

  ‘No, to Mid Wales. To Dinas. To the country. This is such a far cry, both geographically and culturally, from the streets of Manchester.’

  ‘There must have been something about it that appealed. To bring them back.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘In both cases, they had spent the previous school summer holiday in Dinas. It was something that Sara Harris had been doing for a few years. She had some sort of connection with the children’s home. Every summer, she had a girl from Manchester to help in the salon, to get them out of that grim environment, and hopefully, spark some interest in them.’

  Sara Harris? The name meant something. ‘So, what you’re saying is that both girls had done a summer-holiday stint at the hairdressing salon, about three years apart?’ She nodded. ‘Then they go back to Manchester, and the following summer they both come back? And get jobs here?’

  ‘That’s right. Despite their apparent lack of enthusiasm for rural life, there must have been some attraction.’

  But what? And then it locked into place. Sara Harris … David Williams telling me: Sara Harris ran the hairdressing salon in Dinas. Sara Harris was Les Tucker’s long-term girlfriend.

  Les Tucker was Gordon McGuire’s best friend.

  Les and Gordon paid to fuck Monica Trent until her services got too mundane for them.

  Magda, Donna, Colette. I now had three young women in the chain of connection.

  And Boon Paterson?

  I preferred to use the back bar in The Fleece. Where the older men congregated. It was quieter, I could mope peacefully, or talk to David or Sandra without straining. The front bar was the reserve of the energy crowds, the young farmers, the rugby aficionados; shoal culture in all its deafening and jostling glory.

  I should have been warned when I walked in that evening and the old guys turned their backs on me and shuffled a portentous half-step away from their usual positions. But I was too preoccupied with what Joan Harvey had told me. Wondering what the best approach to Sara Harris would be. Bearing in mind who her boyfriend was.

  David, serving at the front bar, turned and saw me. His face dropped visibly. I smiled mock wearily, and waited for him to come over and explain the joke. But another signal interrupted. Hairs pricking on the back of my neck. An alarm response.

  I was aware of the entire raucous mass in the front bar turning silent. Sound snuffing out on a ragged wave of curtailed laughs and shouts, glasses and bottles being put down with an unheard of delicacy.

  And I knew that I was the cause.

  Even before I saw Gordon McGuire, Les Tucker and Paul Evans in the opening that connected the two bars. The crowd behind them shuffling quietly for vantage points.

  Not having a glass to raise, I just nodded at them.

  ‘You’re not wanted here, Sergeant,’ Gordon stated.

  ‘It’s a public house, Mr McGuire.’

  ‘Tell him, Dave,’ Les prompted David Williams.

  David shook his head uncomfortably. ‘Perhaps it would be better, Glyn.’

  I let them see me ponder it. Using the moment to prevent my fear response from showing, keep the adrenalin surge under control. Smelling the animosity in that crowd, there was nothing that I would rather have done than get up off the stool and walk out. But I had to live with these people, and if I was going to be railroaded, it would not be without anger.

  ‘I’ll have the usual please, David.’

  ‘Don’t do it, Dave – not if you want t
o keep the rest of us as customers,’ Les warned. A rumble from the crowd backed him.

  David looked at me imploringly.

  ‘What’s your problem, Mr Tucker?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice reasonable, not let them hear the tremble in it.

  ‘You’re a fucking shit,’ Paul Evans snarled, a small rumble of assent running through the crowd behind him.

  Gordon raised his hand slightly to control him. ‘We don’t like to hear rumours being spread about our friends. Especially from people who don’t know them.’

  ‘Be specific, please.’

  ‘You concocted a story about Trevor Vaughan being queer, and then you threatened him with exposing it.’

  ‘Which probably drove him to do what he did,’ Les chipped in.

  ‘Are you accusing me of causing Trevor Vaughan’s death?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes!’ Paul Evans shouted.

  Gordon shook his head. ‘You can see the mood here, Sergeant. I suggest that you get out now. I’d also recommend that you apply for a transfer, anywhere well away from here.’

  ‘Oh, believe me, Mr McGuire, there is nothing I would like better,’ I said wholeheartedly. ‘But tell me something: did any of you think that Trevor Vaughan was gay?’

  The shouts and abuse turned on like a tap. Paul Evans actually spat at me. Gordon and Les calmed the crowd before Gordon turned back to me. ‘Of course not. He was our friend, we knew him. We don’t have the same bent, malicious streak as you.’

  Oh shit, I had missed it …

  ‘You bastards!’ I screamed. The unexpectedness of it, the suddenness, the speed with which I stood up, stunning them all. For a moment I was a shockwave. They swayed back en masse, as if they were nailed to the floor. Then I was out of the door.

  I had missed it. I berated myself again. I had let myself be tripped up by illusion and reality. I had confused truth with invention when Monica had been telling her tale. I had actually accused her of not being there, and then not picked up on the crucial point of her story.

  Monica had told me that Trevor Vaughan was homosexual. But Monica had not been there. Everything in her story had been told to her. She didn’t know Trevor Vaughan from Adam. But she knew Gordon and Les.