Good People

by Ewart Hutton

  ‘It’ll end up as manslaughter, sir. They’ll corroborate each other.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how it ends up. I want them charged with something big and nasty to give me some leverage. I want to wave a murder charge in their faces and offer up the possibility of clemency if they give up the other bodies.’

  ‘Ken McGuire’s going to play it remorseful. He’ll use his position in the community. Solid, responsible farmer, man of the earth. So sorry, Your Honour, but we were young and simple country boys and we panicked.’

  ‘But they went on to degrade other young girls.’

  ‘We can’t prove that they were minors, though, sir,’ Bryn pointed out. ‘We can’t prove any criminal behaviour.’

  ‘Because we can’t find the fucking participants,’ Jack Galbraith raged in frustration. ‘Donna, Wendy, and now Marta …’ He ticked them off with his fingers. ‘And all the other ones that we don’t know about. Not to mention Boon Paterson, who probably got in the way. And what have they done with them all?’

  ‘Boarding Colette up was a panic reaction, sir,’ I offered. ‘They learned their lesson there when she started decomposing.’

  ‘Which leaves us only a whole fucking forest and Ken McGuire’s huge farm to explore.’

  ‘There is a way of undermining their defence, sir,’ I said.

  He looked at me warily. ‘Tell,’ he instructed.

  ‘The manager of the Sychnant Nursing Home told me that Colette Fletcher stole certain items of value when she ran away.’

  Bryn and Jack Galbraith looked at each other and grinned simultaneously as the understanding hit. Jack Galbraith nodded, voicing it: ‘And now we know that Colette didn’t run away.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. But Ken and Les wanted it to look like she did. They must have used her key, after she was dead, and gone in to pack up her belongings and steal some stuff to establish her Bad Girl-runaway status.’

  ‘Which smells more of careful planning than a panic reaction to me,’ Jack Galbraith observed happily. ‘Where’s the remorse in burglary and character defamation?’

  ‘Donna Fletcher is supposed to have run away from the same nursing home,’ Bryn reminded us.

  Jack Galbraith nodded. ‘And Wendy Evans and this teacher she is supposed to have run off with …’

  ‘Malcolm Paterson, Boon’s adopted father, sir,’ I contributed.

  ‘What if he was just another poor bastard who got in the way?’

  I nodded in humble recognition of my leader’s sagacity. I was used to credit bypassing me.

  17

  I didn’t tell Sally about the evolving hypothesis on the possible fate of Wendy and Malcolm. She had enough anxiety and grief to contend with. She was flitting between hope and black acceptance of the worst. I knew that I should be working on comfort and reassurance, but the only good proof that I could effectively come up with was the absence of a body. Which brought us full circle, back to the possibility of a body.

  We slept together that night in her bed, but we didn’t make love. She was carrying too much despair, and I was still too close to the smell of Ken and Les’s antics. I did my best to console her. And I took my own comfort from her presence and this re-emerging memory of closeness.

  And then I woke up.

  Sally’s alarm clock told me that it was after three in the morning. She was sleeping soundly beside me. I tried to pretend that it was the unfamiliar surroundings that had confused me. When that didn’t work, I had to confront it. It was the vivid recall of Ken and Les that had jolted me from my dream.

  The memory itself wasn’t shocking. It was the new thinking that lay behind it. Ken and Les had arrived at the Den. They had driven into the clearing on their quad bikes and I had been watching them from my ledge.

  They came out of the Den and started searching. I had wondered what had taken them so long, but now knew that they had been into the Rumpus Room. They had scuttered around outside, and then they had driven off in different directions on their quad bikes.

  They had been spooked. I thought at the time that they might have lost something. Now I was wondering if something that they had expected to find had gone missing.

  Or someone?

  Marta?

  We had been assuming that they had previously moved her from the Den. That they weren’t giving up her whereabouts because they thought she was still a useful card that they could play. Or that they didn’t want to damn themselves even more.

  I concentrated on it again.

  Had that been their intention that night? Was that why they had arrived on two quad bikes? To move her on? To get her out of there in case Paul Evans cracked and gave up the Rumpus Room?

  This wasn’t making sense. We had Ken and Les in custody. We had Colette Fletcher’s remains, their admission that they had been present when she had died, and that they had concealed the body. We were going to charge them. Why was my mind trying to mess things up?

  Because we had another anomaly.

  I now had to confront the real trigger of my disturbance. Ken and Les wouldn’t have risked the lights from the generator being seen from outside. The Den had been padlocked, the Rumpus Room would have been bolted shut, from the Den side. So, if she had been in there, how could she have got out?

  I had to rephrase that. Who, apart from Ken and Les, could have let her out? Who else might have known that she was in there?

  I jump-cut my memory to the discovery of Boon’s sweatshirt under the sofa. I had seen it when I had been crawling out through the hatch. But both Ken and Les had crawled out through that same hatch not long before me. Why hadn’t they seen it? This piece of evidence effectively damned them, and yet they managed to leave it for me to find.

  And why hadn’t I seen it when I first moved the sofa, when I was looking for a trapdoor? I groaned inwardly. I knew that if I ran with this I would have to consider the possibility that the sweatshirt had been placed there while I was inside the Rumpus Room.

  Jesus Christ, how many layers of watchers could there have been out there that night?

  Gordon was a definite.

  Paul Evans maybe knew, but he had been in Mackay’s care that night. Sara, Zoë and Sheila also made the list of people who could have known about Marta’s presence in the Rumpus Room.

  But who had released her? The hatch of the Rumpus Room could only have been opened by someone on the outside. And I was now fairly certain that it wasn’t Ken or Les. Because their headless-chicken act that night must have been the realization that Marta had fled the coop.

  So, someone had helped her escape. But out of that prison into what? This was where it got sinister again. What if the motive hadn’t been altruism? If she was now free, why hadn’t we seen her?

  And why feed us Boon’s sweatshirt? I was back to asking myself complicated questions that I couldn’t answer.

  I didn’t tell Sally about my nocturnal struggle with Faith. She didn’t need the introduction of added confusion. So breakfast was quiet without being tense. She kissed me at the door, in her dressing gown, not worrying about the neighbours, giving me a pleasant foretaste of what more settled times might hold for us.

  I had to run to the car through a slanted downpour of cold rain. The cloud cover was low and moiling along slowly like a nudged and sulky thing. It was one of those mornings that you wanted to miss, because already you knew that the day wasn’t going to get any better.

  Jack Galbraith and Bryn were continuing their interviewing of Ken and Les. I had been pulled out of the loop, replaced by professionals from Carmarthen and Cardiff who were expert at cracking nuances apart. I wasn’t upset; I had already worked out the start of my day.

  Gordon had now been released, but there was no way that he would want to talk to me. Zoë might be prepared to, but not while she was sharing the same working environment as her husband. I wasn’t too sure of Sheila McGuire’s loyalties, but, as we were currently in the process of pulling the family farm apart, my presence might have been seen as
rubbing salt into the wound.

  It was a narrowing down of options that I would rather not have made.

  Because in my last encounter with Sara Harris, she had been strapped to my back like a demented jockey, torn between trying to strangle me or ripping my head off.

  Hoping that her attitude had mellowed in the interim, I stood outside A Cut Above long enough to let my presence be registered, and to establish that a bucket of hydrogen peroxide wasn’t about to come flying out the door at me.

  I walked inside to find everyone in the place staring at me. The ladies of the town in the waiting area, the two young women behind the styling chairs, and the three women lodged in the chairs. All the ladies of the town looked eager, the two stylists looked nervous.

  ‘Good morning.’ I smiled to the room. ‘I’d like to speak to Sara, please.’

  ‘She’s not here,’ one of the stylists replied, the other nodding in jittery confirmation.

  I smiled knowingly at the unattended woman in her chair, the good detective in me having already noticed that her hair was still dripping. ‘I won’t be long with her,’ I promised, and walked towards the rear storeroom.

  ‘You can’t go back there –’ One of the stylists tried half-heartedly to block me.

  ‘It’s all right, I know the way,’ I announced, sidestepping her. She shared a look of confusion with her compadre; they had obviously lost the pages of this particular part of the script.

  Sara was in the storeroom. I had half expected her to have exited through the back door. She was still holding a wet comb. She glowered at me and waved it like a magic wand. ‘This is private property, you’re trespassing.’

  ‘I’m allowed to, I’m a police officer pursuing a line of enquiry.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ she snarled, condensing the message.

  ‘I need your help, Sara.’

  ‘Why would I want to help you?’

  ‘Because I think there’s a possibility that Les isn’t responsible for everything that they are going to try and throw at him.’

  Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. She digested it for a moment. ‘Are you saying it’s all down to Ken?’

  ‘No, this applies to both of them. But I need your help. You’re going to have to answer some frank questions.’

  She stared at me intently, trying to work out if I was running a con on her. ‘Are you serious?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘Yes.’

  She moved fast. For a moment I thought that she was going to embrace me. Instead, she hooked one hand into the crook of my elbow, opened the door with the other, and dragged me into the centre of the salon while I was still trying to work on my balance.

  Our audience looked on, spellbound. The sight of me trying to fathom the steps of the reel that Sara had pulled me into told them that they were in for high drama. She now held her free hand up, as if to quiet the uproar that she was anticipating. ‘Sergeant Capaldi has just told me that my Les has been arrested under false pretences for a bunch of stuff that he hasn’t done.’

  ‘Sara, that’s not what I said.’ My protest was drowned out by the collective gasp from the audience.

  ‘Tell them,’ she urged, yanking at my elbow, ‘tell them what you’ve just told me. Tell them that they’ve arrested Les for things that he hasn’t done.’

  The room went quiet, staring at me in expectation. I managed to free my elbow. ‘That’s not what I said, Sara.’

  ‘Yes it is. “Les is not responsible for the things they’re going to throw at him” – those were your very words.’ She addressed the entranced assembly with all the guile of a sharp barrister.

  ‘Some of the things. Some. . .’ I slowed the word down for emphasis.

  ‘They’ve fitted him up,’ she announced triumphantly, ignoring my protest.

  The first phone call came about an hour later, while I was staking out the offices of Payne, Dyke and Thomas in the hope of seeing Zoë emerge without Gordon in tow.

  It was Sally, her voice granular with anxiety. ‘Glyn, someone’s just called me to say that you’ve said that Ken McGuire and Les Tucker have been falsely arrested.’

  Hell, that was quick. The Dinas grapevine had geared up to warp-speed.

  ‘Calm down,’ I soothed.

  ‘What’s happened? I thought you said that you had evidence on them.’

  ‘We have. They’ll definitely be charged, Sally, I promise you.’

  ‘So, why are they saying those things about you?’ She sounded confused, but calmer.

  ‘Things have been taken out of context.’

  ‘So, you’re not back at the beginning again? You’re making progress? Finding out what’s happened to Boon?’

  ‘It’s happening as we speak.’

  ‘But you’re not there? You’re not interrogating them?’ She tried hard not to make it sound accusatory.

  ‘I’m back out in the field. It’s what I’m best at.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I heard the catch in her voice as she tried to bring herself back under control. ‘I don’t mean to make such a fuss. It’s just … All this not knowing is wearing me out.’

  ‘Believe me, I understand. And I want to do anything I can to help.’

  ‘Can I see you tonight?’ She asked it hesitantly, aware of how frayed and unstable she must be sounding.

  ‘Of course.’

  My phone rang again as soon as we had hung up. ‘It’ll be about seven o’clock,’ I said, answering it, assuming it was Sally calling back.

  ‘What’s that, Capaldi, a train arrival, or a prediction of the Apocalypse?’ Jack Galbraith asked.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I thought you were someone else.’

  ‘So, that wasn’t one of your Pronouncements from the Mount?’

  ‘I’m not with you, sir,’ I replied, confused.

  ‘Not one of your on-high declarations of innocence to the multitude?’

  Oh fuck … I hadn’t expected Jack Galbraith to be hard-wired into the Dinas rumour mill.

  ‘That was a misunderstanding, sir.’

  ‘Fucking right it was. And a fucking big one, too.’

  ‘I was trying to get her to cooperate, sir.’

  ‘I despair of you, Capaldi,’ he groaned wearily. ‘You take us to a point where we think that you might be creeping back into the fold. Starting to look like a sensible copper again, making some astute calls, and then you go and throw it all away by turning back into Boy Fucking Wonder.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, it was just a misunderstanding.’

  ‘The essential misunderstanding is you talking to that woman in the first place,’ he observed harshly. ‘You get a rumour like this started and it makes it look like we’re involved in chicanery. You stay away from all of them now, Capaldi – the wives, the girlfriends, and the brothers.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  So when Sheila McGuire rang, I knew that I should not be taking the call.

  ‘Sergeant Capaldi, I’d like to talk to you.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said quickly, before my career-preserving mode could cut in.

  The rain was still in place. A couple of minibuses loaded with damp and dispirited search-team members were leaving the farmyard as I drove in. A few guys stared out at me as we passed, their looks seeming to suggest that their misery was my fault.

  Sheila McGuire opened the back door. She was wearing a green sweater over a white T-shirt, tight jeans, and slipper socks bunched around her ankles. Her hair looked like it was escaping from a style, and her complexion was even more outdoor than I had remembered. She looked out over my shoulder at the departing minibuses. ‘They’re going to have a rough day in this weather,’ she observed. I could smell some form of alcohol.

  ‘Are they getting in your way?’

  ‘No.’ She shut the door behind us. ‘They’ve finished with the barns now, and they’re being taken out to trudge the fields. Poor sods. Come into the kitchen.’ She led the way. ‘They’re not going to find anything, you know,’ she said over her shoulder. I assumed
that she wasn’t expecting an answer.

  She gestured me to a seat at the long refectory table opposite the one with a glass of red wine and an open bottle in front of it. She took a glass out of a wall cabinet and raised it. ‘Join me?’

  I declined with a smile and a shake of my head. She didn’t insist. She sat down and topped her glass up. Her smile was very slightly cocked, and she still wore a quizzical expression, as if she had forgotten that she had invited me here.

  ‘You decided to stay around?’ I asked. Something to break the locked moment.

  ‘It’s a farm, Sergeant, there are animals here that need caring for. I’m a farmer’s daughter, even though I’m in the process of debating whether I’m still a farmer’s wife.’

  ‘You wanted to talk to me, Mrs McGuire?’

  ‘Sheila. Please call me Sheila.’ She gave me a smile that fell just short of imploring. ‘At the moment I need to hear friendly voices.’

  ‘What did you want to talk to me about, Sheila?’

  ‘You seem to have jinxed us here …’ She looked at me enquiringly.

  ‘Glyn.’

  She nodded. ‘Glyn. That’s right. I’d forgotten. Things have not been good since you entered our lives, Glyn. Trevor Vaughan has gone from us. Ken has done these awful things. Boon is missing. And that poor girl whose body they found …’

  ‘These things were in play long before I turned up,’ I reminded her gently.

  ‘I know that now, but I didn’t have to confront them then. Everything was unknown and excusable. I know that it’s a terrible thing to say, given all that’s happened, but ignorance really is bliss.’

  ‘There is still one young woman unaccounted for.’

  She took a deep drink of her wine and nodded. ‘I heard. But I know nothing about her.’

  ‘And Boon?’

  ‘Was it Boon you were meaning when you told Sara that Ken and Les were innocent?’

  ‘You heard that too?’

  ‘You opened your mouth in Dinas, Glyn.’ She almost managed a grin.

  ‘Sara made a point of misunderstanding me.’

  ‘I wondered.’ She took another drink and held the glass reflectively in front of her face for a moment. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’