Good People

by Ewart Hutton

  ‘Just leave.’

  If she had slammed the front door behind me, I might have thought that there was some hope.

  I drove like a madman. I did it partly to scare the shit out of myself and block the recall of the hurt and contempt on Sally’s face as she had closed the door on me. But I also wanted to buy time. I had a new agenda, and I needed to get up there before the search party arrived to spoil it.

  Because I had now worked out the secret of why the hole that they had dug in the forest had been empty.

  They had always intended it to be part of the evidence trail. Drunk as they all were that night, it wouldn’t have been hard for Boon to persuade them to join him in some kind of sentimental ritual. Hey guys, let’s bury something up here, let’s symbolically sever my connection to the Army. It would have been something loaded with his DNA. So that, when the hole was conveniently found after he became a missing person, it would read as an attempt to conceal incriminating evidence.

  But Trevor followed them out of the hut. He didn’t see what they were up to, but Soph, who had followed him, didn’t know that. The plan appeared to be compromised. Gordon’s presence they could handle, because his testimony would always be seen as slanted. But add Trevor’s corroboration that he had witnessed a celebration, and they were fucked. Where was the black intent? It was hardly sinister any more, the last sighting of Boon and he’s horsing around with the guys who were supposed to have topped him.

  So they removed whatever had been buried, and left the hole empty.

  Except now they must have re-seeded it. With Trevor out of the way, and not knowing that he had shown it to me, it had obviously been deemed safe to re-plant the evidence.

  But I was going to screw them.

  I had dug that hole up once before and found it empty. Now I intended digging it up again and making it empty.

  I had to slow down after spinning the car on the snow that was still a fixture on the tracks higher into the forest. But at least it would also delay the cavalry. As another precaution, I left my car so that it blocked the access to the track that led down to the hole.

  I had worried about finding the exact spot again, but the snow cover actually helped me pinpoint it. The ground had been excavated so many times now that the snow crust had slumped, showing a perfect outline.

  But the snow soon posed another problem. As I dug, the ground around the excavation turned muddy, runny-shit caramel, in stark contrast to the surrounding virginal whiteness. There was no way that I was going to be able to dig this up and fill it back in again without it being obvious that the ground had only just been disturbed.

  I carried on. I had to at least find out what they had left in here.

  I had guessed that I might find a beret, but it was a cap. A baseball cap, not a military one. It was sodden and muddy. It could have been a larger twin to the one at the lay-by. I could make out the initials BP on the sweatband. And it would be swarming, I knew, with Boon’s DNA. It was too wet to tell if they had augmented it with blood traces.

  I had no moral or professional qualms. I was not tampering with evidence but disappearing a corrupt signpost. Fuck it, I was Excelsior, lighting the way back up to the truth. I was on the side of the angels. Despite what Sally now thought of me.

  Except that it was going to require a trade-off.

  Jack Galbraith was not going to buy an empty hole.

  I took the cap back to the car and stashed it in the boot well, under the spare wheel. I would burn it later at Hen Felin, along with the one that Soph had left for me to find. I returned to the hole and placed the one thing that I had to offer as trade goods in the bottom, and started filling it in. I didn’t put too much effort into it. It was only going to be dug back up.

  As I had hoped, when the cavalry arrived, they assumed that I was in the process of digging out, not filling in.

  Jack Galbraith and Bryn, both in borrowed Wellington boots, led the procession. The dogs had been left in the vans. I was glad, I didn’t want them sniffing out evasion.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, Capaldi?’ Jack Galbraith shouted, striding towards me. ‘We told you to look around, not start mining for fucking gold.’

  ‘There was an obvious depression in the snow, sir. And this has been excavated recently. I did check for footprints before I started. And I’ve been very careful while digging.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Jack Galbraith observed, making a meal of surveying the muddy penumbra that I had created around the hole. He nodded for Bryn to take over the organization and management.

  I stood back with the rest of the executive branch while two uniforms painstakingly continued with the excavating. No one spoke. There was an anticipatory tension in the air. I was sharing it, although for different reasons.

  ‘I think we’ve found something.’ One of the uniforms relayed the message to Emrys Hughes.

  Instinctively, we all drew in closer. Emrys knelt down and held out a clear plastic evidence wallet. The uniform picked the object up gingerly between a latex-gloved thumb and forefinger and dropped it into the wallet.

  Emrys stood up holding the wallet skyward like something about to explode.

  ‘Let me see that,’ Jack Galbraith instructed.

  Emrys swung it towards him. ‘Shall I get this down the hill to the technical boys, sir?’

  I coughed.

  Bryn Jones and Jack Galbraith looked at me enquiringly.

  ‘Shepherdess,’ I said.

  Bryn frowned, puzzled. Jack Galbraith started to nod, a pained smile tilting the corner of his mouth. Without turning towards Emrys Hughes, he took the wallet from his hands. ‘I think we’ll be taking this straight down to Carmarthen with us.’ He dangled the wallet containing the memory card case in front my eyes. ‘What do you say, Capaldi?’

  I nodded. ‘I think that that would be a very wise move, sir.’

  THE END OF THE AFFAIR

  I told them everything.

  Well, that is, everything to do with the bluff that I had invented as I had waited by the hole for them to arrive. I had considered the truth as an option, but I didn’t linger long there.

  Yes, I had seen these images before. No, I had not been aware at the time that photographs had been taken when I had stopped a truck to check for poached venison carcases. Only when they had been sent to me with an anonymous note advising me that it would be in my best interests to back off from asking any more questions about McGuire and Tucker. Now that Ken and Les had been arrested, I assumed that the memory card had been planted to capitalize on the earlier threat.

  Jack Galbraith had looked at me then with an almost fatherly concern. ‘Did you ever want to be a vet, Capaldi?’

  ‘Not particularly, sir.’

  ‘I only ask that because it seems to me that this is the only profession that should be showing such a particular and close-range interest in an obviously dead cow.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And why are your trousers undone?’

  ‘With respect, sir, they’re not, it’s just the way the photograph was taken.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us about this?’ Bryn asked.

  ‘I was embarrassed, sir.’ I nodded towards the computer screen. ‘That could so easily be misinterpreted.’

  Jack Galbraith nodded. ‘It could, couldn’t it?’

  They didn’t believe a word of it. But what were they going to do? Abandon me to the wolves and have Jack Galbraith’s hand-picked Man in the Wilderness publicly accused of bestiality with a necrophilia dressing?

  And it would have been even worse PR while we still had an ongoing investigation into the disappearance of Boon and Marta eating up manpower, morale and resources.

  I was not popular. I was officially removed from the investigation, and dispatched back to the boondocks while they considered what action to take. I wasn’t concerned about being taken off the case as I knew it was only a tree of smoke, but I did have fears for my so-called career. After all, there was nowhere furth
er downhill for me to slip.

  It was the day that I was burning Boon’s and Soph’s caps that I came up with the answer.

  Mackay was reluctant at first, until I reminded him that together we constituted the Brotherhood of the Dumped.

  I scanned it in and emailed it as an attachment to Bryn Jones.

  He called me as soon as he received it. ‘What is this?’

  ‘You remember my friend Mackay who helped us out with Paul Evans?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He put out the word to friends he still has in Special Forces.’

  ‘What word?’

  ‘They’ve come back with this. They were on an exercise in Cyprus when they took it. But it has to be nonattributable. We can’t go public with it: Special Forces training is sensitive.’

  ‘When was this taken?’

  ‘Two days ago. There are enough people who will be able to confirm that that is Boon. And all of the men who were on the minibus will be able to identify the girl as Marta.’

  ‘This was taken on a beach, Glyn. It’s the middle of winter.’

  ‘Not in Cyprus. And there is a wind, if you look at the way her hair is moving,’ I offered, looking at the photograph on the screen, which bore a remarkable resemblance to the one that I had removed from Boon’s room at the same time as I had taken his birth mother’s picture to confront Malcolm with.

  As anticipated, it didn’t take long for Jack Galbraith to call me.

  ‘If this fucking backfires, Capaldi …’

  ‘It can’t, sir.’

  ‘Why so certain?’

  ‘They can’t exactly call anyone up and say, “Hey, we really are dead, you know.”’

  He was silent for a moment. ‘So we have closure?’

  ‘I think so, sir.’

  ‘And what do you want out of it, Capaldi?’

  ‘Would headquarters be too much to ask, sir?’

  ‘Fucking right it would …’ But at least he put the phone down with a chuckle.

  I called Sally, ostensibly to report the happy news that Boon and Soph had been resurrected. She heard me out. I waited, ready to gauge her response. She just told me that she was leaving Dinas. Nothing more personal in it than if she was cancelling the milk. Permanently.

  I never did find out whether the news that Malcolm Paterson took back to Cyprus had a recuperative effect on Wendy.

  But he had been right about Ken and Les. Their lawyers managed to talk the charges down to manslaughter. They are currently out on bail awaiting the results of psychiatric reports before sentencing. And I am glad to report that both they and their respective partners are avoiding me. And each other.

  And I had been wrong about Donna Gallagher, the other girl from the children’s home who had disappeared from the Sychnant Nursing Home.

  When we eventually traced her, she was living in Scunthorpe and working as a beauty therapist. And she had called her child Danni, not Dwayne or Britney.

  And the Brotherhood of the Dumped? Against my advice, Mackay followed Gina and her Australian to Queensland. Using Special Forces techniques, he arranged a seemingly casual encounter as she was snorkelling off the Great Barrier Reef.

  He emerged from the sea. I like to picture him with a dagger between his teeth, but that would have made it difficult for him to tell her that he still loved her.

  Gina laughed, he told me, shook her head and told him that history had just repeated itself. When she had left me, she thought she had got rid of the only pathetic bastard in her life.

  To Mackay, this cemented us even closer.

  When he visits, the crazy bastard still makes a point of walking up through the river. And so far, touch wood, the albatrosses are staying on the wing.

  About the Author

  Ewart Hutton was born and raised in and around Glasgow before slipping south to university in Manchester, and then on to diverse occupations in London. He has won numerous awards and prizes for his radio plays which have been produced for BBC Radio 4, RTE and Radio Clyde. He now lives on the Welsh borders with his wife Annie. Good People is his first novel.

  Copyright

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Blue Door

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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  Published by Blue Door 2012

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  Copyright © Ewart Hutton 2012

  Ewart Hutton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  EPub Edition © February 2012 ISBN: 978 0 00 742958 5

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