‘No-one made you,’ Rowlands commented. ‘And, as I said, you profited considerably, if this house and your car are any indication. And your professorship, of course. By the way, does your wife drive?’
‘My wife?’
‘Mrs Solange Williams. Your wife.’
‘No, she doesn’t! And what’s she got to do with this?’
‘Then how does she get around if you’re not on hand to drive her?’
‘Taxis! Trains, when there’s First Class! Why?’
‘And she knows nothing of your deception?’
‘No!’
‘So, Professor,’ Rowlands encouraged, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, ‘what exactly did you do, all those “God knows how many years” ago?’
‘Slipped over the edge into the other world,’ he said, almost happily. ‘And wrote about it in verse which put the old bards to shame.’
‘I know,’ McKenna said. ‘I’ve read it.’
‘It was out of this world!’ he added, gazing up at McKenna as if he had found a saviour. ‘We saw further, we heard more, we smelt the earth as never before, we felt everything! We thought we might die from the wonder of it, and even that didn’t frighten us.’
‘People under the influence are prone to flights of fancy,’ Rowlands said acidly. ‘And some of them think they can really take wing. We’ve all done our share of scraping up hopheads from the pavements.’
‘You’ll spend your life with your head and heart alongside your feet in the dirt,’ snarled Williams, ‘because you’ve no imagination. You’ll never know how it feels to half-divine the magic. You’re pitiful!’
‘You sound like an old hippie, Professor,’ Rowlands said.
‘Sneer if you like. I don’t care for your opinion, because I’ve seen something you don’t even know exists.’
‘And is that enough to outweigh the consequences?’ McKenna asked. ‘Because you and Ned squandered your gifts on a dishonest prank you could never claim what you owned. How do you reconcile that? Did Ned’s pain come from his guilt and fear, like your confusion and degeneration? And why have you suddenly decided to tell us? What prompted this confession?’
‘There’s no-one else to talk to now.’
‘Is there not?’ McKenna enquired. ‘People say conscience is the voice of the dead wanting their due, so if you turn around, perhaps you’ll see Ned looking over your shoulder, as I can.’
9
‘What was all that about, sir? You were making less sense than him in the end.’ Rowlands quietly closed the gate to Williams’s garden. ‘And aren’t we bringing him in to make a statement? Suppose he decides to swallow a bottle of pills on top of the gin?’
McKenna stood by the car, keys drooping from his fingers. ‘He won’t overdose more than he does most nights, and he’s in no condition to make a statement. Wait until tomorrow, when he’s sober.’ Unlocking the car, he climbed into the driver’s seat.
‘Is he ever sober, as we understand the term?’ Rowlands asked. ‘And what was that about Ned looking over his shoulder?’
‘Provocation.’ McKenna gunned the engine, and drew away from the kerb. ‘I’m not convinced Ned was party to the fraud, I’m not convinced Iolo wrote the verse, and I’m extremely disinclined to share the view that he’s a victim of forces beyond his control.’
‘So you think he might’ve killed Ned after all?’
Driving fast through the web of narrow hilly streets between Williams’s house and the main road, McKenna said: ‘Not really. He’d have done it years ago if he was going to. What would be the point now?’
‘He’s got more to lose.’
‘According to him, the strain of pretence is near unbearable. Loss of prestige might be a release.’
‘I was thinking more about the posh house, however filthy it is, and his fancy car, not to mention his trophy wife.’ Rowlands sniffed at his sleeve. ‘The stink off that dump’s got on my clothes.’
‘Living in squalor probably reflects the way he sees himself,’ McKenna said, jumping traffic lights on College Road. ‘You can delve deeper into his psyche tomorrow, which won’t be very taxing, because he’s a shallow man, for all his talk of wondrous visions.’ The car rocked around the tiny roundabout by Safeway supermarket. ‘If he saw anything at all, that is. I suspect Ned’s death is hastening the collapse of whatever ethical structure Iolo has, and I think the words he used and the sight he claims were Ned’s alone. And,’ he went on, roaring down Deiniol Road towards the police station, ‘if I’m wrong, it’s a tragedy, with Iolo forever condemned as a charlatan for admitting to one lapse.’
‘Once a con, always a con,’ Rowlands retorted, stifling a yawn. ‘His childhood mates would probably tell us he cheated his way through school, and played dirty the rest of the time.’ As McKenna turned into the police station yard and parked, he added: ‘If he had this wonderful creative spirit, where is it now?’
‘Stifled by the contentments of the material world, perhaps,’ McKenna said. ‘Or sealed up, like the clouds and dreams in Ned’s boxes, because it chafed.’ He paused, then said: ‘Which makes no sense. Phoebe would tell you she can’t help herself putting pen to paper, because creative energy rages like Iolo’s mountain cataract. Ned dissipated his in arcane research and nurturing Phoebe, but it had to find an outlet.’
‘You’re still disinclined to look for lumps of clay on the end of his legs, aren’t you?’ Rowlands asked.
‘I’ve heard nothing to persuade me I should, least of all Iolo’s pretentious and pedestrian description of a drug-induced flight of fancy. As you said, people under the influence only think they can fly.’
‘Well, with Ned out of the way, he can lay claim to whatever he wants.’ He yawned again, and stretched.
‘Feasibly, drugs can let loose greater potential, and people of an artistic bent go in for excesses of alcohol and drugs in any case, but the potential has to be there in the first place. All the Mandrax in the world couldn’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.’
‘I think Iolo’s still trying to find this magic in his bottles of gin and pills,’ McKenna said. ‘But we’ll never know, any more than we’ll know if Ned only pretended to find inspiration in his own bottle of pills because he was afraid of what was in his head; or of going the same way as Gertrude, who had her own distinctions from the herd.’
‘Or maybe he got sick of snide remarks about being different, and pretended to join in with the flower power drug culture.’
‘Whatever else, joining forces with Iolo ruined him. Even if the manuscript fraud began as a game, once Ned realized the measure of Iolo’s corruption, he was effectively muzzled. He couldn’t let the cat out of the bag because no-one would believe he wasn’t party to the deception.’
‘Wouldn’t it be more in character for him not to break the bonds of friendship?’ Rowlands asked. ‘What other friends has he had, apart from an old tramp, an unbelievably odd child, and a black man?”
‘Iolo really hates George, doesn’t he?’ McKenna commented.
‘He’s a dyed-in-the-wool racist. According to him, Dr Ansoni’s a “dago”.’
‘Only because he stopped his scripts for pills,’ McKenna said, finally opening the car door. ‘He thwarted him and threatened his ego, which Iolo can’t abide, any more than he could bear the prospect of George eventually seeing through the fog of years to the truth.’ Walking slowly up the back steps, he added: ‘In the morning, you can unravel the roots of his racism, if you want, when you’ve found out the specifics of making pieces of paper look as if they’re hundreds of years old. You can also ask him when and where he met up with Ned, when the strain of his chicanery got the better of him.’
*
Diana Bradshaw was waiting for him, lolling in a chair in his office, her smart shoes kicked off and askew on the carpet.
‘I didn’t expect to see you again this evening,’ McKenna said.
‘It’s more like night than evening, isn’t it?’ She reached for the
discarded footwear. ‘What a horrible day! I stayed at the hospital as long as possible, but Janet’s still unconscious, so I couldn’t talk to her.’ Gingerly easing the shoes on to her slightly swollen feet, she continued: ‘The doctors say she’s as well as can be expected, which really means very little. I tried to get more detail from her parents, and got a mouthful of near abuse from her father, instead.’
‘It’s easier for him to blame us than look into his own conscience.’
‘Well, whatever you might say about Janet’s wilfulness, I blame myself for not noticing something was badly wrong.’
‘Perhaps it’s not a matter of blame,’ McKenna suggested, ‘but more of a young woman’s fear.’
‘Fear of what?’ she asked. ‘Single pregnancies don’t attract stigma in this day and age, you know.’
‘Maybe not in England, or in other levels of Welsh society, but Janet’s circle is very different. It’s not a year since her father refused an unwed mother the traditional blessing, humiliating the girl before the whole congregation.’
‘How cruel people can be!’
‘Men of God are often the least charitable about human failings,’ McKenna added. ‘By the way, did you see Dewi at the hospital?’
‘They wanted him in for observation, but he insisted on going home.’ She retrieved her handbag from beneath the chair. ‘I told him to take tomorrow off. I hope you don’t mind.’ She smiled. ‘I’m rostered off duty this weekend, but call me if you need anything. Are there any problems I should know about? Any progress?’
‘I’ll keep you posted.’
‘But only during the hours of daylight, if that’s possible!’ She smiled again. ‘I’ve forgotten the feel of a good night’s sleep.’
*
Feet on the desk and a cigarette glowing between his fingers, Rowlands said, as the firedoor sighed at the top of the stairs: ‘Does she know how lucky she is to be getting any sleep?’
‘Are you going home?’ McKenna asked.
‘Is it worth it? I won’t get there before midnight, and I usually leave before seven. I’d kip here but for the stink of paint.’
‘Then call your wife, and tell her you’re borrowing my spare room.’
10
The cats were behind the front door, faces pressed to the reeded glass. When a stranger followed their master over the threshold, they disappeared at high speed down the staircase.
Following them, McKenna found empty food and water bowls strewn about the kitchen, the sill beneath the open parlour window streaked with dusty paw-prints, parallel trails of dirt on the wall below, and playing cards littering the carpet, the Knave of Diamonds jammed behind a skirting board. The Queen of Spades had vanished, like her human counterpart.
‘Looks as if there’s been quite a party,’ Rowlands said, eyeing the cats, now by the kitchen door, and the wreckage all around him. ‘Why did you leave the window open so far?’
‘So they could get in and out, of course!’ McKenna said tetchily, on his way to feed his pets.
‘Along with half the local cats, by the look of things.’ As practical as Dewi, he re-ordered the parlour, wrung out a clean cloth in hot, soapy water, washed window, wall and table, then made tea and sandwiches while the cats ate supper.
McKenna slumped at the kitchen table, and twitched, like the animals, when the opening bars of Friday’s late concert sounded from the garden.
SATURDAY, 25 AUGUST
1
ROWLANDS SNORED. The deep, rhythmic sound throbbed through the walls of the house and roused McKenna in the small hours. While his brain waded sluggishly through memory for the source of the alien noise, he lay stiff and still, then drifted back to sleep until a brilliant summer’s dawn invaded the room.
Sunbeams angled sharply across the pale flowery wallpaper, moving as the sun climbed behind Bangor Mountain, and he sneezed quietly as the scents of early morning weaved through the open window. The sleeping cats were a dead weight at the foot of the bed, deaf to the screeching and mewling of gulls. Turning over to check the alarm clock, he saw a dark shadow flicker on the sun-striped walls, and felt the draught of wings as a huge bird eddied past the window before landing with a thud on the roof. When its jabbering began to reverberate down the disused chimney shaft behind the bedhead, he buried his head under the pillows.
He slept through the rising tide of noise from the waking city, through the wailing of his hungry cats, and came to life only when the shrill note of the alarm began to sputter with exhaustion. He staggered down to the bathroom, Blackie at his heels, Fluff tittuping ahead, then retrieved a litter of envelopes and postcards from the mat by the front door. As he looked through the post, the smells of toast and bacon and coffee finally touched his senses, and he descended the second flight of stairs to find his breakfast cooked, the table laid, and Rowlands, fully dressed, scooping meat into cat dishes.
‘They’ve already been down,’ he said, nodding towards the animals. ‘They legged it back upstairs when they saw me.’
McKenna grinned. ‘They’re more discerning than tarts and lawyers, even if they do hang around on every street corner.’ Seating himself, he added: ‘This is very civil of you.’
‘It’s the least I could do. I slept like a log.’
‘I know. I heard you.’
Rowlands flushed. ‘If my wife ever murders me, you won’t have far to look for a motive.’
‘Separate rooms might solve the problem,’ McKenna said, ‘as well as giving your conjugal relations a clandestine edge. The upper classes never share the marital bed.’ He flipped through the envelopes. ‘At least, not with each other, except to procreate.’ He grinned again, for no letter from Manchester hid in the welter of paper, and his food tasted even better.
*
Stock-still in the ivy lavishing the garden wall, a pine marten garbed in golden summer livery watched the cats sail out through the back door. As it leapt from view, the dark glossy leaves quivered, and only then did the cats briefly abandon their territorial circuit.
‘What a wonderful sight!’ Rowlands said.
‘You sound like Iolo.’ McKenna smiled.
‘That was a real animal, and you saw it, too.’
‘And I’ve seen it before, as well as the jays nesting in that big tree below the fence, the barn owl which holes up in one of the derelict outbuildings behind the High Street shops, and the colony of bats from Burton’s attic.’ Pouring fresh coffee, he went on: ‘A vixen and two cubs came down from the mountain in March, and last week, one of the neighbours found an adder asleep in her back yard.’
Rowlands heaped sugar crystals in his coffee. ‘We’ve got a view of more houses and the tops of a few artificial-looking trees. It’s a nice area, but it’s too much the work of man, like Iolo’s garden.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘Shall I caution him before he makes his statement?’
‘And don’t forget to offer him a brief,’ McKenna added, surveying the post once again.
‘Aren’t you going to open your letters?’
‘I can resist the temptation.’ He picked out a large, lurid postcard stuck about with numerous stamps and five postmarks. ‘Eifion Roberts, the pathologist, is touring Germany and Switzerland with his wife,’ he said, reading the scrawl on the back. ‘But he’s not a happy man, because if he hadn’t sold his boat last year, he could be tacking down Menai Strait instead of traipsing around crowded foreign places which mean absolutely nothing to either of them. He says his wife’s enjoying herself, but only because she’s buzzing in and out of shops like a wasp going from one jam pot to another.’ Glancing at the collage of mountain peaks and meadows, of narrow streets hung about with timbered houses, and a bell tower in the utilitarian style of architecture, he put the card aside and picked up the other colourful missive which had graced his morning. ‘And this is from Jack Tuttle,’ he said, examining a sharply focused photograph of the Pont du Gard at Nîmes. ‘The weather’s dodgy, along with his stomach, because of the ghastly cuisine, and his wife is also b
uzzing in and out of shops, so he’ll need the payrise due with his expected promotion to settle the credit card bills.’ He picked up his coffee. ‘And as there’s no promotion in sight for anyone now, he’s in for a shock, isn’t he?’
2
A lump had grown on Dewi’s forehead during the night, pulsing as if he were harbouring alien life. He was reading through a pile of paper, placing each sheet neatly aside as he finished it. As McKenna and Rowlands entered the office, he said: ‘I’d like to bring in Jason for questioning about Annie’s car. He arranged the deal.’
‘We know that,’ Rowlands told him. ‘But there’s nothing to suggest he knew it was dodgy.’
‘He insisted on a cash transaction, sir. Edith lent Annie the money, and she’s paying it back every month.’
‘So as Annie should’ve known cash equals something amiss, we could do her for knowingly buying a dodgy car,’ Rowlands suggested.
‘We’re interested in the people behind the fraud,’ said McKenna. ‘Not the victims.’
‘She could be involved,’ Rowlands went on. ‘The family’s hardly white as the driven snow. Edith’s morals leave a lot to be desired, Mina’s a headcase, and the saintly Uncle Ned well and truly mislaid his halo a long time ago.’
‘More to the point,’ asked McKenna, ‘has the pathologist reported back on prescriptions for the Lloyds and Polgreens?’
‘No, sir,’ Dewi said. ‘I’ve left another message for him.’ He paused. ‘And I called the hospital. Janet’s no better.’
‘Is she any worse?’
‘They didn’t say.’
3
The House of Women Page 28