‘What did Uncle Ned say?’
‘He said Jason could go to Hell.’ She stopped speaking, biting her lower lip. ‘And I’d never heard him swear before, not even when something awful happened.’
‘So how did Jason get his things back?’
‘I got them, of course! He asked me to.’
‘When?’
‘At night.’
‘Which night?’
‘I can’t remember. One night last week, I suppose.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I went into Uncle Ned’s room when he was asleep, but I couldn’t find Jason’s things, so I had to take all these boxes and packets, ’cos I didn’t know where he’d put them.’
‘And when did you give them to Jason?’
‘He was waiting outside.’
‘Outside where?’
‘The back gate, with his van. He was doing nights nearly all last week, so we couldn’t go out anywhere nice.’
‘Tell me about the keys to George’s flat,’ McKenna said.
Her mouth twisted. ‘It served him right! He didn’t need to be so horrible to me!’ Then her mouth resolved itself into a smirk. ‘And it’s a good thing he was away, because Jason would’ve beaten him up for what he said.’
‘When did you take the key?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Day? Night?’
‘Daytime. Mama sent me upstairs to tell Uncle Ned his tea was ready, but he was in his bathroom, and the key was on his desk, so I took it.’
‘Why?’
‘Jason wanted it.’
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did Uncle Ned say anything to you about the papers and the key?’ McKenna asked, glancing at his notes. Across the bed, the solicitor’s secretary held her hands over the keys of her state of the art computerized stenographic machine.
Mina nodded, and yawned again.
‘What did he say?’
She sighed, rather peevishly. ‘He said he knew I’d taken them for Jason, and if I didn’t make Jason give them back in twenty-four hours, he was going to the police.’
‘Did you believe him?’
‘I don’t know. I just told Jason.’
‘And did you take Uncle Ned’s SOS bracelet?’ McKenna asked, almost as wearied as the girl appeared.
She nodded.
‘When?’
‘The night before he died.’
‘How?’
‘When he was asleep. He’d taken a tablet. Mama said he took it before supper.’ She smiled vaguely. ‘Did you know taking tablets on an empty stomach makes them work faster? Mama said so, but she wasn’t sure if hot drinks stopped them working altogether.’
‘Weren’t you out late that night?’ said McKenna, racking his memory.
‘Yes.’
‘So how could you know what your mother said?’
‘I heard her when I came in. She was on the phone to Annie.’
‘So when did you take the bracelet?’
‘Late.’
‘Was everyone else in bed?’
‘Yes.’ She yawned again, and rubbed her eyes with the grubby bandaged wrists, like a tired child.
‘Did you wait until everyone was asleep then go into Uncle Ned’s room? Did you go up to his bedroom?’
She nodded again.
‘Was he wearing the bracelet?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even if he’d taken a sleeping pill, wasn’t it risky to take off the bracelet?’
‘I don’t know.’ She looked shiftily at him, then down at her hands, spread limply on the coverlet.
Jason’s knowing smirk and insolent words came to McKenna’s mind. ‘Were you on your own?’
‘Uncle Ned was there.’
‘I know that, Mina. Was anyone else with you?’
‘Like who?’
‘Like Jason?’
Bright spots of colour mottled her cheeks.
‘Was Jason with you?’ he persisted.
She nodded again.
‘Say “yes” or “no”, please,’ he instructed.
‘Yes.’ The word was almost inaudible.
‘Who removed the bracelet?’
‘He did.’
‘Then what? Did he go, or did he stay?’
She stared at him, then clutched Solange’s bare arm, squeezing so hard the Frenchwoman winced. ‘Don’t tell Mama! Please don’t tell Mama!’
Gently, Solange pulled herself free, then held Mina’s trembling hands, while McKenna talked on, relentlessly. ‘Tell me about the car.’
‘What car?’
‘The car you and Jason followed along the expressway. You sprayed it with brake fluid, and nearly caused a serious accident.’
‘Well, we didn’t! It just stopped.’
‘Why did you follow it?’
‘Jason wanted to.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I told him about it.’ She smiled at Solange. ‘It was outside your house on Wednesday morning, so I wrote down the number and what colour it was.’
‘Why do that, cherie?’ Solange asked.
‘I often do it. Jason says it’s like train spotting, only more grown up. He gives me a list of cars to look out for, and when I see what he wants, I write down the number, then where it’s parked.’ She giggled. ‘And when we see it again, I spray it with a water pistol, and cross it off the list. Trainspotters do that in their little books when they see a train.’
‘Did you tell Jason the car belonged to a police officer?’ McKenna asked.
‘Of course I did! He wouldn’t have been able to find it again if I hadn’t, would he?’ She frowned at him, working her mouth. ‘And I wish you’d stop going on! Jason’s got to know about the cars for his job.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he does. It’s his job!’
‘How is it his job, Mina?’ Solange asked.
‘He listens for cars getting abandoned,’ she said wearily. ‘When they’ve broken down or the driver’s been arrested for being drunk or something. He’s got a big scanner in the van, and he picks up police radios and people calling for help on their mobiles.’
‘Have you ever been with him when that’s happened?’ McKenna demanded.
‘I’m not telling you!’
‘Why can you not tell Mr McKenna?’ Solange asked.
‘Jason said he’d get into trouble if his boss found out I was with him.’
‘Let’s talk about Uncle Ned,’ McKenna suggested. ‘When did you put the powder in the butter?’
‘I’m tired. I can’t remember!’
‘I think you can.’
‘In the morning!’
‘Which morning?’
‘That morning,’ she responded, sullenness pinching her lips.
‘The day Uncle Ned died?’
‘Yes.’
‘When in the morning?’
‘After breakfast.’ She scowled, almost viciously. ‘Mama made me wash the dishes before I went to work, so I did it then. I was going to put it in the milk, only I remembered what she’d said.’
‘What your mother said?’
‘About tablets and stuff. Hot drinks stop things working, so it would’ve been stupid to put anything in the milk, because nobody drinks milk except me. Phoebe says it gives her spots, and Uncle Ned said it gave him the stomach ache, like everything else.’ She bit her lip again. ‘And I wish you’d stop going on about it! I’ve already told you, it didn’t work!’
*
The solicitor’s secretary, her machinery in a neat grey case, promised the transcript of Mina’s interview within the hour, assuring McKenna it was a matter of seconds to transfer the data from one machine to another, and of minutes to make the hard copy.
‘What did we do before computers were born?’ Dewi asked idly.
‘We managed.’
‘Any joy with Mina?’
‘She’s told us how she poisoned Ned, but there’s no joy involved, except for a sa
distic bloody psychopath like Jason Lloyd.’
‘Well, he’s banged to rights on the vehicles, so that’s some comfort,’ Dewi said, following McKenna away from the ward where Solange had elected to remain. ‘Geraint doesn’t know owt from nowt, because he’s thick, like most of these backwoods types, but Dervyn got verbal diarrhoea once he knew Jason was behind bars and couldn’t come after him with a baseball bat, as is apparently his wont if people upset him.’
‘If he can’t get hold of some poison.’
‘That was a one-off, sir, and sheer opportunism, and if Ned hadn’t made such a very noisy song and dance about all his ills, he might be alive today.’
‘No, he wouldn’t, because he’d crossed Jason,’ McKenna said. ‘And one day, Edith, or Phoebe, or the cleaner, or even Mina, would have found him with his brains splattered around the room, instead of less bloodily, and, I hope, less painfully, dead in his favourite chair.’ As Dewi yawned, fist against his lips, he added: ‘Why are you here, anyway?’
‘To let you know you were right about Jason. Your mobile’s been switched off for ages.’
‘They interfere with hospital equipment.’
‘Do they? I thought that was a bit of fiction to beef up TV drama. Anyway, where Jason’s concerned, it’s like mother like son with a vengeance, ’cos he was extremely careless with things at Merlin yard. There’s been a huge amount of respraying, none of it in Merlin’s own colours, or like the boss’s personal vehicles, and forensics turned up a load of windows, most with the original numbers etched in, which happily for us, match up perfectly with a lot of stolen vehicles.’ Following McKenna across the car park, he continued talking in lists: ‘Equipment and die stamps, all well used, for grinding and reblocking engines and chassis, nearly two dozen VIN plates out of missing vehicles, and odds and ends like ashtrays and whatnot, which sometimes have the vehicle marque and date embossed in the making. Oh, and there’s an enormous bunch of keys, so hopefully one of them belongs to George’s flat.’
About to carp at him for the repetitious use of vehicle, McKenna bit his tongue. Dark shadows smudged Dewi’s eyes and cheekbones, and the bruise from yesterday’s injury seeped down his face like watery ink.
‘Interviewing Jason’s kin was like having a conveyor belt on the go,’ Dewi added, ‘which is probably why I’ve got a storming headache. And his boss was ringing every half hour, wanting to know when we’d be done with the fat man, and how much longer forensics would be turning his office and yard upside down.’
‘D’you think Mr Merlin’s involved with the car thefts?’ McKenna asked. ‘Jason couldn’t have run the business on his own, and it’s hard to believe his boss noticed nothing.’
‘Why?’ Dewi unlocked his car and reset alarm and immobilizer. ‘Edith let an awful lot pass her by, didn’t she? It’s dead easy to con people when they trust you, even when gut instinct tells them something’s amiss.’
‘Point taken,’ McKenna said, envy niggling as Dewi sat behind the wheel. Hood folded down, the dark vehicle’s long, raked shape was almost sinister. ‘Are you off home?’
‘I’ll finish taking Dervyn’s statement first, as he knows so much about Jason and his mates in the used car business.’
‘What’s the quid pro quo?’
‘He hasn’t asked for anything. Maybe he’s glad to get things off his chest.’ He turned the ignition key, letting the engine tick over. ‘Phoebe rang a couple of times, and Superintendent Bradshaw called to say we’ve done a very good job.’ He gunned the motor. ‘I said we should be able to locate her car, because we found the papers for its scrap twin, so we know the new number.’
‘Have you put out a bulletin on it?’
‘It’s in the computer, sir, along with all the others. The vehicle examiner wants everything ready for Monday morning, including Annie’s car.’
‘She knows.’
‘Phoebe said it doesn’t matter if you’re late ringing back.’
‘I’ll probably visit the house.’
‘This must be dreadful for them, and none of it would’ve happened if Mina hadn’t taken up with that villain.’
‘Unfortunately, she’s the sort of girl who’ll always end up with some villain or other,’ McKenna said. ‘She needs cheap, quick thrills to make her feel alive, because she can’t bear life’s usual tedium, and where we see Jason’s wickedness for what it is, she sees it as a source of constant excitement.’
‘Does she actually understand what she’s done? Does she know she killed Ned?’
‘I honestly can’t say, and in her present frame of mind, it wouldn’t be wise to tell her that what she thought were Epsom Salts was the drug which killed him,’ McKenna replied. ‘Common sense tells me she must understand, but she seems not to, so perhaps Solange is right to call her stupid, in the true sense of the word.’
‘Did she really come good, like you said? I didn’t think she had it in her to be good for anything but spending hubby’s cash.’
‘Hubby hasn’t any cash to speak of. He’s drowning in debt, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and Paul to pay back Peter.’
‘Serves him right for conning people about that poetry,’ Dewi commented. ‘What goes round comes round.’ He paused, flicking the indicator switch. ‘I saw Janet again, while I was waiting for you. Her father’s gone, but her mother was there. She looks terrible.’
‘Who does? Janet, or her mother?’
‘Her mother. Janet’s still out of it completely, but she isn’t any worse. If she can hold her own while her body starts to get over the trauma, she should be OK.’
‘Then we should pray she can,’ McKenna said.
‘I am doing,’ Dewi answered, roaring off into the night.
13
The front of Edith’s house was in total darkness, only a faint nimbus of light defining the gable wall and the trees overhanging the garden. Debating with himself on the wisdom of retreat, McKenna crunched up the drive and around the side, pushed open a heavy wooden gate smelling of sun-scorched wood and, faintly, of creosote, and into the back garden.
A cloud of midges danced under the trees, and there was a shiver of autumn in the air. A clothes-line, slung between a concrete post against one boundary wall, and the branches of a huge old beech tree, sagged under the weight of laundry pegged along its length. In the wedge of fuzzy light spilling through the back door, and the elongated rectangles from the kitchen windows, he saw the pillowcases and quilt cover and sheet from Mina’s bed, the clothes she had worn when she was stretchered into the ambulance, Phoebe’s much larger shirt and trousers, and what must be, he thought, the carpet from the bloody bathroom, a large square of pale pink, indented with curves and slits, dripping on to the grass at the end by the tree, and stippled with leaf shadows. Or perhaps, he mused, the darker patches were splatters of blood, as indelible as Rizzio’s on the floor of Holyrood House.
They must have heard the closing of the gate, for Phoebe appeared in the doorway, throwing an enormous amorphous shadow across the garden and the clothes line. The cat materialized by her feet, creating another black hole in the light.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t come earlier,’ he said. ‘I know you’ve been trying to call.’
‘Solange telephoned,’ she said, drawing him into the house. ‘And that bloody excuse for a man she married called, as well. He wanted to come round, but Mama told him not to.’
His eyes adapted to the soft darkness, the lights in the kitchen were dazzling, making masks of the faces of Edith and her daughters. She sat on the far side of the table, a mug of coffee steaming in front of her, a cigarette in her hand, and the ashes of many more in the blue glass tray. Annie rose, to pour coffee for their visitor.
‘I actually said if he wasn’t too drunk to stand upright, he should be at the hospital,’ Edith added. ‘And I also said all the drink and drugs in the world can’t stop things happening, and can’t shield you from the consequences, either, but Iolo’s a fool, because he still seems to think they can.’ She stub
bed out the cigarette, and reached for another, summoning a smile. ‘I told Phoebe it was too late to expect you to come, but she would insist on calling.’
‘You wanted to see him, Mama, only you wouldn’t ask,’ Phoebe said.
‘I did, and I didn’t,’ Edith countered. ‘Have you anything to tell us we don’t already know?’
He sat down between Annie and Phoebe, close enough to feel the heat of their bodies and smell the scents of fresh air and scouring powders. Coloured plastic buckets, wrung-out cleaning cloths, and rubber gloves, littered the counter beside the sink, and he could hear the whine of a washing machine on fast spin behind a closed door.
‘I’ve told them about Mina,’ Edith added, pushing the ashtray towards him. ‘I should have done it years ago. Secrets do nothing but fester.’
‘I’ve wondered if Professor Williams prevailed upon you to keep quiet,’ McKenna asked.
‘Not so I noticed,’ Edith said, ‘but perhaps he did. We’re both responsible for her, and we’ve both failed her, because we started whatever it was that finished with Ned’s death.’ She gazed somewhere over his shoulder, into the night. ‘I think we broke her heart, and she couldn’t put it back together again. Or perhaps it was so wounded and scarred it just stopped working.’
‘Or perhaps she never had one in the first place,’ Phoebe added waspishly.
‘Don’t!’ Annie snapped at her. ‘You’re too young to know.’
‘Know what?’
‘How it makes sense of all the things I never understood.’
‘Like what?’ Phoebe enquired.
‘Like Mama being afraid and sad, when I couldn’t see why, and why Mina was always unhappy even though she seemed to be Mama’s favourite.’ She paused, searching for words. ‘I was jealous of her, and nasty to her, because she was my sister, but so different.’
‘If you’d seen her as my child, too, your life might have been easier,’ Edith said.
Once again, McKenna thought, he was caught in cross-currents, as their dynamics adapted to crisis and aftermath, closing the wound in the family body opened by the bereavement of Mina, and in their distress, he wanted less to leave them than before.
‘And,’ Phoebe said, ‘I suppose that’s why Mama didn’t drop on you like a ton of bricks over Bethan, because most mothers would’ve gone ape. She could’ve put you in some awful place for fallen women, and they’d have punished you every single day for sinning, and never let you out, in case you had some fun, or worse still, more sex.’
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