by Wonny Lea
‘I’m not, you cheeky blighter – I’ll leave all that ghoulish stuff to you. The reason I know is because of what I told you just now. Alice lives in that house and along with everyone else in the neighbourhood she was interviewed by the police. On top of that, her younger brother went to school with one of the kids who found the body. It was the boy – he was called Owen and I remember his name because he became something of a local celebrity. Heaven knows what he’s doing now.’
‘In what way was he a local celebrity?’ asked Martin. ‘According to what I read, the two children who found the body were both given some sort of award for their exemplary behaviour. I don’t know what the thinking was back then but I do know that now, if some kids witnessed something as upsetting as a naked dead body, they’d be offered counselling.’
‘The girl may well have been in need of some sort of therapy but the boy certainly cashed in on his experience.’ Shelley smiled and shook her head. ‘He was taking groups of children from his school on guided tours of the area and charging them for the privilege. Alice was in her final year at Swansea Uni at the time, but she had younger sisters at the same school as the boy and so heard how it all ended in tears for him.
‘Lots of parents complained that their children were being forced to pay young Owen for giving them nightmares! I can’t really remember the outcome but there was something awful to do with the boy’s family. It may have been a suicide – Alice would remember. Do you want to see if she’s at home?’
‘You can’t just drop in on someone you haven’t seen in ages with a man she’s never met who wants to ask her about an eleven-year-old murder! Can we?’
Shelley nodded and dragged Martin in the direction of her friend’s house. ‘I haven’t seen Alice since her birthday last January, but we do keep in touch and she does know about you. She’s got two young sons, and she and her husband moved to Bath about eight years ago but the marriage didn’t work out and now she’s back here living with her mother – her dad died a couple of years ago.’
Martin had reservations about just turning up unexpectedly but he could see that Shelley had the bit between her teeth and anyway there was always the chance that the meeting would be useful to him.
He needn’t have worried, as even before they had reached the front door, it was flung open and a short plump woman was dragging Shelley into the house.
‘Shelley Edwards, what a lovely surprise – and you must be Martin. What took you so long to make a move on Shelley?’ she asked him accusingly. ‘The poor girl was smitten for months before you finally got round to asking her out!’
Shelley blushed and glared at her friend but Martin laughed and shook his head.
‘I’ve asked myself that question many times and I still don’t know the answer.’
‘Don’t just stand there dripping, take your coats off and come into the kitchen.’ Alice collected the wet clothes and spread them out over the backs of some chairs. ‘Go through there, Shelley knows the way.’
Although Shelley hadn’t been in the house for many years she did know how to get to the kitchen, and as on previous visits had the feeling of going back in time. The house was semi-detached Victorian. The lounge at the front of the house overlooked Roath Park lake, but the kitchen was at the rear of the property and quite dark.
Martin remembered when he and Matt had interviewed a couple in one of the other houses on Lake Road West, regarding a hit and run incident. That couple’s modern kitchen had been like something out of a glossy magazine. The kitchen he was standing in now had moved on from the Victorian era, but was nowhere near the twenty-first century.
There were two boys sitting at the super-sized wooden table were much more up to date, and even though a total stranger had walked into the kitchen, they didn’t look up from the iPad they were sharing.
‘That electronic device has turned my kids into zombies,’ complained Alice, but the boys had undoubtedly heard this allegation before and their eyes remained glued to the screen.
Alice tried another tactic and threw a tea-towel over the screen. Bingo!
‘Mum, don’t be mean – we were just having a …’
It was then that the oldest boy, Evan, realised that they had company and his embarrassment registered on his face. Martin felt an immediate sympathy and although his own early teens were a distant memory, he could still remember when his face would turn crimson at the most inappropriate moment. He removed the tea-towel and an image of a skeleton brandishing a hangman’s noose filled the screen, obviously stemming from a recent Halloween party.
‘The quality of the pictures on these things is amazing. Is that you looking for a neck to fit your rope?’
With something else to focus on, Evan’s hormones relented and his confidence returned. He stretched the screen so that the face of the skeleton was enlarged and easily recognised as his own.
‘Yeah, that’s me, and the green gremlin sitting next to me is Alyn.’ He nodded in the direction of his brother.
Martin hadn’t even noticed the gremlin and watched as Evan enlarged other parts of the photograph and his actions brought to light another three Halloween monsters.
The two women were catching up on gossip and rustling up some coffee, and Shelley was amused to see how easily Martin crossed the generation gap and made friends with the two boys.
‘So you took all these photographs yourself? I can see you’ve had a great time with the special effects. We used to say the camera never lies, but I would never recognise you in some of these pictures.’
Evan grinned and had great pleasure in demonstrating to Martin that costumes could also be transformed, and turned his brother from a gremlin into a fairy!
Alice placed a tray on the table and suggested that her sons had things like homework they should be doing. A few mandatory objections were voiced but Alice had heard them all before and ushered the boys out of the kitchen.
‘Shelley tells me you take your coffee strong and black, which is just as well as those two reprobates have drunk all the milk. Not only finished off the milk but on every other front eaten me out of house and home – so I’ve got nothing to offer you. I swear those sons of mine have hollow legs’
‘If the coffee tastes as good as it smells I’ll be more than happy, but what about you two?’
‘There’s no need for milk – not in a large glass of pinot noir! I’ve persuaded Shelley to join me in a decadent pre-lunch tipple.’
‘I didn’t need much persuading,’ said Shelley. ‘I’ve been telling Alice what brought us here this morning and she certainly remembers the upheaval when the body was discovered. I told her the police are re-opening the case and that you’ve –’
Alice interrupted. ‘I was in university halls during the week, but the body was found on a Friday and I came home for the weekend later that day. Quite a few of the houses around here have been bought and renovated by well-off professionals but the majority are still owned by families like mine who’ve been here for ever. The whole area was in shock.’
‘From what I’ve read so far, no one was able to identify the body,’ said Martin.
‘We were all shown a photograph, but I didn’t come across anyone who had even seen the man, let alone anyone who knew him. He looked like an emaciated version of a boy doing the same course as me, but he was Kenyan, not Somali. It’s strange, but even as a child I never really gave much thought to people’s ethnic backgrounds – I suppose it’s because Cardiff has been a great big melting pot for a very long time.’
Alice perched herself on a stool. ‘Do you really think there’s any hope of you getting to the bottom of that death – after all this time? What I most remember is the chain reaction. The two kids that found the body were hailed as heroes at first. The local press made a big thing of the exemplary way in which the youngsters had behaved – but the story closed down pretty quickly, I guess when it was discovered that the boy, Owen, was making money out of the situation.
‘His family were ac
cused of elaborating their son’s story. I don’t know if that’s true but they certainly sold it to the press. Apparently his mother committed suicide not long after, but I don’t know if that had anything to do with what had happened. Last I heard was that Owen and his dad had moved to Southampton.’
‘Where were they living at the time?’ asked Martin.
‘Not really sure, but judging from the direction the kids were walking to school I would say on the east side of the lakes. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.’
Martin smiled. ‘Well the answer to your question is yes, it happens time and time again. A case of what is likely to be unlawful killing reaches, pardon the pun, a dead end. It isn’t worked on for years but during that time technology moves on and a fresh look throws up new possibilities, which are what I’ll be trying to find.’
The kitchen door burst open and Evan and Alyn returned to make it clear to their mother that they were starving. Alice shrugged her shoulders and looked apologetically towards her friend.
Shelley gave her a hug. ‘It’s OK, Alice, we only intended this to be a flying visit, so we’ll make a move.’
Minutes later they all left the house together, with Alice and her sons heading for the shops and Shelley leading Martin to the scene of the crime.
She took him back through Roath Park and to an exit furthest away from where they had been.
‘The schoolchildren who found the body would probably have come from this area but it could be much further back. The catchment area for the school they went to could go back for miles – I don’t know. Anyway, this is the road that would take them to school from anywhere around here, but a bit further down is the shortcut that some of the kids use.’
As predicted, just a few steps ahead, was a patch of rough ground and a faintly trodden path leading off the main road. Martin looked around and took in the position of a couple of shops at the end of a terrace of houses. He remembered that the boy had retraced his steps to a nearby shop, possibly one of those.
They went over the path and could see why it wasn’t well used. True, it cut off a corner of the route but it was uneven and with the recent rain it was wet and slippery.
‘Remind me to bring my wellies next time you invite me out,’ teased Shelley. ‘Seriously though, Martin, it looks as if we won’t get much more than ten minutes before another batch of rain and it’s going to take five of those minutes to get back to the car.’
Martin looked at the threatening dark clouds and caught Shelley’s hand. They hurried on and were almost back on the main road when Shelley stopped.
‘This is it. This is the place. It was just before this path came back onto the road.’
Martin looked around. There were houses in the area but nothing overlooked that particular spot and it seemed as if all the windows had deliberately turned away from the scene. At the edge of the rear wall of one of the houses was a group of smooth stones that were shiny and were out of place on the rough ground.
‘Some sort of shrine,’ suggested Shelley in response to Martin’s unspoken question.
They both bent down to get a closer look at the oval-shaped stones that were arranged like the petals of a flower.
‘It’s quite beautiful and strangely moving but what amazes me is that it’s not been vandalised. I think the stones have been polished too. Someone is obviously tending this simple memorial. Do you think it’s something to do with the body that was found here?’
‘Don’t know,’ replied Martin. ‘I’ve read all the paperwork and the area is just as described, but there’s no mention of these stones being there then. It’s not uncommon for people to set up shrines at the site of a road traffic death, or even a murder.’
Martin used his phone to take some photographs and it was clear to Shelley that the cogs of his brain were working flat out.
‘Park those thoughts, Martin Phelps, and concentrate your attention on a living body – mine! I’m wet and starving and in need of some TLC, and I’m claiming back the rest of this weekend.’
It only took Martin a few seconds to catch up with Shelley as she headed back towards the car.
Chapter Seven
Less than twenty minutes after putting the phone down, Lizzie’s red Volvo was on the M4, heading for Cardiff. She had sort of promised the detective who had phoned that she would get someone to drive her, but one look at Della’s car had changed her mind. It didn’t look as if it would make it to the end of the drive and Della admitted that the fuel gauge had been in the red zone for the last twenty minutes of their journey to Woodcanton Hall.
Basil had offered to drive the Volvo, but he was a notoriously bad driver and Lizzie wasn’t going to take a chance at the moment. She had initially suggested that Della and Basil stay and make a start on the training programme she had prepared, but they were determined to support Lizzie and go with her to Cardiff.
During the first five minutes of the journey Basil had repeatedly asked Lizzie if she was OK to drive. He stopped asking when it was made clear to him that she was using the familiar process of driving to keep her mind from wandering too far into fantasy.
‘I don’t know what to make of that phone call with Inspector Pryor, there are things that make no sense whatsoever. They got my father’s name by checking out the number plate of a car, left at some station in Wales – I can’t remember the name of the station … yes I can! It was Treorchy, like the Treorchy Male Voice Choir, they gave a concert in aid of one of my mother’s charity campaigns.’
Lizzie kept her own thoughts as she remembered that the concert was at a point in her career when she was wowing the tennis world. Her mother had, at that time, been only too willing to wheel her daughter into the public spotlight, because of the additional publicity it gave to her cause.
‘What I don’t get is how my father’s car can be in two places at the same time! We all know it’s parked at the Hall, albeit not where I would have expected it to be, and not in its usual pristine condition.’
Basil interrupted. ‘When you were upstairs getting your phone and handbag I nipped to the garages and took some pictures of the car with my phone, so we can show the police where it actually is.’
‘Thanks, Basil …’ Lizzie’s mind was now running away with random thoughts and coming up with some impossible questions. ‘What if the body they’ve found is my father? It wouldn’t be impossible for him to have gone to Cardiff – we do know people living there … but he would have driven straight to their homes. He would have no reason for being on a train.’
Lizzie slowed the car down to a crawl and threw the loose change she’d collected from Basil and Della into the coin bin as she steered her way through the Severn Bridge toll barrier.
‘Was the body the detective told you about found on an intercity train or a local one?’ asked Della.
‘He didn’t actually say, but if the car they believe belongs to my father was found in Treorchy, then I suspect it was a local train. What am I saying? I don’t know! The only reason I didn’t tell Inspector Pryor that he was off his trolley is because I don’t know where my father is.’ Lizzie’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Hang on, Lizzie, we’ll be there soon and, fingers crossed, it will all have been just a big mix-up – it wouldn’t be the first time the police have got things wrong,’ said Basil. ‘Pull over onto the hard shoulder if you want me to drive.’
‘No, I’m OK. I’m worried, of course, but I’m trying to keep the lid on it until we really know if my dad’s just staying with one of his pals or …’
Knowing that Lizzie Ferguson was on her way to Goleudy prompted Helen Cook-Watts to get the body moved from the post-mortem room to the viewing room. She remembered the first time she had taken someone to view a body, the distraught adoptive parents of a man who had been brutally murdered. This time, the elderly gentleman looked as if he was merely asleep, and she hoped that whoever identified him would take comfort from his peaceful demeanour.
She joined DI Pryor and was pleased t
o see that the team, previously just Davies, Mullen, and Matthews, had been substantially enhanced. The case, now a full-blown murder investigation, had been moved to Incident Room Two and Helen could see Alex Griffiths talking to her boss and a woman she recognised, but didn’t really know.
Matt Pryor called her over and made the formal introductions.
‘Helen, this is Detective Sergeant Shaw, and Margaret, this is Detective Constable Cook-Watts. DS Shaw is on a three-month secondment from the Wiltshire force. I jumped at the opportunity of getting her help with this case, given that our victim may well turn out to be from that part of the country.’
The two women exchanged smiles and DS Shaw’s smile turned into a spontaneous laugh as she told Matt that the only person who ever called her Margaret was her mother – and only then when they were having a disagreement.
‘I’m Maggie to everyone, but of course I’m DS Shaw to the public and most people outside the team. Does that fit in with your normal way of working here?’
‘OK, Maggie it is,’ smiled Matt. ‘People use whatever they feel most comfortable with, and we don’t stand on ceremony amongst ourselves, though outside this building we generally stick to formal titles.’
‘It’s great to be able to get stuck into what promises to be an interesting case – I only hope I can be of some use to you.’
‘Let’s get this show on the road.’ Matt looked around and suggested that they take things in the order they had happened and invited PC Davies and PC Mullen to start the ball rolling.
Davies stood up and referred to his notebook.
‘The initial call came through to Goleudy at 08.34 as a result of a diverted 999 call from a Mr Eric Lloyd, one of the managers at Cardiff Central. He’d summoned the police and ambulance services, but it didn’t take the paramedics long to realise that their presence was surplus to requirements. We arrived on the scene at 08.55. By that time the platform was virtually empty and Mr Lloyd took us to the carriage where the dead man had been found.