‘How d’you know he’s got a Range Rover?’
‘Traffic copped him doing a ton on Port Dinorwic bypass a while back. He got off with a warning, which isn’t surprising with the connections he must have. He’s also got a big posh horsebox, tractors and whatnot, and a great big, shiny, super-posh, custom-built, Italian sports car his wife drives most of the time. You know who she is, don’t you?’
‘A county councillor,’ McKenna said, weary already of the intricate nexus of relationships which formed the local power group, and which he must carefully and tactfully unravel in search of sickness and depravity rotting the tight-woven fabric.
‘Madame Rhiannon Haf ab Elis is chairperson of the social services committee no less, most likely best mates with Ron and his missis, too.’
‘And probably the obvious connection between Elis and Arwel.’
‘That’s as may be, but who’s to say that’s where it begins and ends?’ He let the car coast down the lane. ‘That’s Bedd y Cor, sir. Weird calling your house a “dwarf’s grave”, isn’t it?’
Slated roof misty with dew, the house stood on a natural terrace, fronted by lawns and shrubbery, and the glimpse of a formal garden. A grove of winter-bare oak and ash, and the rising hillside, shielded its back from mountain storms. Acres of pasture and heath swept towards the foothills, grazed by horses swaddled in crested rugs.
‘Mam says it was long house in the old days, and a near ruin when the Elises bought it,’ Dewi added. ‘I looked them up in Who’s Who this morning. Her family’s riddled with the sort of money that breeds like maggots on a corpse. He’s director of this, that and the other, and probably got shares in half the world, but I don’t expect he’s ever done a day’s proper graft in his life. I wonder if the money’s what the Yanks call old or new?’
‘You read too much pulp fiction, Dewi Prys. Money is money, and old or new, it buys the same. Mr ab Elis’s money has bought some very fine horse-flesh.’
‘It might’ve bought some very fine human flesh as well, sir, but I daresay that came a lot cheaper.’
Leaving Dewi by a huge five-barred gate of weather-bleached wood, McKenna walked down the drive towards the house, feet crunching on finely raked gravel. Moss-grown boulders and rocky outcrops strewed the undulating landscape around what was once a yeoman’s dwelling, the character of which the Elises’ restoration had destroyed nothing. Set on an east-west axis, like so many older houses, only north and south-facing walls bore windows. The east wall faced the hillside, where a silvery tumble of water seemed to disappear beneath the foundations. An enormous oak tree, its trunk arched by centuries of prevailing winds, touched the other, and spread its branches over the roof. White paint gleamed on cob walls and squat chimneys, flashed with shale to throw off the rain. Riotous with autumn colours, the north wall was garbed from roof to footings with Virginia creeper, and McKenna imagined the house in summer, canopied by the oak tree, like the house built of leaves in an ancient Welsh poem. Old barns in the adjoining field had been converted to stables and feedstore and garage, their yards laid with smooth cobbles, their roofs yellowy-green with lichen.
A girl who spoke with the harsh accent of Arwel’s home town opened the door, and took him through a hall floored with worn stone slabs, down a passageway where the slabs were covered in coarse druggeting, and to a room which looked out over the gardens and down the hillside.
Russet leaves draped the window like a frame around a tranquil winter landscape, blazing logs in a huge stone fireplace filled the air with heat and sweet woody scents, lit pale-leather furniture and pearly-grey carpet, and walls and ceiling of a colour so subtle McKenna felt adrift in room without angles or demarcation. Seated on the edge of an armchair, good arm cradling the bad, he examined the painting above the mantel, where a dark-robed figure drifted in desolate twilight between sea and strand, and surveyed the shelves of fine limed oak built in the chimney alcoves, where old buckram- and leather-bound books were stacked beside a brass-bound casket of burnished wood. Against the far wall, away from the heat, matching shelves housed racks of records and compact discs, and the most expensive hi-fi console he had ever seen.
Fidgety, wanting to smoke, he stood up and walked to the shelves, leaving tracks in the lush carpet pile, and tilted his head to read the book titles. Many were biographies of Beethoven, in German and English, the others devoted to Mozart and Salieri, Dittersdorf and Gassmann, Handel, Spohr and Benda. He leafed through the yellowed pages of an arcane text on counterpoint, and wondered what delayed Elis. Perhaps he played with time, McKenna thought, hoping to subvert its momentum as these composers had done, and thus recreate the time-space in which Arwel Thomas still lived and no questions needed to be asked.
He looked again at the painting, troubled by the feelings it evoked, then made new tracks towards the other picture, a chalk portrait hung to catch the best light, sepia-toned like the pages of the text. He felt a draught as the door behind him opened.
‘Beethoven, at the age of fifty-one.’ The voice was cultured and soft. ‘A marvellous face, don’t you think? Of course, the original is still in Bonn.’ Elis smiled wryly. ‘All the money in the world can’t buy some things. Do sit down. Mari’s bringing coffee.’ Tall and muscular, he wore a heavy woollen jumper, riding breeches splashed with mud, long wool socks, and his wealth without ostentation.
The girl followed him into the room, and put coffee and a silver ashtray on a delicate painted table, offering no deference to Elis, but simply a beguiling smile as he thanked her.
‘I do apologize for keeping you waiting. I was grooming my horse.’ Pouring coffee into fine china cups, pushing McKenna’s within hand’s reach, he asked, ‘What have you done to yourself?’
‘Dislocated my shoulder.’
‘That must be painful. What happened?’
‘A tumble.’
‘We don’t bounce so well as we get older, do we?’ He stood by the fireplace, fumbling with cigarette and lighter.
‘That’s a fine painting,’ McKenna observed. ‘Who’s the artist?’
‘Caspar David Friedrich, who died a near madman. An excess of vision, I suppose, like his contemporary. They make you suffer with them, don’t they? Friedrich with his solitudes, Beethoven with his music.’
‘Perhaps we should accept suffering as one of the great structural lines of human life,’ McKenna commented. Elis sat opposite, frowning. ‘Perhaps,’ McKenna added, ‘we should find it sufficient to rejoice in their vision.’ He gazed at Elis, at the trembling hand holding the coffee cup. ‘And much as I would like to discuss music and art, Mr Elis, I didn’t come here to seek your opinions on either.’
‘I know.’ The cup clattered on the saucer, slopping liquid. Dabbing at the spill with a napkin, Elis said, ‘Arwel didn’t turn up as usual, so I called Blodwel. They said he’d absconded.’
‘And how often would he come here?’
‘Every weekend. Sometimes, he’d arrive without warning on a schoolday. I always let them know, and no one ever told me to send him back.’
‘We’ve been told the children aren’t allowed out unaccompanied.’
‘Have you?’ Elis said wearily. ‘You’ll no doubt hear other half-truths, as well as blatant untruths.’
‘How did you know him?’
‘I try to use my own good fortune for the benefit of others.’ Elis smiled bitterly. ‘Look what I managed to do for Arwel.’
‘Please keep to the point, Mr Elis.’
‘I take children out of care, as my predecessors hired from the workhouse. Mari came a couple of years ago, after spending childhood in so many foster homes everyone lost count. She was thrown out of care the day after her sixteenth birthday. Not what I call good parenting, but who am I to cast the first stone?’
‘Arwel, Mr Elis.’
‘Early in the summer, I asked Social Services if any of the Blodwel children might like to help with the horses. Doris brought Arwel.’
‘And you let him look after valuable bloo
dstock?’
‘Mari’s from Caernarfon. She said he was a decent boy. And I,’ Elis added fiercely, ‘never found anything to prove her wrong. He was that rare person without fear of horses. They seemed to liberate him. He loved and respected them, and they responded in kind.’
‘You taught him to ride?’
‘And to groom and feed and muck out, to recognize injury and sickness.’ Elis tossed his cigarette in the hearth. ‘He was gifted with horses, Mr McKenna. Almost fey.’
‘Did you take him out?’
‘We went to Chester Races in early July, to Newmarket later that month, to Valley Air Show in August, to the first National Hunt meeting at Bangor on Dee last month, then to Aintree for the day, because he wanted to see the Grand National course.’ Elis smiled, pain forgotten. ‘I think he decided to be a jump jockey the first time he galloped a horse.’ Pain returned to rampage through his composure. ‘That was the last time I saw him.’
‘Did you pay him?’
‘Children in care aren’t allowed to earn. I sent Hogg a cheque for a hundred pounds each month, to be put in Arwel’s savings account. He deserved much more, but Hogg said he was spoilt already, the others would be jealous, and boys like him didn’t deserve privileges in any case. I gave him cash every so often, and told him to keep quiet.’
‘Did he ever discuss his family? Or Blodwel? His friends? His hopes and dreams and fears?’ McKenna sipped his coffee.
‘He was quite reserved, even shy, except with the horses, but I never expected his confidence in any case, because I’m forty-one, and to Arwel’s generation, that’s almost inconceivably old. Like most youngsters, he was a little secretive, but never devious, and he liked quietness, and privacy. He read quite a lot, too.’ Elis looked at the bookshelves, frowning. ‘I’m sure he left one of his books here. Mari should know where it is. He talked to her a lot and I often heard them giggling in the kitchen. I think she took a fancy to him.’
‘Hardly surprising. He was a very beautiful boy. His sister is equally beautiful.’
‘Yes, I know.’ The voice was quiet, the eyes downcast, the hands trembling violently as if in the throes of delirium.
‘You know the family?’
‘In his greater wisdom, Hogg banned family contact. Arwel was desperate to see them, so I took him one Sunday afternoon. I don’t think I’d recognize the parents if I fell over them.’ Elis paused, to light another cigarette. ‘Carol was in that horrible back parlour, standing in front of the window. The sun was behind her, and I thought she must be made of light.’
‘According to her parents, she’s wholly of the flesh.’
Elis stared at the painting over the mantel. ‘To see them all together was like witnessing a law of nature; Carol and Arwel the light to their parents’ darkness, each necessary to the other, neither able to vanquish the other. At least, I thought so. How else could I believe there may be justice and reason in the world?’
‘Nature is prone to accidents of beauty as much as to those of genius and idiocy.’ McKenna stood up, pain cavorting from neck to knee. ‘Would it be possible to see Mari now?’
Elis glanced at his watch. ‘She’ll have gone shopping, but I’ll give you her number. Don’t look so astounded! She has a self-contained flat in the house, because this is her home for as long as she wishes. The only relative is an aged grandmother in Caernarfon, whom Mari visits from time to time.’
Dewi leaned on the wall by the gate, watching the grazing horses. ‘That ginger one looks like she’ll drop her foal any minute.’
‘Chestnut, not ginger.’
‘Whatever you say, sir. Who’s the girl? She drove out about ten minutes ago.’
‘What was she driving?’
‘A grey Peugeot 305.’
McKenna climbed into the car, fumbling for the seat belt. ‘She must have a car as well as her own flat and telephone number.’
‘Who must?’
‘Mari from Caernarfon. Elis’s maid, or whatever, who spent her life in foster homes until he rescued her from a life of drudgery.’
Dewi leaned over to fasten McKenna’s seat belt. ‘You sound like you’ve taken against the man, sir. Did you see his wife?’
‘No.’
‘Is the house posher inside than out?’
‘It’s very discreetly the home of very rich people who don’t need to bother about any of the things which trouble us ordinary mortals,’ McKenna said. ‘And they have open fires everywhere. Maybe Mari doubles as Cinderella for them.’
Bumping up the lane, Dewi remarked cheerfully, ‘Mam always says even the pope and royalty have to go to the lavvy.’ He laughed. ‘Did you know Henry the Eighth employed a “Gentleman of the Stools” to wipe his backside for him? I saw it on TV. When Henry took a laxative, the man wrote: “The King had a veritable siege of the bowels”. I’d call Hogg a veritable siege of the bowels.’ He slipped the engine to first gear to take the brutal hill past St Mary’s. ‘D’you reckon Elis is another? Did he know where Arwel might’ve been for nearly a week before he turned up dead?’
‘That girl is absolutely stunned with grief, sir,’ Janet told McKenna. ‘She’s like a zombie.’
Easing himself into the chair behind the desk, McKenna searched for his cigarettes. ‘Did she not have much to say?’
‘She didn’t even answer my questions. She was off somewhere else altogether.’ As the smoke from McKenna’s cigarette rose pungent in the air, Janet sniffed.
‘D’you want one?’
‘It’s not the smoke. I took Carol to a poxy café for some lunch and my clothes stink of frying. She hardly ate anything, just picked at a few chips. She’s painfully thin. D’you think she’s anorexic?’
‘Elis says she seems to be made from light.’
‘Fancy him knowing her. Hardly the same social circle.’
‘Arwel took him to meet the family. It seems he thought a great deal of Mr Elis.’
‘And what did Mr Elis think of Arwel?’
‘He’s as much stunned in his own way as Carol.’
‘I’m not surprised. His reputation could be on the line.’
‘He’s no fool,’ McKenna pointed out. ‘His live-in maid was in care, and I want her interviewed as soon as possible.’ He scribbled Mari’s telephone number on a sheet of paper and pushed it across the desk. ‘Be nice to her. She knows the Thomases, and Elis thinks she was sweet on Arwel.’
‘No word from HQ yet about interviewing Blodwel kids,’ Owen Griffiths told McKenna. ‘I’ll chivvy them along in a while. Social Services might be trying to hide something, but then again, they might just be following the rules about questioning minors, and confidentiality and what-have-you.’ The superintendent sighed. ‘Pain in the arse, like most rules.’
‘You’ll be retired and away from it all soon.’ McKenna smiled. ‘Honourably retired.’
‘Don’t be snide. Policing’s a dirty job at times, and some folk get their hands in the muck a bit too deep.’ Griffiths pushed his coffee mug round and round on the blotter. ‘My wife’s got the next five years organized to the minute. She’s afraid I’ll get bored.’
‘You’re more likely to wonder how you ever found time to work.’
‘You think so?’ Griffiths asked, his eyes bleak. ‘My job’s so much a part of my life I can’t imagine being without it, but there’s hellish pressure to take early retirement. HQ want to make room for others, and the family say I should get out before I’m too old to do anything but sit in a rocking-chair going gaga. You thought any more about applying for the vacancy? I have it on good authority it’d be nothing more than a formality.’
‘I’m not sure I want to return to uniform, promotion or not.’
‘You’ve been sure about nothing since you split with Denise. You’ve spent the last six months in limbo, waiting for God knows what.’
McKenna fidgeted, snapping his lighter off and on. ‘It’s hard making plans for yourself. Collapsing marriages cause a huge convulsion in the personality, I’m to
ld.’
‘Denise isn’t having problems, from what I hear.’
‘She’ll sort herself out in her own way. Women usually cope much better.’
‘I hear she’s found someone to take the edge off her misery.’
‘I know. It’s nothing to do with me. She’s a free agent.’
‘Not everyone will be so magnanimous. She’s still Mrs McKenna to most folk, and her cavorting around with a boyfriend isn’t good for you. Either tell her to be a bit more circumspect, or give her a divorce. She’s dead wood you’re carting around, and unless you hope to have her back, you should finish things properly, before you fall in the shit-pile she’s busy making. She’s holding you back.’
‘From what?’
‘From going forward. Life’s all about moving on, isn’t it?’
‘Mr Tuttle’s gone tilting at windmills, Detective Constable Miss Janet Evans buggered off without condescending to say where, and nobody can make head or tail of the crosswords,’ Dewi said. ‘Dr Roberts telephoned. The local paper and BBC and HTV’ve been pestering us, so I referred them to HQ, which went down like a lead balloon. BBC want to know if it’s true Arwel got hit by a train, HTV want to know the same, and the local paper wants to know how often Blodwel kids go on the run without anybody telling us.’
‘Stop sniping about Janet Evans,’ McKenna snapped. ‘I’ve warned all of you. She’s interviewing Elis’s maid. What did Eifion Roberts want?’
‘He said there’s no chance of releasing Arwel’s body. Apart from waiting for tissue and sample results to come back, somebody else might be asked to PM the boy to make sure he didn’t dream up the sexual abuse. And there’s been no inquest yet.’
In Guilty Night Page 5