In Guilty Night

by Alison Taylor

  ‘How has he been worse?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know!’ Tears glimmered. ‘Like he hates me! God knows what people’ve said to him.’

  ‘It might help if he tells us,’ McKenna suggested. ‘Especially if his experience at Blodwel was unpleasant.’

  ‘Who told you about him? Social Services?’

  ‘He knows the daughters of one of our officers. These young people seem very distressed about the death of the Blodwel boy.’

  ‘He was on the run, wasn’t he? Gary says the children run away a lot. He didn’t because he was scared of going to prison for it.’

  ‘Did Social Services help you with him?’ Dewi asked.

  Mrs Hughes smiled grimly. ‘Not that I’ve noticed. The social worker brought him back when Blodwel finished with him, dumped him on the doorstep, and went. We haven’t seen or heard from her since.’ She wiped her thin hands over her eyes, restoring the contours of her face. ‘You may as well talk to him, but you’ll have to come back after school. He’s going every day. I know he’s not dodging because I check. Somebody’s put the fear of God in him about that. It’s the nastiness to me I can’t cope with.’

  Standing knee-deep in golden bracken rimed silver-white with frost, Janet looked up the drive to an imposing stone house, double-fronted and steeply gabled. ‘D’you know why it’s called Hafodty, sir? It must’ve been a hafod, a summer holding where the farmer moved his animals to fresh grazing.’

  ‘When?’ Jack asked, with little interest.

  ‘In the old days. Moving people and stock according to the time of year is called transhumance.’

  Jack gazed at mountain flanks bare and frost-hard, girdled with swathes of the dying bracken, hollows filled with mist drifting like gunsmoke. ‘And where did they live the rest of the time?’

  ‘Lower down.’ Janet kicked at the bracken, sending puffs of leaf dust and frost in the air. ‘In a hendre. That’s why so many houses are called Hafod and Hendre.’

  A string of horses clattered up the road, led by a huge black animal with a white blaze aslant its face. Janet watched, hands deep in her pockets. ‘There’s a riding stables down the pass. Did Mr McKenna fall off one of their horses?’

  ‘He landed somewhere in the middle of Anglesey, and I had to go for him because he wouldn’t have an ambulance, then my wife had to drive over later for me to get his car. He should’ve known better!’

  ‘People fall off horses quite often. You’re taught how to do it without hurting yourself when you learn to ride.’

  ‘Nobody ever taught the chief inspector, did they?’ Jack marched to the wide white gate barring the driveway, unhooked the latch, and pushed it open. ‘How well d’you know this minister?’

  ‘As well as we know most of the local ministers, I suppose.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Usual sort of minister.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Jack said, stamping his feet as they waited for the door to be opened. ‘It’s usual for ministers not to be able to keep their grubby hands off the youngsters, is it?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that!’ Janet snapped. ‘I just meant he never seemed different to anyone else.’

  The room was like a summer garden, Jack thought, preserved for the bitter months of winter. He sat in a deep chair, its linen cover splashed with leaves and peony roses, his feet buried in thick green carpet. A huge log fire blazed with high-summer heat, crystal wall-lights in chimney alcoves and a crystal chandelier lit gauzy flowers of pink and purple-blue and golden yellow festooning the walls.

  ‘Who pays for all this?’

  ‘It’s run by a health and pension fund. People come here to convalesce.’

  ‘From what? The shock of having their sins found out?’

  ‘You’re very cynical,’ Janet commented.

  ‘And you’re still wet behind the ears.’

  The carved oak door slid open, bringing a faint scent of roasting lamb and the Reverend Christmas Morgan, a short thin man with wispy greying hair and china-blue eyes, crêpey skin overlapping his dog-collar. He smiled at Janet, exposing teeth stained yellow with nicotine. ‘How lovely to see you, my dear! How’s your dear father? And who’s the friend you’ve brought to see me?’

  ‘And is the Reverend Christmas Morgan queer as a nine-bob note?’ Eifion Roberts asked. ‘I blame his parents. Fancy calling a lad “Christmas”!’

  ‘Dewi’s informant got his wires a bit crossed,’ McKenna said. ‘This reverend ran off with a young lady. His interests seem within normal limits, but he has heard there’s a trade in young boys.’

  ‘What’s new? Young boys’ve been worth their weight in gold since mankind discovered the stuff. Who’s trading the commodity round here?’

  ‘He doesn’t know. He would only commit himself to saying adultery isn’t necessarily always sinful because it’s sometimes unavoidable, as in his case, presumably.’ McKenna lit a cigarette. ‘So he’s recovering from this unavoidable moral lapse at the expense of the chapel.’

  ‘Folk always accommodate their own, don’t they? I’ll wager the reverend could give chapter and verse on a damned sight more than the Bible, like Owen Griffiths knows a few dirty secrets he doesn’t want to sully his mouth repeating. But that’s we Welsh. Peasants so used to wading neck-deep in shit we don’t notice the stink any more.’

  ‘You’re irredeemably irreverent, Eifion. You’ll go to Hell.’

  ‘I’ll be able to keep up old acquaintanceships, then. How long d’you plan on staying in limbo while other folk dictate what you can do and when you can do it?’

  ‘Eifion Roberts finds Arwel’s situation very disturbing.’ McKenna lit a cigarette. ‘He feels the boy should be swinging the earth like a bauble from his wrist, rather than lying in a mortuary drawer with his head in pieces and his body cobbled together, although he does intend to reassemble the head properly. Undertakers don’t always do a very good job, apparently.’

  Seated behind his desk, uniform pressed and emblazoned, Owen Griffiths looked somewhere beyond McKenna’s left shoulder. ‘I’d prefer you not to smoke. It makes the room smell unpleasant.’

  ‘Corruption generally smells most unwholesome. Worse than Eifion Roberts’s mortuary, I imagine. He wonders if Arwel rebelled against more than the usual oppression to which those in authority subject children.’ Smoke drifted towards the ceiling. ‘He says rebellion can be a moral necessity.’

  ‘Eifion Roberts never did know when to shut up.’

  ‘You do, though. Don’t you?’ McKenna tapped ash from his cigarette. ‘Elis is a Beethoven enthusiast, and as I don’t want to appear a cultural Neanderthal, I borrowed Beethoven’s Letters from the university library yesterday, and found the most interesting comment on the state of man. He thought friendship and monarchy and empires mere fog, which any gust of wind can transform or blow away. Citing Terence, he notes that deference begets friends, but truth begets hatred, so there must be truth in what I said earlier which transformed our erstwhile friendship.’

  ‘You don’t know when to shut up, either. And you play with fire.’

  ‘And I can’t screech when I get burnt.’ He dropped the cigarette in the ashtray, grinding it to shreds. ‘I won’t accept the unacceptable, so I make myself unacceptable. What will you do with me?’

  ‘What I should’ve done already, and insist you go off sick before you do any more damage.’ Griffiths stared angrily at the younger man. ‘If you were less inclined to let other people’s ideas flummox your thinking, and spent less time gossiping with Eifion Roberts, you might be able to focus. Eifion’s got no faith in religion, so he has to look elsewhere. He can’t do his job unless he fills his head with outlandish thoughts, and however interesting, they won’t tell you how Arwel Thomas died.’

  McKenna lit another cigarette, his hands trembling.

  ‘If you want the truth, I’m bloody seething!’ Griffiths added. ‘You’ve no right to speak to me the way you did, whether you’re in pain or not! I’m not involved
in any cover-up, and nobody’s telling me what to do, and for all I know, your little performance might be a diversionary tactic, so I don’t notice you haven’t a bloody clue what you’re doing. And don’t bother saying your hands are tied. If they weren’t before, it’ll serve you right if they are after the way you behaved towards that boy’s social worker! Was there any need to be so bloody aggressive? And fancy letting Janet Evans say what she did! What sort of example are you setting her, for God’s sake?’ The superintendent paused for breath, then added, ‘You’ve let Elis get under your skin, and now you’re chafing others. Jack was perfectly happy thinking the world revolved around his belly and the marital bed, but now he’s wittering about things he’ll never properly understand or appreciate, and miserable with it. You’re not doing Dewi Prys any favours, either. He’d follow you to the edge of the world, so mind you don’t let him fall off.’ He frowned. ‘Have you bothered to ask yourself why Social Services don’t want you at Blodwel? Has it occurred to you Blodwell staff have nothing to answer for?’

  ‘How about criminal negligence?’

  ‘For not listening to that doctor? Maybe Social Services made the right decision, on information they don’t care to share with us. Eifion can say Arwel was raped while he was on the run from Blodwel, but he can’t date the other lesions with any real degree of accuracy, and no one knows how Arwel spent most of his time before his admission to Blodwel, though we know where he spent a lot of his time after.’

  ‘I hadn’t by any means discounted Elis.’

  ‘You can’t discount anybody. Have you formulated any proper plan? All I can see is Blodwel blocking up the end of your tunnel vision.’

  ‘You know perfectly well what we’ve done so far, and what enquiries are ongoing.’ McKenna stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette. ‘And whatever my present shortcomings, your messages are rather mixed, if not confused. Am I to hand over to Jack Tuttle, or will someone else be brought in? Is Blodwel out of the running or not?’

  ‘Oh, bloody get off your high horse, Michael! You’re riding for another fall!’

  Flicking his lighter on and off, McKenna stared at the flame until it began to die.

  ‘You rammed a bitter pill in my mouth,’ Griffiths said, his voice softer, ‘but Arwel’s more important than your feelings or mine, so I swallowed it. Let’s hope it doesn’t poison me, eh? You’re to interview staff and children at Blodwel between six and eight-thirty this evening. Make the most of it, because I doubt there’ll be another opportunity.’ He smiled. ‘You know what Dewi Prys’ll say, don’t you? Something like “About bloody time! Hogg must’ve finished getting shut of the evidence”.’

  Dim lights behind Blodwel’s windows cast fuzzy shapes on grass sparkling with frost, tinting the white mist which drifted about the walls and in and out of the bushes and trees on the lower slopes of the hill. McKenna heard train wheels screaming between the two tunnels and thought again of Arwel Thomas.

  Doris Hogg opened the front door, waiting while the officers filed past into the musty hall. Three women, Dilys Roberts among them, and a weed of a man with a straggling beard, stood silently against the wall, watching her harry the police officers towards the children’s quarters.

  McKenna stopped. ‘We shouldn’t all descend on the children. Perhaps you’d show my officers where the children can be interviewed, while Inspector Tuttle and myself introduce ourselves.’

  As she turned about heel and began pushing the others in another direction, Dilys Roberts broke from the group, and not looking at either, led the men down the rear corridor. McKenna heard no voices, no television, no sounds of life. In the stale and heavy air, he smelt fear, that age-old scent clawing at instincts. He followed the woman, remarking on her brutish silhouette, and thought she looked as mean and forbidding as her miserable habitat.

  Standing by the open door, Jack breathing down his neck, he looked into a room where eight bodies inhabited a silence punctuated by heavy panting breaths, seated in armless chairs upholstered in orange plastic, and ranged against the walls. In one corner, an antiquated television set blinked snowy pictures, without sound to relieve the tedium and silliness. Bare of pictures, the walls were painted a cold pale green, the floor covered in dun matting, the whole room nude of playthings and children’s litter.

  Heads tucked in chests like baby birds trying to weather a storm, three little boys crouched in their seats, beside a gangling bullet-headed youth with slitted lupine eyes, who lolled on his chair, stockinged feet thrust towards the middle of the room. McKenna noticed absently that none of the children wore shoes or slippers, and heard a giggle swallowed into extinction as the slouch-shouldered wench with rat-tail hair in the next chair put a hand over her mouth. Beside her sat a crew-cut androgynous youth, clad in jeans and sweatshirt, three rings in one ear and a spider’s web tattooed across neck and jaw. Legs crossed, the girl in the next seat ran her fingers through the cloud of red-gold curly hair tumbling about her shoulders. Her face was pale-skinned and vixenish. She lowered her lashes as McKenna looked, then opened a rosebud mouth in a little knowing smile, sharp teeth biting her lower lip. She glanced at the woman beside her, who patted the thin young hand, then rose, moving to the middle of the room in a swirl of pleated skirt and a drift of expensive scent. Her back to the two men, she said, ‘The police must ask you some questions, but there’s nothing to worry about. One of the staff will be with you all the time.’ Turning to McKenna, she added, ‘I am Councillor Mrs Elis. I trust none of you will abuse the co-operation of Mr Hogg and his staff.’

  ‘I foresee no problems, Councillor.’ McKenna held out his hand. ‘May I introduce Inspector Tuttle? He hasn’t yet had the pleasure of meeting your husband.’

  ‘Never off duty in this job.’ Ronald Hogg smiled unctuously, crossed his legs and nipped at trouser creases with a thumb and forefinger. ‘I expect you know the feeling.’

  ‘Then maybe we should skip the social chit-chat,’ Jack said. ‘Can you tell us who decided to ignore an expert medical opinion about Arwel Thomas?’

  ‘I don’t recall any such opinion.’

  ‘You were told Arwel displayed the classic signs of abuse.’

  Hogg nodded. ‘By someone who’d never set eyes on him before, and had no idea how devious he was. It’s not a good idea to jump to every crack of the whip.’

  ‘But Arwel was viciously and persistently abused.’

  ‘But he didn’t actually say so to that doctor.’ Hogg shifted in his chair, realigning the trouser creases. ‘Our frames of reference aren’t like yours, Inspector. We have to consider all the pros and cons, and assess the impact of investigation, on the child and everyone else. Is the child strong enough to cope? Might we do more harm than good? You know how much damage can be done by disclosing abuse.’

  ‘Keeping quiet does a lot more damage,’ Jack commented. ‘It got Arwel killed.’

  ‘That’s your interpretation, with the benefit of hindsight, I might add. I know the doctor’s suspicions have since been confirmed, but we’ve no idea how the injuries were acquired.’

  ‘Perhaps he sat on the top of Snowdon too long!’

  ‘Jack, please!’ McKenna intervened.

  ‘What is this?’ Hogg looked from one to the other. ‘The nasty-cop-nice-cop routine?’ He almost laughed. ‘Good heavens!’

  ‘I’m afraid we’re all under considerable pressure,’ McKenna said. ‘Inspector Tuttle meant no offence.’

  ‘Aren’t we all under pressure?’ Hogg smiled generously. ‘Institutions demoralize the people in them, and the police force is no exception.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘But they can brutalize people as well, can’t they? Such a pity.’

  ‘Could you discuss the decision not to refer Arwel for further examination?’ McKenna asked. ‘And would it be possible for us to see his file?’

  ‘Well, not really, to either.’ Hogg frowned. ‘But the decision was fully endorsed at the highest level. The file’s been returned to County Hall. You’ll have to apply to the d
irector.’

  McKenna nodded. ‘We’ll do that. We’ll also need a formal statement from someone about the decision not to report Arwel’s absconding.’

  Hogg smiled again. ‘I’ll send you a copy of the memo we had after your chief constable complained to my director about the cost, manpower, and sheer trouble of chasing absconders.’ The smile died. ‘I’ll regret to my dying day that we didn’t find the boy, but these things happen, and a boy as devious as that won’t be found. I wouldn’t be surprised if his sister knew where he was. She’s a bit of a hussy, isn’t she? Did you know the father’s been in prison for benefit fraud? What a family!’

  ‘Arwel had some savings, I believe,’ McKenna said.

  ‘County Hall’s dealing with that. I daresay the benefit agency will have first call, to offset funeral costs.’

  Flattening his hand against the radiator in McKenna’s office, Jack said, ‘Some idiot’s turned the heating down.’

  ‘It’s after nine,’ McKenna said. ‘Most people have gone home.’ He rubbed at knotted muscle and stiffened sinew. ‘We should’ve gone home, as well, instead of wasting our time at Blodwel.’

  ‘That little exercise was scuppered before it started,’ Dewi said. ‘Fancy wheeling in Rhiannon. She’s very matey with the Hoggs, isn’t she?’

  ‘They’re all watching out for each other. How did you get on with the children?’

  Dewi tossed a sheaf of statement forms on the desk. ‘Guess. Nobody knows nothing.’

  ‘Nobody dare say anything, you mean,’ Janet commented. ‘Doris stuck to me like a bloody leech, frowning and shaking her head every time the kids looked like saying more than “dunno”, or “I can’t say, miss”. Poor little things were frightened half to death, and they’re dreadfully tense.’