McKenna smiled wryly. ‘And Nature must keep our interest going somehow?’
Dr Roberts nodded. ‘Until that lady’s ready to finish us off, the reproductive power of the gene will rule the world, as always, while we bow down to our infatuation with our own death, and the awesome knowledge of being held fast in the slipstream of Time.’
‘The best minds don’t accept Time as a great comet hurtling from infinity to infinity,’ McKenna said. ‘It’s a construct of artifice.’ He smiled. ‘And even without the benefit of modern science, Goethe understood that no thing decays to nothing. One form of energy simply transforms to another.’
‘Bully for Goethe!’ Dr Roberts observed. ‘Didn’t stop him being terrified of dying, did it?’
Beyond the bedroom window, a pale winter moon rode high in the sky, clouds dragging across its face, and McKenna wondered what music the clouds made in heaven as they heaved and rolled and unravelled themselves, fighting winds whose only reality was the flight of the clouds they harried. In the garden below, grey in the wan moonlight, a strange cat slept beneath one of the spindly shrubs, curled in a tight ball on the cold earth.
The other cat nuzzled his hand as he lay wakeful, stroking her soft coat. A simple theme ran through his mind, the variations of its notes and intervals following one upon the other until it was over, and he fell alseep at last, some time after the cathedral clock chimed three long notes.
13
‘Oh, God!’ Owen Griffiths groaned. ‘D’you really want to question Elis under caution?’
McKenna nodded. ‘And I want search warrants for his vehicles and house.’
The superintendent frowned. ‘You were gunning for Hogg.’
‘Hogg isn’t out of the frame. Putting the finger on Elis might be a diversionary tactic.’ McKenna rubbed his forehead, feeling the tension of an incipient headache. ‘But we can’t ignore Elis. Maybe he’s simply another victim of this sodding awful mess, and he loved the boy as a surrogate son, or maybe he indulged his preference for the love that dare not speak its name.’
‘Oh, God! Don’t bring Oscar Wilde into this, or that upper-class pervert he was so besotted with.’
‘Pervert or not, Lord Alfred Douglas wrote a rather poignant verse on the subject.’
‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a good deal more poignant, and a sight less sentimental.’ Griffiths took a pen from the desk tidy, and drew a row of interlocking boxes on a sheet of official notepaper. ‘How many vehicles?’
‘Car, Range Rover, a large horsebox, a trailer and a tractor.’
‘Forget the tractor. Whoever dumped the boy had him in a boot or something.’ Griffiths began to draw bars inside the boxes. ‘Or a trailer.’ He surveyed his doodling, then drew a figure behind the bars. ‘And the ground was so hard with frost, we couldn’t tell if a herd of elephants’d been there. Oh, sod it!’ He threw down the pen, and tossed the paper in the waste bin. ‘I’d better contact HQ, hadn’t I?’
‘Unless you want to assume that mantle of responsibility yourself.’
‘I wanted to retire peacefully. Fat chance, eh? Is there any point searching the house? I know the boy’s clothes are still missing, and Forensics are still sifting all the rubbish dredged up by the railway, but I doubt Elis is stupid enough to leave hard evidence around, and any of Arwel’s stuff you found at Bedd y Cor could quite legitimately be there. He spent enough time at the place.’ Griffiths sighed. ‘Ronald Hogg could justify anything. In one breath he’s relating his dreadful suspicions of Elis, and in the next, he’s saying why he did nothing to stop the association.’
‘But as Eifion Roberts pointed out, it’s all wonderfully plausible and reasonable. Hogg can only wait and watch, as he puts it, until Elis drops himself in it. Until then, he has to take him and his motives at face value, because otherwise he might deny a very disadvantaged child the chance of a wonderful rehabilitation.’
‘Can’t Hogg make up his bloody mind? Was Arwel a wicked, manipulative blackmailer who got his just deserts, or a poor disadvantaged victim?’
McKenna rubbed his shoulder, wondering if phantom pain would haunt the rest of his days. ‘One man’s truth is another’s deception. Life is ambiguous.’
‘People are ambiguous, and people make life what it is for others, and I don’t like the life Hogg makes for these children.’ Griffiths sighed again. ‘I’d better crank up the engine and get the wheels going, but don’t be surprised if HQ send someone more exalted than you or me to talk to Elis.’
McKenna stood up. ‘Eifion wants a disposal certificate. No one’s ever questioned his autopsy findings, and he’s got all the tissue samples he needs.’
‘I’ll ask the coroner for a burial certificate. Let Social Services know, because the Thomases’ll need help paying for the funeral. The pittance of a grant this bloody government gives would just about get the poor lad tipped in a common grave. Didn’t John Donne call life a common grave? We’re wrapped in our shrouds from the moment of conception.’
Emma Tuttle sounded as if she had been weeping. ‘I’ve called the doctor, because Jack’s really ill. He’s been miserable for days, but I thought it was work and the girls getting him down.’ She drew a rasping breath. ‘It’s probably ‘flu. His temperature’s high, and he’s shivering an awful lot, but I had a dreadful struggle to make him stay at home. He’s fretting about that missing boy, wondering where he could be….’
‘Stop worrying,’ McKenna said. ‘We’ll manage.’
‘Why are you always so kind to me?’ She paused, then said, ‘Don’t answer that. I’ll call again when the doctor’s been.’
‘I could collect the medical certificate later.’
‘And you can pick up the note Denise left last night because you won’t return her calls. She wants to know about Christmas.’
Cigarette burning in the ashtray, McKenna looked at the wall calendar and noted, with an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach, that Christmas would be upon him and the rest of the Christian world in less than three weeks’ time. Denise would warrant a gift, despite the adultery she thought only a convention for the discarded wife of this modern world. Her greetings card would arrive soon, reminding him of his responsibility to the society of men. Eifion Roberts would remind him in a different way, importuning him to gaiety and seasonal amnesia with friendship and a bottle or two of spirits, and Jack would issue invitations to Christman lunch and tea, when the twins would tease and flatter, Jack would talk of this and that, and Emma would simply be herself. The hours between the eve and the day could be spent at mass with the other Catholic souls marooned in this puritan landscape, he thought, and realized he could do anything or nothing, as he wished, but knew the days to Christmas would nonetheless be counted out until their burden was dead and gone, and only a few more hours remained before the turn of the year, when the sap would rise and life blossom once more.
Dewi walked in and sat down. ‘Dr Roberts called to say the HIV and VD tests on Arwel were negative, but we won’t hear about Tony yet.’
‘Inspector Tuttle’s off with ‘flu.’
‘More likely the stress of thinking Dai Skunk breathed AIDS on him. It’s weakened his defences, so the viruses can get at him.’
‘Dafydd ap Gwilym wrote a poem about a hut ruined in a storm, but I think the subject describes a woman who’s lost her virtue, like one of Beethoven’s “ruined fortresses”.’
‘Arwel’s crosswords haven’t helped much, have they?’
‘We don’t know enough about him to understand them. Like notes in music, words have personal values and embrace personal concepts, and they can be meaningless or revelatory, depending on the thoughts and experiences behind them.’
‘And the imagination,’ Dewi added. ‘Who’ll be asking Elis the nasty questions?’
‘HQ’s sending a person of rank,’ McKenna said. ‘Probably more than one. Where’s Janet?’
‘Interviewing the lady video stars. I doubt she’ll get any more joy than we had with the blokes
, but at least we won’t have any claims of sexual harassment by nasty brutal male officers.’
‘We should set Pastor Evans on them. His nose is long enough to sniff out any souls struggling to emerge from the filth.’
Driving up St Mary’s hill, the car labouring in second gear, McKenna glanced at Dewi, and wondered how the Prys family spent Christmas. He imagined simple contentment, the family conversing in the shorthand, unintelligible to outsiders, which rendered them safe from invasion, then discarded romantic nonsense about the lot of ordinary folk. Like himself, Dewi was trying to escape the toil and disappointment to which he was born.
Luminous in red and green livery, a white patrol car laboured behind, bearing men to drive away the vehicles in which Elis and his wife gracefully flaunted their wealth and their differences. He thought of the huge inconvenience to which they might be put by the execution of the warrants, then cursed himself for forgetting the pretty little car in which Mari Williamson flaunted her own difference.
‘Elis’ll probably go ballistic,’ Dewi said. ‘I can’t see him and Rhiannon hoofing it to town for a pack of bog rolls.’
‘I expect Mari does the nitty-gritty bits of keeping their persons in comfort, and it doesn’t help that I forgot all about impounding her car.’
‘We’ll just take it. They’ll be too up in the air to notice anything much.’ Dewi wiped his cuff on a patch of condensation on the side window, and watched the high banks and bare clipped hedges flying past. ‘I usually enjoy this kind of thing, you know. Dropping on folk with warrants and a bunch of pounding flatfoots from uniform is exciting, like the films. I’m not enjoying this at all. It doesn’t feel right.’
‘It’s necessary. We do our job without malice or favour.’
‘We might mean no malice, but the rest of the world won’t see it like that.’ Dewi frowned. ‘Hogg’s set us up, and we’re dancing to his horrible little tune.’
‘Elis has questions to answer, and I should have asked them a damned sight earlier than today.’ A few drops of rain spattered the windscreen as he bumped down the lane to Bedd y Cor. He took the last bend, and almost stood on the brakes as the great grey horse reared before him like a beast from a Gericault canvas, hocks down, veins throbbing, hind legs sprung with immense power, front hooves flailing over the car bonnet. He saw Elis pull back the animal, and watched something near exhilaration on his face change as understanding arrived.
As soon as she picked up the telephone, Janet had recognized the voice, breathy with fear, gabbling an address.
‘It’s the other girl we want. Tracey whatever-her-name-is will keep,’ Owen Griffiths said. ‘Take somebody from uniform if McKenna hasn’t hijacked them all.’
‘What shall I do with Mandy, sir?’ Janet asked.
‘Put her in the detention cell for now. We need to stop her going off again. It’s a load off my mind to know she’s safe.’
‘We’re supposed to notify Social Services.’
‘McKenna can do that. You organize a solicitor for the girl, and sit in with her, ’cos you never know what she might want to say.’
The servants huddled in the kitchen, numbed with shock, watching men in uniform steal the beautiful car. Josh watched from the door of the grey horse’s loose box, saddle slung over the bottom hatch, bridle hanging from the pommel.
Mari ran from the back door, her feet skittering on the cobbles like the horse’s hooves. She made as if to chase the car, the last of the convoy moving up the drive, stopped and screamed after it, then ran back indoors.
Dewi shut the door and caught her arm. ‘Stop it! Calm down!’
She dragged herself away, ran to the drawing-room where McKenna waited with Elis and his wife, and began to scream at McKenna, tearing her hair and the neck of her tunic, still screaming.
Elis put his arms around her from behind and held the flailing hands. ‘Hush, Mari, hush. You’ll be all right.’ He held her tight, looking at McKenna, who thought sorrow embraced the girl. ‘You’ve revived all her demons, Chief Inspector, invaded the place where she felt safe from the past.’ The girl slumped against his body, breath rasping. ‘She thinks you’re about to destroy her sanctuary.’
‘Examining the vehicles is part of our ongoing investigation of Arwel Thomas’s death,’ McKenna said.
‘What have we done to you?’ Rhiannon asked. ‘D’you resent us because you think we have too much?’
‘The deputy chief constable will put a number of questions to Mr Elis,’ McKenna added. ‘We neglected to include Mari’s car on the warrants, and would be obliged by your permission to remove it.’
Mari pulled herself from Elis’s grasp and ran from the room. Within a split second, it seemed to McKenna, who thought time must surely be awry, she returned to throw a small leather fob at his feet, and watched from her harbour within Elis’s arms, as Dewi bent to retrieve the keys.
‘Who’ll talk to me?’ Rhiannon demanded. ‘To Mari?’
‘Other senior personnel with the deputy chief.’
Rhiannon sat on the Knole settee, reaching forward to brush a wisp of straw from her husband’s breeches. She folded and crumpled the straw, tossed it on the blazing logs, and said, ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘I’m not authorized to interview either you or Mr Elis. I’m sure you appreciate the reasons.’
‘And when will the others arrive?’
‘Soon.’
‘Then perhaps Constable Prys would kindly ask Cook to bring coffee while we wait.’
Geared for a tussle, Janet was surprised by the meek and almost agreeable manner in which Mandy relinquished herself to the police officers who suddenly arrived at Tracey’s tiny bedsit above a derelict High Street butcher’s shop.
‘I knew she’d grass me up,’ Mandy said, as Janet put a mug of canteen tea on the table in the detention cell. ‘She doesn’t want to get done for hiding me.’
‘You can’t blame her.’
‘Are you going to tell Hogg?’ Mandy sipped the tea, and pulled a packet of cigarettes from her jacket pocket.
‘My boss will contact Social Services later. A solicitor’s coming to talk to you.’
‘You’ve got to tell Hogg. He’s in charge of all the kids.’
Janet saw fear glitter in Mandy’s eyes, heard its note rising in her voice. ‘I do what my boss tells me, and he told me to get you a solicitor.’
‘Why?’
‘He thinks you need one to protect you.’
‘I haven’t done nothing,’ Mandy whined. ‘Honest I haven’t!’
Janet sighed. ‘Why did you run away again? Did something happen?’
Mandy tipped ash on the floor. ‘Doris told the foster people I made up horrible lies, so they were nasty with me, weren’t they?’
‘Did you lie about Mr Hogg?’
‘Where’s your boss, and the one with sexy eyes?’ Mandy giggled, and picked up her mug of tea.
Wrapped in musty blankets, Gary dozed as winter twilight settled about the mountains. Rain spattered the windows, harried by a wind turning this way and that before settling to blow with increasing vigour from the north-east. He shivered in his sleep, fingers of icy air poking and prying about his person, then twitched, muscles shrinking under the skin, as alien noise intruded. Motionless, he strained to place the scratching and rustling which flickered in and out of the compass of his hearing, then tumbled from the bed and ran from the tiny room, thinking only of rats come to gnaw the flesh from his bones.
He stood by the parlour window, watching night drift in from the east, the twinkling lights of the cottage dotting the mountain foothills like tiny stars fallen to earth. Hunger gnawed at his stomach more viciously than any rat, and as soon as night grew old enough to empty the village of watchful eyes, he would venture out again, beyond the low wall where the steely-plumed raven alighted each morning to sing for him its bleak morbid song, and down the empty lane.
Searching the house would be easy, McKenna thought, for Bedd y Cor housed little more tha
n necessity. No litter, no untidiness, nothing which did not seem to fulfil ongoing and discernible purpose, as if the Elises felt compelled to remove the evidence of each spent day, in hope the next might bring something worth keeping.
He waited in the room next to Elis’s study, seated on a beautiful antique Davenport beneath a chandelier of Bohemian crystal. Flames from an artfully designed gas fire flared up the chimney, their light dancing on the ebony piano, lid closed, from which the room drew purpose.
Restless, he stood up, and leafed through the book on the piano lid, hearing the spine crackle as he flicked age-spotted pages. The endpapers showed a bear grasping a winged mace, crouched in the arbour of leaves, the title page a lute-playing cherub in rococo setting. Turning to the last few pages, he found at their end the same bear in the same arbour, guarding the mace and a small photograph. As the door opened, he slipped the photograph back in its hiding place.
‘Shall we go to the drawing-room?’ Rhiannon suggested. ‘One mustn’t smoke near pianos. They’re more temperamental than any horse.’ She led him down the hallway, past the table now bedecked with fresh white pom-pom dahlias, and through the ornate door. ‘My husband’s in his study with the deputy chief constable, and Mari was taken away by your young man and a lady superintendent.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Thank God the media don’t know.’
‘You seem to have taken charge, Mrs Elis.’
‘I’m trained to keep the world turning even if Armageddon’s on the horizon. Poor Mari really sees you as one of the Four Horsemen.’
‘I deeply regret upsetting her.’
‘You terrified her, but she’s probably so devastated because she’s in love with my husband. Poor child! She wants him to cool the hot blood in her veins, and why not? Lust doesn’t make moral distinctions. She hates Carol because she thinks he gives her the pleasuring she wants for herself.’
In Guilty Night Page 22