In Guilty Night

by Alison Taylor

  ‘Arwel’s come home. They brought him back this morning.’

  He heard what sounded like a muffled sob from the other room. Carol smiled, brilliant amid the dross of her surroundings. ‘Mrs Hogg came to pay her respects.’ She laughed. ‘Isn’t she kind?’

  Iciness slithered up McKenna’s spine. ‘Perhaps I should to the same.’ He moved slowly to the door.

  Carol pounced, barring his way. ‘Oh, no!’ Her breath rasped. ‘I wouldn’t want you paying the same respects as Doris. You don’t owe like her.’ She laughed again, a tinkling little sound absorbed by an atmosphere heavy with menace.

  McKenna caught her arm, the poor stuff on her jumper so different from the richness shrouding Mari Williamson. ‘Let me pass, Carol.’

  She scampered to the hall, and threw open the door of the front parlour. The icy room stank of must, of soot frothing in the hearth, of dust and flowers and death and food. Poor dismal furniture was pushed against the walls, poor bits of china busied the sooty mantelshelf, poor thin carpet trod underfoot, poor Carol stood beside the other woman, and relinquished all her status to her poor dead brother, whose embalmed and mutilated corpse lay in a coffin on the table, a vase of giant white chrysanthemums at his head, and a feast upon his breast. Carol grabbed a handful of Doris’s hair and pushed her face down in the coffin, to gorge on the sins of others, and on death itself.

  ‘No!’ McKenna whispered. ‘Carol! Don’t do this!’

  ‘Eat! Eat! Eat!’ Carol chanted, while Doris struggled and keened, feeble as a child, choking on the food. Still holding her by the hair, Carol dragged her upright, and presented her head to McKenna as one slain. Eyes black, mouth and face smeared red and brown, Doris gaped, and he thought her marked forever, feared and shunned like the Aghoris of India, who feast on rotting human corpses and their own excrement in the quest for redemption.

  As if wading in sluggish water, he moved clumsily, and gathered up the corners of the cloth laid on Arwel’s chest, making a parcel of the bits of bread and meat and vegetable. He put the cloth on the floor, then unhooked Carol’s clawed fingers from the woman’s hair.

  ‘Get out!’ Carol spat. She pushed her, and Doris stumbled against the table leg, snatching at the coffin to save herself. ‘Don’t you dare touch my brother!’ Carol screamed. ‘Get out!’

  Doris staggered through the door, and down the hallway, McKenna in her wake, but she eluded him, scuttling down the path and through the rotting gate to her car, fighting like a wild animal as he tried to wrest the keys. She knocked him violently against the fence, and was gone before he recovered his balance, the car swerving and rocketing along the road, rear lights leaving a puddle of smoky colour. He telephoned Owen Griffiths, then went back to Carol and her dead brother.

  Fine thin hands resting on the edge of the coffin, she smiled at Arwel, then frowned when she noticed the stain on his shirt. McKenna forced himself to look at the boy amid the folds of ivory fabric, dressed in the stained white shirt, trousers, socks and plastic shoes in black, and a black bow tight around his neck to cover the scar Eifion Roberts made when he dug in his scalpel and turned Arwel inside out. Thin child’s hands with ragged nails were folded on his chest, another faint stain on the edge of one cuff.

  ‘He can’t be buried in a dirty shirt,’ Carol said.

  ‘I’ll make sure he isn’t,’ McKenna said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Looking up, she offered that heart-stopping smile. ‘Will you? Can you do that?’ She leaned over, tracing her fingers down the side of Arwel’s face and neck. ‘His neck’s dirty.’ She began to rub the dead flesh.

  ‘Don’t, Carol.’ He pulled her hand away. ‘It’s a bruise.’

  ‘They’ve made his hair all stiff.’ She caught McKenna’s hand, and made him stroke the lacquered blond hair. ‘Arwel had beautiful hair, all soft and silky like a baby’s.’ She smiled again. ‘I helped him walk and talk. We were always together.’

  ‘Come away,’ McKenna persuaded. ‘It’s so cold in here.’

  She nodded, then leaned over, her own beautiful hair swinging forward, and kissed Arwel’s forehead and cheeks, trying to lift one of his hands to her lips. McKenna took her fingers, unclasping their hold, the cheap papery coffin dressing brushing his flesh as Arwel’s dead fingers dragged over his hand and back to their resting place.

  He sat with her in the other room, the touch of her hair like gossamer, and heard the grief and rage she would carry in her heart for the rest of her days, from which there would be no delivery, and felt the crushing weight of her tragedy more dreadfully than anything felt in his whole existence.

  ‘Dear God!’ Owen Griffiths leaned against McKenna’s office window, his gaunt reflection adrift in a penumbra of darkness. ‘Dear God! How could we let such a terrible thing happen?’

  ‘How could we know?’ McKenna askd. ‘Perhaps it was necessary.’

  ‘Necessary?’ Griffiths turned. ‘Who could possibly benefit from that barbaric practice?’

  ‘Arwel.’ McKenna stubbed out his fourth cigarette.

  ‘I can’t believe all the sins visited on Arwel are now languishing in Doris’s soul.’

  ‘Your opinions don’t matter,’ McKenna said. ‘Carol believes in the power of sin-eating, and for all we know, so does Doris. She certainly seemed to understand what was happening.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Griffiths sat down wearily. ‘I’ve heard a sin-eater lived on Bangor Mountain until just before the last war. What a terrible legacy we Welsh have in our hearts, eh?’ He sighed. ‘What was Doris eating?’

  ‘Sausage, bread, cake, cream crackers, all cut up small, smothered in brown sauce and jam, and laid out on paper plates from Woolworths and Peggy’s Sunday best tablecloth.’ He lit another cigarette, trying to quell the taste of death lingering in his mouth and worming through his body in search of a resting place.

  ‘Did you bring it back? It’s evidence.’

  ‘I threw it away.’

  ‘Why in God’s name did Doris go there?’

  ‘Carol told her Rhiannon was visiting and wanted to meet her there.’

  ‘And Doris couldn’t resist the siren call of the most powerful woman in her small universe,’ Griffiths said. ‘Even if Rhiannon’s stripped of her power, it’s served its purpose for Carol, hasn’t it? But who’d think the girl capable of something like that?’

  ‘She’d given her parents bus fare to visit relatives in Pwllheli.’

  ‘We should harness resources like that instead of letting them go to waste, or worse. Who else knows?’

  ‘No one, probably. The Thomases came back about five, and Carol shot to the kitchen when she heard them at the door. I doubt they’ll notice anything amiss, except perhaps the stains on Arwel’s shirt.’

  ‘And I doubt Carol will be lost for an innocent explanation,’ Griffiths said. ‘Did you get any sense out of her?’

  ‘She said Doris sets herself up as better than anyone’s own mother, but she didn’t protect Arwel, so she’s guilty of his death, and she must suffer.’ McKenna stubbed out his cigarette, and lit another. ‘I had the impression Doris hasn’t even begun to suffer yet.’

  ‘What should we do?’

  ‘Charge Carol with assault, I suppose, and let the law take its course.’

  ‘You’d be happy with that?’ Griffiths demanded. ‘She’d go down for a long time, pregnant or not.’ He paused, then said, ‘I’m taking an executive decision: we do nothing, and tell no one.’

  ‘And if Doris makes a complaint, or shoots her mouth off?’

  ‘I’ll say the girl was understandably distraught, and not herself, and ask Doris what she was doing at the house in the first place.’

  ‘You could be storing up a great deal of trouble for yourself.’

  ‘Yes, I could.’ Griffiths nodded. ‘And see if I care.’

  ‘I saw Mandy in town with her Nain, sir, buying new clothes,’ Janet told McKenna. ‘You could take them for twins, except for her Nain’s wrinkles. She seems pleased to have Mand
y.’

  ‘Let’s hope it lasts.’

  ‘Mandy’s going back to school after Christmas.’ Janet smiled. ‘Isn’t it strange how the ordinary little things matter so much? School, family, a few new clothes.’

  ‘Routine, predictability and affection add up to security,’ McKenna said. ‘Mandy’ll get bored to death with the routine, but she might appreciate the rest of it.’

  ‘Hogg asked where she is,’ Janet said. ‘I said Superintendent Griffiths took an executive decision about placement.’

  ‘What did he say to that?’

  She smiled wryly. ‘Even the chief constable, apparently, doesn’t have that power with children. Hogg will be “seeing about it”.’ Offering a cigarette to McKenna, she added, ‘I’ve tried not to, but I really dislike him. Dilys Roberts is another nasty piece of work. He made her sit in while I talked to the boy, and even though she didn’t actually do anything, she frightened him half to death.’

  ‘And the tiepin?’

  ‘Somebody found it, gave it to Hogg, and he chucked it round to prove how brave he is. When it didn’t blow his ugly face to bits, he gave it to the kid, who showed it to Rhiannon.’

  ‘Who found it? When?’

  ‘Hogg said: “Oh, really! Can’t you find better things to do with your time than pester me about a trivial matter like this?” And Dilys didn’t know because she wasn’t on duty.’

  ‘If she doesn’t know when the bullet turned up, how can she know if she was on duty?’

  ‘Because, sir, she would know if she’d been on duty. Therefore, she wasn’t.’ Janet paused, tapped ash from her cigarette. ‘They’ve got an answer for everything. I said we’d been told Arwel always wore the pin, so if it was broken when he was killed, he must’ve died at Blodwel. Hogg looked down his nose at me and said: “But who knows when it was broken?”’

  Dressed in a sinuous gown of black devore velvet, a rope of crystal chunks around her neck, Rhiannon opened her own front door. Her make-up was flawless, and her hair glistened under the lights.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ McKenna said. ‘Are you going out?’

  She sighed. ‘I’m trying to set my house in order. Routines are so important at times of crisis, don’t you think?’ She led him to the drawing-room. ‘We dressed for dinner, which was a most civilized meal, and my husband took coffee in the music-room. I won’t see him again tonight, so your visit rescues me from splendid isolation.’

  ‘I spoke to Mari this afternoon.’

  ‘I know, and she may have misled you. Guilt impels her to do something.’ Rhiannon pushed a silver ashtray across the table. ‘I hope she hasn’t put you to any trouble.’

  ‘No one seems to know who found the pin, or when.’

  ‘It was only important to my husband and Arwel.’ She paused, sipping her coffee. ‘Have you any news for us, Mr McKenna?’

  ‘Forensic examinations take time. It’s an exacting science.’

  ‘So much depends on the outcome, doesn’t it?’

  ‘In some cases.’ McKenna opened a new packet of cigarettes, and tossed the wrapping on the flames roaring up the chimney. ‘One of my officers commented on your husband’s willingness to co-operate.’

  ‘Did you tell him he knows no other response to power?’

  ‘I also said Mr Elis may know he’s nothing to fear.’

  ‘He’ll always have something to fear, like a former addict in the face of temptation. Those around him share the terror.’

  ‘Perhaps you encourage his morbid condition by accepting it.’

  ‘I tried every other ploy, but I’ve nothing to offer that he wants.’ She stared at her visitor. ‘You’ve resurrected so many demons I thought were laid to rest, so many questions I don’t want to answer. My marriage is a wasteland, and always will be, because nothing has any value to my husband except his own needs, this darkness he cherishes like a lover. He sees tragedy as his consort.’ Picking at her cuticle, she added, ‘I don’t. All I can see is a romantic justification for self-centredness of tragic proportions.’

  ‘He spent childhood in the company of merciless strangers,’ McKenna said. ‘He learned to fear more than most.’

  ‘We’re all afraid,’ Rhiannon snapped. ‘We fear what value others put on us, if they hate us, if they plan our destruction.’ She shivered. ‘All that mystery ruling other hearts! We never know when its power might be turned against us, do we?’

  ‘Terror is part of the human condition,’ McKenna said. ‘Is your husband ever violent?’

  Her cheeks flushed. ‘I’m not a council-house wife!’

  ‘Indeed no, but like sex and death, violence is a great leveller.’ Beyond the roaring of the flames in the chimney, McKenna heard another fire in the music-room. ‘And although you can buy any distraction, you’re no more immune from life than the Thomases and their ilk.’

  Rhiannon smiled bleakly. ‘You must be very good at your job. You make people expose themselves.’ She emptied the ashtray into the fire, then said, ‘Have you seen Carol’s other side yet? She can be violent, in her own way. Did you know Peggy Thomas claims her husband didn’t father the children? Carol’s been browbeating her mother for weeks, trying to get at the truth, because she was afraid her baby might have been fathered by a half-brother.’ She shuddered gently. ‘Or even her natural father.’

  ‘Peggy’ll use any stick to beat her husband. Unfortunately, she wounds others at the same time,’ McKenna said. ‘Was Carol’s mind put at rest?’

  ‘Not before she tried to abort herself with a bottle of gin, like in the good old days. Doctors and hospitals are just another aspect of hostile authority as far as she’s concerned.’ Rhiannon sighed. ‘Mari took the gin from our cellar. Silly girl! She knows my housekeeper’s a strict accountant, and accounting for every drop of drink and morsel of food is her article of faith.’

  ‘And what did you do?’

  ‘I told Mari to ask next time she wanted something.’ She laughed. ‘She’s taken me at my word, as you’ve no doubt noticed from her dress.’ The laughter faded. ‘Then I went to see Carol, because I was horrified, and she’s Arwel’s sister, and I’m rich, and she’s poor and ignorant. My husband doesn’t know, and he mustn’t. I offered to pay for the abortion if she really wanted one, and said I’d give her money to buy a decent flat and bring up the child if she didn’t. I suppose I showed her a way out of her own misery, so you could say I’ve bought the child, in an ambiguous way.’

  McKenna sat on his worn sofa, reading of child abuse in Europe and America and Australia, of spectacular denial, of the underlying pathology, and of the prevalence of abuse throughout recorded history. The cat sniffed at the back door, and paced around his legs, mewling. Letting her out, he found on his doorstep the same poor animal he had seen under the bare shrubs in the little garden. His own cat watched as he filled bowls with meat and water, laid them on the step, and closed the door, then she climbed on his lap. Listening to the scrape of dishes on the outside step as the other cat feasted, he said, ‘Do you cats talk to each other? Is word out I’m a soft touch for strays?’

  He closed his eyes, imagining the other cat metamorphosed, like the little animal on his knee, who came to him as a threadbare wormy stray, and drowsed, thoughts rambling through the forest of words heard and read, music charting a more certain course. He let the music play in his head, marvelling at such complexity imprinted on memory, fretting a little because he could not bring the notes to the forefront of his mind and make them louder, and fell asleep wondering why one never could.

  The telephone woke him, and the cat leapt off his knee to lie before the fire.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you.’ The hard edges of Jack’s voice were blunted by congestion. ‘You weren’t in bed, were you?’

  ‘Is anything wrong?’

  ‘I can’t get to sleep. I’m disturbing Em, so I got up.’

  ‘Have some hot milk and brandy,’ McKenna suggested.

  ‘I might. Any news? Anything interesting happened?’
/>   ‘Bits and pieces, odds and ends.’ McKenna lit a cigarette. ‘Hogg’s giving us the runaround.’

  ‘He’ll get his comeuppance one day.’ Jack coughed. ‘I hope I’m there to see it.’ His breath wheezed. ‘Any news on Gary?’

  ‘Somebody robbed food and fags and cans and soap from a village shop last night, so Dewi’s spending the night on watch with the shopkeeper.’

  ‘He pulls his weight, doesn’t he? How’s Miss Evans?’

  McKenna stifled a yawn, then laughed. ‘She had a run-in this morning with a teenager she was following in the car. She thought it was Gary, and it was a girl, and the girl called her an ugly dyke and said she’d get the police on her.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Jack wheezed and chuckled. ‘Sod’s law, isn’t it?’

  ‘Your chest sounds bad.’

  ‘Secondary infection, according to the doctor. He’s given me antibiotics, and they’ve given me the runs and an almighty headache.’

  ‘Then you’d best stay off the drink.’

  ‘I hate being ill. It throws all your routines, I’m bored rigid, and I can’t settle to anything.’

  ‘Read a book. Wrap up and watch late-night TV.’

  ‘There’s nothing on except wrestling and reggae. I’ll get my lovely daughters to rent some videos tomorrow. Bambi or Snow White or something. There’s more than enough sex and violence at work.’

  ‘Bambi’s full of violence,’ McKenna said. ‘It was the first film I ever saw, and I cried so much I was sick.’

  ‘I’ll bet your mother was pleased. Is that why you’re a pushover for animals?’

  ‘I’m being visited by another stray cat.’

  ‘Like that old rhyme? “Not last night but the night before, two tom cats came knocking at my door”.’ Jack laughed.

  ‘Talking of visitors, the phone keeps ringing but nobody says anything. It’s happened three times in the past few days.’