by Rhys Bowen
“I’m from Lancashire, mate. I was working in the Lake District National Park until I was transferred here. It’s not too bad because I can still nip home to the parents at weekends, but they’re a funny lot the Welsh. Take some getting used to, don’t they?”
Since he was clearly a Welshman himself, Evan thought this wasn’t exactly a tactful remark, but he had come to the conclusion that National Parks personnel found politeness to be an unnecessary part of their job. He had to humor this pen pusher or he wouldn’t get anywhere.
“So it looks hopeful this time, does it?” he asked. “Planning permission’s finally going to be granted? I’ve been waiting to hear for a year now.”
“In theory, yes.” Mr. Pilcher sucked through his teeth. “Of course you’ll have to have the listed buildings bloke take a look at it.”
“Listed building? This?” Evan stared incredulously at the tumbledown ruin. “It was an old shepherd’s cottage before some English people gentrified it.”
“Ah, but look at those walls, lad,” Mr. Pilcher said. He made his way gingerly across to the cottage and gave a halfhearted kick at the stonework. “Look at the thickness. Look at the mortar they used. These have to be pre-eighteen-hundred, maybe even pre-seventeen-hundred, which would make it automatically listed. And who knows about the foundation? It may have been built on the original foundation of a hill fort.”
“A hill fort?” This was becoming more ridiculous by the minute. Evan had had several encounters with the National Parks Authority now, and each time he’d ended up feeling that he’d stepped into a twilight zone of bureaucracy.
“Look, it’s just a bloody shepherd’s cottage, and all I want to do is put a roof on it again and live in it,” he said.
“Hold your horses, mate,” Mr. Pilcher said. “I understand your frustration, but these things can’t be rushed. It’s up to us to make sure that the integrity of the National Park is preserved.”
“I don’t want to add a pagoda or a swimming pool or even put plastic flamingos around it.” Evan could feel his temperature rising. “I just want to make it livable again, the way it always was. Now what is so complicated about that?”
“Look, lad, I can turn you down flat if I’ve a mind to,” Mr. Pilcher said. “The Parks Authority is all for reducing the number of residences within the park.”
Evan had been staring past him as he spoke, trying to stay calm. His gaze followed the road up the pass, through the village of Llanfair, nestled directly below them, and then on until—he locked onto the Everest Inn.
“Hang about,” he said. “What about the hotel down there? It was only built five years ago. How come they got permission? Don’t tell me that Swiss chalets were once part of the Welsh landscape.”
“Ah well.” Mr. Pilcher cleared his throat. “From what I understand they made a generous donation to the CAE—the area development fund.”
“If I’d known bribery would work, I’d have tried it last year, rather than waiting patiently to go through all these planning committees,” Evan said. “I was joking,” he added quickly.
One quick glance at the man revealed that he obviously had no sense of humor or not one that matched Evan’s. Maybe a good chuckle when he had to turn down someone’s application, but irony would be beyond him.
“Look, mate,” Evan tried another tack, “I’m getting married this summer. She’s set her heart on moving in here right after the honeymoon, and you know what women are like when they’ve made up their minds about something. This isn’t Caernarfon Castle, is it? It’s a little cottage that can’t even be seen from the road, and all I want to do is fix up the roof and move in. Is that too difficult? If you do your inspection today and approve it in principle, then the listed buildings bloke takes his little look, and I can start work. I’m planning to do most of it myself, you know. And hiring out the skilled labor to local firms—boosting the economy, isn’t that what your development fund is supposed to be doing?”
Mr. Pilcher had begun a circumnavigation of the cottage. During the two years that it had lain desolate, brambles had sprung up in what used to be a garden and Mr. Pilcher moved cautiously, stepping through the vegetation with distaste. “Nothing much to see at the moment,” he said. “You submitted plans, did you?”
“In the file you’re carrying.”
“Oh. Right. Let’s take a look then.” He opened the file. “Oh, dear me no. That won’t do.”
“What?”
“You’ll not be allowed a Calor Gas cylinder up here.”
“The last people had one.”
“Different planning board in those days. No more gas cylinders, unless you’d want to bury it. Eyesores, aren’t they? We have to think of the integrity of the landscape and the tourists. They want to see adorable shepherds’ cottages, not unsightly gas cylinders.”
“Then how do you propose I heat the place?” Evan demanded. “Trek up to the high bogs and cut myself peat?”
“You could have a buried oil tank and oil-fired central heating. Why don’t you get yourself an oil-fired Aga?”
“An Aga? They’re bloody expensive.”
“But they solve the cooking and heating problems in one go, don’t they? And resurrecting a listed building is going to be expensive. You could always change your mind and apply for a nice council house, mate. They give priority to local police, don’t they?”
Evan wondered how Mr. Pilcher had managed to last this long on the job. Surely he must have stirred up equally violent thoughts in other applicants? He sensed that the bastard was goading him, waiting for Evan to lose his cool, so that he had an excuse to turn down the project. Evan wasn’t going to let that happen.
“All right. We’ll think about the heating alternatives,” he said. “What else needs to be done? The place was already on mains water—we’d just have to get it reconnected. And there’s a septic tank in place.”
“That would need to be reinspected—the sewage line and the tank itself. You’d need a plumber to certify its integrity.”
Obviously integrity was Pilcher’s favorite word at the moment. Evan wondered if he had been given one of those New-Word-a-Day calendars for Christmas. “Right.” Evan nodded. “That should be no problem. Now, how do we set about getting the inspector of listed buildings up here?”
Before Mr. Pilcher could answer, a loud beep came from Evan’s hip. He took out his pager. “Damn,” he muttered. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get down to a phone. It’s my boss. Feel free to look around as much as you want to up here, although as I’ve said there’s nothing to see. Four walls and a floor. That’s about it. Thanks for taking the time to come up here.”
“We’ll need your septic tank inspection certificate and your heating proposal before we can proceed any further,” Mr. Pilcher said.
“Right you are. I’ll get both to you within the next few days. I want to make the most of any summer weather that we get, don’t I?”
“Could be like this all summer,” Pilcher said with a dry chuckle. “I understand it does nothing but rain in bloody Wales.”
Evan had already started down the steep track.
“You want to get yourself a nice council house, mate,” Pilcher shouted after him.
“Where the devil have you been?” Detective Inspector Watkins’s voice boomed down the phone line. “I called you fifteen minutes ago.”
“Ten,” Evan said, “and I was up on the mountain. It took me awhile to get down.”
“I tried your mobile phone number first. Why didn’t you have it on you?”
“Sorry, Sarge—I mean Inspector,” Evan said. “I suppose I’m not used to carrying it around yet.”
“Then you’d better get used to it, pronto. You have a police-issued mobile so that we can get in touch with you at all times, Evans. At all times—do I make myself clear?”
“You’re in a lovely mood this morning, sir,” Evan said. “And it is my day off.”
“You’re in the plainclothes division now, boyo. There’s n
o such thing as days off. You work when there’s work to be done. And there’s work to be done right now. Do you know the caravan park at Black Rock Sands, just outside Porthmadog?”
“I think so.”
“Then get yourself down here as fast as possible. I’ll meet you at the entrance. It should take you what—half an hour?”
“Twenty minutes if I break the speed limit,” Evan said and hung up.
It was closer to half an hour by the time Evan slowed to a halt beside the gate that led to the caravan park at Black Rock Sands. Porthmadog had been clogged with traffic and pedestrians, all of whom had emerged at the same moment to do their shopping the moment the rain stopped. There were patches of blue in the sky now, and steam rose from the wet surface of the narrow road as Evan left the sleepy coastal village of Borth-y-Gest behind. After Borth the landscape became wilder with green meadows leading to sand dunes and a windswept stretch of beach on one side and the heather-clad slopes of Moel-y-Gest on the other, rising to a rocky summit that dominated the landscape. As Evan got out of the car, the sun shone through a break in the clouds, turning the whole landscape into glorious Technicolor. The sweet smell of hawthorn flowers and sea tang greeted him, along with the cries of seagulls overhead. He stood, breathing deeply and enjoying the sun on his face, looking up with satisfaction at Moel-y-Gest, rising on the other side of the road. It had been the first mountain he had climbed as a small boy, and he still remembered the triumph and the sense of wonder as he surveyed the scene below him.
Then he turned his eyes away, shoved his hands in his pockets, and headed for the wooden gate. A sign outside said, HOLIDAY HAVEN. ON-SITE CARAVANS FOR RENT. TENTS WELCOME. HOT SHOWERS.
On the other side of the hedge, he saw two white police vans parked. He spotted D.I. Watkins’s familiar fawn raincoat. The inspector was leaning against one of the vans, consulting his notes.
“See, I told you thirty minutes, didn’t I?” Watkins looked up and grinned as Evan approached.
“The traffic was horrible in Porthmadog. Sorry.”
“Yeah. And I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have bawled you out like that on the phone. This job gets to me sometimes.”
Evan thought Watkins looked tired and drawn. If that was what promotion did to you, maybe he should stay a constable for the rest of his career.
“So what have we got here?” Evan asked. He fell into step beside the inspector as they walked across a broad expanse of meadow around which there were rows of caravans, ranging from impressive mobile homes to little two-wheelers that could be towed behind the family car.
“Missing child. Little girl, five years old. Staying in one of the caravans. Last seen on the beach this morning.”
“Isn’t that a job for the uniform branch? I seem to remember that a large part of my job up in Llanfair was finding lost kiddies.”
“The uniform branch have been searching all morning,” Watkins said, striding out with purpose over the short grass, “and we’re here because the mother suspects foul play.”
Chapter 3
A thin woman with bleached blonde hair was leaning against a white caravan, smoking a cigarette and staring out toward the ocean. She looked up as she heard them approaching and hastily stubbed out the cigarette under her heel. She was wearing jeans and a black imitation leather jacket tied tightly at the waist. She had a pale, pinched face, made paler by the blackness of the jacket, and her eyes darted nervously.
“Mrs. Sholokhov?” Watkins asked. He pronounced it cautiously, as Show-lock-off.
“Yeah? What do you want?”
“We’re from the North Wales Police,” Watkins began.
She grabbed at his sleeve, her eyes wild with fear. “Have you found her? Oh God, tell me she’s all right. Tell me it’s not bad news.”
Watkins prized her hand from his sleeve and patted it. “No, it’s not bad news. We haven’t found her yet—”
“Then what the hell are you doing back here again, worrying me?” she shouted. “You should be out there looking for her before it’s too late.” She spoke with a North of England accent, clipping the consonants and broadening the vowels.
“Hang on a minute,” D.I. Watkins raised his hand to calm her. “Our men are still out there looking. We’re doing everything we can to find her quickly, so just calm down.”
“Sorry,” she said, pushing her straggly blonde hair back from her face, “but I’m going nearly out of my mind with worry.”
“I’m sure she’ll turn up safe and sound,” Evan said. “They nearly always do, you know.”
“I’ope so.” She was staring past them, out toward the sand dunes and the beach. Evan had now defined the accent as coming from east of the Pennines—Yorkshire not Lancashire.
“We’re from the Plainclothes Division,” Watkins said. “I’m Detective Inspector Watkins and this is Detective Constable Evans.”
Evan still got a rush of excitement when he heard those words. They had been so long in coming he had begun to believe he’d be stuck in the Llanfair subpolice station forever. But he had finally finished his training course and been assigned to shadow his old friend D.I. Watkins, much to his satisfaction.
“We came because we were given to understand that you thought someone might have taken your daughter.”
“I don’t know how she could have disappeared so sudden otherwise.” Her voice rose again. “I mean one minute she were there, next she were gone.”
“Is this where you’re staying?” Watkins asked, glancing up at the small caravan with peeling white paint. “Your van? Did you tow it here behind the car?”
“Not likely,” she said. “Bloody dump, isn’t it? But I wanted Ashley to get some sea air to strengthen her up again.” She put her hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. “Bloody stupid of me. Always doing the wrong thing.”
“Has your daughter been ill?” Evan asked gently.
“Didn’t they tell you? She’s had major heart surgery.”
“No. We haven’t been told anything much,” Watkins said. “Can we come inside and you can fill us in?”
“Right-o.” She opened the door and went up the steps ahead of them. The interior of the van was cramped with a pull-down table taking up most of the available space and the bed serving as the seat on the far side of it. Big enough for a woman and a little girl, maybe, but not for two large policemen. Evan stood at the doorway and waited to see where D.I. Watkins would position himself. Watkins motioned Mrs. Sholokhov to the bed/bench on the far side and perched on a foldout chair. Evan continued to stand and took out his notebook.
“Now, why don’t you tell us what happened?” Watkins said.
“It were all so sudden,” the woman said. “The sun came out this morning so I took Ashley down to the beach for some fresh air. I’m trying to build her up again after being in hospital so long. She were playing nicely on the sand, so I just popped back to the van for a fag. She weren’t even out of my sight for thirty seconds. I went into the van, grabbed the pack of cigarettes, and then I glanced out of this window at the beach and I couldn’t see her. I ran back down to the beach and there was no sign of her. As I were running back through the dunes, I thought I heard a car engine start and take off. I ran back to the vans, but there was no sign of a car either.”
“Then what did you do?” Watkins asked.
“What did I do? What the hell do you think I did? I ran around like a crazy thing, yelling her name, knocking on caravan doors, stopping anybody I met and asking if they’d seen her.”
“When you left her on the beach this morning, was there anyone nearby?”
“The beach was almost empty,” she said. “There was a man walking his little white dog. I’ve seen him several times. Ashley liked the dog, even though she’s not supposed to get near pets on account of her allergies. Then there were a couple of boys throwing stones into the waves, but they were a good way off and there was someone fishing way down toward whatever that place is called—Criccieth. Oh, and an old couple walked pas
t a few minutes before I left her, but that were about all, I think.”
“And what about on the caravan site? Did you find many people?”
“It’s almost empty at this time of year, isn’t it? There’s a couple of hippie types who live here year-round. One is an artist—or at least he calls himself an artist. He makes sculptures out of old junk. The site owner has warned him to clear them up. Bloody eyesore, that’s what they are. He were outside, working, but he said he hadn’t seen anybody. There was a foreign couple—German, I think, in the big yellow van at the end, and then the site owner was in her office. None of them had seen anything.”
“What about heard anything?” Evan asked, wondering as soon as he’d spoken whether he was supposed to be butting in.
“Like what? Screams or something?” she asked.
“I meant the car engine you said you’d heard. None of them saw or heard a car go past?”
“I don’t know if I asked about that. I was half out of my mind with worry. I probably didn’t even make sense.”
“Then you called the police?” Watkins asked.
“The park owner called for me. I have to say they got here really quickly, and they were very nice. A policewoman stayed with me and asked me questions while the men went door to door and searched the beach.”
Watkins consulted his notes. “And came up with nothing.”
She nodded. “It’s like she was snatched from the sky. It just doesn’t seem real.”
“How old is your little girl, exactly, Mrs. Sholokhov?” Evan asked.
“Just turned five.”
“Has she ever hidden from you for fun?” Evan went on. “I know I used to do that when I was little—scared the daylights out of my mother a couple of times.”
Watkins glanced up at him. “She wouldn’t keep hiding for three hours, Evans.”
“Not intentionally, but I was wondering if maybe she ran off and then got lost or fell asleep among the dunes or got caught on brambles under a hedge or even got caught under a caravan—there’s all sorts of possibilities.”