by Rhys Bowen
“You live here year-round, do you, sir?”
The man shook his head. “No, I live in Essex. I come here occasionally to get away. I’m retired now so I can do pretty much what I like. I’ve rented one of the holiday bungalows about a mile down the road.” He looked back in the direction he had come and noticed two policemen crossing the dunes. “Look, if there’s anything I can do to help find her—anything at all—I’d be more than willing to be part of a search party. Trixie’s not a bloodhound but I’m sure she’d be willing to do her part too, wouldn’t you, old girl?”
The white dog wagged her stump of a tail. The old man raised his hat politely and went on his way, leaving Evan surveying the empty beach. He wandered around a few minutes longer but saw nothing but a long strand of seaweed, high above the waterline, that could have been trailed and then dropped there by a child, but how long ago he couldn’t say.
He stared back at the tops of the caravans, poking over the dunes, and shook his head. If someone had kidnapped Ashley, where had he hidden to watch for the moment when Shirley Sholokhov left her alone? The dunes were only gentle curves of sand and grasses here, none of them big enough to hide a man. How could Shirley not have noticed someone darting out across the beach as she made for the van? He tried an experiment, setting his stopwatch then running from the dunes to the water’s edge and back again. It took over a minute, and that was without the time necessary to grab a child. Could Shirley have been wrong about the amount of time she took? Evan wondered if she had not told the exact truth to them because she was feeling guilty. Maybe she had paused at the caravan to light that cigarette and take a few puffs before heading down to the beach again. Maybe she hadn’t looked through the van window at all to notice that Ashley had gone. Satisfied that this made more sense, Evan stomped back through the dunes toward the caravans.
He started with the closest caravans, knocking on doors and then searching around them thoroughly. Most were still locked and uninhabited, with curtains drawn and dustbins empty. He stepped over gas cylinders that formed boundaries between each of the vans. The National Parks bloke had been right, he had to concede. They were a bloody eyesore. He wondered when he’d get time to do anything more about his cottage. He should get in touch with the listed buildings inspector right away and find a plumber to certify the sewage line and the septic tank. He decided that it would be sensible to cut costs by clearing the line to the tank himself. No sense in paying someone else to do the digging. If he ever got a day off, that would be the first thing he’d tackle.
Evan glanced at his watch. Three o’clock. That meant school would be over for the day. Bronwen knew he was meeting with the National Parks inspector today. She’d be waiting to hear the results. He took out his mobile phone and dialed her number.
“Finally,” she said, when she heard his voice. “I thought you might have stopped by at lunchtime to give me the news. I’ve been on the edge of my seat all afternoon. I found it so hard to concentrate that I said ‘Very good’ to Alud Davies when he told me that Peru was a soccer player. So what did the inspector say?”
“Still more hurdles ahead, I’m afraid, but not insurmountable ones. But listen, cariad, I can’t talk now. I was called out on a case while we were up at the cottage. I’m down near Porthmadog. Little girl’s gone missing.”
“Oh, dear. Wandered off or what?”
“Not sure yet. Could be a case of abduction. It’s all rather strange and rather vague. I’ll tell you later. I just wanted to warn you in case I’m not back until late this evening.”
“All right. I’ll see you when I see you then, and you can give me all the news. Take care of yourself.”
Evan smiled as he pressed the off button. That was what he liked about Bronwen—never a fuss, always understanding. She was going to make a great policeman’s wife. He reacted as the words passed through his brain. It was still rather amazing to him that anybody was about to become his wife, that he was about to settle down with one woman for the rest of his life. At times he still went through momentary panic at the thought. But on the whole he couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than to spend the rest of his life with Bronwen. He shoved the phone back in its holder and went back to his task.
Chapter 5
Evan had just taken the lid off a dustbin and was peering inside when a hand grabbed his shoulder.
“All right then. Let’s take a look at you!” a voice said in his ear.
Evan spun to defend himself and found himself staring at Constable Roberts. The latter’s face fell when he saw whom he had nabbed.
“Oh, it’s only you, Evans. I thought I’d got him. Suspicious-looking character and all that.” Then a grin spread across his face. “They’ve got you on dustbin patrol then, is it?”
Evan was only too aware that Roberts had never liked him and always been jealous of him, even more so now that he had made the plainclothes squad.
“You never know where a little kid could decide to hide, do you?” he answered evenly. “And I’ve just checked all this area, so there’s nothing much more for you to do around here. Especially not when they’ve got dog teams out who’ve got better noses.” And he gave Roberts a friendly grin.
He felt decidedly better as Roberts stomped off.
To reach the next caravan he had to climb over piles of rusty pipes and dustbin lids.
There was music coming from this one—Worker’s Playtime on the radio, by the sound of it. He tapped on the door, then rapped louder. The door was flung open by a big fellow wearing a spattered undershirt and torn jeans.
“Yeah, what do you want?” he demanded aggressively.
“North Wales Police, sir,” Evan said. “Just asking a few questions about a missing child.”
“I already spoke to one of your blokes and to the kid’s mother,” he said, about to close the door in Evan’s face.
“Well, I’m sorry to trouble you again, but I’d just like to go over what you told them,” Evan said. “I’m Detective Constable Evans and you are?”
“Richard Gwynne,” he said.
Evan remembered what Shirley Sholokhov had said about aged hippies. Richard Gwynne must have been in his forties or fifties and wore his gray hair tied back in a long ponytail. He had tattoos on both massive forearms and a peace symbol on a leather thong around his neck.
“You live here year-round, do you?” Evan asked.
“Have done for the past couple of years, but I may be moving on if that old cow won’t let me do my artwork anymore.”
“What kind of artwork do you do?” Evan asked, although he glanced back at the pile of rusty pipes and remembered what Shirley Sholokhov had said about the junk sculptures.
“I combine art with recycling,” Gwynne said. “Too much stuff goes into landfills, doesn’t it? I rescue it and turn it into art. I’ve got pieces displayed at all the major art galleries, you know.”
Evan tried to picture mounds of rusty pipes lying next to Rembrandts at the National Gallery. “Good for you,” he said.
“Yeah. I’m making quite a name for myself,” the man went on, “only the park owner doesn’t have an eye for modern art. She had the nerve to call it an eyesore. Told me I’d be evicted if I left my sculptures outside. So I imagine I’ll be looking for a new place to park myself. Pity, because this suits me well. Quiet most of the year and close enough to home so that I can visit my old mum from time to time.”
Evan was surprised that he was the type who visited his old mum and thought more highly of him. “She lives nearby, does she?”
“In the council estate just outside Caernarfon.”
“Oh, right.” Evan nodded. “So you’re a local?”
Gwynne laughed. “Don’t sound so surprised. Locals are supposed to go to chapel and work in slate mines, is it? I’ve done my share of working for a wage, boyo. Fifteen years with the bloody County Council. One day I said sod it. I’m not wasting another second of my life, so I chucked it in and came here. Paradise—or would be if th
at old cow would quit nagging.”
“I won’t keep you long, Mr. Gwynne. I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about this morning. You heard that the little girl disappeared about eleven o’clock. I wondered if there was anything you saw or heard about that time that might help us in any way.”
“So they still haven’t found her then?” He frowned. “Nice little thing, wasn’t she? She came to watch me work a couple of times. Of course, I had to be careful, on account that I use a blowtorch, but she seemed fascinated. And she recognized that the figure I was making was a soldier, which is more than most people have done.”
“I take it you have to work outside if you’re using a blowtorch?”
“Oh yes. The whole thing would go up in smoke if I tried working in there—and if it did, the old cow would kill me.”
“So were you working outside this morning?”
Gwynne scratched his stomach. “Only a short while. It rained, you see, until about half past ten, and the wind was bad too. The sand blows up when there’s a wind, and it makes using a blowtorch impossible.”
“So you came outside to work after half past ten. Did you see anyone around?”
“That foreign couple in the end van—she was hanging out some washing, and he was cleaning hiking boots.”
“What about the little girl? Did you see her go to the beach with her mother?”
“No, I can’t say I noticed her this morning, but I was concentrating on getting as much work done as possible.”
“You didn’t notice any strange men? Foreign looking?”
“What kind of foreign?”
“Russian.”
The man laughed. “I’ve no idea what a Russian looks like, apart from athletes and ballerinas and Gorbachev and Yeltsin.” Then the smile faded. “In answer to your question, like I told your bloke before, I didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary.”
“No car engines starting up?”
“Ah well, I wouldn’t have noticed that—unless there was something odd about the engine.”
“But you didn’t see a car drive past?”
“I think the German couple went past at some stage. They’ve got one of those Volkwagon Beetles—looks like a big kid’s toy, doesn’t it?”
“No other vehicles?”
He thought, then shook his head. “Not that I can remember. It’s usually pretty quiet around here, which is why I like it. I don’t recall anything much until the mother came running up, screaming like a madwoman.”
“What time was that, would you say?”
“After eleven, that’s all I can tell you.”
Evan held out his hand. “Thanks for your help and sorry to have troubled you.”
“If you want any help looking for the little girl, I’ll be glad to volunteer,” he said. “They’ll be sending out search parties, won’t they? They haven’t searched the mountain yet.”
“Thank you, Mr. Gwynne. I’ll bear that in mind,” Evan said.
The second man today to have volunteered to look for the little girl—she must have made quite an impression during the short time she’d stayed here. Evan worked down the line of caravans until he came to the yellow van at the end of the row. The line of washing was still flapping outside. Before he could rap on the door, it opened and a young man came out. He was tall and lean, with close-cropped hair like a European soccer player, and he wore cords and big hiking boots. He was carrying sleeping bags.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Evan said, stepping out to block him. “I’m from the North Wales Police. Do you mind answering a couple of questions?”
“More questions?” the young man demanded. “We are supposed to be on holiday here, and all they do is hound us.” He spoke with a strong German accent, but his English was gramatically correct.
“I’m sure nobody is hounding you, sir. You’ve been bothered today because a little girl has vanished from this caravan park and we’re just hoping that somebody here saw or heard something that could help us with our inquiries.”
“I told your man before that we saw and heard nothing. Now please, I need to put these things into the car.” He tried to pass Evan.
Evan focused on the sleeping bags. “Are you leaving, sir?”
“Ya. My girlfriend does not like it here anymore. She does not feel safe.”
Evan looked at the line of washing, flapping in the strong wind, and sensed this was a recent decision.
“Is she inside the caravan? I’d like to talk to both of you,” he said.
“She does not speak good English like I do,” the man said.
“All the same, you can translate for me if necessary,” Evan insisted. When the man opened his mouth to protest, Evan went on. “A little girl is missing, sir. Don’t you want to do everything you can to help us find her before it’s too late?”
The man shrugged. “I suppose so.” He dumped the sleeping bags on a picnic table, then opened the van door. “Marlis, komm’raus,” he called. A lean and fit-looking girl came to the door and looked down at Evan suspiciously.
“I’m sorry to trouble you again,” Evan said. “I’m a detective constable, North Wales Police. You’ve heard about this missing girl, haven’t you? Do you know the little girl we’re looking for? Did you ever see her?”
The young woman glanced at her boyfriend, then nodded. “Ya. We see her. But not today. This morning we go for a short climb up that mountain.”
“What time was that?”
She shrugged. “Maybe after ten o’clock? And we are returning maybe twelve o’clock? We go into the town to have a cup of coffee.”
“But the English do not know how to make coffee,” the man said. “We order coffee and we get instant coffee made with milk. Pah!”
Evan was not forming a favorable picture of the couple. “We’re not English here, we’re Welsh, sir,” he couldn’t help pointing out.
“When it comes to making coffee, there is no difference,” the German said.
Evan tried to keep the pleasant expression on his face. “So you left the caravan site around ten. Were you back when the girl’s mother was running around in a panic?”
“Oh yes. She came here, making a big fuss,” the German said.
“Then you were back before noon. That would have been around eleven-thirty.”
The man shrugged again. “Very well, if you say so. When we are on holiday, we don’t observe the time so much.”
Evan got the feeling that they couldn’t care less about the missing child. She was an inconvenience.
“So you’ve decided to head out today, have you? Where would you be going?”
“We don’t know yet. Maybe up to Scotland.”
“How long do you plan to stay in the country?”
“Another week, maybe two. It depends on how we like it and how much it rains.” He glanced at his girlfriend, who nodded agreement.
“We think this is springtime, no? But it is more like winter. Look at that snow! We can’t believe this.”
“You never know in Wales,” Evan said. “One day it’s bad, the next it’s glorious. The only thing we can guarantee is that nothing lasts more than a couple of days.” He opened his pad. “Now if I could just have your names, addresses, and phone numbers—just in case we need to contact you again.”
“What for?”
“I have no idea, sir, but it’s routine to get contact numbers for anybody who was around at the time of a crime.”
“A crime?” The young woman registered surprise. “The little girl is missing, no? She has not been—how do you say it?—taken away by somebody bad?”
“We don’t know yet. That’s why we’re asking all these questions. The whole beach area has already been searched, and there’s not a trace of her so far. So if you can think carefully—when you returned from your outing this morning—did you look at the beach at all? Did you happen to notice the little girl playing? Did you see anybody else—anyone you hadn’t seen before in the caravan park, any strange cars p
arked?”
The couple stood silent. The girl was staring down toward the beach as if trying to jog her memory. “I looked at the beach,” she said. “It was empty. Nobody on it at all when I looked.”
“But you didn’t look at your watch?”
“We don’t wear watches when we are on holiday,” the man said. “At work it is always hurry, faster, and too much stress. This is why we come to walk in the mountains.”
Another thought occurred to Evan. “You say you climbed Moel-y-Gest this morning.” He looked across to the mountain, its heather-covered slopes now glowing in bright sunlight. “You must have had a good view of the whole area then. Was the little girl out on the beach at that stage?”
“I think not,” the German woman said. “The wind was very strong, and there was some rain, too. Not a good weather for beach playing.”
“Right. Thanks very much then,” Evan said. “Now, if you’d just write your names and addresses for me, and if you’ve got a mobile phone with you—that would be very helpful.”
The man took the pad and pen and wrote, handing the book back with a curt nod.
“Thanks very much.” Evan took the pad. “Let’s hope we won’t need to be in touch with you and that it all ends happily. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your holiday.”
“Thank you,” the German said.
The young woman had already gone to the clothesline and was yanking down the washing with great force and speed. Evan watched with interest. If they seemed so disinterested in the missing girl, why were they so anxious to get away?
Chapter 6
As Evan made his way along the second row of caravans, he fought with growing unease. A couple of times he paused and glanced back at the Germans’ car. Should he have taken a look inside the trunk? Should he have asked to see inside the caravan? But then what reason had he got to suspect the Germans, other than that they were in a hurry to leave? They weren’t even around when the child went missing. The grumpy sculptor had seen their car going out during the morning to back up their story. And the child’s own mother suspected her ex-husband had snatched the little girl. Perhaps the Germans had heard bad rumors about the British police or simply didn’t want to be involved in any kind of incident over here. Or, more simply, they were overstressed from their jobs and wanted a hassle-free holiday. That had to be it. Evan breathed easier and climbed over another gas cylinder.