Evan's Gate

by Rhys Bowen

  Henry appeared at her shoulder. “Why on earth are you putting out all these bloody flowers?”

  “They’re called table centers, Henry.” She stared him down, conscious of how much she disliked him. Thirty years of bullying were enough. “They are quite usual among people who know how to entertain.”

  “But why go to all this trouble for the old man? You know what he thinks of flowers, and he doesn’t want anything pretentious.”

  Suzanne stood, cradling one of the baskets of primroses in her hands. “But we all know that this isn’t about Grandfather, don’t we, Henry? This is a wake.”

  Evan watched with growing impatience as Dr. Telesky worked at what seemed to be a snail’s pace, using minute tools and sometimes even a small brush, until at last the whole skeleton was revealed. It lay there, staring up at Evan with its sightless eye sockets and grinning mouth. The front teeth were angled slightly forward. Evan remembered that she had sucked her thumb until she was five. The others had teased her about it. Could it really be her, so far from where she’d vanished? Could someone have brought her here, alive or dead? He shuddered and folded his arms to stop himself from shivering.

  “Can you tell if it was a boy or a girl?” he asked.

  “Not definitely at this stage. Probably a girl,” she said.

  “And can you tell how old it is?”

  “PMI, you mean?”

  “PMI?” Evan looked blank.

  “Postmortem interval. How long she’s been there. Did you mean that or how old she was when she died?”

  “Both.”

  “In answer to the second part, I’d estimate between four and six. Not older than six anyway. She still has her primary teeth. And as to the PMI—I’d say less than forty years.”

  “Why forty and not fifty?”

  “Because of the clothing.” She leaned forward and lifted a scrap of fiber with tweezers before dropping it into a plastic bag. “Cotton doesn’t last long. This appears to be man-made fiber. Polyesters weren’t common before the sixties. The soles of her shoes are man-made too.”

  “But you think she’s been her for some time, do you—more than a year or so?”

  “More than a year, yes,” she said, looking up at him. “There’s no adhering soft tissue, no odor of decomposition, and take a look at the surfaces of the bones—all those split lines and checking. Of course those things tend to happen more quickly on a younger victim, but we’ve got something else to go on here.” She reached up and tugged at a branch that was drooping over her as she worked. “That’s a good-sized bush growing beside the gate. More robust than any of the other bushes because it’s had more nourishment.”

  Evan fought to keep his face expressionless as she went on. “If you want to know where a body’s been buried, you only have to look at the plants above it. Go for the healthiest plants. Good fertilizer, you see.”

  Evan thought back to the lab tech and his apparent detachment. Coming from this fresh-faced young woman with her ponytail, it was even harder to take. But he supposed that they had to stay detached if they were constantly around crime scenes. He’d heard of surgeons making jokes throughout operations, and there were plenty of policemen who traded jokes over corpses. One way of coping, he supposed. He wondered if he’d ever get so used to death that it wouldn’t affect him.

  Dr. Telesky was still talking, pointing now to the child’s right foot. “And see how one of the roots has gone right through one foot and out the other side—right through the leather of the shoe. Amazing isn’t it, what roots will do?”

  Evan swallowed hard. He remembered that foot and how lightly it had danced over the springy turf, as if the body it supported weighed nothing at all.

  “Now this is useful because it will help us to narrow down exactly when she was buried here. I’ll take a cutting from the root. They have rings in them like trees do, you know. A competent botanist will be able to tell me how old the root is; then we’ll know how long she’s been here.”

  She looked up at Evan as she withdrew a pair of clippers from her backpack. He shut his eyes as she snipped at the root close to the foot.

  “You said you might have some idea who she was?” she asked with interest. “You’ve got an unsolved missing child case on the books, have you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Twenty-five years old. Little girl who vanished from the mountain above Llanwryst. That’s on the other side of the Glyders from here.”

  “Twenty-five years ago?” She laughed. “You surely weren’t in the police force then? Or are you another one who is much older than you look?”

  “No,” he said. “I was seven years old at the time. I was one of the kids she played with.” He was going to add, “She was my friend,” but he couldn’t.

  “Oh my. Then this can’t be too easy for you, then. Not just any other case.”

  “No, it’s pretty important for me to know for sure whether it’s Sarah or not.”

  “Then I’ll do my utmost to get you a definite answer. Her family will be glad to know too, I’m sure. It’s the most unbearable thing in the world not knowing what happened, falling asleep every night with the faint hope that your child still might be alive somewhere. It destroys more lives than just this one.”

  Evan looked at her more favorably. So she was human after all. She had put the root clipping into another plastic bag and now produced a camera from her bag of tricks. “Did they ever have any suspects? Was foul play suspected in those days?”

  Evan stepped back as she aimed the camera at the grave site. “I don’t really know. Like I said, I was just a little kid at the time. I just remember helping to look for her, not finding her, and feeling scared.”

  “Of course. You would. It will be interesting to see the police files from the time and whether anyone was suspected.”

  “Can you tell if there was foul play?” Evan asked, as the flashbulb went off again and again from different angles. “She looks as if she was arranged very peacefully.”

  “Child molesters often give their victims a nice burial,” she said, not looking up from her camera. “Instant remorse. But I can’t tell you how she died. There’s no obvious trauma to the skeleton, but a big hand over her face could have suffocated her easily enough.”

  A vivid image of Sarah came to him, the way her long, blonde hair floated out behind her as she ran, the way she was always laughing. Then he pictured that big hand, clamping itself over her face. What else had been done to her? He didn’t want to ask.

  “They have DNA testing these days to find out who she was, don’t they?” he asked.

  “That’s the most expensive way of finding out,” she said, “and it takes time. Dental records would be the simplest. But yes, it is possible to do a DNA match. Bone cortex or tooth pulp work well, and the match is made with the mother or siblings. It’s always maternal DNA we use for the match.”

  “She had siblings,” Evan said. “A brother and a sister. And I expect her mother’s still alive too.”

  “They live around here?”

  He shook his head. “No, they used to come on holiday once a year to stay with their grandfather.” He straightened up. “Look, I really have to go. I’ve got a meeting with my boss at four. What will you do next?”

  “I’ve taken photos of the site. Now it’s a question of moving the skeleton down to the lab, taking soil and plant samples from around it. I’ll need help getting this lot down the mountain.”

  “A police constable is on his way. So it’s alright if I go, is it?”

  “I guess I can’t stop you,” she said.

  “You’ll be all right, alone up here then?”

  “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.” She went back to lifting bones into a tray.

  Chapter 12

  As he ran down the mountain, Evan got the feeling that she was annoyed with him for leaving. Less than an hour ago she’d been shouting at him for mucking around with the site and a fat lot of use he’d been ever since, mostly standing and
watching while she did things. The problem with women was that you never knew what they really wanted, he decided. They threw out hints and men were supposed to guess right. They said that you shouldn’t go to the trouble and expense of buying them flowers or taking them to a restaurant, when they really wanted you to say that nothing was too good for them and they sulked when the flowers or the dinner out didn’t happen. Why they could never come out and say exactly what they wanted was beyond Evan. Bronwen, thank goodness, was better than most, and she didn’t sulk.

  He called to check that the constable was on his way, then drove as fast as he dared down the mountain pass. It was ten to four. His driving kept pace with his mind, which was also in overdrive. Why had he kept all of this shut away, never thought of it for years when he had been so devastated by it at the time? The Thomas children had never returned to the valley again, and Evan’s family had moved away soon afterward, down to the city of Swansea, where he’d had other things to occupy him, like learning how to hold his own with the bigger, tougher city boys.

  He remembered now that he had helped to look for her, joining his father and grandfather and all the other men from the area as they combed the mountain, using flashlights as darkness fell. But all the time he had known that the search was a waste of time and she wouldn’t be found. He knew exactly what had happened to her. She had been taken by the fairies.

  “You live here, don’t you?” Sarah had asked him, the first time they met in the meadow behind his grandfather’s house. He had been five years old at the time and thought she might very well be a fairy herself. He had been busy putting back stones that had fallen from a drystone wall around his grandfather’s property, and when he looked up, there she was. She had a little elfin face and long, almost white-blonde hair that was so fine it danced on its own as she walked. And her eyes were light blue. Evan had never seen light blue eyes before, nor blonde hair, except in films. Most of his neighbors and schoolmates in the Ogwen Valley of North Wales were dark haired, like he was. Furthermore, the other children in the valley wore sensible, long-lasting clothes in colors that wouldn’t show the dirt. She was wearing a light filmy dress that floated out around her.

  Evan had nodded, too overcome to speak.

  “Good. So you can show me the fairies.”

  Evan had been at school for a whole year and considered himself as tough and worldly as any of the boys in the mixed infants. “There’s no such thing as fairies,” he’d said scornfully.

  Her blue eyes opened even wider, like a doll’s. “Oh, but there are. My grandfather says so. He says they’re called the Twlwyth Teg and that means the fair family in case you don’t speak Welsh, and you can see them up in the mountains if you’re lucky.” She’d skipped ahead of him, lighter than air herself. “My grandfather says he saw them once when he was young. He says they were dancing in a fairy circle and they wanted him to dance with them, but he knew that they’d take him forever if he stepped into that circle so he ran away.”

  She paused to look back at Evan with a pitying look. “So maybe you just haven’t been lucky enough to see them yet. You have to go right up into the mountains. I don’t suppose you’re allowed up there alone because you’re not old enough.”

  “I’m almost six years old,” he said. “And I can go where I want.”

  “Then you can take me,” she said. “You can show me the kind of places where we might see fairies.”

  “What kind of places?” He still didn’t believe in them, he told himself, but he wasn’t stupid enough to turn down an opportunity to be with her, and to show off how well he could walk and climb.

  “My grandfather says the entrances to the kingdom of the Twlwyth Teg are always underwater, like caves at the bottom of a lake. So if you see them, it’s likely to be near a lake or a pond or a waterfall, and always on misty days.” She gave him the sweetest smile that lit up her whole face. “So next misty day, you can take me and maybe we’ll see them.”

  “Sarah, where are you?” a voice called, and an older boy, dressed in khaki shorts and open-necked shirt, came striding across the meadow toward them. “Oh, there you are, you naughty girl. You know you’re not supposed to wander off. Now give me your hand and come along. Mother’s waiting to take us on a picnic.” His voice was loud and clear, with an annoying edge to it—the same kind of voice as the posh tourists who stopped their big cars to ask for directions and always shouted in case Evan couldn’t understand them. He gave Evan the briefest of glances as he dragged Sarah away.

  As Evan stood watching her go, skipping over the tussocks of grass in that remarkable weightless way, he heard the big boy say, “You know Mother wouldn’t like you mixing with the local children.”

  Then Sarah had looked back at him with her sweet smile. He worried that he’d never see her again.

  Evan found himself in the car park of the Caernarfon police station with no recollection of how he’d got there. D.I. Watkins and the rest of the team were already assembled in the incident room as he burst in.

  “Sorry. I got held up,” he gasped.

  “It’s all right; you’re not late. It’s only just four,” Watkins said. “Did the anthropologist turn up?” he asked, as Evan took a seat at the table.

  “Yes, and she’s unearthed the skeleton, and what’s more, I think I know who it is.” The words came tumbling out, like rapid-fire bullets.

  “Really? And who is it?” Watkins looked mildly interested, that’s all.

  “I didn’t think of it at first because she went missing on the other side of the mountains, and I’d forgotten all about it, but her name’s Sarah Bosley-Thomas. I was there when it happened. I knew her.”

  Now he had Watkins’s undivided attention. “You were there—how long ago was this, then?”

  “Almost twenty-five years. I was seven years old when she disappeared.”

  “I thought you grew up in the south, in Swansea.”

  “We moved down there when I was ten.” Evan was conscious that he was still speaking quickly. “Up until then we lived outside Llanwryst, and my dad was with the North Wales Police in Colwyn Bay.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “We lived with my grandfather, actually, on his farm.”

  “Does he still live there?”

  Evan shook his head. “No, he died some years ago, and my father’s brothers sold the property. I wish I’d had a say in it—I’d have definitely wanted to keep it. Lovely spot it was, with a view right across the valley.”

  “So it was a local girl from that area—Ogwen Valley?”

  “No, she was a visitor. She used to come and stay with her grandfather for the summers on the next-door farm. There were several grandchildren, and I used to play with them.”

  “And the little girl went missing?”

  “Yes.” Evan stared out of the window. Sparrows were twittering and fluttering in the hedge. “They were playing up on the mountain. Sarah was the youngest. She got tired and said she was going home. She never showed up. They had search parties all over the mountain, but they never found her.”

  “Up above Llanwryst?” Watkins asked. “Then how the hell did she wind up above Llanfair? If someone had grabbed her, he would have had to bring her over the top of the Glyders and down again, when there were a thousand spots on the other side he could have hidden her—lakes he could have thrown her in, caves, potholes—plenty of opportunity to hide a body.”

  Evan tried to control the shudder. “Unless he had some connection to the cottage, and he brought her back.”

  “Ah, right. You were going to check out who was living there at the time, weren’t you?” Watkins said. “We’ll need a positive identification on the skeleton first, just to make sure we are speaking about your missing girl—but it certainly sounds as if she could be the one.”

  “Can we get on with the matter in hand?” Bill Edwards, the grim-looking sergeant, interrupted. “I’m sure this skeleton of Evans is most fascinating, but aren’t we supposed to be tracking
down a missing girl who might still be alive?”

  “Yes, you’re right, Bill,” Watkins said. “Let’s put this on hold until after our meeting, Evans.”

  “But I think it’s important, sir,” Evan said. “The two cases could possibly be connected.”

  “Come on, Evans,” Bill Edwards said. “You’re not trying to say that our missing girl is connected to a child who disappeared twenty-five years ago?”

  “She could be.”

  Evan detected a patronizing grin. Bill Edwards obviously thought he was a new detective constable and thus too keen. He needed taking down a peg or two.

  “So you’re telling us that someone grabbed a little girl twenty-five years ago and has behaved himself ever since, until now, when it enters his fancy to grab another one?”

  “Maybe not,” Evan said. “Maybe he hasn’t been in the area all that time. He might have just come back, and it’s possible that Ashley is the latest in a long line.”

  “Do you think we might be barking up the wrong tree then?” Glynis Davies asked, her intent look letting Evan know that at least she was going to take him seriously. “You think Ashley wasn’t taken by her father after all?”

  “We won’t know that until we find the father, will we?” Watkins interrupted. “And finding him has to be our number one priority at the moment. So let’s put Evan’s skeleton on hold until we’ve got some positive identification. We’ll consider the child’s father our prime suspect until we’ve located him, and it’s been proved otherwise.”