Evan's Gate

by Rhys Bowen

  “Let’s leave the D.I. a memo about what we’ve done and go and get some lunch,” Glynis said. “He had us in very early this morning, and I don’t know about you but I’m starving.”

  “Me too,” Evan agreed. “I wonder what delicacy the canteen ladies have thought up for us today?”

  “Oh, not the canteen, please,” Glynis rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry. There are many things I will do for love of my job, but eating canteen food is not one of them. And I flat out refuse to drink what they have the nerve to label coffee. There’s that nice little coffee bar on the other side of the roundabout. They do a decent cappucino and a good Greek salad.”

  Evan foresaw teasing if he was seen eating Greek salad for lunch, but he decided the teasing would be tempered with envy if he was seen having lunch with Glynis. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  As it happened, they had a comprehensive Greek menu and Evan ordered gyros.

  “Lovely,” he commented. “Lots of garlic.”

  “I’m surprised at you, Evan,” Glynis commented, as he tucked in with satisfaction. “A real Welshman enjoying foreign food cooked with garlic. Won’t you be drummed out of chapel?”

  “My fiancée’s been educating me,” he said. “She likes cooking exotic dishes, and I’ve developed quite a taste for them.”

  “Have you now?” Her smile hovered at the very edge of flirting. “And how did she learn about foreign cooking?”

  “Oh, she’s a very cultured person. She went to Cambridge, you know.”

  “The university?”

  “No, the bloody football club,” Evan said, half joking and half not.

  Glynis blushed and had to laugh. “I’m sorry. That was very ham-fisted of me. There’s no reason at all why your fiancée shouldn’t have been to Cambridge. I was caught off guard because I was surprised that—” She broke off in embarrassment.

  “That she chose to be a schoolteacher in a village school or that she chose to marry me?”

  “I didn’t mean either, Evan.” She toyed awkwardly with her salad.

  “It’s all right. I ask myself the same questions quite often in fact. How did someone as bright and beautiful and worldly as Bronwen wind up with an ordinary chap like me?”

  “I don’t think you’re at all ordinary,” Glynis said.

  “Well, compared to people like Bronwen, or like you. I mean, you’re another one I wouldn’t have expected to find in a backwater like Caernarfon.”

  “I like it here,” she said. “I like being a big fish in a small pond. I expect Bronwen does, too.”

  Evan nodded and took another bite of gyro. He was suddenly conscious that gyros were impossible to eat delicately when sitting next to a young woman. Glynis took a stab at an olive and glanced up at him. “So you’re really going to get married soon?”

  Evan nodded. “In August. Bronwen’s school holidays.”

  “Ah. That’s not long, is it?”

  “No, not long.”

  She ate another mouthful in silence. “So tell me something—when we first met, did I read it wrong or did you actually fancy me?”

  “Of course I fancied you,” Evan said. “You’re a real looker, Glynis. Any man with a pulse would fancy you. But it didn’t mean I was planning to do anything about it. Just window-shopping, not intending to buy, if you get my meaning.”

  She laughed. “Nicely put. And if it’s of any interest to you, I fancied you too.” She paused, watching his reaction. “Lucky we didn’t do anything about it, wasn’t it? Especially now that we have to work together so closely.”

  “Yes, very lucky,” he said. “Those sort of things can become very awkward—”

  “Ah, so this is where you’re hiding out!” D.I. Watkins exclaimed as he pushed open the coffee shop door, causing several little bells to tinkle. “So my team’s turning snooty on me, are they? Cafeteria not good enough for you? Plotting behind my back—or don’t tell me this is a secret assignation?”

  “All of the above,” Glynis said with a laugh, while Evan was still phrasing an answer.

  “Well, either way, your time’s up. I need you both on duty pronto. The North Wales Police doesn’t pay for assignations on the firm’s time.” He was grinning at Evan’s discomfort.

  “We have actually only been here long enough for a cappucino and a bite,” he said.

  “A cappucino—you’re going very upmarket suddenly, aren’t you? And I don’t think Bronwen will approve of the biting part either,” Watkins said, as he drove them before him, like a skinny beige sheepdog.

  “So has any news come in since we talked to you last?” Evan asked.

  “Your Germans—criminal record in Germany. We’re onto the German police about them, and I’ve put out the word that I want them found and brought in for questioning.”

  “Criminal record, eh?” Evan said, as they waited to cross at the roundabout. “They didn’t look the type. Clean-cut, outdoorsy, and all that. Do we know what they were arrested for yet?”

  “Civil disturbance. Probably some of these greenies or peaceniks.”

  “That’s not exactly the same as trafficking in stolen children, is it?”

  “You think those Germans could have taken Ashley?” Glynis broke into a trot to keep up with Evan as he crossed the road.

  “It did cross my mind, since they were so anxious to do a bunk. I wondered whether they were being paid to take her because the father dared not show up himself.”

  “It’s a possibility, isn’t it, sir?” Glynis asked Watkins. “Anyhow, if they’re driving a car with German plates and they’re staying at campsites, it should be easy enough to locate them again.”

  “Yes, hopefully we’ll have them picked up in the next day or so,” Watkins said. “If the other police forces don’t think we’re a lot of hysterical Welshmen and sit on their rear ends, doing nothing.”

  “Oh, surely not,” Glynis said.

  “Strange though it may seem, Glynis love, the Welsh are not universally popular in the rest of Britain,” Watkins said, with the hint of a smile. “I can’t think why.”

  Evan held open the station door so that Watkins and Glynis could go through ahead of him. Watkins let Glynis go inside then stopped Evan. “Not you, Evans. Glynis, you man the shop—or do I have to say woman the shop to be PC?”

  “You could try saying staff the shop,” Glynis suggested.

  “Right. You can reach me on my mobile if anything at all comes in. I need Evans with me.”

  He set off across the parking lot. “Where are we going, sir?” Evan asked.

  “I decided that your hunches haven’t been far off the mark before. I’ve got a free hour. We’re going to talk to these Thomases.”

  Evan gave Watkins a quick glance and then a smile flickered across his face. “Thanks, sir.”

  “Nothing to thank me for,” Watkins said. “It makes all the sense in the world to have you there if you’ve met them before. You can chat about old times and make them more relaxed.” He went across to his car. “And you can drive,” he said. “That way I can take five minutes’ kip.”

  Evan took the A road out of Caernarfon, looking across the Menai Straits to the island of Anglesey with green hills and white cottages sparkling in clear light. It was one of those rare clear, glass blue days and Evan felt a pang of regret that he never seemed to be free to take advantage of good weather anymore. How long had it been since he and Bronwen had done a day’s hiking together? Life seemed to be all work and responsibility these days. His mind went back to the carefree time on his grandfather’s farm when summer had seemed endless and bad weather no deterrent to a day in the outdoors. He had grown up tough and healthy and able to scramble up the hillside as nimble as any sheep. He remembered setting off after breakfast with a lump of bread and cheese and an apple wrapped in his pocket in case he got hungry and only returning from the mountains when it was getting dark.

  Had anybody worried about him? he wondered now. Life had seemed so safe then. In all his lo
ng days in the hills, he had never come across anything more frightening than the occasional aggressive dog. And yet somebody had snatched Sarah from those same hills. Somebody had buried her.

  He had worried that he would never see her again and had tried to recall a clear image of her during the long months of winter. Then the next summer the Jaguar had turned up again with the Thomas children. They hadn’t seemed any more willing to include him in their games than the year before, even though he had hung around hopefully, watching them from the other side of the drystone wall. Sarah may have grown a little, but she hadn’t changed, still looking frail and lovely. Sometimes she looked across at him and smiled before her brother and sister called her away.

  It might have turned into another summer of futility except that this year the Thomases brought a puppy with them. Old Grandpa Thomas was none too pleased.

  “Only dogs around here are working dogs,” he said. “That thing will scare the sheep and distract my dogs from their job.”

  “Nonsense, Pah. It’s only a tiny puppy. It can’t possibly do any harm,” the children’s father had said. And indeed it was a sweet ball of yellow fur that might someday grow into a golden retriever. Evan had long wanted a puppy and gazed at it almost with the same longing that he felt for Sarah.

  Then one day he was in his room with the window open when he heard that something was wrong. High children’s voices were shouting, “Barley. Where are you, Barley? Here, boy.”

  He tied his sneakers hurriedly and ran outside. The Thomas children had fanned out and were walking through the sheep meadows.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked Nick, who was around his age and had always been the most approachable.

  “We’ve lost our new dog,” Nick said. “Only a puppy actually. Someone left the door open, and now he’s gone.”

  “I’ll help you find him,” Evan said. “I know these hills really well.”

  “Thanks. That’s awfully nice of you,” Nick had said. He had the same posh English voice as the other boys, but he had a friendly smile.

  Evan left them scouring the lower meadows. He scrambled up the hillside until he came to a vantage point on an outcropping of rock. He eased himself into a position perched with the whole valley below him. Where might a puppy have gone? The road below the farm was a possibility, of course. But if the dog had come out through the back door and up the sheep track, then it would have passed this way. It was only a puppy with little legs. It couldn’t have wandered too far.

  As he sat there, his senses fine-tuned to the song of an invisible lark, the bleat of a distant sheep, his ears caught another sound on the breeze—the high-pitched yelp of a frightened or injured animal. He followed it across the mountainside and found the puppy at last, wedged in a deep crack in the rocks. It took time to extricate the puppy without hurting it, and by the time he clambered up, he was also scratched and bruised. But he didn’t notice the hurts as he ran down the hill, the puppy in his arms, and carried it in triumph to the Thomases.

  “Barley! You’ve found him. He’s all right.” They snatched the puppy, kissing it and petting it, while Evan stood awkwardly at the doorway.

  Finally he controlled himself enough to say, “Well, I’ll be going then.”

  “No, don’t go. Stay and have ice cream with us.” Sarah was the only one looking at him.

  Then the others became aware of his presence, and one of the mothers said, “Yes, do stay and have some ice cream. We’re most grateful to you. Most grateful.”

  Then they all turned to him and gave him the same attention they had given the puppy, patting him and telling him what a good chap he was. This was more awkward than being ignored. Evan winced with discomfort and was glad to attack the dish of ice cream. When he explained where he had found the dog, they were all impressed.

  “You’re allowed up in the hills by yourself?” the mother asked.

  “Oh, yes. I know my way pretty well everywhere,” Evan said.

  “Then you can come with us next time and show us a good place to build a fort,” the other big boy, not the stuck-up one, said.

  And Sarah just sat opposite him, watching and smiling.

  Chapter 16

  The marquee was still standing in the Thomases’ meadow, but two men were wheeling stacks of chairs out of it and into a van with the words NOSON LAWEN, EVENTS CATERING, CONWY on the side. The area beside the driveway had been churned up by tire tracks.

  “Oh, we’re here, are we?” Watkins asked, reviving from his doze as the tires crunched on the gravel outside the farmhouse. “Nice place. A bit of money here, I’d have thought.”

  “Oh, yes. They were never lacking for cash,” Evan said. “Sarah’s father always drove a Jag.”

  “But he isn’t the one who owns this place, is he?” Watkins opened his door and stepped out onto the gravel.

  “No, that’s the grandfather, old Mr. Tomos Thomas.”

  Watkins smiled. “Tomos Thomas. The Welsh give their kids bloody stupid names, don’t they?”

  “Like Evan Evans, you mean?”

  “Tomos Thomas sounds even more daft somehow.”

  Evan grinned. “They used to call him Tomos Dau around here.”

  “Two times Thomas, eh?” They started for the front door. “So he’s the grandfather?”

  “And he had two sons, both of whom did very well for themselves, I understand, and it was their kids I played with.”

  “And they’re all here now?”

  Evan nodded. “The kids are. It was Henry and Suzanne in one family; Val and Nick are the cousins.”

  “And the little girl belonged to—”

  “Henry and Suzanne. Their father drove the Jag. We never saw much of him. He used to be away on business all week and just showed up here on weekends.”

  “I hope this won’t be too much of a shock for them,” Watkins said. “How did they take the news last night?”

  “I only spoke with Nick—he’s a priest now, by the way. I thought it best not to spoil the party, but I presume he’s told them all by now.”

  There was a brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head on the front door. Watkins gave an impressive rap, and they could hear footsteps coming down a tiled hallway.

  “Yes?” The man’s hair was graying at the temples, and he had deep frown lines etched into his forehead. Evan tried to work out which one of them this was but couldn’t place him. He was older than any of the kids Evan had played with, but perhaps they’d had an older brother he’d never met.

  Watkins produced his warrant card. “North Wales Police, sir. I’m Detective Inspector Watkins and this is Detective Constable Evans.”

  The man’s face broke into a smile, and Evan suddenly recognized him. “It’s Henry, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “And you’re the little Evans boy. My God, you’ve changed.”

  “So have you, Henry. It has been a long time, you know.”

  “I do know. Twenty-five years,” Henry said, and the smile faded. “Nick told us that they’ve found a skeleton somewhere in the mountains. I don’t suppose they can tell yet …”

  “Not definitely, sir,” Watkins said. “That’s where we hope you’ll be able to help us out.”

  “Oh, of course. Won’t you come in? We’ve all dutifully been to chapel with Grandfather, and we’re just finishing up lunch.” He led the way down the dark hallway into a dining room on the right. Evan only remembered the bright kitchen at the back of the house. This room was dark, with windows that faced east and brown wallpaper. The family was sitting around a large mahogany dining table, on which the remains of a roast and some serving dishes of vegetables still rested. They had evidently finished their dessert and were in the process of drinking coffee. Evan noticed there was only one woman present—easily recognizable as Suzanne. She, at least, had not changed or aged much since he’d seen her last, especially because she still wore her hair long and straight over her shoulders. She glanced up nervously as Henry showed them in.

 
; “This is Detective Inspector Watkins,” Henry said. “And this skinny little chap is young Evan from next door.”

  “Evan? The little boy who found the puppy?” Suzanne stared hard at him as if she somehow believed he was an imposter.

  “The very same,” he said. “And I recognize you all right. You haven’t changed at all, Suzanne.”

  “So you’re with the police now?”

  “I am. I just moved across to the plainclothes branch.”

  “And you’re here about Sarah?” Suzanne asked.

  Evan detected a collective intake of breath.

  The old man had risen to his feet. “So it’s true then. They’ve found her at last?” In contrast to his grandson’s public school tones, Tomos Thomas sounded much like Evan’s own grandfather, and he was tempted to speak to him in Welsh—if D.I. Watkins gave him a chance to talk at all.

  “We’re not sure yet, sir,” Watkins said, “but it’s a child’s skeleton of the right age. We’re hoping her family has dental X rays or pictures that will help us make a positive identification.”

  “My mother is coming up from Surrey tomorrow,” Suzanne said. “She’s bringing pictures with her.”

  “That’s good, because if we need to make a DNA match, it’s maternal DNA that we use.” Evan couldn’t resist the chance of establishing himself as an authority here.

  “They could also use Henry or me, I’m sure,” Suzanne said, “since we both carry the same maternal DNA.”

  “Of course,” Evan said quickly, “but we hope we can establish identity without DNA testing as it takes a long time and it’s expensive.”

  “Won’t we be able to tell by what she’s wearing?” Val asked.

  “There’s nothing left, sir. Only shoes and small scraps of cloth.”

  A half sob escaped from Suzanne, who covered her mouth and looked away.

  “And where was the body found, Inspector?” the man at the far end of the table asked. Evan focused on him for the first time. Sarah’s father. He had aged well too, Evan decided, sleek and gray like his Jaguar.