by Rhys Bowen
The miles seemed to pass frustratingly slowly as they were swallowed into darkness. They turned off at Chester, then had to endure another eternity on the A55, almost deserted at this time of night and made unreal by pockets of mist that floated in the valleys. Then finally the twinkling lights of the outskirts of Caernarfon. The mist grew thicker as they passed Llanberis and climbed the pass. Llanfair loomed like a ghost town, then the monstrous shape of the Everest Inn, its lights only dimly visible across the car park. They hurried toward the front door, raincoat collars turned up against the bitter chill.
“Like the middle of bloody winter again,” Watkins complained.
The Thomas brothers were sitting together in the bar. They looked up as the two policemen approached them.
“Any news yet, Inspector?” Val asked.
“I wonder if we could have a word, sir,” Watkins asked.
“By all means. Grab a pew,” Val said. “Can we get you gentlemen a drink?”
“No, thanks all the same, sir,” Watkins said. Evan’s gaze met Nick’s, and Nick gave him a big smile of recognition. “It’s actually Father Thomas we’d like to talk to—in private, if you don’t mind.”
Val shot his brother a questioning glance.
Nick rose to his feet. “Of course. Maybe we should go up to my room. See you later then, Val.”
They followed Nick up the staircase. The room on the first floor was spacious with windows opening onto a balcony.
“Take a seat.” Nick indicated leather armchairs beside the desk. He waited until they were seated before he said, “You’ve found out, haven’t you?”
“We’ve been in touch with the Canadian police, yes.”
Nick sighed. “I was trying to keep it from my family. It was bound to come out in the end, I suppose, and obviously you’d pick up on it. The charges were dropped, you know.”
“Yes sir, we know. Would you like to tell us about it?”
“It’s still too horrible to think about,” Nick said. “You probably can’t imagine what it’s like to stand in the dock and see people staring at you with loathing—people you trusted and liked.”
“We know none of the details of the case, sir. You were accused of molesting a child?”
Nick looked down at his hands, toying with the signet ring on his little finger. “It was all part of the epidemic of priest bashing. Half the Catholics in the world were suddenly accusing their priests of molesting them. The motives weren’t always the purest, I have to tell you. There was a bob or two to be made when the church was still paying people to keep quiet.”
“We’re only interested in your particular case, sir.”
“I’m coming to it,” Nick said. “It’s not easy to talk about. I’ve always been a friendly sort of guy. I love children. So when I talk to a child, it’s natural for me to put an arm around them, to take little kids on my knee—that sort of thing. Well, a do-gooding woman in my parish saw me with my arm around a little girl. She had been crying because she’d lost the doll she’d brought to school with her. I told her I’d help her find it.” He looked up at them. “This woman interviewed the child after I left her. She twisted the child’s words—that I’d tried to lure her into my study with the promise that we’d find her a doll there, that the child had felt uncomfortable with my arm around her, that I’d made her cry, that it wasn’t the first child I’d touched. Next thing I knew I was relieved of my parish duties and I was up in court. I can’t begin to tell you—it was like a horrible nightmare. You try to wake up and you can’t. Fortunately the charges didn’t hold up in court. There were plenty of witnesses to speak up on my behalf. I was acquitted, but the damage was done. Everywhere I go now I can hear the whispers, ‘He was the one who molested that little girl.’”
He looked away and sighed. “I’ve been reassigned to the cathedral, where I’m safely shielded from contact with real people. I’ll probably never be a parish priest again. They made me a handsome cash payment for my suffering, but what good does that do? All the reasons I wanted to become a priest—they’re all denied to me now.” He got up and went to look out of the window. “You know what it was like? It was like going through Sarah all over again.”
Chapter 27
Evan was relieved to see lights on in the schoolhouse, even though it was after eleven. The long drive through the rain and then this last emotional session with Nick Thomas had left him feeling drained. He crossed the playground, tapped on the front door, found it unlocked, and let himself in. Bronwen, already in her silky blue robe and slipper socks, appeared from the bedroom.
“Hello, Bron, sorry to come round so late, but I need a hug,” he said.
“From whom?” she asked, staying where she was at the bedroom door.
“From you, of course.”
“Oh, I wasn’t sure if you wanted one from another of your girlfriends,” she said. Her tone was half joking, half not.
“What are you talking about?” Evan was tired, confused, and irritable.
“I’ve had an interesting evening, Evan,” Bronwen said, coming out now and crossing to the fireplace, in which embers still glowed. “Knowing that you had a long drive today, I decided to be the dutiful fiancée and make you a lovely dinner for when you came home. So there I was, working in your kitchen, when there’s a tap on the front door. In comes Betsy, wearing a dress that was so short and revealing that it left nothing to the imagination. She looked startled to see me, muttered that she’d just come over to show Evan something, and left.”
“Betsy? Does this mean she’s broken up with Barry?”
Bronwen shrugged. “She was certainly armed for battle. But that wasn’t all. I’d just put the casserole in the oven when there was another knock at the door. A strange woman was standing there, and she said she was taking you up on your invitation to show her around the place, starting with the Red Dragon.”
“A strange woman?” Evan’s brain refused to cooperate. “Did she tell you her name?”
“She sounded American, if that’s any help.”
“Oh, cachwr,” Evan swore under his breath. “It must have been that lady anthropologist again.”
“Lady anthropologist. I don’t think you mentioned her.”
“The one who dug out the skeleton.”
Bronwen had fixed him in a cold stare. “You said the anthropologist from the university. I don’t think you used the word ‘she.’”
“Look, Bron, I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t important, but she came on to me the other day. I told her I was getting married and I wasn’t interested. I guess she just doesn’t take no for an answer.”
“Popular chap, aren’t you?” Bronwen said.
“I can’t help it if I’m irresistible,” Evan said. “I swear I do nothing to encourage them.”
Bronwen finally laughed. “No, I’m sure you don’t. And I’m acting like a jealous shrew for no reason. Sorry.” She went over to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I was thrown by Betsy in the slinky dress, and then I was quite startled to hear that you’d promised to take some strange woman to the pub.”
“I actually offered to take her hiking with us,” Evan said. “She’s very persistent.”
“American women are supposed to be aggressive, aren’t they? Sometimes I wish I could be more assertive myself. Then I’d put my foot down and forbid you to talk to anything in skirts that doesn’t play bagpipes.”
“Glynis Davies usually wears trousers,” Evan said, his eyes teasing her as he pulled her close to him. “Now give me that hug.”
Bronwen rested her head on his shoulder, and he stood there, letting peace flow through him.
“You must be starving or did you stop for dinner on the way?”
“We grabbed sausage rolls at the motorway place. Bloody disgusting they were.”
“So you must have left London very late.”
“We had another errand to run when we got back.” And he told her about Nick Thomas.
“But he was false
ly accused, Evan,” she said, when he had finished talking. “Poor man. I feel sorry for him. I bet there’s a lot of that kind of thing going on.”
“I feel sorry for him too, but we’re still going to have to check him out. We’ve only had his side of the story, after all. Watkins is going to have his picture shown around at the caravan park and throughout the area.”
“If I’d kidnapped a little girl and done God knows what to her, I wouldn’t stick around in the area any longer than I had to,” Bronwen said. “Now the others have gone home, and he’s lounging in the bar with his brother.”
“I agree with you, but we have to cover our rear ends,” Evan said. “Personally I can’t believe anything bad of Nick Thomas, but I’m beginning to see how easy it is to twist the truth,” and he told her about Ivan Sholokhov. “So I’m off to Yorkshire in the morning to trace the elusive Mrs. S.,” he said. “Watkins doesn’t want me involved with the Nick Thomas stuff. He thinks I may be biased, and he’s right. Besides, I can’t wait to confront Shirley Sholokhov. This is the first real thing he’s let me do alone, Bron.”
“Just so long as he doesn’t change his mind and send Glynis Davies off to the wilds of Yorkshire with you,” Bronwen teased. “I’d offer you food, but your supper is sitting in your own oven.”
“Thanks,” Evan said, still holding her firmly around the waist, “but I think I’m too tired to feel hungry. You didn’t leave the gas on, did you?’
“Of course not. I had no idea when you’d be back, and you do have a microwave.”
“In that case,” Evan said, nuzzling at her long, soft hair, “I’m in no hurry to go home, am I?”
It was under a gray and leaden sky with the promise of more rain that Evan started for Yorkshire the next day. He left at first light, wanting to beat the traffic that always clogged the junctions around Manchester. It was one industrial city after another all the way to Leeds, old wool and cotton towns like Huddersfield and Bradford. These days there was no pall of smog hanging over them since strict pollution standards had been introduced. Most of the old industries had died anyway, and gangs of unemployed youths, lounging outside pubs, were a feature on many street corners as he drove into Leeds. Leeds, of course, was bigger and more prosperous than those towns that had relied on only one dead industry. He drove through areas that looked positively yuppie, with fancy foreign cars parked outside reinvented town houses and new flats. The address he had for Shirley Sholokhov was not like that.
It was in a development of former council houses, now mostly privately owned, but with little attempt at improvement. They were similar to those he had visited in Swansea—eight front doors to a building, pebble dash exterior, lacking any kind of ornamentation to make them attractive or unique. What had been small front gardens once had been paved over to make room for off-street parking, except for the house at the end, which still sported a small square of lawn with a birdbath in the middle.
The door at number thirty-eight opened abruptly in response to Evan’s knock, and he was startled to see a large, unshaven man wearing only an undershirt and jeans.
“Yeah? What do you want?” the man demanded.
“I’m looking for Shirley Sholokhov,” Evan began.
“She’s out,” the man cut off the last of his sentence. He went to close the door.
“But she does live here?” Evan’s foot prevented the door from closing.
“Yeah.”
“And you are?” Evan asked.
“None of your bloody business, mate.”
Evan reached into a pocket and produced a warrant card. “Police. It is my business. Now give me your name.”
“Joe Bingham. What’s all this about?”
“What do you think? Mrs. Sholokhov’s missing daughter. Now, are you going to let me come in or leave me standing on the doorstep where all the neighbors can see us?”
Bingham opened the door wider. “Okay. Come in then.” He led Evan to a spartan front room with mismatched furniture and full ashtrays. A television in the corner was going full blast.
“Go on then.” Bingham eyed him insolently as Evan took an orange vinyl chair at the table.
“Are you a relative?” Evan asked.
“No.”
“But you live here?”
“What are you—the bleeding morality police?”
Evan ignored the remark. “Mrs. Sholokhov reported her daughter missing in North Wales.”
“That where you’re from? I thought you had a funny accent.”
“She reported her daughter missing in North Wales. We’ve had the entire police force out looking for her. We’ve put out nationwide bulletins and now, in the middle of all this, we find that Mrs. Sholokhov has upped and left without telling us.”
Bingham shifted uncomfortably under Evan’s stare. “Yeah, well, she got cheezed off there by herself. She wanted to be home with me.”
“Have you been living together long?”
“Nah. I moved in about a month ago. She got scared when her old man paid her a visit, so I told her I’d keep an eye on her. Too bad I couldn’t go to the caravan with her—I’d have knocked his block off if he’d tried to take Ashley, bloody foreign git.”
“So why didn’t she tell the police she was leaving the area?”
Bingham shrugged. “Search me, mate. I don’t know what goes on inside her head, do I? I can tell you one thing—she’s very upset. She probably don’t know what she’s doing. She’s upset with you blokes, that you haven’t found her daughter yet. Not too good, is it—the whole bloody police force after that Russian git and nobody can find him?”
“So where is she now?”
“I can’t tell you, mate. Out somewhere. Shopping maybe. I got up and she wasn’t here. That’s all I know.”
“So you don’t know when she’ll be back?”
“No idea.”
“She hasn’t gone back to work, has she?”
“Too upset to work. Says she can’t settle to anything until Ashley’s brought home. She loves that kid, you know.”
“Why did she go to the caravan in Wales?” Evan asked.
“Why? Because he found out where she’d moved to, didn’t he? He came hanging around. Made her nervous.”
“So she left your protection and fled to a lonely coast where she knew nobody? That doesn’t seem too smart to me.”
Bingham took a step toward him. The intent to be threatening was obvious. “Listen, mate, she thought he’d never find her there.”
“So she went into hiding because she didn’t have full custody of Ashley, and she was scared the courts would make her hand over the child to her father?”
“Something like that. She’s terrified of that man. She said he came across as quiet and well behaved, but if he lost his temper, he’d just explode. Knocked her around a bit, you know. If he’s gone back to Russia, then I say good riddance. We don’t need his sort here.”
“But not if he’s taken Ashley with him.”
“Oh, right.” He corrected himself. “It would break her heart if she lost that kid. The kid is her whole life.”
“We’re doing everything we can, I assure you, Mr. Bingham. We’ve got the national crime people, the Foreign Office, Interpol all working on it. We’ve followed up on God knows how many leads. If he’s still in the country, he can’t stay hidden forever. Someone will come forward.”
“And when they do, he’s going to be sorry.”
Evan got out his notebook. “So you really don’t know when she’ll be back? And she doesn’t have a mobile phone with her?”
“What do you think we are, bleedin’ millionaires?”
“All right then. I’ll give you my mobile number, and you are to call me as soon as she comes home. I’m not leaving until I’ve spoken to her. There are still some things we need to clear up—she may be in violation of the law just as much as he is, running off with the child without his permission.”
“His permission? She don’t need no sodding permission, ma
te. They’re separated.”
“Still legally married and sharing joint custody until the hearing.”
The big man shrugged again. “I wouldn’t know. I just met her, as a matter of fact. At a club.”
Evan got up and handed him a slip of paper. “Here’s the number she’s to call. Make sure she does, or we could haul her in for questioning.” He was pleased to see that he was slightly the taller of the two when he matched Bingham, eye to eye.
He started toward the door, then turned back. “You’re not worried about the fact that she’s not here when you wake up, then? You’re not worried that her husband has come back for her if he’s got such a violent temper?”
He noticed a spasm of alarm cross the man’s face; then he shook his head. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“And if, by any chance, the child wasn’t taken by her father?”
“Someone else, you mean?”
“Nobody near the caravan park ever saw who it was. It could have been anybody—it could have been the Russian Mafia caught up with them.”
“Go on. Russian Mafia?” A smirk crossed the big man’s face.
“Sholokhov did leave Russia because he had a run-in with the Mafia, you know. They may have a score to settle with him. You haven’t noticed anyone hanging about outside the house at all?”
Bingham shook his head. “Can’t say I have. Why don’t you ask the old biddie next door. She spends her life watching through the curtains, minding other people’s business.”
“Thanks,” Evan said. “I’ll do that. And I’ll be back as soon as Shirley comes home.”
He got as far as the door.
“You don’t think anything really might have happened to Shirley, do you?” Bingham asked.
“No idea,” Evan said and left.
Chapter 28
The next-door house was the only one on the block with some attempt at a front garden, although it was little more than a few sorry tulips now dying around the birdbath. Before Evan could reach the front door, it opened and an old woman in carpet slippers and overall stood there.