by Rhys Bowen
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I suppose you don’t have to put up with the rubbish we get down here. Your father was a good man. I started out under him in this very manor. But don’t you worry. We’re doing everything we can to nail the little bastard this time.”
“I was wondering, sir.” Evan paused and took a deep breath. “Would it be possible for me to speak to Mancini? I never got that chance before, and it’s something I feel I need to do.”
“Yes, I can understand that,” DCI Vaughan said. He paused, staring long and hard at Evan. “It will all have to be done through the proper channels and with his solicitor’s permission, but I don’t see any problem there. They’ve appointed him a little squirt still wet behind the ears. Doesn’t know his arse from his elbow if you ask me. So you go and tell him you’re there with my permission. Only, Evan — keep your hands to yourself, won’t you. At least if anyone is watching.”
“Don’t worry, sir. I’ll behave myself. Oh, and sir? I know this investigation is none of my business, but if there’s anything I could do to help … I need to feel I’m doing something, if you can understand that.”
“Of course you do. We all do. Believe me, everyone in the South Wales Police wants to nail the little bastard this time. So go and talk to him, and Evans, you’re welcome to ride along if you like.”
Evan’s face lit up in a big smile. “Thanks very much, sir.”
He felt energized and hopeful as he made his way to the solicitor’s office in one of the few older buildings left on Kingsway. Swansea had been badly bombed in the war, and there weren’t many old buildings in the city center. The young solicitor wasn’t listed as a partner and had a small office off a dark upstairs hallway. He glanced up from a crowded desk when Evan came in and in the subdued light looked little older than a schoolboy. “Richard Brooks. Do sit down. You’re Robert Evans’s son?” He made a face. “Funny, but Tony asked to see you. Maybe it’s been playing on his conscience all this time and he wants to make amends. I hope so. It’s something we can bring up for the jury if he does apologize to you.”
“They have a strong case against him, do they?” Evan asked. The young solicitor made a face again, the sort of face fifth-formers make when asked a particularly tough question they don’t know how to answer. “I am not privy to what evidence they have against Tony, but I do understand that they are sure they’ve got their man. Tony, of course, maintains his innocence.”
“And you believe him?”
“I’m his solicitor. I have to believe him.”
“And if you weren’t his solicitor?”
The young man shrugged. “He’s not the easiest of clients. It’s hard to know when he’s telling the truth. Of course, I’ll do my best for him. I’m currently trying to get a top-notch barrister to represent him, but of course we can’t pay the fees they expect.” He got to his feet. “So, when do you want to visit Tony? I will naturally have to come with you.”
“Whenever you are free,” Evan said. “But will it be possible to speak to him alone? I’ll report to you if he says anything that could help his case.”
“I suppose that will be all right.” He looked hard at Evan, assessing him, then nodded again. “Yes, I think it will be all right. Later this afternoon then.”
Evan got to his feet. “Thank you. It’s very kind of you.”
The solicitor managed a weak smile. “Let’s hope it may be a turning point for Tony, because frankly I don’t see much hope for him.”
Evan stopped off at his mother’s house and had to endure a long interrogation session as to why he had come back alone, without Bronwen.
“Are you sure she hasn’t thrown you over?” she asked more than once. “She’s a high-class girl. Anyone can see that. Although she speaks a lovely Welsh.”
“No, Ma, she hasn’t thrown me over. I’ve just got some things I have to do here. I’ll be going back to her parents’ house tomorrow, probably.”
“I’ve already washed the sheets from your bed,” his mother said accusingly. “Now I suppose you’re going to make them dirty again.”
“I’ll sleep on the sofa.”
“Indeed you will not. You think I can’t provide a warm welcome for my own son?”
Evan sighed and went upstairs to make up his bed.
A clock somewhere on the hill was chiming four as Evan and Richard Brooks walked together down to the waterfront and approached the impressive wall that surrounded the prison. Once inside the main gate, they were searched then led across a narrow yard. Beside the original gray stone rectangle, there was a newer octagonal unit that looked like an overgrown chapel. It was to this unit that they were led. They were shown into a windowless interview room equipped with a table and two chairs. After a few minutes the door opened and Tony Mancini was brought in. When he saw Evan he reacted nervously.
“What’s he doing here?”
“He wanted to speak to you,” the solicitor said.
“Sit.” The guard pointed at a chair on one side of the table.
“You can’t make me.” Tony struck a defiant pose. “I haven’t even been tried yet, and I’m innocent until proved guilty. I know the law.”
“You will be. Sit.” The guard put a big hand on his shoulder. Tony’s eyes darted around the room as he perched on the edge of the chair.
“I don’t have to speak to him if I don’t want to. I don’t have to talk to no one.”
“You wanted to the other day,” the solicitor said.
“Yeah, well, I changed my mind.” He eyed Evan defiantly.
“Can you leave us alone for a while?” Evan asked. The solicitor nodded and indicated for the guard to leave.
“Hey, I said I didn’t want to talk to him. Are you fucking deaf?”
The door shut behind them. The place smelled of disinfectant with just a hint of latrines; it brought back memories of the boys’ bathroom at Evan’s primary school, a place where bigger boys had waited to bully skinny undersized kids like himself.
Tony’s posture indicated he expected to be picked on in the same way. “You better not touch me,” he said. “You lay a hand on me and you’ll be sorry.”
“Not as sorry as you’d be. I’m a lot bigger than you.” Evan’s gaze challenged him.
“You’d be laughing on the other side of your face if I was carrying my knife.”
Evan pulled up a chair to the other side of the table. “Look, Tony, I’m not here to attack you, so just relax.”
“Then what are you here for?”
“Why did you want to see me?” Evan countered.
“Because—Forget it.”
“I’m here because I never got a chance to talk to you earlier,” Evan said. “I just needed to tell you that you messed up my mom’s life and my life too.”
“Look, mate, I told you. I never meant to kill nobody.”
“You fired the gun.”
“I was lookout man, see. Jingo gave me the gun and yelled for me to shoot. I pulled the trigger. I didn’t expect to hit no one.”
“Who’s Jingo?”
“A bloke I used to know.”
“I didn’t think he was prime minister. In a gang together, were you?”
“Something like that.”
“So where was this gang?”
“Up in Penlan. You’re not nobody up in Penlan if you don’t belong to a gang.” Penlan, Evan remembered, was the toughest of the council estates, sprawling in ugly rows across the hills at the back of the city. “And what happened to Jingo?”
“Nothing. He’s still around. Why?”
“Are you still with the gang?”
“Nah. Been going straight, haven’t I? Good little boy, and all that.”
“You still live up in Penlan?”
“No, I bloody moved out to a mansion on the Gower. What do you think?”
Evan felt his hand curl into a fist beneath the table. He breathed deeply. “So you didn’t mean to kill anyone. What about this time? Was that an accident too—an
‘accidental’ rape and murder?”
“This time?” Tony glared at him defiantly. “I told you, I didn’t do it. They’re trying to nail it on me, but I didn’t do it. I liked Alison. She was all right.”
“You knew her then?”
“Of course I fucking knew her.”
“Watch your language, boy. You’re talking to a police officer.”
“You’re a fu—, a copper too?”
“Yes, and I’m getting tired of putting up with your mouth. In fact I’m getting tired of you. You deserve everything you bloody well get.”
He got to his feet then controlled himself and sat down again. “Tell me about Alison. How did you know her? She doesn’t sound like your sort of girl.”
“We met clubbing on a Friday night.”
“Clubbing—where?”
“The Monkey’s Uncle on Kingsway.”
“Alison’s parents let her go to the Monkey’s Uncle?”
Tony smirked. “Of course not, stupid. They didn’t let her go nowhere. She used to climb out of her window and get picked up by a friend’s car. She was a nice little dancer. A nice kid. I liked her.”
“What were you doing out by her house that night?”
“I went out there to give her something. Something I’d promised her.”
“So what happened? Did you see her?”
“Yeah. I saw her. I met her out in her front garden, but only for a moment. Then she said she heard someone coming and I’d better beat it. She said her father set the dog on people he didn’t like, so I nipped through a gap in the hedge, pretty lively, like.”
“And did you see who was coming?”
“I heard her speaking to someone. I’ve no idea who.”
“So she was alive and safe in her own front garden when you left her.”
“That’s right.”
“What time was this?”
“Around nine-thirty, I suppose.”
“And what did you do then?”
“Me—I was running to get the bus on the Oystermouth Road, when some fu—some sodding copper recognized me. He stopped me and wanted to know what I was doing out there. I told him it was a free country and to mind his own sodding business. Then he let me go. In the morning they came to get me. That’s when I heard she was dead.”
“And you didn’t see anybody near her house?”
“Have you been out there at night? It’s the middle of bloody nowhere. Only one streetlight and her house is up a long drive. I didn’t see a soul.”
“So if you didn’t kill her, who did?”
“Search me. You’re the policeman, mate.”
“Any idea who might have wanted her dead? Did she ever talk to you about being afraid of anybody—a boyfriend she had dumped, maybe?”
“We never talked much. It’s too loud to talk in the club.”
“What about her friends? What do you know about them?”
“Oh yeah, of course I knew her friends. We hobnobbed together at the bleedin’ country club every Saturday night, didn’t we? What do you think? I had no idea who she was until she told me where she lived. That’s when I found out that old man Turnbull was her father.”
“The one who sacked you from his factory for stealing?”
“I didn’t take nothing.”
“Then why were you sacked?”
“The foreman sent me up to Turnbull’s office. He wasn’t there. I was just taking a little look around for myself, curious like, when he came in, and he blew his stack. Sacked me on the spot. Never gave me a chance to explain—just like the rest of them. Well, I tell you this. I’m sorry Alison’s dead, but I’m glad that bastard got what was coming to him. Let’s see how happy he is with all that money now he doesn’t have his precious little darling daughter.”
He glared at Evan defiantly. When Evan said nothing, he went on. “She hated their guts, you know. Her parents. She couldn’t stand them. She said they treated her like a little kid, and they wouldn’t let her out of their sight. As soon as she turned eighteen, she was going to move to London and never come back.”
They sat there in silence.
“She was nice,” Tony said. “Easy to talk to. Not at all snooty like some of them posh birds you meet. I hope they catch the bastard that did it. Of course, they won’t even bother to look, will they?”
Evan stared at him long and hard. “So you want me to believe that Alison was alive when you left her that night.”
“Believe what you like, mate. It don’t matter to me. Nothing you say is going to make them change their minds. They’re out to get me.”
“Why should I say anything?”
“Of course you wouldn’t, would you? I bet you’re really happy about this.”
Evan got to his feet. “I’d better be going.”
“Yeah. Go on. Bugger off.”
“If you take my advice, you’ll act politely when anyone comes to question you. The way you act has guilty written all over you.”
“Oh, piss off,” Tony said.
Evan sighed and left the room.
Chapter 10
Evan came out of the prison to find that the hot weather had broken and dark clouds were rolling in from the west. About the average length for a usual Welsh summer, he thought, Two days of sunshine and then more bloody rain. He felt the pressure of the approaching storm echoing the tension in his head. Why on earth did he have to go and visit Tony Mancini? Bronwen was right. The encounter hadn’t brought him any closure — instead it had opened a whole new can of worms. Not that he believed Tony was telling the truth. He was known as a convincing liar. He’d conned the judge at his last trial easily enough. But now a seed of doubt was planted and wouldn’t go away.
He drove straight home and called Bronwen.
“You’ve got a lot to answer for,” she exploded before he could say anything. “I had to endure one of Mummy’s lunch parties today. They’d all come to meet you, so I had to face them alone. Not something I’d have chosen to do. I had to listen to what a delightful chap Edward had been and how they couldn’t understand why we broke up.”
“So you never told them the real reason?”
“Would you have told my mother that my husband ran off with another man? It would have been poor naïve Bronwen. We’d better find a more suitable chap for her next time.”
“So I gather I didn’t measure up.”
“I wouldn’t say that. They think you must be delightfully quaint. A village copper. Mr. Plod. They were devastated that you weren’t there. I told them you were called away on an important case you were solving and you’d be back soon. I hope that’s true.”
“I don’t know, Bron. I went to see Tony this afternoon.”
“And?”
“And I’ve never met anybody I’d like to send to prison more than him. He’s an obnoxious little twit. His own worst enemy.”
“So are you glad you went?”
“No. He says he didn’t do it.”
“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes, but …”
“And you said he’s a great con artist. Don’t tell me you believed him, Evan?”
“No, of course I didn’t.” Evan attempted an easy laugh. “He’s going to get what’s coming to him and serve him right. It’s just that — I need to find out for myself, one way or the other.”
“And if it’s the other?”
“I’m not sure. I’m really not sure.”
“It’s not up to you, Evan,” Bronwen said. “Why don’t you just come back here and suffer beside me? We’ve got sherry at the Fearnails tomorrow. And Daddy’s dying to show you his rare sheep—oh, and speaking of sheep, we’ve had problems with Prince William, I’m afraid.”
“You mean our adopted son hasn’t been behaving himself?” Bronwen laughed. “Daddy is paranoid that Prince William will get out and infect his precious darlings. And we forgot to warn Mrs. Todd that he was shut up in the laundry. She went in with a load of washing, dropped it on top of him without l
ooking, then thought the place was haunted. She had to be calmed down with a large brandy.”
Evan chuckled.
“I miss you,” she said simply. “I wish you’d give this up and come back.”
After he had hung up, Evan felt uneasy, unsettled. He drifted from room to room until his mother summoned him to supper.
“I had a chance to pop out and get your favorite, liver and bacon,” she said, putting in front of him a plate piled with three slices of lamb liver swimming in rich brown gravy, adorned with fried onions and rashers of bacon. This was completed by mashed potatoes, peas, cauliflower, and marrow. He was reminded of Mrs. Williams, his former landlady, and found himself wishing he was back in Llanfair, before any of this painful business had started.
“But you don’t usually have a big meal in the evening,” he said.
“I knew you’d be hungry and needing a good meal.” She smiled, pleased to have done something right.
Evan tucked into the food, feeling comforted by his mother’s cooking.
“This is very good,” he said. “You always were a good cook.”
“No one to cook for these days, so I don’t bother much,” she said, deliberately looking away from him.
“I went to see Tony Mancini today.” The words came out before he had a chance to decide if he should have told her or not.
“That devil—you went to see him? Why in God’s name?”
“I just felt that I needed to talk to him. I never had the chance before.”
“I hope you told him just what you thought of him and how he wrecked so many lives and how he’s going straight to hell if he doesn’t shape up and repent.”
Evan smiled. “I didn’t exactly say that.”
“So that’s why you came back here? To see him?”
“I want to see if they’ll let me work on the case,” he said.
His mother actually smiled. “Your father would have been proud of you. You make sure he didn’t die in vain, Evan.”
He felt uncomfortably full when he got up from the table. “I think I might just pop down to the pub,” he said.
He could detect the instant frost in the air. “No wonder you’re not able to save up for a new car if you spend all your money drinking at the pub,” his mother said. “You’ll not be popping out to the pub every night when you’re married, I can tell you that. She’ll make sure you stay home.”