Evan Only Knows

by Rhys Bowen

  “Not really, sir. She talked a lot about when she was a little girl. Said she used to live on a boat next door.”

  Dr. Hartley laughed. “Did she really? I must say it’s amusing in a sad way. You never know what’s going to come out next. It all has a basis in reality, of course. Her father was in the navy, although stationed on shore for most of her life.”

  “She talked a lot about her father.”

  Dr. Hartley nodded. “He was a rather imposing man. I was terrified when I first met him. No wonder he’s still clear in her mind. Actually, she remembers the past quite well, but the present is another matter. She doesn’t know me most of the time. And she doesn’t recognize this house, which I find really distressing. We’ve lived here for forty years now. It breaks my heart when she begs me to take her home.”

  “It must be very hard for you.”

  Dr. Harley pressed his lips together for a moment, then said, “Very hard,” in a gruff voice. “She can’t really be left, you see. One never knows.” He looked at Evan, appealing for understanding. Evan nodded. “I keep her door locked, but she can be surprisingly strong and cunning when she puts her mind to it. So I appreciated the chance to pop out for a few minutes.”

  He came to a halt at the front door. “We had a daily woman, but she left. I think washing all those sheets was too much for her. And I haven’t managed to find another one yet.” He hesitated, looking at Evan. “Look, you wouldn’t like a cup of tea, would you? I’m about to make one for myself.”

  Evan was impatient to be off, but he saw the old man’s face. “Thanks very much,” he said. “I’d love a cup.”

  It was a good hour later when Evan finally got into his car. He sat for a while, staring at the words he had scribbled in his notebook during his talk with the Turnbull’s housekeeper. He should start with Mrs. Turnbull’s bridge ladies: Richards, Haversham, and the vicar’s wife. It should be easy enough to look up their addresses in the phone book, but the vicar’s wife would be the easiest to locate. It was just a question of which parish.

  The closest church turned out to be in a less affluent neighborhood, so it would be highly unlikely that the Turnbulls would wish to be seen there. That meant Oystermouth was a better bet and Evan drove out beside the water. He glanced longingly at the sparkling blue of Swansea Bay with the green Gower Peninsula reaching a long finger out into the water on the west side. Hiking with Bronwen did seem infinitely more desirable than this wild goose chase he had set himself. With every interview he came away none the wiser. All he had to go on was Tony’s word, which didn’t count for much, a father who yelled and made enemies, and a mother who had asked, when she thought he was out of earshot, “Exactly what were you telling him?” Just enough to keep him suspicious and involved.

  The woman who opened the front door of the vicarage had dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and was dressed in shorts and a halter top.

  “Sorry to trouble you,” Evan said, “but I wondered if I could speak to the vicar’s wife.”

  “You’re speaking to her.” The woman looked amused. “What can I do for you?”

  “I wondered if you are a friend of the Turnbulls?”

  “Oh dear,” she said, her smile fading. “Not another reporter, I hope. Those poor people have been through enough already.”

  “Not a reporter. Police, actually. I wondered if anyone had asked you about the night Alison was killed. Were you one of the bridge ladies who was in the house at the time?”

  “Yes, I was. It was most—distressing. That awful shriek of despair and then finding her lying there.”

  “But you didn’t hear anything earlier?”

  “That’s the strange thing. We didn’t. We were concentrating on the bridge game, of course. It could be that we were in the dining room, having stopped for refreshments when it happened. We were certainly there when Frank found her. Margaret wasn’t feeling too well, you know. She gets terrible migraines. She was dummy and she went upstairs to get herself one of her headache tablets. She told us to go ahead and help ourselves to food and wine when we’d finished the rubber. She was going to lie down for a few minutes. Then she was quite agitated when she came into the room. She said she couldn’t find her glasses and she’d be right back. Then we heard her awful scream, and we rushed to the front door and there was poor little Alison. Too horrible for words.”

  “And the dog didn’t bark at all?”

  She paused to think. “No, I can’t say that I heard the dog bark. But he was shut in the kitchen. Mary Richards is afraid of him, you know, so they keep him shut up when we come.”

  “Mary Richards, and presumably you had a fourth player?”

  “Yes. Jane Haversham.”

  “And where might I find them?”

  “The Richards are out in Langland—Brandy Cove Road. Jane Haversham is a neighbor of the Turnbulls, but they are away at their French cottage at the moment.”

  Evan hesitated, wanting to ask more questions but not sure what to ask. “Did you know Alison well?” he said at last.

  “Not well. She’s been away at school for the past four years, but I saw her from time to time.”

  “And how would you have described her?”

  She thought for a moment. “Typical teenager, I suppose you’d say. I know that she and Margaret had been clashing a lot lately. Margaret didn’t approve of the things Alison wanted to wear, the music she listened to—the sort of thing we’ve all been through in our time.” She smiled. “And of course it wasn’t made any easier because her father adored her and let her have her own way all the time. He thought the sun shone out of Alison’s head. Well, she was a lovely child, and sweet natured too, basically.” She frowned. “It was a horrible, horrible thing to do. It has shattered those people’s lives, as well as snuffing out a bright, hopeful little candle.”

  Chapter 17

  As soon as he left the vicarage, Evan drove straight to the Richards—one of the remaining bridge players the vicar’s wife had mentioned. She had given him the address willingly enough. “It’s worth exploring every avenue, isn’t it? No jury is going to be convinced if we can’t come up with good solid evidence, although I don’t think that Mary Richards’s testimony will be all that reliable. A bit of a waffler and prone to flights of fancy, if you know what I mean. So take anything she tells you with a grain of salt.”

  As it happened, Mary Richards didn’t tell him anything. There was nobody home except the daily woman. Mrs. Richards had, apparently, gone to Cardiff shopping, as she usually did on a Friday. Wouldn’t be home until evening and then they had theater tickets. So that would have to wait until tomorrow.

  The clock on the Guildhall chimed noon and reminded Evan that it would be diplomatic to go home for lunch. He had made the right decision, as his mother had prepared a lovely piece of smoked haddock with mashed potatoes and peas.

  “Fish on Friday,” she said, as she put the plate in front of him. “I hope that’s all right with you.”

  Evan smiled at the stubbornness of tradition. It had been fish on Friday ever since he could remember. Since the family had never been Catholic, he wondered where this self-imposed rule had come from. Probably from his grandmother and her mother before that, back to the time when everybody was Catholic, before Charles Wesley converted Wales. He didn’t find it a hardship to eat the moist, flaky fillet, dotted with melting butter, on his plate.

  “Just to warn you,” he said, when he had finished eating, “I’m going to fetch Bronwen some time over the weekend, so we might need to make up another bed again for a night or two. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be all right? Your intended is always welcome here, as you know. I thought it was a bit funny, myself, going off and leaving her alone in the first place. Your father and I always did everything together. None of this flitting in one direction and then another.”

  “Except for when he went to watch Swansea Town play football,” Evan reminded her.

  She smoothed d
own her apron. “Yes, well you wouldn’t want me standing among a lot of hooligans, would you?”

  After lunch Evan decided to tackle Penlan—the large council estate that sprawled, row after row of uniformly ugly houses, over one of the hills that flanked the town. He parked outside a row of shops, hoping that this gave his car less chance of being vandalized, then walked through the estate to Tony Mancini’s house. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to find up here, but he needed to get the feel of Tony’s life for himself. The houses were typical of postwar council developments—built in rows of eight, with brown pebble-dash exteriors that were now peeling and in urgent need of repair. The small front gardens were overgrown with weeds, or piled with old car parts, abandoned sofas, or bits of lumber. A place of little beauty and little hope, Evan thought. Occasionally he passed a garden whose owner had made an effort and created a tiny patch of beauty—a flower bed amid neat crazy paving, a birdbath surrounded by petunias, a small, well-mowed lawn, complete with two grumpy-looking garden gnomes.

  Tony’s mother had made no such effort. The front garden was concreted over, and a rusting Ford Fiesta with no wheels was propped up on bricks. The front gate almost came off in his hand. A woman came to the front door, cigarette in one hand. She was still wearing a dressing gown and slippers, her eyes bleary and her hair tangled from sleep. She eyed him suspiciously.

  “Yes? If you’re from the council about the drains, it’s about bloody time.” As she spoke Evan noticed she had a missing front tooth.

  “I’m not from the council, ma’am. I’m from the police,” Evan said.

  The eyes instantly became wary and hard. “Oh yes? He can’t have done anything this time because he’s safely behind bars.”

  “You’re Tony’s mum?”

  “No, I’m the bleeding Queen of England. What do you think?”

  “I’m trying to help Tony,” Evan said. “I don’t think he did it.”

  “Of course he bloody did it.” She spat out the words. “If he told you he didn’t, he’s lying. He’s tried to lie his way out of everything since he used to help himself to sweets from the jar. A born little liar, that’s what he is. So don’t waste your time, mate. Let him rot, for all I care. I’m done with him.”

  “But he was living here, until he got arrested?”

  “I suppose he was. Off and on. When he bothered to turn up, like. To tell you the truth, Sid was about to kick him out.”

  “Sid?”

  “My bloke. Couldn’t stand the sight of Tony. A good-for-nothing, that’s what Sid said. Said it made him sick.”

  Evan nodded. “Mrs. Mancini—you know Tony better than anyone. Did it surprise you to learn that he’d been arrested for rape and murder?”

  That made her stop and think for a moment. “Well, yeah, I suppose it did. Not the murder bit. I mean, he’d already shot a copper, hadn’t he, so that didn’t surprise me at all. But the rape bit—well, I would have said Tony was as crooked as a bent pin, but I wouldn’t have called him violent. I took him to see Bambi when he was a kid, and he cried all the way through it. Sid used to wonder if he was a fairy ’cos he never seemed to have girlfriends. No, I can see him helping himself to a girl’s handbag, but not to anything else she might have to offer.”

  “When he came home that night,” Evan went on, “how did he behave? As usual? Was he upset?”

  “He was hopping mad that the police had picked him up. ‘I was just minding my own f-ing business,’ pardon my language—that’s what he said. ‘He had no right. I’m going to tell my probation officer that they keep picking on me.’”

  “Thank you,” Evan said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Have I? I don’t want to be. The longer they keep him behind bars, the better, if you ask me. They should shut him away for life. Proper criminal mind, that’s what he’s got. Never did have a sense of right and wrong. It was always, will I get caught or won’t I? That’s how that type of person thinks, you know.”

  “So you had problems with him as a little boy, then?”

  “All his life. Well, he was too much for me to handle, wasn’t he? His dad walked out on us when he was still a toddler. He needed a firm hand. Sid’s been trying to take him in hand, but it’s too late now. He’s already bent.”

  Evan took a deep breath. “Well, thanks again, Mrs. Mancini.”

  “Ta ta, then. But I wouldn’t waste any more time on him, love. He’s not worth it.”

  She closed the door. Evan walked back down the front path. This time the gate did come away in his hand.

  He went back to the car, which was sitting there untouched, then cruised around Penlan. There were children playing in the streets, pushing dolls’ prams or kicking soccer balls. They looked up with hard, suspicious little faces as he passed. At last he found a group of boys sitting on the steps of a block of council flats. Evan got out of the car. The boys stared at him suspiciously, tense and ready for flight.

  “Can you blokes help me?” Evan called out, in the lilting singsong of the Swansea accent. “I’m looking for someone.”

  He approached them. “Any of you know a bloke called Jingo?”

  “Jingo? Jingo Roberts?” The boys were still eyeing him with great suspicion.

  “That’s right. Used to be a friend of Tony Mancini’s.”

  “What’s he done?”

  “He hasn’t done anything. I’m—I’m working with the solicitor who’s trying to help Tony, so he’s sent me to talk to his friends.”

  “Tony doesn’t belong to the gang anymore,” one of the smaller boys blurted out before he was elbowed in the ribs by a bigger boy. “Jingo doesn’t want him.”

  “I know that,” Evan said, “but I’d still like to speak to him. Any idea where I can find him?”

  “You’re trying to help Tony?” another of the boys asked.

  Evan nodded. “Maybe.”

  “Jingo says he did it,” the smallest boy said, moving out of the reach of another elbow. “Jingo says he’s dead meat if ever he gets out again.”

  “You think someone set Tony up, mister? Paid him back, like?” a serious boy of Indian descent asked.

  Now that was an interesting thought, Evan decided. Out of the mouth of babes! He straightened up. “Something like that. So where can I find Jingo at this time of day, do you think? Does he work?”

  For some reason this made them smirk.

  “Nah. Jingo don’t work. Don’t need to, does he?”

  “He lives with his mum. Thirty-four Conway Street,” the small boy said. Then he added quickly, “Don’t go hitting me again. I’m telling Dad. He could easily have found it out for himself, couldn’t he?”

  “Thanks.” Evan gave what he hoped was a friendly smile. Future gang members, he thought as he walked away. Were they destined to follow in Tony’s footsteps?

  Conway Street was near the top of the hill and afforded a lovely view out over the green valleys beyond. In other parts of the world people paid a high price for views like this. He wondered if anyone here appreciated it.

  A tired-looking woman opened the front door only wide enough to peer out.

  “Jingo isn’t home,” she said bluntly in response to Evan’s question.

  “Any idea where I can find him then?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not his secretary. He comes and goes as he pleases.”

  “I understand he doesn’t have a job at the moment.”

  “That’s right. On the dole again. Not much work to be had around here, is there? What did you want him for?”

  “I wanted to speak to him about Tony Mancini.”

  “That little shit? Jingo don’t want no more to do with him after what he did to that girl. He doesn’t approve of violence against women. I brought him up to respect women, see. You’ll not find my Jingo laying a hand on a girl.”

  “So when do you think I might find him at home?” Evan persisted.

  She shrugged again. “Like I said. He comes and goes as he pleases.”

  “Hey,
Ma. Do we have any more of those salty bacon crisps?” a voice shouted from a back room.

  “Well, what do you know?” Evan grinned. “He decided to come home, by the sound of it.”

  “You better get out here, love,” the woman called into the house. “There’s a man wants to talk to you about Tony.”

  The door opened wider, and a tall, bony young man with short, spiked red hair stood facing Evan. He had that very white skin that sometimes accompanies red hair, very light eyes, and the ring through his left eyebrow gave him a permanent frown. He was wearing tight black jeans and a muscle shirt, and he looked at Evan with an insolent sneer. “Copper, are you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Go on. Of course you are. I can tell one a mile off. Got a particular smell to them.”

  “I haven’t come to trade insults,” Evan said. “I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about Tony. You two used to be good mates once, right?”

  “Tony was in my gang. That’s not exactly the same thing. I told him what to do. He did it.”

  “Like shooting that policeman?” Evan couldn’t help the words from escaping and regretted them instantly.

  “He was holding the gun.” The insolent smile never faltered. “But the little shit tried to bring me into it in court, didn’t he? I’ve never forgiven him for that. Rangers don’t squeal on other Rangers, especially not on me.”

  “So you haven’t seen him recently.”

  “Not to talk to. No.”

  “So what do you think about this latest thing. Were you surprised?”

  Jingo shrugged. “I didn’t think he had it in him. I thought he was actually a timid little prick when it came down to it.”

  “He says he knew the girl. He met her clubbing. You never saw them together, did you?”

  “I wouldn’t know her from Adam, would I? And I don’t go clubbing. It’s for kids. You grow out of it, don’t you?” He moved toward Evan in a manner that Evan was supposed to find threatening. “Look, mate, I don’t know what you want from me, but I wouldn’t help Tony Mancini if he was about to fall off a mountain and I had the only rope.” He fixed Evan with a cold stare. “Got it? So bugger off.”