Money Can Kill

by Wonny Lea

  Dragging Jason behind her, Tina walked up the path towards the children’s park but decided against going into the area when she saw some of the women standing around and staring in her direction. Jason let out a howl as he was spun around and left in no doubt that he would not be swinging from the climbing frame any time soon.

  ‘I want to go to the park,’ he shouted. ‘I want to play with my friends, I don’t want to see the animals, I want to play with my friends.’

  ‘Shut up, Jason, just shut up. You can play with your friends in school. I’m not going to the park and that’s that. Just stop shouting before I give you something to shout about.’

  Tina was tall and thin to the point of looking gaunt and for every one of her strides Jason was forced to take five or six running steps and he pleaded to her to slow down.

  ‘You’re going too bloody fast,’ he told his mother.

  ‘Don’t you dare say bloody unless you want a smack across the face,’ replied Tina. ‘It’s a good job Miss Masters didn’t hear you swearing or you would really be for the high jump.’

  Tina suddenly stopped and gave Jason a big hug. ‘Look, Jase,’ she said. ‘It’s just you and me since we won the lottery, or at least until I find you a new dad. That lot back there are just jealous and it’s for the best that we don’t bother with them.’

  Jason looked horrified. ‘But I don’t want a new dad. Have I even got a dad? I didn’t know I had one. Have I got a dad?’

  Realising she had opened a can of worms Tina ignored her young son as she didn’t really want to be reminded of Jason’s biological father. As far as she knew he was totally unaware that Jason existed. She had registered her son’s birth using her own surname and told the registrar that she could give no information about his father. The registrar had assumed that this meant there were so many possibilities that Tina couldn’t decide who to name, but the reality was very different.

  Tina was not, and never had been, promiscuous. She knew exactly who had fathered Jason, and she still caught sight of him from time to time. There had been one occasion in the school yard when he had spoken to Jason and for a moment Tina had imagined that the light of recognition had flashed across his face, but it was unlikely he even remembered their brief sexual encounter.

  Jason had not stopped firing his questions. ‘Why haven’t I got a real dad? I want a dad like my friends. Molly-Anne has got two dads. One of them lives with her mother and one of them lives with another girl’s mother. They all go to the cinema together, I know ’cos Molly-Anne told me.’

  ‘What are you going on about?’ asked Tina.

  ‘She did tell me, I’m not telling fibs, she did tell me.’ Jason suddenly changed tactics and told his mother that he was starving and wanted to go to McDonalds.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Jason, there is no such thing as McDonalds here, and anyway we’ve brought sandwiches.’

  ‘I don’t like sandwiches. I want a burger and fries, not sandwiches.’ Jason sulked and plonked himself down on the path.

  ‘Get up,’ his mother shouted but he refused to budge and she walked on, thinking that he would soon get bored with sitting on his own and catch up with her. ‘If you sit there too long the pig-man will come and get you – and good riddance is what I would say.’ She called the words back over her shoulder. After a few minutes she stopped walking and waited to hear his footsteps running towards her but a few other children passed with their families and no sign of Jason.

  The families that were walking past were not from her son’s school and were all speaking Welsh so she did not feel able to ask them if they had passed Jason. She made her way back to the spot where he had been sitting but he was not there. She wasn’t worried as hide and seek was one of his favourite games and she began looking behind trees and over the walls of the circular dry-stone pigsty. ‘Jason,’ she shouted. ‘Jason, that’s enough now. I give in, I can’t find you, so you’ve won and if you like we can get some ice-cream.’

  Usually the very mention of ice-cream would see Jason running towards her but still nothing and now there were children from Jason’s school walking towards her so she confronted them.

  ‘Have you seen Jason? He was sitting on the path and must have decided to play hide and seek but he’s too good for me and I can’t find him.’

  ‘Mam, am I allowed to talk to Jason’s mam?’ asked the son of one of the women Tina had at one time considered to be her friend.

  ‘Best not or she’ll only think you’re after her money, like she thought your mother was.’ Smirking at another woman who was walking alongside her, Pam Woodland answered her son’s question, but now Tina was getting worried and so she ignored the intended insult.

  ‘Look, Pam,’ she said. ‘Forget about me and just answer the question. Have you seen Jason? He was sitting in this exact spot but now he’s nowhere to be seen and I’m getting concerned.’

  ‘Your concerns are no concerns of mine. I’ve got three boys to look after and I’ve managed not to lose one of them,’ retorted Pam. ‘We passed two of the teachers near the red farmhouse so I suggest you ask them.’

  Claire and Emma Locke were listening to the history of the Kennixton farmhouse, and how the owners had lived in the red-painted house and farmed the land in the Gower over the centuries. Like all the other historic buildings it had been relocated to the museum and was a terrific example of a particular way of life. Their interesting history lesson was interrupted as Tina ducked her head to enter the low doorway.

  ‘Have you seen Jason?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘I can’t find him anywhere.’

  A missing child was top of the list of incidents that must not happen on a school trip and only topped by the loss of more than one child, but it was never a permanent loss. Usually the child or children were being naughty and one of the other children could be persuaded to reveal their whereabouts. Nevertheless it was always a worrying time for the parents and teachers alike and Claire responded to the situation, treating the matter as serious from the outset.

  ‘OK, try to stay calm,’ she suggested. ‘I doubt he’s gone far; he’s probably gone to look for one of his friends. Mrs Locke, will you find the other four teachers and check if they’ve seen him, and I’ll go back with Jason’s mother to where she last saw Jason. We’re due to see the blacksmith in fifteen minutes, so I guess lots of the school will be on their way there and Jason’s possibly tagging along.

  ‘I also suggest you speak to the staff of the museum as this is probably not a rare occurrence and they may be able to suggest special hiding places that are used by children.’

  Even as Claire made the suggestion she was remembering what she had learned about St Fagans prior to the trip and especially the bit about it being set in a hundred acres of parkland. The boy could be anywhere, but she reined in her imagination, as she remembered that there were a hundred and sixty-two adults and children from Holly Road walking around, so someone would have seen him.

  His mother had lit up another Pall Mall, and her cheeks caved in as she sucked heavily on the cigarette as if her life depended upon it. As they returned to the spot where Tina had last seen her son they passed several of his classmates. The majority had come from the playground and were en route to watch the blacksmith bending some seriously hot iron, and no one had seen Jason.

  ‘He hasn’t come in this direction,’ said one of the dads. ‘I think young Carla here has a soft spot for him and she would have spotted him, wouldn’t you sweetheart?’ He grinned down at his daughter and she dealt him a swift kick on the shins accompanied by a load of cheek, but this seemed to amuse him all the more.

  Claire shook her head and wondered what her own father’s reaction would have been if, when at the age of six, she had kicked him and suggested that he was sick in the head. She was hardly in her dotage but she did believe that society as a whole had changed dramatically since her childhood.

  The two women walked around the area from where Jason had gone missing and, with renewed vigour, looke
d around every hedge, fence, tree, and wall. There was no sign of the boy and Claire was starting to get really worried. She was puzzled by the fact that there was a definite pathway along which Jason would have had to go, either forwards towards his mother or back in the direction of his classmates. It appeared that he hadn’t gone in either direction, so he must still be hiding somewhere – there was no other explanation.

  Both women made a beeline for the pigsty. There were no pigs in the enclosure, just an area enclosed by stone walls, with a gate that allowed access to a small area that was paved in stone and had a stone feeding trough. Claire had no idea if pigs were ever kept there, but today it all looked clean and there was nowhere here for anyone to hide. However there was the sty itself. There was a small opening into the actual circular sty, but it was dark inside and the area looked undisturbed. Although it was just possible that a small boy could have crawled inside, Tina said that Jason was terrified of the dark and didn’t like being stuck in small spaces, so there was no way he would hide in there.

  A number of others had now joined in the search for Jason and one of the dads jumped over the wall of the pigsty, and getting down on his hands and knees stuck his head into the low square opening at the bottom of the bee-hive shaped stone building.

  ‘It’s black as hell in there,’ he said ‘I can’t actually see a bloody thing, we would need a torch to be sure, but I can’t see a kid staying in there and I can’t hear a sound either.’

  No one had a torch but Tina handed him her cigarette lighter and he knelt back down to get a better look. After just a few seconds he confirmed that there was no one inside, and he scrambled back over the wall.

  At that moment they were joined by Mrs Locke and two of the museum staff, who were closely followed by the other four teachers. Claire smiled at the museum staff who introduced themselves as Andy Marsh and Clive Kane, and she asked if they had any ideas on how they should go about finding Jason.

  Clive said that he was the head grounds-man and knew every nook and cranny, and he tried to reassure Jason’s mother. ‘At least once a week we get a call to look for a missing child but it usually takes no more than ten minutes of our time, so don’t worry, we will soon find your son. Show me exactly where you left him and I’ll tell you all the possible places he could have made for from that point.’

  Tina gave the man a half-hearted smile and lit another cigarette. ‘He was exactly here,’ she pointed to the spot. ‘He was miffed because he didn’t want the sandwiches I brought, he was insisting on a McDonald’s happy meal, and so I just left him to sulk.’ Recalling her last words to Jason she started to cry and smudged her blue-black mascara across her cheeks. ‘I told him the pig-man would come to get him … but I didn’t mean it … I was only teasing.’

  Claire offered her a tissue from the seemingly endless supply that was available to primary school teachers, but Tina was now sobbing pitifully and thinking that the situation was getting out of hand. Clive Kane took control.

  ‘OK, let’s get the “find Jason” show on the road, and I suggest we look in groups, with each group headed by a teacher or one of the museum staff, so that will give us seven groups and we can each head off in a different direction. I want Miss Masters to stay here with Jason’s mother and I bet by the time we all get back Jason will be here with them.’ He gave each group an idea of the direction he wanted them to take and suggested that they just walk and look for ten minutes and then retrace their steps so that he could re-assess the situation.

  He turned to Tina. ‘Apart from Andy and me everyone knows what Jason looks like and will spot him a mile off, but if you describe him we will also know who to look out for.’

  ‘I can do better than that,’ sobbed Tina. ‘I took a picture of him on my phone this morning. We were standing in the drive waiting for the taxi to take us to the coach, and I made him stand next to the pool for me to take a photo.’

  Clive was surprised when he looked at the image on Tina’s phone not to find the kid’s paddling pool he had expected, but a beautifully designed patio area surrounding a state-of-the-art swimming pool.

  He focused on the boy standing awkwardly at the side of the pool and used the phone’s touch technology to enlarge the image of the boy and showed it to his colleague. ‘Is he still wearing these clothes?’ he asked Tina.

  She nodded and Clive took a fresh look at her. Because he had thought she looked a bit common, he had assumed that her clothes and jewellery were imitation but now he could see that his first impressions had been wrong. Although she completely lacked any style, there was no doubt that her designer labels and gold chains were the genuine article. He recalled the setting in which the child’s photograph had been taken and some uncomfortable thoughts registered in his mind.

  There appeared to be some serious money attached to this woman and so maybe her son’s disappearance was more sinister than a childhood prank. Maybe he had been snatched.

  Clive told himself to get a grip. This was Cardiff, not London or New York, and when kids went missing in St Fagans they were always found safe and well. Jason would be no different … would he?

  Chapter Two

  Hide and seek?

  DCI Martin Phelps stared up at the Victorian design of bunches of grapes and bold flowers etched into the ceiling of his office in Goleudy. It was good to be back. The past couple of months had taken him to some very dark places and caused him at times to doubt the very foundations of his profession, but the outcome had been worth the trauma.

  He had only been working outside his substantive role for three weeks, but it felt much longer than that and he was keen to get back to normal. Matt Pryor, his detective sergeant, had been acting as a DI in Martin’s absence and just lately he had wondered how Matt would feel about reverting back to being a DS.

  Rather than just let it happen Martin decided that a bit of social time together would ease the transition, and he knew that Matt was desperate to know the details of the Vincent Bowen case that Martin had been charged with re-investigating.

  Sacrificing a weekend at the cottage alone with his girlfriend Shelley was not something he had really wanted to do, but now it was not only weekends that Shelley spent at the cottage. She was spending more time with Martin in Llantwit Major than she was at the home she shared with her father, thanks to her dad’s new-found courage.

  For years Shelley’s father had been an insulin-dependent diabetic, but in spite of masses of encouragement from Shelley and the community nurses he had never been able to give his own insulin injections. It had always been Shelley’s responsibility to check his early morning blood sugar levels and adjust his insulin requirements according to the results. She had never minded doing this for her dad, as there had only been the two of them since Shelley’s mother had died of a malignant brain tumour almost twenty years ago. Her father Pete had been mother and father to Shelley, enlisting the help of his sister Fran for the ‘girlie bits’ of his daughter’s growing up. Shelley had only been a young teenager when her father’s diabetes became really unstable and needed to be kept under control by rigorous blood sugar tests, careful control of food intake, and appropriate adjustments to his insulin levels.

  Over the years the community nurses had been brilliant and were always available to give Shelley some time off but she knew that her father preferred her to give him his injections.

  Pete had watched his daughter grow into a beautiful young woman who looked so much like her mother, and who had also inherited her mother’s gentle but determined nature. She did well at school, got a 2:1 at Cardiff University, and then stayed on to get an MSc in Occupational Health. Throughout her university days she had lived at home, working every weekend and a couple of evenings a week to ensure a more comfortable financial state for herself and her father.

  In spite of his precarious health, Pete had held down a middle-management position as a finance officer in the NHS and had then taken early retirement with a reasonable pension. His position now was one whe
re he could stand alone financially but he could barely remember a time without his daughter and didn’t really want to. Although Shelley hadn’t been short of boyfriends there had never been anyone special until she had taken the job as head of training and development at the South Wales Police Headquarters, Goleudy, based in Cardiff Bay.

  The redbrick Victorian building had been purposely adapted to bring together all the elements needed for twenty-first-century police work. Until she had started working there she, like most members of the public, just thought it was a large police station, but had been amazed to discover just how many different facets of police work it facilitated.

  She had expected to see cells and interview rooms but not things like the state-of-the-art laboratories, post-mortem rooms, identification suites, specialist IT facilities, and above all she had been impressed by the way the various departments worked together.

  Her own domain was based on the second floor and comprised of one very large seminar room, several smaller discussion rooms, a couple of offices, and a good-sized cloakroom area. Since Shelley had been appointed the training programme had expanded and news of her own particular expertise in all matters relating to health and safety in occupational settings had spread to the rest of Wales and beyond. A participant on one of Shelley’s courses had commented in his written feedback that he wouldn’t have believed that it was possible to get so excited about H&S law and suggested that the course-leader’s enthusiasm should come with a government health warning.

  Although Shelley used IT effectively she neither knew nor wanted to know about the technical side of it and was delighted when she was introduced to Charlie Walsh, who headed up the IT department that was based on the same floor as Training. The two women soon became good friends and when Charlie had changed her surname to Griffiths, Shelley had been at the wedding.