Evanly Bodies

by Rhys Bowen

  And without waiting for an answer, he started to run.

  The quad at the top of the hill was strung with lights and packed with young bodies, some of whom were moving to the beat of a Celtic flute and drum in a primitive rhythm. Evan passed a booth selling mead and others selling Celtic jewelry and music CDs. Banners floated out in the wind. Students were wearing cloaks and strange head dresses. Some were dressed like Druids; some wore the Welsh tartan. A stage had been set up in the middle of the quad, and it was on this that the band was playing. The sign announced them to be CARREG LAFAR. As Evan approached, a young girl stepped up to the mike to start singing in a high sweet voice. Her hair floated out behind her in the brisk wind. The music had an ancient quality to it that added to the unreality Evan was feeling. He climbed up the steps at the side of the stage and scanned the crowd. A security man tugged at him.

  "Get down please, sir."

  "I'm a police officer," Evan said quietly to him. "And I'm looking for a young Pakistani man who could be dangerous. Have you see any Muslim men in the crowd?"

  "It wouldn't exactly be the right night for them, would it?" The security man asked. "Not at a Celtic folk festival." He looked amused.

  Evan's eyes continued scanning as the man spoke. Rashid shouldn't be that hard to pick out, not if he was wearing the traditional white robes. But then, if his plan was not to be noticed, he'd be dressed to blend into the crowd. Then he stiffened. He had spotted a glimpse of white in the midst of the sea of dancing figures. He noted the direction and came down from the stage. Painfully slowly, he maneuvered his way through the crowd. Hands grabbed at him. "Come and dance with us," one girl shouted, tugging at him. He managed to smile and shake himself free. "Spoilsport," she called after him in Welsh.

  He was now where the crowd was thickest, right at the center of the quad. He hadn't stopped to think what he would say to Rashid when he reached him, but he was driven on by a terrible feeling of urgency. If Rashid did indeed have some kind of bomb, he'd have to act with extreme caution. Rashid had proved himself a volatile enough man at the best of times. Then the crowd parted, and he saw a glimpse of the white leggings. His hunch had been right. He was there . . . and he was wearing a backpack. Evan knew very little about homemade bombs. He wasn't sure what Rashid would have to do to detonate an explosive device currently carried on his back. Wouldn't he have to take it off and set the timer first? That was Evan's hope as he inched nearer, hoping to advance on Rashid from his blind side. If he merely had to push some kind of detonator button whenever he wanted, then Evan's own chances weren't too good. Neither were those of those fresh-faced, laughing kids around him.

  He felt cold beads of sweat running down the back of his neck. It was becoming harder to breathe. At the last minute a group of kids in front of him joined hands and swung into a jiglike dance, laughing crazily. They broke apart and Evan found himself looking directly into Rashid's face. He saw a whole gamut of emotions flicker across that face-surprise, then fear and hate. It only took Rashid a second to register who Evan was, then instantly he turned and pushed his way through the crowd. At least he didn't have a detonator switch in his hand. Evan breathed a sigh of relief and gave chase.

  "Rashid, wait," he shouted. The music seemed to have risen in intensity with the throb of a drum competing with the sounds of violins and pipes. "Stay away from me," Rashid shouted back and kept on moving. Evan caught up with him and grabbed his arm. "Rashid, slow down. We need to talk."

  "What have you done with my sister?" Rashid shouted. "Where is Jamila? What right do you have to take my sister away? Just who do you think you are?"

  "I did nothing," Evan said. "My wife did nothing. It was Jamila herself who ran away. Now calm down and let's talk about this sensibly."

  "Talk sensibly, you say? When did we ever get a fair deal from your sort? You despise us just as much as we despise you. Well, you're going to see. You're going to be sorry when the wrath of Allah falls upon you. Then you'll see who has the real strength, who has the real power."

  He started to wrestle with his backpack, trying to take it off, shaking himself free of Evan. "Say your prayers, Copper." He spat out the words.

  "Rashid, your parents are here. They are worried about you. Don't do anything stupid."

  "Stupid? You call me stupid? It is you who are stupid because you are standing close to me. My parents will be proud of me. I am a martyr. A glorious martyr."

  "Is that what they tell you?" Evan asked quietly. "Kill a lot of innocent kids and you go straight to Paradise? What kind of God would praise that kind of behavior? Do you think your parents want you blown to pieces? Do you think this will make them proud of you? This is a civilized country, and this isn't the way."

  "Civilized?" Rashid almost spat the word. "You call this civilized? Pornography and cheating and blatant sex-then your definition of civilized and mine aren't the same. These people do not deserve to live."

  The backpack slipped from his shoulder, and Rashid swung it to himself so that he was hugging it. Evan made a supreme effort and wrenched it out of his arms. He turned and ran with it, not knowing in which direction he was running, only hoping to get out of the thick of the crowd. Rashid clawed at him like a madman. In a way it reminded Evan of all those rugby games he had played, when he had run down the pitch with opposition team members trying to bring him down. He made it to the edge of the crowd and paused to catch his breath. Down the hill he picked out the shapes of Mr. and Mrs. Khan, making their way up toward him.

  "Rashid!" Mrs. Khan shouted out. "Rashid, come and talk to your mummy. Let us talk quietly, Rashid. Enough of this nonsense."

  "Nonsense?" Rashid screamed. Without warning he punched Evan in the face, snatched the backpack from him, turned and ran with it, back up the hill toward the crowd. Suddenly he stumbled on a slippery rock and went sprawling forward. There was a blinding flash, a boom, and Evan found himself being hurled backward with all the air sucked out of him.

  "Rashid!" Mrs. Khan screamed again. Evan picked himself up, his eyes watering, his nose full of the acrid smell of gunpowder. He looked at where Rashid had been and then looked away, sickened. He picked his way back down the hill where the Khans were standing with Bronwen, openmouthed and horror-struck, behind them.

  "I tried to reason with him," Evan said. "I managed to get him out of the middle of the crowd. I even got the backpack away from him, but this was something he really wanted to do."

  "My boy, my son," Mrs. Khan was still screaming, rocking back and forth in an orgy of grief.

  Mr. Khan looked at Evan. "I suppose you think you're some kind of hero now, don't you? First you take my daughter from me and now my son. My only son. My bright, beautiful boy. . . ."

  And with that he broke down into noisy sobs. His wife put her arms around him, and they stood clinging and swaying together, overwhelmed by their misery. Bronwen came over and slipped her hand into Evan's. "You did what you could," she said.

  Evan stared hopelessly up at the site where Rashid's body was not even recognizable as a human being. "But it wasn't enough," he said. "That's the problem, isn't it? You try your best, but it's not always enough."

  Bronwen squeezed his hand. "You were very brave to have tackled him like that. Brave and stupid, if you want my opinion. I don't want to be a young widow, you know."

  Evan looked down at her and managed a smile. "I couldn't let him detonate that thing among all those kids, could I?"

  "No, you couldn't. But there are times when I wish you weren't such a bloody Boy Scout."

  Chapter 28

  "Would you take a look at this!" Bronwen looked up from the Daily Post, her eyes glaring with indignation. "Of all the cheek, Evan."

  "What?" Evan was enjoying a day off and a real Welsh breakfast, neither of which happened often anymore.

  "Bloody Inspector Bragg," Bronwen said. "Talk about aptly named! A whole big article about how he solved the murders single-handedly, and his stupid face grinning from a picture. He's taking all t
he glory for himself. Listen to this: 'I saw the wives as the primary suspects from the beginning, and it was just a question of finding the link between them. Luckily one of my team stumbled upon that link at a women's shelter.' He doesn't even name you by name, Evan."

  Evan smiled as he went back to his sausage. "That doesn't worry me, love. Let him get the glory if he wants it, although personally I can't see how anyone with any feeling could get any satisfaction from solving this case."

  Bronwen nodded. "Those poor women. I feel terrible for them. Evan, when we get a second car, would you mind if I signed on as a volunteer at that shelter?"

  "You do what you want to, love," Evan said. "It's your life. You don't need my permission to do anything, you know that. I'm not about to turn into a domineering bully like those men."

  Bronwen came over and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. "That's lucky because I don't think I'm the type who would stand for bullying. Although who can say? Those women might have started off as brave and confident and just been gradually worn down by years of abuse."

  "And we've seen for ourselves that sometimes women try to be brave and stand up for themselves, and it pushes some men over the edge. Jamila was lucky to escape with her life."

  Bronwen rested her cheek against his. "It sounds terrible, but in a way I'm glad that Rashid was killed. Now at least she can come back to her parents, and I don't think they'll be in a hurry to let go of her again."

  "I wonder what the Khans will do now?" Evan asked. "They idolized that boy."

  "What can they do? Go on with their lives without him."

  But the corner grocery store stayed locked and shut the next day and the day after. Mrs. Williams, basket over her arm and needing some custard powder in a hurry, arrived to find the shop in darkness and the door locked and had some unkind things to say about unreliable foreigners.

  "Probably yet another of their heathen feast days, I shouldn't wonder," Mrs. Powell-Jones commented, when she came across a very irate Mrs. Williams standing at the bus stop.

  Thanks to tight police security, the nature of Rashid's real intention had not been allowed to leak out, and for once the Llanfair underground telegraph system had not picked up the true story right away. Of the other young men in the house, two maintained complete ignorance about Rashid's true intentions and his building of a bomb. The third, the one who visited Pakistan frequently, had vanished by the time the police arrived back at the house with a warrant.

  But snippets of news of the Khan's tragedy eventually filtered through to the villagers, and there were mixed feelings in the Red Dragon.

  "Nothing but trouble, didn't I say it from the first?" Charlie Hopkins stated. "We'd have had a terrorist cell in the village, you mark my words."

  "I suppose they'll be moving away again now," Barry the Bucket said. "They won't want to stick around here after a tragedy like that."

  "Good riddance, I say," came muttered from a corner.

  But the women did not reflect their attitudes.

  "I hope they're not thinking of moving out and shutting up shop," Mair Hopkins said to Charlie. "Just when I've become used to having eggs and baked beans on the doorstep again and not having to ride in that drafty old bus. I tell you, Charlie, if they go, you're going to have to buy me a car and teach me to drive. I'm sixty-nine years old and I've had enough of waiting in bus queues."

  It was Mrs. Williams who first showed up on the Khan's doorstep with a big pot of soup and a bara brith. "I thought you might not feel like cooking much," she said. "I'm not sure which meats you're allowed to eat, but that soup was made with good Welsh lamb and I'm sure that's not against anybody's religion."

  Mrs. Khan managed a smile. "You're most kind," she said. "Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?"

  Other women followed suit, and by the end of the next week Jamila had come home and the shop had opened again.

  "I suppose one can say that occasionally good things do come out of tragedy," Bronwen said to Evan as they walked together up the track to their cottage. "I think the women showing up on the Khan's doorstep with food like that really touched their hearts. Maybe it will lead to better understanding."

  Evan smiled at her. "If it leads to the Welsh welcoming foreigners, it will be a bloody miracle," he said, and looked back fondly at the village nestled below, bathed in afternoon sunshine.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Table of Contents

  Glossary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28