by Roy Lewis
‘I would really have preferred to stay in the valley,’ Crow replied, much against his inclinations. It was not that he preferred the valley so much as his being placed in Cardiff suggested he was being located at one remove from the centre of operations. ‘Emergencies can arise, and it’s likely I will be working until late on occasions. Is there no place. . .’
‘I think not,’ the Chief Constable said. His eyes were blank, regarding the suggestion as an unwelcome one. ‘Nothing suitable. You’ll be better off in Cardiff. A car will be made available to you. No trouble.’
No one else spoke. Crow looked around him and sensed a certain hostility. It was not new to him. Many local officers resented the intrusion of the Murder Squad; it was like saying the local detectives were not good enough to do the job. It was often an unpopular decision. But that was none of his business. It was local politics. He had to work with these people; in time their reserve and closeness might disappear. He nodded his head.
‘All right. I’ll accept your advice. Now my brief—’
‘We discussed it at length with the Home Office,’ the Chief Constable said brusquely, but smiling a false smile. ‘We’ve thought that in the circumstances we’d like to use you, drain you dry, if you like, ha, ha! We’re in a difficult position, you see. Our local force could probably handle matters, but the time element is against us. And your expertise and experience will be useful. But valley people are funny people, and I speak as one who knows them. It’s a close, inbred community. It doesn’t take kindly to outsiders — and even a Cardiff man is an outsider. It’s true many people work in Cardiff, commute to and from the valley — but the Rhondda is self-sufficient. And a Murder Squad man, well, you can imagine, can’t you?’
‘Might get less than co-operation,’ Crow said quietly. ‘I understand the position perfectly.’
His tone also made it clear he did not agree with it. Stiffly, the Chief Constable said, ‘The team has been introduced to you now, anyway. We can make a start once you’ve been given all the details we have.’
‘I’d like an officer who could be detailed to work with me,’ Crow said. ‘A detective-sergeant—’
‘Detective-Inspector Jones will act,’ the Chief Constable said flatly.
Crow almost smiled. These people were pulling no punches. A sergeant, they felt, would have to take too many orders, so give Crow an inspector, a man with some initiative and we can ensure that we remain in control of the situation. The senior officers can go about their business, Crow can supervise and co-ordinate and overlook and advise but he won’t be able to control.
* * *
Detective-Inspector Jones. A big man, tall as Crow but running to bulk where Crow remained lean and bony. They’d make a fine pair, physically. He saw the same thought in Jones’s eyes and immediately decided he could do worse than work with this man. Jones at least had the capacity to observe himself as well as others and had a sense of humour for all that his brown eyes were as sad as a spaniel’s.
‘Perhaps you could put me in the picture?’ Crow said to Dewi Jones.
The knuckles of Jones’s right hand were knobbly with old breaks. He sucked at them thoughtfully as with his left hand he extracted the folder from the filing cabinet and handed it to Crow.
‘That’s about all we’ve got so far. The Chief Superintendent has already organised a massive enquiry, door to door, throughout the area and he’ll feed in any results once they’ve been sifted. Chief Inspector Brown is co-ordinating the lab work and as soon as they come up with anything new he’ll let us know—’
‘I gather it isn’t an easy task they have at the lab,’ Crow said.
Jones inspected his knuckles and grimaced.
‘They haven’t. Thing is, the body was down in that shaft for some time. . .the rate of decomposition wasn’t high apparently because of the atmosphere or something, but rats had got at the body for sure and there’s a few bits missing after the minor falls when they were trying to get the body out. Nothing vital, like, but it’s meant some initial difficulties for the pathologists.’ He shook his head. ‘It certainly gave Dai Chippo a bad turn. Anyway, all the details of what we’ve got are in there, sir.’
Crow sat down in the chair beside the window. It had stopped raining and the evening streets were shining damply. He pushed the file across the table.
‘I’ll take that with me to my hotel. I can go through the details later. I’d rather have you tell me about it first.’ When Jones looked surprised, Crow added, ‘You’ll be able to give me facts, but you’ll also give me impressions the file won’t contain. I can learn things more quickly from your account than from the file.’ And, he failed to add, I can learn more about you, Inspector Jones, and that’s no bad thing, if we’re to work together.
Jones perched himself on the edge of the desk and placed one broad hand on the file. He frowned at it for a moment, marshalling his thoughts.
‘Well, what we have so far is this. The body is that of a woman of about thirty years of age. She was well dressed, not too flashy or expensive, but well dressed. She knew what she was about. A few items of a personal nature were missing – handbag, purse, keys and so on, but in the main her clothing, apart from shoes, seems to have been complete. Certainly she had not been subjected to sexual assault, and her underclothes were intact. From the state of her legs and coat we are assuming she was dragged along towards the shaft — there were some splinters of wood in her thigh and the lab boys have a few other items, dirt, rust and so on — but we can’t be positive about all this because she could have picked all these things up down there on the rubble.’
‘Was she dead before she ended up in the shaft?’
‘Dead, or unconscious. The cause of death was probably strangulation, although her neck is also broken — possibly by the fall. When she was pushed through into the shaft — a piece of timber was removed, incidentally, and then replaced after she dropped — she fell straight to the first level, struck the platform there and rolled into the level itself. That’s where Dai Chippo found her.’
Crow nodded thoughtfully.
‘So you’re working on the assumption that the shaft was merely a hiding place for the body, not the method of murder.’
‘That’s it, sir. And a bloody good place it would have been too, but for that fall at the first level. If she’d have gone straight down we’d never have found her.’
‘Nor, presumably, would you have found her if the dog had not been lost.’
Dewi Jones agreed.
‘All right,’ Crow said. ‘The next and obvious question is. . .who was she?’
Jones looked as doubtful as a hesitant virgin, his sad eyes wide and serious.
‘A good question, sir. And we’ve got no answer yet. What we do know is, she wasn’t local.’
‘On what do you base that assumption?’
‘Well, first of all we’ve been through the missing persons files for the Rhondda and there’s no one missing who would be answering the description we got of her: about thirty, brunette, about eight stone, blue eyes, good teeth, married, five foot three in height—no, there’s no one we’ve heard of who fits that description.’
‘You said she was married?’
‘Wedding ring.’
‘Mmm. All right, so there’s no one in the files.’
‘Another thing,’ Jones said, ‘is that her clothes aren’t local. At least, most of them aren’t. Her tights and bra were bought in Cardiff, we’re pretty sure of that, even though we can’t trace the actual purchase date, of course But her topcoat, a pretty bright affair, brown and white, it was bought in a store called Binns in Middlesbrough.’
‘So she might have come from the north-east?’
‘Or been there shortly before she died. Anyway, the Chief Super is working on that assumption, and he’s started to make enquiries up there.’
‘He’s been busy,’ Crow said drily.
Jones allowed a slight smile to touch his lips. ‘We got to show we’re as effi
cient as the Murder Squad, sir.’
‘You seem to need little advice. I begin to wonder why I’m here.’
Jones hesitated, then grinned. ‘You’re having me on, sir. You know as well as I do that all this is preliminary stuff. We have a long way to go even when we know who she is. This all happened months ago, trails are cold as ice and chances are we’ll never find out who it was done her in. At least, we know we won’t work it out — but you might.’
‘You mean you might, if the Murder Squad advises you.’
Crow was sorry he said it, as soon as the words were out. He tried to remove the bite of discontent from the words, surrounding them with a smile, but Jones was not easily fooled. Nor was he one to close up, as those others would have done.
‘It’ll work out, sir.’
‘I’m sure,’ Crow said briskly. ‘Still, you say the body was in the shaft for some time.’
‘We think she went in on the sixth of June, sir.’
Crow raised his heavy eyebrows. ‘As precise as that?’
‘There was the return stub of a train ticket in the pocket of her coat. It was bought on the sixth of June — we’ve checked it out. She came up from Cardiff on that day. She never went back.’
‘Day return ticket?’
‘That’s it, sir.’
Crow folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. ‘So this woman, who might have come from the Middlesbrough area, turns up in Cardiff, buys a day return ticket to—’
‘Ystrad Rhondda.’
‘Gets off the train, and never goes back. Instead, she ends up down a mine shaft. All right, what questions do we need to find answers to, Inspector?’
Jones grinned. ‘You want my advice, sir?’
‘Only to see if it accords with mine, of course.’
Jones laughed, and his sad eyes were crinkled at the corners with pleasure. ‘Well, as I see it, sir, we have several questions that need answering. First, who was she? Second, why did she come to the Rhondda? Third, who did she meet here? Once we have those answers, we can really start work.’
‘There is one question you missed,’ Crow said.
‘Sir ?’
‘How long she stayed in the valley before she died.’ Crow rose, walked to the window, peered out at the damp streets. His reflection seemed to peer back at him, the bald dome of a head, deep-shadowed eyes, a death’s head mirrored against a dark rainy background.
‘She had a day ticket, and maybe she didn’t return because she was dead. There could have been other reasons for not returning. We don’t know she died on the sixth. So we need to find out how long she stayed in the valley.’
He turned his head, looked at Jones.
‘Alive.’
* * *
He had Tuesday afternoon and evening clear, and everyone knew the pattern — it was worked out with the other fish-fryers in the valley on a rota basis, even though the thought of anyone’s trade being more than purely local was laughable. It gave them a feeling of togetherness, in any case; even a feeling of offering a service of a professional nature, like doctors and dentists, if they worked on a rota. And it suited Dai to have Tuesday afternoon off. It was a good day, in more ways than one. Other shops closed on Wednesdays. And men who might take a Monday off because of a beery weekend, or a Friday off in anticipation of one, would always work on a Tuesday. So it was a good day.
This particular Tuesday was a bright sunny day, and there was a promise of a late heat wave, but Dai was somewhat morose. To start with, Margaret had played hell with him last night because he hadn’t left his underclothes where they should have been left for the wash. Unlike every other woman in the valley she washed on Tuesday mornings, not Mondays. There’s perverse. And then she had decided not to go down to Pontypridd for her usual shopping expedition. The mountain wasn’t the same without Gyp, so it had to be the Club – and Charlie Dick, his usual snooker opponent, was in bed with a broken leg. Playing football for the Wednesday League last week. So Dai left the Club early and walked down through Pentre about four in the afternoon, feeling pretty miserable.
It was only to pass the time, before going back into the shop premises and Margaret that he stopped to speak to Martin Evans as he got out of his car.
Dai didn’t know Martin Evans very well, which was surprising since Dai knew most of the people in Pentre. But there were a number of reasons for this. To begin with, Martin Evans wasn’t a local man. He had come to the valley several years previously and bought out Old Man Enoch who had all but done for the long-established estate agency of Enoch and Morgan, on the hill opposite Dai. It had picked up when Martin Evans took it over, not a great deal, because Evans certainly wasn’t a go-ahead businessman. He seemed to keep himself very much to himself, for a Welsh Canadian, or American, or whatever he was. But the fact he wasn’t truly local was one reason why Dai didn’t know him too well.
A second reason was Martin Evans’s reticence. He was not inclined towards small talk, he wasn’t a member of any of the Clubs, he lived a bachelor existence in a well-appointed house in Ton and was looked after by a housekeeper called Maureen McCarthy who was sixty-three, fourteen stone and as exciting as a lump of sour dough. If Dai ever had need for a housekeeper, it wouldn’t be her kind he’d look for! So Martin Evans was probably queer, Dai had decided long ago.
Indeed, he had also decided that in sheer business terms it was probably Ceinwen Williams who kept the estate agency on its feet. Martin Evans made few business contacts but Ceinwen was well enough known. She was small and slim, rather shy, nervous — too nervous for Dai who liked a bit of life in his women — but good-looking in her own way. If he had been in Martin Evans’s shoes Dai would have thought of marriage to Ceinwen — would probably have been forced into it! After all, Ceinwen had come to work for Martin, travelling every day the three miles from Treorchy, soon after he took over the business. Martin in his bachelor house in Ton, Ceinwen living with her grandmother in Treorchy, meeting every day in the office, working there, saying good night at five-thirty and going their separate ways . . . Evans had never even been known to take her home, not even when it was raining. He must be queer.
But for some reason, this particular Tuesday, he was not averse to conversation.
‘Hello, Martin,’ Dai said.
‘Hello’, Martin Evans said, and stood with one elbow on the open car door, looking at Dai. ‘How’s business?’
He had a curious accent. His voice was deep and resonant and he had the flat vowel sounds that one heard throughout the valley, but his North American accent was like a bad imitation of an amateur actor playing in Death of a Salesman. Like that production in the Workmen’s Hall Theatre. Dai was never sure whether Martin Evans tried to affect a ‘transatlantic’ accent but failed to hide his Welsh vowel sounds, or had transplanted those vowel sounds on to his real American accent in an attempt to communicate adequately. It wasn’t something you could ask a man.
‘Business, like always,’ Dai said, ‘is up and down. And you?’
‘Usual.’ Evans said in a non-committal tone. ‘You . . . you’ve had a fair number of people buzzing around this last week, though.’
‘Huh, it’s information they’ve been after, not chips.’
Martin Evans closed the door of the car. ‘About the body in the pit?’
‘What else? It’s natural, I suppose, but all I want to do is forget about it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind talking about it because, well, you’ve not been like all the others, you didn’t come chasing around and goggling and all that, like. Your reasons for asking will be different – not bloody curiosity. I suppose you’ll be wondering yourself if you ever saw her?’
Martin Evans was not an outgoing person; his emotions were not reflected in his face. He had grey eyes that held a distant look; he rarely smiled, though when he did it seemed to transform his serious visage and make him seem charming; and the passivity of his craggy features lent weight to his general air of withdrawal. Yet Dai felt something was ha
ppening to Martin Evans; in some way he had been affected by Dai’s last words.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said after a moment. ‘How do you think I might have seen her?’
Dai shrugged, watching those cool grey eyes with care. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that the back of your premises, where you got your own office, it looks out on to the hillside doesn’t it? And from there you’d get a view of anyone walking up towards the Bwylffa. It just occurred to me you might have wondered whether you’d actually ever seen the dead woman, walking up there, I mean.’
A smile notable for its control appeared on Martin Evans’s face. He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t even know whether it was the same woman, would I, even if I’d seen any woman up there. The police have issued no description. In fact, they’ve been pretty close about the whole thing.’
‘That’s because they haven’t got much to work on. But they have issued a general description — and described what she was wearing. Didn’t they come around to ask you if you’d seen her?’
Martin Evans shrugged, looked casually around him as though seeking some way of avoiding the question. ‘They came and they asked. But I told them I don’t spend my time in the office staring out of the back window. And I go home to Ton in the evenings. So I saw no woman walking up towards the Bwylffa.’
‘Nor in the street? In her brown and white coat?’
Evans’s grey eyes held a hint of calculation as they stared at Dai Chippo. ‘You seem well informed on her dress.’
‘I found her down the Pit, remember?’
Evans considered carefully before replying. ‘This woman . . . when was it she was supposed to be around here in Pentre?’
‘June.’
Coldly, Evans said, ‘I can’t even remember if I saw you in the street in June, let alone a . . . stranger.’
The pause was an odd one. It was as though Martin Evans had considered the word, almost rejected it in seeking a better one, but had been forced to employ it. And had employed it unwillingly.’