Evan can Wait: A Constable Evans Mystery (20 page)

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Authors: Rhys Bowen

BOOK: Evan can Wait: A Constable Evans Mystery
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“If you want to give her a present, go to Mr. Jones-the-Cloth and get a yard or two of his best flannel, so that she can make her skirts a decent length,” she said. There was nothing for it. I had to stop painting.
The next few weeks I was a bag of nerves. Every day at the mine, I expected to hear that there had been a break-in. Every night I expected to hear hammering on the front door as the police came to take me away. But as the weeks passed, and nothing happened, I began to relax. Now that I was aware of it, the security was really not too hot. I could have taken a whole lot more paintings if I’d put my mind to it.
I might tell you I was very tempted to sneak back into the shed and take another painting instead of the one I’d got. I must have picked the bloody hardest painting in the whole National Gallery
to copy. As Ginger had said, it was dark and gloomy, but the gloom had such shape and texture to it that the figures became part of the darkness. I just didn’t have paints in my palette to even attempt those shades of darkness. I suppose they must have all been in Rembrandt’s head.
But I kept working at it, every time I had a spare moment. When my parents were out at one of their many chapel meetings, I even painted in my room. I kept the window open and smoked cigarettes all the time to hide the smell. Bit by bit, a fairish copy came into being—nothing like the quality of the original, mind you, but you could tell what painting it was meant to be.
Finally, by March, it was finished. I took it outside and looked at it in the bright light. It was a passable imitation at best. But Ginger was very impressed.
“It’s just like the real thing, Tref. It’s lovely, just. I’m very proud of you. One day when we’re in Hollywood, I’ll let you paint the walls in my mansion and everyone will want one of your paintings. You’ll probably be more famous as a painter than I will as a film star.”
I laughed. “Get away with you. Such big ideas.”
She started dancing around. “But we have our ticket out of here now. Don’t you see? All we have to do is wait for this stupid war to end and then we’re away from this place for good.”
But the stupid war didn’t look as if it was going to end soon. The news on the radio was never good. More cities bombed, the London docks set on fire, our troops battling Rommel in the African desert. More telegrams bearing bad news to cottages in Blenau. My own time was getting closer. I tried not to think about it. I tried not to think about the painting and the row there would be when they discovered my copy. I tried not to think about Ginger with all those servicemen all day. The trouble was that I was working alone down a dark mine most of my life and all you do down there is think.
The rain had eased slightly by the time the train returned, its piercing whistle echoing from clouddraped crags and invisible valleys. Evan stood impatiently behind the engine driver all the way down to Porthmadog, listening to the old man sounding off about hooligans and day trippers who ripped his seats to pieces and even tried to scratch their initials on the polished flanks of his beloved engines.
When the train finally stopped, the old man shook his hand. “Nice to have a bit of company for a change, I must say,” he said. “Sorry if it was a wasted ride for you, but I enjoyed it. Like I said—your man was leaning too far out as we went around a bend. Lucky to be alive, if you ask me. We’ve had cameras and handbags and kiddies’ dolls fall out before now and they usually end up a thousand feet below.”
Evan decided not to tell him that Grantley hadn’t been so lucky the second time around. He waited until the old man had gone back into the cafeteria before he tested his theory on the railway carriage. It worked exactly as he had thought.
His mind was racing as he made his way across the car park to his car. If Howard Bauer really had engineered Grantley’s death—why did he do it? Grantley and Howard had supposedly hardly known each other. Grantley had been Howard’s intern in
the hopes of learning more about the business. Howard had agreed to direct this movie to do Grantley a favor. There was something wrong with the story, but Evan wasn’t sure how he was going to find out what it was. Were Howard and Grantley connected in another way altogether? Was this another gay relationship gone sour? And yet Howard had mentioned multiple wives and alimony complaints. Gay men married, but did they marry several times? So could it be something to do with drugs? Howard had asked if Grantley’s death was an overdose. Had he suspected that Grantley abused some kind of substance? Was he somehow linked in a chain of supplier, pusher, user?
Evan shook his head. There was no way he could pursue a broader inquiry like this without getting into serious trouble. He’d have to hand over the piece of folded paper to Sergeant Watkins and let him follow up on it while Evan went back to the village and Mrs. Powell-Jones.
Damn. He slammed the car door behind him, none too gently.
“You are feeling sorry for yourself, aren’t you, boyo?” he said out loud. “Must be the weather. And the important thing is that the killer is found. It doesn’t matter one bloody bit who finds him.” Having given himself this pep talk, he drove out of the car park and through the center of Porthmadog. The High Street was lacking its normal bustle, due to the rain. Women with head scarves, plastic macs, and shopping bags darted across the street and into the shelter of another shop, sometimes dragging reluctant toddlers behind them. Suddenly, another figure came out of the post office, stopped to turn up his collar and jam his beret more firmly onto his head before he walked out into the storm.
Without a second’s hesitation, Evan pulled over to the curb and wound down a window. “Hello, Howard. Going somewhere? Like a lift?”
Howard Bauer’s face lit up in recognition. “Are you driving back to the village? Boy, what a stroke of luck. I thought I’d have to wait for a bus.”
He opened the passenger door and climbed in. “Filthy weather. Is it often like this?”
“Most of the time,” Evan said. He grinned as he put the car into gear. “So what were you doing in Porthmadog?”
“I got a little stir-crazy up there,” Howard said. “I mean, it’s a nice place, that Everest Inn, but dead—like a morgue. So when the bellhop said he was driving down to Porthmadog, I asked if I could ride along. Not that there’s anything down here, is there?”
“What were you hoping for?” Evan asked.
“I don’t know. Movie theater? Internet café?”
“There are movie theaters in Bangor and Colwyn Bay, but I don’t think there’s an Internet café anywhere in North Wales yet.”
“Too bad. My damn roving feature won’t work for some reason. I’ve been without e-mail since I got here. It’s driving me mad, not being connected to the outside world.” He looked at Evan. “How can you stand it, cooped up in a dump like this?”
“Most of the time I stand it pretty well,” Evan said. “I don’t feel cooped up. Just sometimes.”
Howard shook his head. “I’m an L.A. kind of guy. I’m lost without my car and my freedom. How much longer do you think we’ll have to stick around here? I’d just as soon scrap the whole damn project and go home. It was Grantley’s thing after all, not mine.”
“Until you’re ruled out as a suspect, I should think,” Evan said, trying to sense some reaction from the man beside him. Be sensible, he told himself. If you are sitting beside a man who has killed, you’re at a distinct disadvantage. You have two hands on the wheel and a winding road to contend with. And if he really did kill Grantley, then he has to be damned strong.
Evan glanced at Howard’s hands. They were artistic, with long, white fingers. There was a signet ring on his little finger. His nails were immaculate. Were those the hands of a strangler? He forced himself to take long, deep breaths. Play it easy. Don’t
jeopardize the investigation by shooting your mouth off, boyo. But he was bursting with curiosity. Howard Bauer just didn’t add up. Were those the hands of a man who enjoyed roughing it in the African bush? Who was famed for his tough documentaries of tribal warfare?
The road had passed through the last of the coastal settlements and was entering the narrow pass where the river Glaslyn flowed between tall cliffs. It was usually a somber place. Today, with the rain dripping from oak trees and running down the walls of rock, it felt overwhelmingly melancholy.
“So what were you doing down here today?” Howard asked pleasantly. “Getting some shopping done on your day off?”
“No, I went for a train ride,” Evan said. “You know, the little train up the mountain. The driver is an old friend of mine. I like keeping him company from time to time, especially on days like this when he has no passengers. He was glad of company today, I can tell you. Showed me exactly where that accident happened—you know, when Grantley fell out of the train. Lucky, wasn’t he? A few more inches to the right, and he’d have been a goner.”
He turned to look at Howard. The latter’s face was ashen. “Yeah. Damned lucky,” he said.
“My friend the engine driver reckoned there was something fishy about the whole thing. He says he’s never known a door to come flying open like that before. But I think I have to disagree with him. Some of those catches don’t really lock properly unless you slam them really hard—and if something was wedged into the lock—something as simple as a piece of paper … .” He glanced at Howard again. “I notice you’re not carrying your pad with you today, Howard. Don’t you need to make any more notes, or is it all used up?”
A big shuddering sigh went through Howard Bauer. “Oh my God. You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?”
“About Grantley falling out of that train. I never really
thought—I mean, it was just a crazy idea. I don’t know what made me do it. I never thought it would really work and then it did. He came flying out, like a rag doll. Oh my God!”
They emerged from the gloom of the pass. The village of Beddgelert was ahead of them. Evan began to breathe more easily. Here was potential help if needed.
“Why did you do it, Howard?” he asked.
Howard Bauer had buried his face in his hands. “It seemed like too good a chance to be missed,” he said. “I don’t know. I must have been crazy. I’ve never hurt anybody in my life. I just saw a chance to get him off my back and I took it. I’ve been sick with worry ever since, reliving it over and over again until I thought I’d go mad.”
“Why did you need to get Grantley off your back?” Evan asked quietly. They were in the center of the village now, driving between solid gray houses, over a sturdy stone bridge. “Was it something to do with drugs? Was he supplying you … . ?”
Howard laughed. “Drugs? No, nothing like that. Scotch is good enough for me. He was just an annoying little bastard. You saw him. If you must know, he was bugging the shit out of me. I have no idea why I ever said I’d do his stupid little movie. The moment I got here, I knew it was a mistake. So when I saw that that door didn’t shut properly, the idea came into my mind. I thought, If he falls out of the damned train, he’ll hurt himself and we can stop shooting and I can go home. They were all busy taking pictures of the locomotive. I folded up a piece of paper and jammed it into the lock to make sure it didn’t shut all the way. Then I got in the next compartment. I seriously never thought it would work. I don’t know what had gotten into me.”
“But it did work,” Evan said. “He almost died. Were you disappointed, Howard, that you hadn’t finished him off? Did you follow him up to the mine to complete the job?”
Howard shot him a look of horror. “Me? You think that was me? Jesus, there’s no way I could ever strangle anybody. I hate violence. I abhor it.”
“And yet you shot a famous movie about violence.”
“Oh yes. That. I wanted to show the evil of violence. The terrible destruction to lives.”
They had left the village and the road had begun to climb again, this time up the Nant Gwynant Pass to the junction at the crest.
“What I don’t get,” Evan said, “is why you didn’t just walk out if he was bugging you. You weren’t under any kind of contract, were you? You said you were just doing him a favor. Why were you doing him a favor in the first place if you found him so annoying? And why didn’t you just walk away if he got too much for you?”
“It’s a long story,” Howard said. “Let’s say it was part of the complicated relationship I had with Grantley—and nothing whatever to do with his death, okay? Can we leave it at that?”
“For the time being,” Evan said. So it looked as if Howard and Grantley were in some kind of relationship that had nothing to do with mentor and pupil after all. Was there anyone in this case who had not been romantically involved with Grantley Smith?
Now I’d finished the copy, a couple of small problems remained. I had to get the copy into the frame and back into the shed, and I had to decide where to hide the real painting so that it was safe. I thought about hiding it among the slate pilings in the mine, but I was scared there would be a flash flood, like there was sometimes, and it would be damaged. I wasn’t too keen about hiding it at home. My mother liked a good snoop. She’d even found the pin-up magazine I hid under my mattress once.
Ginger, as usual, was full of bright ideas. “Why don’t you hang it on your wall? You’ve got enough pictures there, so nobody would suspect anything. Might as well enjoy it while we’ve got it.”
It sounded all right in theory. So I went out and bought a cheap frame in Woolworths and I hung the Rembrandt between a Turner
I’d torn from a magazine and a Frans Hals I’d picked up at a jumble sale for two and sixpence
.
But once it was up there, it haunted me. I was overwhelmed by the enormity of what I had done. Then I reassured myself that I could put it back anytime I wanted to. In fact, I could even put it back and keep the copy if my conscience got too much for me. Ginger couldn’t tell the difference. Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to get out of Blenau and go to Hollywood just as much as she did. Above all, I wanted to be with her, basking in her glory when she became a big star. I tried to picture myself in Hollywood, lounging by one of those fancy swimming pools. I could picture her there, all right. But never me. It just seemed too impossible, even to dream about.
You’ve heard that saying about the best-laid plans of mice and men, I suppose. There was I, thinking that the security was lax, and waiting to pick the ideal day and good weather to get the copy back into the shed. But before I could put the copy back, the mine manager called us all together into his office. “I’ve got bad news, I’m afraid, boys,” he said. “The mine is closing.”
There was a collective gasp, then silence. Not one of those men dared to ask why. The manager looked at us with sympathy. “I got the directive from the owners this morning. It’s government orders, see. Slate’s not a high priority in a war, is it? Not much new building going on. Just a lot of destroying. So the government is sending you where you are needed for the war effort—they’re short of miners down in the Rhondda.”

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