Authors: Rhys Bowen
Evan's Gate (2 page)
She saw him wince as if she’d struck him.
I’ve scored a point,
she thought, pleased with herself.
I’ve scored a point,
she thought, pleased with herself.
“I notice that Val wants to know about everyone else but divulges nothing of his own personal life,” Nick said, with a quizzical look at his brother. “Isn’t it about time you got hitched, Val, old man? You won’t be young and lovely forever, you know.”
“All the more reason to make the most of it while I can,” Val said easily. “Shall we dine here tonight? I gather they have a fine
wine cellar and I, for one, don’t feel like braving the elements to find anywhere better.”
wine cellar and I, for one, don’t feel like braving the elements to find anywhere better.”
“I’m not sure whether …” Suzanne began when Val patted her knee.
“It’s on me, of course,” he said.
“Good idea,” Nick said. “It is something of a celebration, after all. The first time we’re all together since—since we were kids. That’s definitely worth celebrating. In fact let’s order a bottle of bubbly right now.” He waved for a hovering waiter.
Suzanne watched him with interest. Not exactly the humble priest, the way they were in England, riding around on bicycles and living on donated food. And Val wasn’t exactly the starving artist, either. How come the rest of her family had done so well when she was still living in an upstairs flat in Clapham? How come they all seemed so at ease? They were debating the merits of the champagne list now, animated for the first time. Had they forgotten all about Sarah?
Why are we here?
she wanted to shout.
Why are we here?
she wanted to shout.
The wind hit the two men full in the face as they reached the bluff halfway up the mountainside. One of them, a skinny fellow wearing a plastic poncho over his business clothes, was panting heavily.“Quite a climb, isn’t it, Mr. Evans?” he managed between gasps. “Can’t think why you’d want to live up here.” He looked with distaste at the shell of an old cottage, now reduced to four stone walls with gaping holes where the front door and windows used to be.
“Ah, but look at the view, Mr. Pilcher.” Evan Evans turned his back on the cottage and surveyed the horizon of snow-clad peaks. “And you should see it at sunset. Quite spectacular on a fine day.”
“You’ll change your mind when you have to traipse up here with the groceries after the Saturday shop,” the first man said, grinning.
“You forget, I’m used to it.” Evan Evans smiled. He was younger, broader, fitter than the other man, with unruly dark hair and healthy, boyish good looks that women seemed to find attractive. He was clad in a navy jersey and corduroy trousers and seemed oblivious to the misty rain. “I was born and bred around here. We have mountains in our blood.”
“Rather you than me, mate.” Mr. Pilcher pulled up the hood to his poncho.
“You’re not from these parts, then?” Evan asked, although he could tell the man wasn’t from the accent and from the fact that they were speaking to each other in English.
“I’m from Lancashire, mate. I was working in the Lake District National Park until I was transferred here. It’s not too bad because I can still nip home to the parents at weekends, but they’re a funny lot the Welsh. Take some getting used to, don’t they?”
Since he was clearly a Welshman himself, Evan thought this wasn’t exactly a tactful remark, but he had come to the conclusion that National Parks personnel found politeness to be an unnecessary part of their job. He had to humor this pen pusher or he wouldn’t get anywhere.
“So it looks hopeful this time, does it?” he asked. “Planning permission’s finally going to be granted? I’ve been waiting to hear for a year now.”
“In theory, yes.” Mr. Pilcher sucked through his teeth. “Of course you’ll have to have the listed buildings bloke take a look at it.”
“Listed building? This?” Evan stared incredulously at the tumbledown ruin. “It was an old shepherd’s cottage before some English people gentrified it.”
“Ah, but look at those walls, lad,” Mr. Pilcher said. He made his way gingerly across to the cottage and gave a halfhearted kick at the stonework. “Look at the thickness. Look at the mortar they used. These have to be pre-eighteen-hundred, maybe even pre-seventeen-hundred, which would make it automatically listed. And who knows about the foundation? It may have been built on the original foundation of a hill fort.”
“A hill fort?” This was becoming more ridiculous by the minute. Evan had had several encounters with the National Parks Authority now, and each time he’d ended up feeling that he’d stepped into a twilight zone of bureaucracy.
“Look, it’s just a bloody shepherd’s cottage, and all I want to
do is put a roof on it again and live in it,” he said.
do is put a roof on it again and live in it,” he said.
“Hold your horses, mate,” Mr. Pilcher said. “I understand your frustration, but these things can’t be rushed. It’s up to us to make sure that the integrity of the National Park is preserved.”
“I don’t want to add a pagoda or a swimming pool or even put plastic flamingos around it.” Evan could feel his temperature rising. “I just want to make it livable again, the way it always was. Now what is so complicated about that?”
“Look, lad, I can turn you down flat if I’ve a mind to,” Mr. Pilcher said. “The Parks Authority is all for reducing the number of residences within the park.”
Evan had been staring past him as he spoke, trying to stay calm. His gaze followed the road up the pass, through the village of Llanfair, nestled directly below them, and then on until—he locked onto the Everest Inn.
“Hang about,” he said. “What about the hotel down there? It was only built five years ago. How come they got permission? Don’t tell me that Swiss chalets were once part of the Welsh landscape.”
“Ah well.” Mr. Pilcher cleared his throat. “From what I understand they made a generous donation to the CAE—the area development fund.”
“If I’d known bribery would work, I’d have tried it last year, rather than waiting patiently to go through all these planning committees,” Evan said. “I was joking,” he added quickly.
One quick glance at the man revealed that he obviously had no sense of humor or not one that matched Evan’s. Maybe a good chuckle when he had to turn down someone’s application, but irony would be beyond him.
“Look, mate,” Evan tried another tack, “I’m getting married this summer. She’s set her heart on moving in here right after the honeymoon, and you know what women are like when they’ve made up their minds about something. This isn’t Caernarfon Castle, is it? It’s a little cottage that can’t even be seen from the road, and all I want to do is fix up the roof and move in. Is that too
difficult? If you do your inspection today and approve it in principle, then the listed buildings bloke takes his little look, and I can start work. I’m planning to do most of it myself, you know. And hiring out the skilled labor to local firms—boosting the economy, isn’t that what your development fund is supposed to be doing?”
difficult? If you do your inspection today and approve it in principle, then the listed buildings bloke takes his little look, and I can start work. I’m planning to do most of it myself, you know. And hiring out the skilled labor to local firms—boosting the economy, isn’t that what your development fund is supposed to be doing?”
Mr. Pilcher had begun a circumnavigation of the cottage. During the two years that it had lain desolate, brambles had sprung up in what used to be a garden and Mr. Pilcher moved cautiously, stepping through the vegetation with distaste. “Nothing much to see at the moment,” he said. “You submitted plans, did you?”
“In the file you’re carrying.”
“Oh. Right. Let’s take a look then.” He opened the file. “Oh, dear me no. That won’t do.”
“What?”
“You’ll not be allowed a Calor Gas cylinder up here.”
“The last people had one.”
“Different planning board in those days. No more gas cylinders, unless you’d want to bury it. Eyesores, aren’t they? We have to think of the integrity of the landscape and the tourists. They want to see adorable shepherds’ cottages, not unsightly gas cylinders.”
“Then how do you propose I heat the place?” Evan demanded. “Trek up to the high bogs and cut myself peat?”
“You could have a buried oil tank and oil-fired central heating. Why don’t you get yourself an oil-fired Aga?”
“An Aga? They’re bloody expensive.”
“But they solve the cooking and heating problems in one go, don’t they? And resurrecting a listed building is going to be expensive. You could always change your mind and apply for a nice council house, mate. They give priority to local police, don’t they?”
Evan wondered how Mr. Pilcher had managed to last this long on the job. Surely he must have stirred up equally violent thoughts in other applicants? He sensed that the bastard was goading him, waiting for Evan to lose his cool, so that he had an excuse to turn down the project. Evan wasn’t going to let that happen.
“All right. We’ll think about the heating alternatives,” he said. “What else needs to be done? The place was already on mains water—we’d just have to get it reconnected. And there’s a septic tank in place.”
“That would need to be reinspected—the sewage line and the tank itself. You’d need a plumber to certify its integrity.”
Obviously integrity was Pilcher’s favorite word at the moment. Evan wondered if he had been given one of those New-Word-a-Day calendars for Christmas. “Right.” Evan nodded. “That should be no problem. Now, how do we set about getting the inspector of listed buildings up here?”
Before Mr. Pilcher could answer, a loud beep came from Evan’s hip. He took out his pager. “Damn,” he muttered. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get down to a phone. It’s my boss. Feel free to look around as much as you want to up here, although as I’ve said there’s nothing to see. Four walls and a floor. That’s about it. Thanks for taking the time to come up here.”
“We’ll need your septic tank inspection certificate and your heating proposal before we can proceed any further,” Mr. Pilcher said.
“Right you are. I’ll get both to you within the next few days. I want to make the most of any summer weather that we get, don’t I?”
“Could be like this all summer,” Pilcher said with a dry chuckle. “I understand it does nothing but rain in bloody Wales.”
Evan had already started down the steep track.
“You want to get yourself a nice council house, mate,” Pilcher shouted after him.
“Where the devil have you been?” Detective Inspector Watkins’s voice boomed down the phone line. “I called you fifteen minutes ago.”
“Ten,” Evan said, “and I was up on the mountain. It took me awhile to get down.”
“I tried your mobile phone number first. Why didn’t you have it on you?”
“Sorry, Sarge—I mean Inspector,” Evan said. “I suppose I’m not used to carrying it around yet.”
“Then you’d better get used to it, pronto. You have a police-issued mobile so that we can get in touch with you at all times, Evans. At all times—do I make myself clear?”
“You’re in a lovely mood this morning, sir,” Evan said. “And it is my day off.”
“You’re in the plainclothes division now, boyo. There’s no such thing as days off. You work when there’s work to be done. And there’s work to be done right now. Do you know the caravan park at Black Rock Sands, just outside Porthmadog?”
“I think so.”
“Then get yourself down here as fast as possible. I’ll meet you at the entrance. It should take you what—half an hour?”
“Twenty minutes if I break the speed limit,” Evan said and hung up.
It was closer to half an hour by the time Evan slowed to a halt beside the gate that led to the caravan park at Black Rock Sands. Porthmadog had been clogged with traffic and pedestrians, all of whom had emerged at the same moment to do their shopping the moment the rain stopped. There were patches of blue in the sky now, and steam rose from the wet surface of the narrow road as Evan left the sleepy coastal village of Borth-y-Gest behind. After Borth the landscape became wilder with green meadows leading to sand dunes and a windswept stretch of beach on one side and the heather-clad slopes of Moel-y-Gest on the other, rising to a rocky summit that dominated the landscape. As Evan got out of the car, the sun shone through a break in the clouds, turning the whole landscape into glorious Technicolor. The sweet smell of hawthorn flowers and sea tang greeted him, along with the cries of seagulls overhead. He stood, breathing deeply and enjoying the sun on his face, looking up with satisfaction at Moel-y-Gest, rising
on the other side of the road. It had been the first mountain he had climbed as a small boy, and he still remembered the triumph and the sense of wonder as he surveyed the scene below him.
on the other side of the road. It had been the first mountain he had climbed as a small boy, and he still remembered the triumph and the sense of wonder as he surveyed the scene below him.
Then he turned his eyes away, shoved his hands in his pockets, and headed for the wooden gate. A sign outside said, HOLIDAY HAVEN. ON-SITE CARAVANS FOR RENT. TENTS WELCOME. HOT SHOWERS.
On the other side of the hedge, he saw two white police vans parked. He spotted D.I. Watkins’s familiar fawn raincoat. The inspector was leaning against one of the vans, consulting his notes.
“See, I told you thirty minutes, didn’t I?” Watkins looked up and grinned as Evan approached.
“The traffic was horrible in Porthmadog. Sorry.”
“Yeah. And I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have bawled you out like that on the phone. This job gets to me sometimes.”
Evan thought Watkins looked tired and drawn. If that was what promotion did to you, maybe he should stay a constable for the rest of his career.
“So what have we got here?” Evan asked. He fell into step beside the inspector as they walked across a broad expanse of meadow around which there were rows of caravans, ranging from impressive mobile homes to little two-wheelers that could be towed behind the family car.
“Missing child. Little girl, five years old. Staying in one of the caravans. Last seen on the beach this morning.”
“Isn’t that a job for the uniform branch? I seem to remember that a large part of my job up in Llanfair was finding lost kiddies.”
“The uniform branch have been searching all morning,” Watkins said, striding out with purpose over the short grass, “and we’re here because the mother suspects foul play.”
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