Good People (30 page)

‘There’s nothing to find in here,’ he announced truculently. The big spots were being trained into the hut while the portable lights were being set up. The additional light added to the sense of the room’s decrepitude.

‘What do you use this place for, Mr Tucker?’ Jack Galbraith asked casually, running his torch and gaze slowly over the rear wall.

‘It’s just a shelter. Somewhere for a brew-up, if we’re up this way shooting.’

I watched him obliquely, the same way that Jack Galbraith and Bryn were playing at not watching him. Looking for his troubled spots. The way his eyes pointedly refused to travel in the direction of the sofa. He thought that he was cleverly drawing our attention away from the hatch.

‘Move that –’ Jack Galbraith instructed, painting the sofa with his flashlight beam.

The two big uniforms took an end each and lifted it effortlessly away from the wall. Jack Galbraith’s and Bryn’s flashlight beams intersected on the flattened, crumpled bundle.

‘Is that yours?’ Jack Galbraith asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Les was genuinely surprised, but not yet devastated. ‘I didn’t know it was there.’ He was moving slowly, circling the bundle, making for the rear wall, trying not to draw attention to his journey. Not realizing that I knew exactly where he was going.

The portable lights came on, flooding the interior. ‘Photograph it and grid its position,’ Jack Galbraith instructed. ‘Shift the rest of the stuff, I want to see under and behind everything.’

Les took up his position on the rear wall in front of the hatch, spreading his legs casually so that they covered the vertical seams, stooping slightly to keep the horizontal join obscured. He watched curious as the bundle was photographed. He sculpted a frown, as if he were trying to work out who among the boys could have left it there. The inherent damage in it still hadn’t struck him.

The photographs and the offset measurements taken, Jack Galbraith nodded to Bryn, who dropped down beside the bundle. Slowly, and very carefully, using the shaft of a pen, he started to unfold it, making sure that Les, Jack Galbraith and the photographer always had full sight of every stage of the reverse origami.

I watched Les. Picking up the precise moment when he recognized what was unfolding in front of him. His jaw dropped fractionally, and the faintest tremor went through him, before he brought it back under control. He overplayed intense concentration now, coupled with nice-guy bewilderment. I saw the dynamic tension at work, the strain in his body as it struggled between remaining sentinel, and getting closer to the sweatshirt.

‘Do you recognize it, Mr Tucker?’ Jack Galbraith asked.

Les shook his head ponderously, making a show of deliberating. ‘No … I don’t think so … It’s not one of mine. It could have been under there for years.’ He tried to share a grin with us. ‘The girls don’t get to come up here. So not too much cleaning gets done.’

‘What girls are those, Mr Tucker?’ I asked.

‘Sara, and Sheila and Zoë,’ he came back at me without blinking.

‘Don’t you want to get a closer look, see if you can identify it?’

‘I can see it from here.’

Jack Galbraith glanced at me, and picked up my intention. ‘Would you mind stepping away from the wall please, Mr Tucker.’

Les stared through him. I had seen the look before, in interview rooms, the furious concentration as the suspect searched for an act of magic, or of pure and implacable will, to get them out of there.

‘That is not a request, Mr Tucker.’

I was delegated to stay behind to wait for the SOCO team. Since the discovery of the Rumpus Room, Les had turned mute and antsy. Jack Galbraith wanted him out of the big wide woods and into a confined place where they could start to question him formally. They also needed to get the sweatshirt and the laptop from the filing cabinet into the labs for analysis.

‘I’m worried about Ken McGuire doing a runner,’ I said. By this time, I had given them the tailored gist of my concerns and suspicions. The edited version. There were certain veerings on the way to this point where my trail could have been construed as having laid down slime.

‘He’s a farmer, he won’t be going anywhere. Those guys grow fucking taproots,’ Jack Galbraith argued.

‘He’ll go if the consequences are bad enough, sir.’

Jack Galbraith frowned. ‘I don’t want to chance lifting him until we’ve got a definite on the sweatshirt. Or the laptop has started to tell tales. These people are solid-citizen category, their supporters can generate a lot of howl.’

‘Do we bring Paterson’s mother in to identify the sweatshirt?’ Bryn suggested.

I didn’t let them catch my reaction. I owed Sally this. If bad news was arriving, I was the one who was going to have to deliver it. ‘Couldn’t we have the blood type tested first, just to make sure that there is a match, before we put her through that?’

‘We still need her. We have to establish the blood type.’

‘The Army will have a record of that.’

Jack Galbraith nodded. ‘He’s got a point, Bryn. Let’s keep citizens out of this for as long as we can.’

‘Okay, I’ll get on to the military as soon as we’re out of here.’ He gave me a knowing smile. Bryn had a memory that netted and retained lots of little details.

They walked to the Land Rover. Les was already locked in the back with Emrys Hughes. Emrys didn’t realize that he was being used as Traitor Monkey, in the vague hope that Les might just treat him as a confessor. It wasn’t working. They both looked like they were auditioning for the part of the last survivor on earth.

I experienced a sudden panic when I realized that the question of geography had not been discussed. ‘Sir,’ I yelled.

They both half turned round.

‘Where are you taking him?’

Jack Galbraith dipped his head, tossing it to Bryn.

‘I won’t know that until I can get communications working, and start seeing what’s available. Somewhere with the resources to hold the four of them, if it comes to it.’

Jack Galbraith grinned. ‘Don’t worry, Capaldi, we’ll try to keep it on your patch.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said gratefully. For him it was a big concession. Staying in the boondocks.

I couldn’t bring myself to wait in the Den. My imagination insisted on drawing my attention to the hatch, now seeing it as shaped for a coffin’s exit. Or a crematorium oven. It was just too redolent of the possibility of bad discoveries. Instead, I waited outside in the cold bruise-blue night, while the breeze puffed a resin-tinged suspension of moisture into my face.

It was well into the small hours before the SOCO team arrived. They were a grumpy bunch, roused from their beds and shipped out to the operational equivalent of a leper colony. I soon got tired of shadowing them, waiting for someone to erupt into a gasp of significance. They didn’t do exuberance or excitement; instead, they dusted and taped for prints, picked up fibres with tweezers, took lots of intensely close-up photographs, and grumbled quietly amongst themselves about the mess we had made stumbling all over the scene.

While they tackled the minutiae, I occupied myself with the surfaces. The floor of the Rumpus Room was old concrete, pocked and dusty, with no evidence of any section ever having been dug up and replaced. The same with the walls. They all sounded hollow, but then they were lining what was essentially an irregular cave. There were no indications of any sections of panelling having been replaced recently, and all the nail heads had the same rust patina. The wall that had been creosoted had faded uniformly. I stood on a chair to get a closer look at the ceiling, but that too appeared not to have been disturbed.

A dirty grey light was edging in from the east over the top of the bank by the time I was relieved. My eyes felt gritty and my mouth tasted like I had been snacking on fuller’s earth. I drove out of the forest, the car’s window fully open to stop the yawns fusing together into sleep.

I came awake with a sudden flash on Monica Trent. I fingered the scars that were healing on my cheek. I hadn’t promised anything, but she had kept up her end, she had directed me to Alexandrina.

I got the answering machine. It suited me. I needed to keep this cryptic and nonattributable. Just in case somebody had a feed into her line. ‘Monica, the farm boys have folded.’

I drove the rest of the way on automatic pilot and had stopped outside Unit 13 before I noticed the car. It was a dark blue Ford Fiesta, parked in the aisle between the caravans. Blanketed in tree shade and the dusky murk of early morning. It looked empty. I left my lights on and the engine running, and got out quietly without closing the door. My arrival had already been announced, I couldn’t change that, but anyone inside my caravan didn’t need to know that I was now out of the car.

I sidled past the Fiesta, intending to slide along the side of the caravan and check out the windows. I stopped in mid-sidle and turned back, realizing that something had been wrong. It took me a moment to place it. The car had not only appeared empty, but it had had no driver’s seat.

I stepped closer and saw my mistake. The seat had been fully reclined. The body on it stirred, sensing my presence.

She sat up slowly, rising out of the shadow of the well, looking puffy, sleepy, and bewildered.

But beautiful.

I had been allowed the grace to see the nascent Sally Paterson.

‘I left work early.’ She blinked and shivered as she stepped out into the cold early-morning air. I saw the pink nylon Sychnant Nursing Home housecoat crumpled on the back seat. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a light wool cardigan that wasn’t adequate for the season.

‘Why didn’t you go home?’ I draped my coat around her shoulders.

She tried to shrug it off. ‘Let’s go inside; I’ll be all right then.’

‘No, you won’t, it’s just as cold in there.’

She gave in and let me settle the coat on her. I unlocked the door and followed her into the living area. She slumped down on to a seat, her shoulders bent forward in a posture of exhaustion. ‘I had to see you.’

I looked up from lighting the gas fire. ‘I’m flattered,’ I quipped, trying to keep it light, but feeling the doom settling into the pit of my stomach.

‘I thought about what you said. About Boon being spotted in Holyhead. Asking me about his sweatshirt. And the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that it was bullshit. Bullshit, right?’ Her eyes were red-rimmed. She had been crying. But the look was questioning and steady.

‘We really don’t know anything yet, Sally.’

‘It’s winter, Glyn. It’s cold. Even Boon would have had his coat fastened. No one would be able to see a sweatshirt.’

‘He might have been inside.’

She tightened her face to pinch in the tears. ‘Don’t dig yourself in any deeper. Please …’ She shook her head and held out her hand. ‘Be my friend …’

I hunched down in front of her and took her hand. What could I tell her? I raced through the permutations. How could I keep distress out of this? ‘We’ve found a sweatshirt. It matches the one you said Boon was wearing.’

Her grip on my hand tightened. ‘Where?’

‘A hut in the forest that Les Tucker owns.’

She digested this. I saw her searching for significances. She shook her head. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘We’ve only just found it. I didn’t want to upset you.’

She stared at me. ‘There’s more, isn’t there? If it was just the sweatshirt, you would have told me. That would have been a clue. Part of his trail. You would have, wouldn’t you? To reassure me.’

I nodded. ‘We think there’s blood on it.’

Her face twisted. ‘Oh God …’

I moved in closer. On my knees I was level with her. I put my free arm around her and pulled her into me. Her head sank on to my shoulder. Her body felt like an overtightened drum. I could sense the embryonic sobs like a demonic pulse, waiting to surface. ‘There’s nothing to know yet, Sally. That’s why I didn’t tell you. We have to run tests.’

She gave a piteous wail, something raised out of, and voiced from, a deep-set archetype, and the tears welled. I held her tightly, trying to project comfort through the sobs and the shaking.

‘What’s happened to him?’

It was a question I couldn’t answer, so I just continued to hold her as she rocked on the seat.

Gradually, her tension eased. She slowed the rocking. I loosened my clasp before she could sense it as constrictive, found a clean paper tissue and put it into her hand. She brought it up to her bowed head. When she looked up, her eyes were raw, tear runnels staining her cheeks. But she managed a small, sheepish smile. ‘I’d better go home.’

I helped her stand up. ‘No, you’re staying here tonight. Or what’s left of it.’

She started to shake her head, but gave up. We had gone beyond etiquette. I led her to the bathroom. ‘Do what you have to do; I’ll find you something to wear.’ She nodded lumpishly, whacked by emotion and exhaustion.

When she came into the bedroom, I had dug out an old T-shirt that Gina had brought me back from Lanzarote. It was blue, faded and had a César Manrique print on the front, but it was clean and large enough to act as a nightshirt on her. ‘This okay?’ I asked.

She nodded, hardly glancing at it, and sat down on the bed.

‘Want a cup of tea?’

She nodded again. Then looked up me, her face suddenly very young and frightened. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered.

‘First tea, then sleep, then we take it from there,’ I said, hearing myself sound like a fully qualified grandmother. I slipped out before she could question my credentials.

When I returned, her clothes were half-heartedly folded on the floor, and she was in bed, lying on her back, her eyes closed. I went in quietly and put the tea on the bedside table. She opened her eyes. ‘Please don’t leave me alone tonight.’ She drew down the side of the duvet nearest me and shifted over on the bed. ‘Please … Just for comfort.’

We started off tense and chaste beside each other. Each worrying that the other might construe intent out of the simplest movement. So we stayed cocooned and rigid. And fell asleep like that.

I woke with the warmth of her pressed against me. Her face tucked into my collarbone. We had moved in our sleep to accommodate each other. I felt her breath, warm and lightly moist through the fabric of my T-shirt.