In Guilty Night (34 page)

‘It’s a waste of time talking to the parents, sir. They don’t give a toss about those kids, else they’d’ve taken Arwel back home when he said Hogg was beating him up,’ Dewi said. ‘Arwel would still be alive if they’d believed him.’

‘I’ve told you before not to judge people too harshly. What could they do? Kidnap the boy? Social Services were calling all the shots.’

‘They could’ve done something!’ Dewi insisted. ‘Most folks’d thank God on bended knee for children like Arwel and
Carol. Look at what Elis was landed with.’

‘Elis might deserve his punishment; Carol and Arwel might deserve Tom and Peggy. There’s always far more to see than what people lay in front of you, and in any case, we only know the Thomases after the event, when they’re trying to come to terms with Arwel’s degradation and death, and their own part in it.’ McKenna lit another cigarette. ‘Before all this, they muddled along, like millions of others.’

‘I suppose.’ Dewi stacked plates and mugs on the tray. ‘But if there’s any bad in that lass and her brother, I reckon somebody else put it there, and the parents had most opportunity.’ He picked up the tray. ‘I wonder what Hogg’s parents were like? D’you think he just crawled out from under a lump of slate one night?’

‘I expect Mr and Mrs Hogg Senior were perfectly ordinary people,’ McKenna said. ‘Just like Alois and Klara.’

Dewi frowned. ‘Alois and Klara who?’

‘Guess.’

Jack sniffed. ‘Fancy traipsing round those mountains. I’m surprised Eifion Roberts didn’t have a heart attack.’

‘I rang to ask after your health,’ McKenna said. ‘I don’t want another lecture.’

‘Who’s given you a lecture?’

‘Who hasn’t?’

‘People expect the killer handed over on a plate, like John the Baptist’s head.’ Jack coughed. ‘I reckon you’ve done everything humanly possible in the circumstances. Arwel wouldn’t be the first unsolved death, you know, and he won’t be the last.’ He coughed again, more raspingly. ‘God! My chest’s bad. I hope these antibiotics shift the bugs before Tuesday.’

‘We’re expecting a lot of media interest.’ McKenna rubbed the nagging pain in his shoulder. ‘People like a good funeral even better when there’s somebody posh to gawp at, though nobody seems to know about our interest in Elis yet.’

‘Nobody’s interested in Arwel, so Elis doesn’t need to use his clout and cash to get injunctions against nosy-parker journalists.’ Jack coughed again. ‘That’s another way rich folk buy poor ones with no comeback. How’s your shoulder, by the way?’

‘Hurting like hell.’

‘Doris probably sat up all night making your voodoo doll, and now she’s ramming pins in it,’ Jack said. ‘God, it’s a
miserable world, isn’t it? Never mind, the longest night’s on its way, then after Christmas, the days start stretching. We keep hoping, don’t we?’

‘Only because day follows night and spring follows winter,’ McKenna said. ‘Or so we’re led to believe.’

‘Happiness follows despair, as well, if you don’t die waiting.’

‘Is sickness making you appreciate the interdependency of opposites?’

‘I’m stretching my intellect round that Goethe biography you lent me. Some of his ideas are really fascinating.’ Jack coughed again, a breathy sound rattling in his lungs and echoing in McKenna’s ears. ‘I know he was just a poet, but it makes you wonder if poets can’t divine the truth, long before the scientists can prove it. Mind you, if the greatest bard in Wales divined the truth about Arwel’s death, we’d never prove it, would we?’

Mari answered the telephone at Bedd y Cor, and snarled at McKenna like a wounded cat.

‘When will Mr and Mrs Elis be back?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘I’m sure you do know, Mari.’

‘They’ve gone to see the boy. They were late leaving because of the other things.’

‘Ask Mrs Elis to call me tomorrow, then.’

‘Why? Haven’t you done them enough harm yet?’

‘Carol’s waiting outside, sir.’ Dewi sat down, frowning. ‘I didn’t manage to talk to the parents. I thought he was drunk at first, ’cos he’s rambling and slurring his words and lurching round, but apparently he’s had tablets off the doctor. She’s like a cat on hot bricks, really agitated and all breathless, so I asked what was wrong, and he said: “What the bloody hell d’you think’s wrong?” He called me a stupid fart or some such.’ Two little spots of colour erupted on his cheeks. ‘Ignorant sod!’

McKenna fidgeted with a pen. ‘And Carol?’

‘She’d taken to her bed yesterday evening and not moved since. They actually seemed worried about her.’

‘Then why didn’t you leave her there?’

‘She wanted to come, sir. I didn’t force her.’

‘Are you ill?’ McKenna asked.

Dressed in faded jeans and worn grey sweater, Carol sat in an old upholstered chair from Owen Griffiths’ office. She
shook her head, the luminous hair swirling about her pallid skin and starved features.

‘Why were you in bed?’

‘I’m tired.’

‘What’s wrong with your parents?’

‘Apart from Arwel getting murdered, me getting pregnant, and them being sodding useless?’ She looked down at her hands, balled in little fists in her lap. ‘They know about yesterday, and think you’ll put me in court, or Doris will.’

‘Who told them?’

‘Mam guessed when she saw the stain on Arwel’s shirt. She’s not as stupid as she looks.’ She frowned. ‘My father’s really stupid, though.’ The frown disappeared, leaving her face blank. ‘Arwel’s not there any more. Mrs Elis had him taken away, so I told the social worker to sod off.’

‘I know all about it,’ McKenna said.

‘No, you don’t. You’ll never know about anything like this.’ She stared at him gravely. ‘Will I be charged with common assault on a bitch as common as muck?’

‘Why did you do it?’

‘I told you why.’

‘You said Doris owes for not protecting Arwel.’ McKenna lit a cigarette, thinking Carol’s baby had already known far worse than the taint of tobacco smoke. ‘What was she supposed to protect him from?’

Carol’s hands unfurled, like claws. ‘Social Services said Mam was a lousy mother for neglecting Arwel, so they took him away and gave him to that bloody bitch, and now he’s dead!’

‘You think little enough of your parents.’

‘That’s between them and me!’

‘Perhaps you should blame yourself instead of Doris,’ McKenna suggested. ‘I think Arwel told you everything, hoping you’d put a stop to his agony. He thought the sister he worshipped wouldn’t fail him like everyone else. But you did, didn’t you?’

‘No!’

‘I think you decided to use Arwel’s suffering for your own profit.’ He stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette. ‘You’ve set yourself up nicely for a few years, but you got him killed.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about you and your beautiful brother.’ McKenna leaned back in his chair. ‘Arwel was irresistible, like a rare flower, but one after the other, men pulled off the petals, until
there was nothing left.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘But your body’s like a rich pasture, and you can grow a perfect child for people too impoverished by nature to make their own. Or are you just harvesting their guilt?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Carol demanded again.

‘Rhiannon Elis offered you a ticket out of poverty,’ McKenna said. ‘In exchange for what? Does she get the baby? Or is she paying the first instalment on the price of your silence?’

Carol levered herself out of the chair, and pulled on her jacket. ‘Tell me I’m wrong,’ McKenna said. ‘If you won’t, you’re as good as accusing Elis of killing your brother.’

‘You’re doing the accusing! You and them sodding social workers think you know bloody everything, don’t you?’ She dragged at the jacket zip, catching the jumper in its teeth. ‘Oh, you’ll be sorry!’ she breathed. ‘You’ll wish you’d never been born!’

She plunged from the room, and by the time McKenna reached the corridor, the fire door at the head of the staircase was closing behind her. He ran downstairs and rushed outside, but the street was deserted, as if night had consumed the girl and her unquenchable light.

‘You shouldn’t have secrets. They ricochet, like stray bullets.’ Eifion Roberts sat on McKenna’s sofa, nursing the black cat. ‘You’re involved in a conspiracy of silence with Doris Hogg, and she’s the last person to be involved with in anything. Look where your conspiratorial theories’ve led now. Carol’s got enough grief, without being told she’s liable for Arwel’s death.’

‘I’m not blaming her,’ McKenna said. ‘She didn’t kill him.’

‘You can’t actually be any more sure about that than about anything else in this world. She’s capable of it.’ The black cat raised its head, and nuzzled the pathologist’s hand. ‘I think you’ve lost your grip. There’s more crap silting up your brain than there is in Menai Strait, because you let Elis and Rhiannon beguile you with their nonsense. They’re unhappily married, Michael. As prosaically and tediously unhappily married as you were. There’s nothing special about their misery.’

‘Rhiannon thinks Elis killed Arwel.’

‘How d’you know she’s not just looking for a way to get shot of him? She’s probably very bitter. You’re bitter about the years wasted hoping things with Denise would turn out good. If Elis loved his wife half as much as he loves his self-pity, she’d be a very happy woman, and I expect she’s realized that.’

The black and white cat rubbed around McKenna’s ankles, then jumped on his lap. ‘Child abusers frequently suffered abuse themselves,’ he said. ‘I can’t ignore that fact.’

Dr Roberts stroked the black cat’s ears. ‘D’you know, I think Elis is too lazy to bother with the subterfuge of abusing children. He spends most of life sitting on his backside. On horses, at the piano, listening to music, in his posh vehicles, at board meetings. What does he achieve with his time?’

‘He’s probably chronically depressed.’

‘Self-pity does that. We often find the person we’ve grown into wasn’t worth waiting for, and can’t cope with the disappointment of knowing nothing better’s likely to show up.’ The cat rolled over, paws in the air. ‘Elis and his maundering’s enough to make Beethoven turn in his grave. He wanted to write wonderful music, so he did, regardless of the poverty and disease and death snapping at his heels. Elis does bugger all except whinge, but I doubt he’ll understand the waste even on his deathbed. He’ll find somebody else to blame.’ Rubbing the cat’s belly, the pathologist added, ‘Somebody profited from Arwel’s death, you know, and it’s probably the same person who profited from him and Tony when they were alive.’

‘And that could well be Elis,’ McKenna pointed out.

‘I mean profit in the prosaic sense of hard cash. These boys must’ve been sold like meat off a butcher’s slab, but Arwel could’ve been mauled around too much and gone past his use-by date, so he got chucked in the swill bucket.’

16

McKenna dreamt he was at work, but snug under a thick quilt, its cover scented with the freshness of the wind which blew it dry. He dreamt the telephone shrilled and his good arm reached out lazily, and dreamt he heard words, punctuated by static, telling him something urgent and important. He smiled to himself, and dreamt he was dreaming.

‘
Sir
!’ Dewi’s voice pierced the dream. ‘Did you hear me? Blodwel’s on fire!’

Stumbling down the staircase to the bathroom, down the next staircase to the parlour, he searched in the darkness for car keys and telephone, then switched on the light, and closed his eyes, the imprint of the room searing his eyelids. The cats watched, their bright gaze following his disjointed movements around the room and up the staircase. Pulling his coat from the rack, he went out into the night, and unlocking the car, fancied he smelt acrid smoke on the wind and saw the sky behind the mountain glowing red, stars eclipsed by the sparks shooting up to heaven.

There were no flames or sparks, but the air smelt of brimstone, and smoky orange and livid crimson licked and flicked through the rooms of Blodwel and around the window orifices. Smoke pulsed in great heavy draughts, driven by the force of heat, and McKenna watched the plastic windows bubble and wrinkle before suddenly exploding outwards. The chief fire officer pushed him back. ‘Don’t go any nearer. The smoke’s toxic.’

The lane was strewn with fire engines and ambulances, television news crews, and people, roused by alien tensions in the night. ‘Is anyone still inside?’ McKenna asked, jostled from both sides by people struggling to see. Firemen and uniformed police officers pushed them away from the billows of black dirty smoke rolling from the building and down the lane.

‘We got them all out.’ The fireman gestured towards a drab figure standing over a small group of children and teenagers. McKenna recognized Dilys Roberts, and watched her cuff one of the weeping children. Even from this distance, he could see them shiver and tremble, hear their whining above the dull roar from within the building. ‘We had to smash the fire door with sledgehammers, ’cos it was locked, and the bloody windows’d been nailed up again. That woman was crouched behind the door with the kids, and they’d have suffocated within seconds. I’m going to make sure that bloody Hogg and his boss are done for criminal negligence.’

‘A vain hope,’ McKenna said. ‘Is it arson?’

‘Probably one of the kids having a sly fag and dropping it. You won’t stop them smoking, and it’s far more dangerous when they have to do it in secret. This place could’ve been smouldering for hours, like that store in Caernarfon.’

There was a sudden roar from behind the building, and flames erupted upwards and outwards, shooting sparks up to the sky. The hillside glowed, fire crackling around the roots of bushes and small trees, trickling along the bare branches, then taking hold and running out of control.

‘What will they do with the kids?’ Dewi’s face was smutty with soot.

‘I don’t know,’ McKenna said. ‘Who reported the fire?’

‘Dilys Roberts. The smoke alarms went off.’

‘Why didn’t she get the kids out? Surely she had keys.’

‘She can’t say. She probably panicked, and couldn’t find the right key.’

‘Where’s Janet Evans?’