Simeon's Bride (11 page)

John Jones, when reporters came knocking on their door to talk to his wife, refused to be included in the photograph, and churlishly said nobody would be done any good from putting a face to the name of the man who found the body in the woods. Functioning by instinct rather than reason, an instinct which nourished the delusion that if his face remained unseen, his body would remain safe, John Jones imagined himself as a child playing hide and seek will imagine himself: invisible prey so long as he cannot see the predator. But John Jones’s instincts were too primitive, honed only by opportunism, for too little danger had come his way in the past.

He hoped the picture of Beti showed her ugliness in all its terrible glory, prayed her shame would make her hide for the rest of her days. The paper went to press soon, and there remained only a few more hours for him to wait before he could crow in her face, as raucous and nasty as the rooks in the churchyard trees.

Wil Jones eyed the sky to the east, then to the west, where the wind had changed course during the night, rising off the Irish Sea. He lifted his nose like an animal, scenting rain in the air. Leaves, still limp, newly dropped from their buds, trembled on the wind, turning up their pale backs.

Dave worked in the trench, laying and sealing drains ready for delivery of the septic tank. Wil roamed the cottage, from room to room, trying to decide whether to finish painting upstairs, or begin downstairs. He sat on an upturned crate in the kitchen to read his checklist, always systematic, knowing without ever being told if things were done arse-about, as he said, they usually had to be done again.

The staircase was finished, treads scrubbed clean of a thick patina of dirt and grease. Close-fitting oak planks formed the stairwell, their heavy grain, rendered almost black with age, burnished and glowing with life after 400 years. Standing at the foot of the staircase, Wil realized, with a funny little jolt in the pit of his stomach, that the cottage was already two centuries old when that poor creature they found in the
trench had dropped, or perhaps thrown, her little baby down those stairs, to see it die in a welter of blood and brains on the hard flagstones at the bottom. Then Wil thought of other deaths, whose memory might be steeped into the heavy walls of Gallows Cottage.

The decorating finished, he would rub the stone treads with paraffin, to put a sheen on their surfaces, the way housewives in the mountain villages polished slate doorsteps and window ledges, those folk too poor to spare precious paraffin using soured milk instead, so their remnants of pride were not dirtied by the poverty.

He smoked a pipe, put the kettle on for morning break, and decided to finish painting the bedrooms. He took his toolbox up, ready to nail down a couple of loose floorboards in the back bedroom. Glancing through the window, he saw Dave bent over in the trench, his backside sticking up in the air, and the hungry-looking man, watching again from the trees. Losing all patience, he went carefully down the stairs and out of the front door but, by the time he reached the garden, the man had disappeared.

Late on Tuesday afternoon, McKenna took a call from a solicitor in Yorkshire.

‘I would have contacted you days ago, Chief Inspector,’ the solicitor said, ‘if I’d realized it was Mrs Bailey’s body found in those woods of yours. Where on earth did you come up with the name I saw in the newspapers?’

‘It was the name she was using,’ McKenna said. ‘What can you tell us about her?’

‘Not much, I’m afraid. I was sorting out her divorce when Tom was killed. Nasty business all round.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Jack saw McKenna’s eyebrows twitch. ‘Why was that, then?’

‘Oh, you know … accusations of this and that.’ The solicitor sounded as if he regretted broaching the subject.

‘Accusations of what? Why was she divorcing him?’

‘I didn’t say she was divorcing him, did I?’ the solicitor said. ‘As a matter of fact, he was giving her the heave-ho.’

‘Why?’

The man’s sigh whispered down the line, like the sorrow of an earthbound spirit. ‘Can’t do her any harm to tell you now, I suppose. They do say the dead are out of reach, don’t they?’

‘Out of reach of what?’ McKenna asked.

‘Everything, I suppose. Envy them sometimes, don’t you?’

‘Are you asking me?’ McKenna said.

‘I don’t quite know, to tell you the truth. Has anybody been able to tell you about her?’

‘Tell me what?’

‘Tell you what she was like. As a person.’

‘No.’ McKenna was beginning to grind his teeth, Jack noticed. ‘No, they haven’t. It would be very helpful – very helpful indeed – if you could flesh out the skeleton a little, so to speak.’

‘Well, I don’t know that I can help you over much, because I never knew her well. I knew them both socially, up to a point, but only as acquaintances. Not what you might call friends.’

‘And was there any particular reason for that?’

‘For what? Oh, I see! No, not really. We just didn’t mix with the same people. Tom Bailey was a dentist, with a decent private practice. Mad keen on driving. Rallies, racing … he was the most reckless and stupid driver I’ve ever seen in my whole life. We all knew he’d either kill himself or somebody else one day.’ The solicitor coughed. ‘Well, he got himself first, didn’t he?’

‘What about Margaret?’

‘Margaret. Yes … a strange woman, Chief Inspector. Unusual. Different, if you know what I mean.’ He paused. ‘Actually, not the sort of wife to suit Tom Bailey when you come to think. She had something about her, I suppose, though for the life of me, I couldn’t say what it was. He was one of those people who go through life taking everything they can lay their greedy hands on, and giving nothing back.’

‘How was she different?’

‘I can’t really say, because I don’t really know.’ McKenna waited patiently for the man to continue. ‘You always tended to notice Margaret, even though you could hardly ever say why … I mean, she didn’t look special, she didn’t look any different from anybody else, really, from any of the people you pass a thousand times in the street … all those faceless sorts of people you see all around you everywhere….’ His voice tailed away.

‘Even they,’ McKenna said, trying to prompt the man’s memory, touch his imagination, ‘even they are individuals, aren’t they? They have passions and fears and hopes and their own despair.’

‘I suppose so, yes. Margaret certainly had her despair. She looked sometimes, Chief Inspector, as if it was eating her up, like some cancer. Eating her up from the inside out, and one day it would consume her completely. She was so terribly painfully thin, as if she couldn’t stomach solid food. I used to be afraid her bones would come poking out through her skin when she moved. And her eyes looked as if they were falling right out of her head sometimes…. I expect that’s the reason she drank so much. That and other things.’

‘Was she an alcoholic?’

‘Not quite. I daresay she would’ve been, given a little longer in this vale of tears.’

‘Why was her husband divorcing her?’

‘Margaret said he used to beat her.’

Jack watched McKenna flinch. ‘Then why wasn’t she divorcing him?’

‘Because he beat her when he found out she was having affairs with other women.’

McKenna filled in circles and ellipses on his doodles. ‘The architect of her own destruction, Jack.’

‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’

‘What else am I supposed to say? None of this gets us any nearer to finding out who topped the poor bitch.’ McKenna opened desk drawers, threw in files and papers, slammed the drawers shut, and stood up. ‘I’m off.’

‘And what am I supposed to do?’

‘Go home to that pretty wife of yours if you’ve any sense.’

‘Don’t you think we should be looking for another woman, after what that solicitor said? Or a disgruntled husband?’ Jack stared at McKenna, unable to fathom the absence of interest. ‘There’s any number of motives there.’ He held up his hand, ticking off items as he listed them. ‘First, her husband was divorcing her. Second, her husband beat her … and maybe that accounts for the abortions….’

‘Well, we’re never likely to know,’ McKenna said wearily. ‘She’s dead and her husband’s dead.’

‘We could ask around the hospitals,’ Jack said. ‘Thirdly, this solicitor reckons she was a lesbian, of all things. God alone knows what that might’ve provoked!’

McKenna sat on the edge of his desk. ‘Jack, because someone says someone else is something or other, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.’

‘Then why say it?’

‘Margaret Bailey may have said it to dramatize herself. Or perhaps she didn’t. Someone else could have said it…. A snippet of gossip, sly whispers in the right ear, and before you can draw breath, Margaret Bailey’s a fully paid-up, card-earning member of the great sisterhood of Sappho.’ He pulled a cigarette from the packet. ‘And Margaret Bailey doesn’t have the slightest clue why people start giving her a wide berth and the cold shoulder.’

‘Why are you so negative?’ Jack demanded. ‘As soon as we might be getting anywhere, you go and put the mockers on it.’

‘Because I don’t think any of this is relevant.’

‘Not relevant?’ Jack stared. ‘Of course it is. It must be.’

‘Why must it?’ McKenna argued. ‘Even if she was a lesbian, what’s that to do with her being killed?’

Jack considered the question. Eventually he said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Quite.’ McKenna put the unlit cigarette in its packet. ‘You don’t know … and unless you invent a scenario with a jealous lover, or a
ménage
à
trois,
or something bizarre like that, you’re not likely to find out.’ He regarded Jack, smiling a little. ‘The English aren’t very passionate, Jack. They don’t usually kill, or get killed, for love. They kill for greed, for envy, for hatred, for revenge, for fear, or simply to save face.’

‘So you’re saying she wasn’t killed by somebody local?’

‘I’m saying she wasn’t killed because she provoked passion. But she may well have provoked fear or greed or envy, and therefore more than enough hatred to fuel the will to kill,’ McKenna said. ‘Think about it.’

Jack rubbed his hands over his jaw. ‘I can’t think straight about anything much at the moment.’ He stared at McKenna. ‘This is a real human tragedy, isn’t it? Big enough to kill Margaret Bailey, big enough to ruin the life of whoever murdered her….’ After a moment’s thought, he added, ‘And ruin the killer’s family.’

‘You think so, do you?’ McKenna asked. ‘You think it’s a terrible human tragedy?’

‘Don’t you?’

McKenna eased himself off the desk, turning to pick up his briefcase. ‘Depends, doesn’t it? You could argue all human tragedy is trivial in the extreme. After all,’ he added, checking the briefcase lock, ‘what difference does one tragedy or ten million make to the turning of the earth and the flow of the seasons and the moon and stars in the sky?’

Profoundly shocked, Jack said, ‘How can you say such things?’

‘How can I?’ McKenna asked. ‘I’m simply putting words to a thought.’ He looked at Jack. ‘If it bothers you, just forget I said anything.’

Low-voiced, Jack said, ‘I can’t, can I? You can’t unthink a thought once it’s come, and no more can you get rid of a thought once somebody else puts it into your head.’ After a long pause, he added, staring hard at the silent McKenna, ‘And you can’t ever wash away the effect of the thought, can you? Any more than we can unlearn how to split the atom.’

Jack heard the sound of the fire door at the head of the stairs closing behind McKenna before he began to think about the veiled warning not to neglect Emma.

‘I am not staying in, Denise,’ Emma said to the distraught woman on her doorstep. ‘This is the first time we’ve had an evening out as a family for ages.’ Upon Denise’s ashen face, Emma thought, surely lay the scars of tears as hot as molten glass. ‘Look, why not come with us?’ she suggested. ‘Take your mind off things. We’re only going to see a film suitable for fourteen year olds, and you can come back for supper.’ Emma took her arm, pulling Denise into the house. ‘And I don’t know
where Michael is, so stop fretting, and relax for a few hours. You never know, Denise, you might have a new perspective on things afterwards.’

They were already seated in the car when one of the twins said to Denise, ‘Your husband’s very sweet, isn’t he, Mrs McKenna? He came round for supper the other evening, and we enjoyed it so much!’

At work for 7.30 in the morning, Wil fidgeted for almost an hour before the lorry bringing the septic tank made its way down the track to Gallows Cottage. Rain had fallen overnight, the light sandy soil in the trench blotted with dark patches of water. Wet grass in the garden squelched under his boots, little beads of water garlanded the low eaves of the roof. All being well, Wil said to himself, he would finish on schedule, provided no more bodies emerged from ancient resting places, nothing happened to encourage the police to tear the place apart.

Leaving Dave to supervise unloading the tank, he went upstairs into the back bedroom, where the floorboards were loose, and kneeling, began to prise the boards from their moorings. The planks came up with a small flurry of gritty dust and a crackling of splintered wood. He put them to one side and stuck the hose end of the vacuum cleaner into the cavity. The whine of the motor drowned out the throbbing of the lorry’s engine pulsing stinking diesel fumes into the clear morning air as the tank was slowly unloaded and positioned. He could hear the dust and debris of centuries rattling up the hose, then that strange plopping sound of something too big blocking its inlet. Cursing under his breath, he found a bundle of dirty cloths stuck to the end. He yanked it away, and threw the bundle to one side, then pushed the hose back again.

The planks fitted beautifully into the clean space. He had nailed them back to the joist, vacuumed the floor, coiled up the cleaner and put away his tools in the right places in his box before he looked at the bundle again, and then only to glance casually, picking it up to take downstairs to the rubbish bin. The pattern caught his eye when he dropped it on the kitchen floor, and the rags scattered a little. The cloth on the outside of the bundle was dirty and faded, that on the inside quite clean, except for grubby marks here and there where the vacuum cleaner had caught.

Wil put the kettle on, adding extra water for the lorry driver, lit his pipe, and sat on a crate. He picked up the bundle and untangled it, spreading out on the kitchen floor a woman’s skirt, in pale silvery-grey wool, and a jacket, the fabric woven with dusky faded flowers on a background to match the skirt. The jacket was fastened with tarnished
buttons, once bright and gilded.

On the afternoon shift, Dewi Prys slept soundly until past eleven, when his mother’s voice eventually broke up his dreams. He ate his breakfast-cum-lunch, drank two mugs of tea, read the local paper, smiling at the tale of Beti and her ghost, marvelling that she looked much less hideous in the photograph than in real life, and walked down to the shop to buy groceries for his mother.

The main road through the council estate was busy, with cars and buses and vans, young girls with babies making their way from the morning mother and child clinic, where local doctors kept an eye on the youngsters, most of whom came into the world without benefit of a father’s name to their birth certificates. It was beyond Dewi’s understanding why girls barely out of childhood themselves could not wait before clamping the shackles of motherhood around their future, chaining hope to the railings of tedium. He walked slowly home, passing pushchairs and prams and girls in jeans and padded coloured jackets, their hair tangled by the wind, their faces bright with lipstick and eye colour. The babies, anonymous little lumps in quilted suits, some clean and rosy faced, others whey-faced, dirty and thin, already scavenging off the state for every crumb, every drop of milk, which passed their lips,
were, he realized, the next generation of Jamies and his ilk, misery-makers of the future. The baby boys would grow up to spawn fear into the hearts of the law-abiding and more babies on to the girls; the lowest social classes overbreeding, overweighing the fragile balance of a society teetering like a seesaw with too great a burden at one end; too many in need and not enough to make the wealth to keep them.

He passed a pretty, fair-haired girl, tall on her black high-heeled shoes, slender legs clad in denim, and looked briefly at the child in the pushchair she guarded. The baby, large and aggressive, looked as if aware the world owed it a living, and was already learning how best to call in the debt. But for the child, the girl might have taken Dewi’s fancy, and he wondered about the men who gave not a second thought to taking on another’s offspring, those he met almost every day at work: vicious, stupid, bestial humanity wearing its customary familiar face.

Jamie Thief lived but four doors down from Dewi’s nain. Dewi called on the old woman on his way to work, to take a meat pie his mother had baked. Jamie was on the pavement as he came out of his grandmother’s house, closing the door of a shiny grey Ford Scorpio.

Dewi sat with Jamie in the squad room, empty save for the two of them. As whey-faced as any baby from the estate, eyes red-rimmed and watery, Jamie pulled hard on a thin cigarette.

‘When’s your birthday, Jamie?’ Dewi asked. ‘Soon, isn’t it?’

‘None of your sodding business!’ Jamie snarled. Dewi watched the shaking hands.

‘What’re you on? Dope? Speed?’ Dewi asked. ‘You look a mess. Did you know that? From where I’m sitting, you look like you might be six feet under long before you get to your next birthday.’

Jamie made no response. He sat stony-faced, staring at the small patch of floor between the toes of his Nike baseball boots. Dewi remembered sitting in this same room countless times, watching Jamie stare at the floor and Doc Marten boots on his feet. Times changed, and fashions changed, but the likes of Jamie stayed the same, new ones growing up to join the mob each day. McKenna once told Dewi that the world must be balanced between good and bad, neither able to exist without the other, the social function of criminals so crucial that their absence would force society to pass laws to bring them into existence. Staring at Jamie, Dewi wondered where that process might begin, and realized the greater importance of knowing where it would end.

‘Why’ve you brought me here?’ Jamie demanded. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

Dewi grinned. ‘Jamie, you’ve always done something. There’ll be a whole string of things you’ve done waiting for us to find out about sooner or later.’

‘You always did talk a load of crap, Dewi Prys.’

‘We want to know about the car. That’s all.’

‘I’ve told you! How many more times do I have to tell you? I borrow it now and then. No crime in that, so hard bloody luck!’

Dewi wrote ‘borrows the car now and then’ in his notebook, while Jamie tried to read the words upside down. ‘Who d’you borrow it from?’ he persisted.

‘A mate.’

Dewi added ‘from a mate’ to his notes.

‘Why’re you writing it down?’ Jamie demanded.

‘We write everything down, you know that, Jamie. So you can’t come back at us and say you never said whatever it is. And so you can’t make out in court we beat a confession out of you.’

‘I’m not confessing anything!’

‘Did I say you were?’ Dewi smiled. ‘Shall I get us a
panad
?’

‘I don’t bloody want a drink! I want to get out of here!’

‘All in good time. Mr McKenna’ll want to talk to you about the car.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, you’ll have to ask him that yourself. Not for me to tell you, is it?’

Jamie jumped to his feet. ‘I’m going!’

‘Sit down, unless you want to be arrested,’ Dewi ordered. Jamie sank on to the chair, once again locked into the ghastly ritual, neither he nor Dewi Prys able to escape the consequences of their role in life.

Jack walked into the squad room, and saw the pair seated at the table. ‘What’s he doing here?’

‘I brought him in to talk to Mr McKenna, sir.’

‘Well, Mr McKenna’s not here, so you may as well send him away.’

‘Perhaps you’d better talk to Jamie, then,’ Dewi said. ‘I found him with the Ford Scorpio, so I thought we’d better do something about it.’

‘You what? Not that bloody car again!’

‘It’s the same car, sir. We should sort out why Jamie gets to borrow it. And who he borrows it from, if you get my drift.’

Jack looked from Jamie to the young police officer, and wondered which of the two was the bigger thorn in his flesh. ‘All right, Prys.’ He sat on the edge of the table, sharp creases in his trousers pulled taut over his thighs. ‘Who d’you borrow the car from, Jamie?’

‘I’ve already told him.’ Jamie gestured towards Dewi. ‘He’s too bloody thick to understand. Typical copper, isn’t he?’

‘Jamie says he borrows the car from a mate. I was just about to ask him again who the mate might be.’

‘Give me a name, Jamie. Stop farting about!’

Bravado returned to Jamie. ‘I don’t have to tell you anything. I want my brief.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Jack’s eyes narrowed. ‘And why should you want some
piddling bloody solicitor to hold your hand? What’ve you done you don’t want us knowing about?’

‘Nothing!’ Jamie spat the word.

Dewi’s voice was silky. ‘If you’ve done nothing, Jamie, you’ve no reason to have a brief. We’re not saying you have done anything. We’re almost agreeing with you that you haven’t done anything. Isn’t that right, Inspector?’ he said. ‘We just want you to tell us about the car, then you can walk right out of here, all legit, and not have to come back again.’

Jamie stared at Dewi, his eyes cold. Dewi wondered irrelevantly how many of those babies seen today might be the fruit of Jamie’s loins. Rotten fruit, so to speak. ‘What’s so important about the car anyway?’ Jamie asked.

‘That’s our business.’ Jack was losing patience. ‘Who lends it to you? Why is this
mate
of yours quite happy to hand over fifteen thousand quid’s worth of car whenever you want it?’

The silence lengthened. Jamie felt like a cornered animal, the feeling engendered by the sight of any policeman. ‘What happens if I don’t want to tell you?’ he asked. ‘If I decide it’s none of your fucking business?’

Jack hissed, ‘You’ll find out in the next thirty seconds.’

Dewi intervened. ‘You’re making life hard for yourself, Jamie. Beats me why you should want to do that. The inspector’ll have to arrest you unless you tell him.’

‘Why?’

Dewi said to Jack, ‘The trouble is, sir, Jamie’s conditioned to not telling us anything, even when there’s no reason for him not to…. I don’t reckon he thinks the car’s important, to be honest. Aren’t I right, Jamie?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

Jack banged the table with his fist. ‘I’ve had enough of this! Take him down to the cells!’

‘What for?’ Jamie leapt to his feet, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he gulped air.

‘Wilful bloody obstruction. To a murder investigation!’ Jack stalked off.

‘What the fuck is he talking about?’

‘What he said, Jamie,’ Dewi sighed. ‘That’s the bottom line. So don’t you think it might be a good idea to stop playing silly buggers?’