Slated for Death (15 page)

He paused for a moment and then spoke. “I'll get that key.”

“Before you do,” said Davies, “please answer my question. Has anyone reported a slate splitter missing or do you know if one is missing?”

“No. No one has reported one missing.”

“And,” Davies prompted. “Do you have personal knowledge that one is missing?”

Bevan shook his head. “No.”

The two police officers waited until he'd gone and then Bethan turned to Davies.

“Evasion always troubles me,” said Davies.

“And does it seem odd to you that Bryn Thomas would be so casual with his tools?” said Bethan. “If they've been handed down, why would he just leave them lying about where presumably anyone could take them.”

“Why would anyone want them?” Davies asked.

Bethan peered at the tools in the evidence bag.

“To own a little bit of British industrial history? To kill Glenda Roberts?”

 

Twenty-five

“I'd better let Bethan know that Taff's been found,” said Penny. She and Victoria were back at the Spa, having left Ifan with the vet to sort out his dog's care. Staff at the veterinary clinic had warmed Taff and were monitoring his vital signs carefully. Ifan had wept in the consulting room, both with gratitude to Penny, Victoria, and Bronwyn, and with relief that his lost dog had been found alive.

“But he's not out of the woods yet,” the vet had warned, adding that Taff would have to be hospitalized and the next twenty-four hours would be critical. “But he's young and very fit, so he has that going for him. It goes without saying that we'll do everything we can.” The vet had recommended that Ifan go home and get some sleep, but Ifan had asked if he could stay for a bit and told Penny and Victoria he'd make his own way home.

“Poor Ifan wasn't in very good shape,” said Victoria. “I didn't know he drank, but you could really smell it on him. As things turned out, it was a good thing he'd already arranged for me to lead tonight's practice.” She glanced at the calendar on her desk. “We've only got three weeks or so until the concert and there's still so much to do.”

“Yikes!” said Penny. “You're right. Not much time. I'd better get in touch with the guest singer and make arrangements for her rehearsals and find out what she needs. By the way, I thought we'd offer to do her hair and give her a manicure here at the Spa. I'm assuming she does her own makeup, but I'll find out.”

“Good idea. Oh, and when you're speaking to Bethan, ask her if there's anything new on the knockoff goods. A friend told me last night that fake Halen M
ô
n salt has now turned up at the market.”

“I wonder if there's any more of our stuff out there. I hate thinking of some crappy imitation being passed off as our beautiful cream.”

“Me, too. The damage it can do to our reputation…”

“Right, well, I'll leave you to it.”

Bethan answered her phone almost immediately and thanked Penny for the Taff update. When Penny asked about the counterfeit goods, she hesitated. That investigation is ongoing, she said, but a new line of inquiry had revealed some interesting information.

“We're working on that,” Bethan said. “All the fake products that we've been able to uncover so far trace back to one local distributor. But I have a question for you. Did you sell a jar of your hand cream to Glenda Roberts?”

“I don't know. I'd have to ask Rhian. If anyone would know, she would. Just hang on a second.” Penny put the phone down and went to find Rhian.

“Yes, in fact I sold her two. She said she wanted one for herself and one for her sister.”

“Her sister doesn't strike me as the hand cream type.”

“And I'm not sure Glenda strikes me as the thoughtful type who'd buy a jar of relatively expensive hand cream for her sister.” Penny returned to her office and resumed her conversation with Bethan.

“Do you think Glenda was the distributor of these goods?”

“We'll know more once we've audited her bank accounts. Financial forensics. Apparently she had some good jewellery and apart from organizing events and just generally being useful in the community, we can't find that she had a real job of any sort. So she must have been getting her money from somewhere. We'd like to know where.”

As Penny rang off, Rhian poked her head round the door. “Oh, good. You're off the phone. Just wanted to ask you … my grandfather's birthday is on Friday, and we're hoping you'll join us.”

“Are you sure?” asked Penny, avoiding any reference to their previous exchange.

“Yes,” said Rhian. “There's no hard feelings you know, Penny. We all know what you're like. Asking all the questions, like.”

“Well, I'm sorry again that I upset your grandfather, Rhian, and I'd like very much to go to his party. We'll walk over together, shall we?” Rhian nodded and returned to her desk. Penny made a mental note to let Jimmy know she was coming. He'd asked her to always let him know when she was coming. “Old people don't like surprises,” he'd told her. “A surprise robs us of the pleasure of anticipation and our days can use a little more pleasure.”

 

Twenty-six

“Right, you lot,” said the High Pastures' recreation director, also known as the third housekeeper, with false cheeriness. “Time to get ready for Dylan, today's birthday boy.” She looked at the few people in the lounge. Two or three were asleep in their chairs after lunch and the rest seemed only vaguely interested.

“We need someone to sort the balloons. Who'd like to volunteer?”

“I'll do it,” said Jimmy. “I've done it before and I know where they're kept.” He wheeled himself down the corridor and into the crafts room. Shelves filled with neatly stacked rolls and sheets of coloured paper, plastic boxes filled with small tools, bottles of glue and glitter, rulers, artificial flowers, ribbons, and small embossing machines lined one wall. Miss Owens, an elderly resident seated at a table, did not look up as he entered, but kept her eyes on her work. Her scissors made little snipping sounds as Jimmy opened the door of a cupboard and pulled three balloons from a box. Then he lifted out the helium gas canister and attached a balloon to it. It gave an empty little fizz and then nothing.

What the hell's the matter with it, thought Jimmy. He fiddled with the valve and gave the canister a thump. He'd filled the balloons for Doreen's party and there'd been plenty of helium in the tank when he'd finished. Maybe the staff had used the helium for a little party of their own.

He sat for a moment with the bright red tank on his lap. A staff member would just have to blow up the balloons because he doubted any of the residents had enough puff left in their lungs for the task. Unless there was another tank hidden in the cupboard somewhere. He bent over but didn't see another tank on a lower shelf, and it would be hard to miss. But something did catch his eye. He pulled out a large plastic bag with an adjustable Velcro strip around the opening. When he'd worked out its significance, he looked at the tank in his lap and regretting he had touched it, held it under the bottom and placed it back on the shelf. He set the plastic bag beside it, closed the door, and returned to the lounge where he waited for Penny to arrive.

He turned his head each time someone entered the lounge and finally, he saw her, entering with Rhian. She smiled and made her way over to him.

“All right, Jimmy?” she greeted him, giving his hand a friendly pat.

“Good, thanks Penny. But before things get started here, I've found something I want to show you. Come with me.” Penny took the handle of Jimmy's wheelchair and pushed him toward the door of the day room.

“Where are we going?”

“Down the hall, here. To the crafts room. Straight on and I'll show you.” A few minutes later he gestured at a door with a faded wreath made from dried flowers on it. “In here.”

He nodded at Miss Owens who smiled a brief acknowledgement and then bent her head over her delicate scissoring. “Over here,” he said to Penny pointing to a worktop with storage cupboards underneath. “Right.” He opened the door. “That's the helium tank and behind it, there's a plastic bag. Probably best we don't touch anything.”

“What about them, Jimmy? I don't understand what you're telling me.”

“Come around in front of me here, Penny.” He motioned to a small desk nearby with a chair. “Bring the chair over.” She did as she was told and sat close to him.

“The bag that's there. It's not an ordinary bag. It's got a Velcro strap on it so you can fasten it.”

“Fasten it?”

“Yes, you put it over your head and fasten it around your neck.” He let that sink in for a moment and when Penny's puzzled eyes narrowed slightly, he continued.

“The helium tank is empty. I know it was almost full on the day of Doreen's birthday because I inflated the balloons for her party myself. That's my job. I fill the birthday balloons.”

Penny glanced at Miss Owens who seemed engrossed in her work as she pushed the little pieces of cut paper into a neat pile with the edge of her hand. “I'm listening. Go on,” said Penny.

“Well, the empty helium tank and the plastic bag—hood, really—makes me think we could be looking at assisted suicide.”

“Sorry, I'm not with you.”

“Doreen Roberts. The way we found her. She might have done an assisted suicide.”

Penny's eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

“It could be a suicide kit. Helium's meant to be quick and painless. You put the plastic bag over your head, attach a tube to the helium tank, and feed the tube under the hood. Then, using the Velcro, you tighten the bag around your neck and turn on the helium. You breathe it in and the end comes quickly.

“Trouble is, if you don't want the suicide to be obvious, you need someone with you. The assistant is not supposed to touch any of the equipment or provide any help with the actual process. The helper's role is just to take away the equipment when it's all over. It mustn't be found with the body, so the death looks natural. And apparently, the helium isn't detected at the postmortem.”

“Oh, Jimmy,” said Penny. “How do you know all this? No, don't tell me. I can guess.”

“You just have to look around you when you're in a place like this, Penny,” he said. “Almost everybody in here has considered this at one time or another. To some, it seems like a better alternative than being here for years, eating up the kids' inheritance. Some people live in places like this for three or four years. Or longer. And really, after a while you ask yourself, what's the point?”

“Did you ever hear Doreen Roberts talk about suicide?” Penny asked.

“No, but it wouldn't surprise me,” said Jimmy. “See, there are two types of people in here—those whose minds have gone, but their bodies are still relatively strong, and those, like me, whose bodies don't work very well anymore but who've still got it up here.” He tapped his temple with a forefinger. “Doreen was like that. She was pretty sharp, let me tell you. Not much got past her. And those are the kinds of people who might contemplate suicide. The ones who've had enough, realize that this is all there is and there's no going home, and one day they just can't take any more.”

He spoke so softly that Penny had to lean forward to hear him. She glanced at Miss Owens, now engrossed in adding a touch of colour to her creation and hesitating before exchanging one pastel marker for another.

“Suicide as a theory just doesn't seem right to me,” said Penny. “It doesn't make sense. Why would she commit suicide just before her birthday party? Wouldn't she wait until the party was over? Or, did she want to make sure her body was found quickly? She'd know that when she didn't turn up on time for the birthday party, someone would come looking for her.”

Jimmy raised an eyebrow. “Or, there's the possibility that…”

“Someone gave her some unwanted assistance and it wasn't suicide at all,” finished Penny.

“Either way, we need to inform the police,” said Jimmy. “Suicide or otherwise. Because here's the thing: if someone took the tank away, someone else was there.”

“And why would they just leave the bag here in the cupboard where it would be found sooner or later?” asked Penny. “Because they were in a hurry to get away or because they didn't care if it was found?”

Jimmy did not reply, but looked in the direction of Miss Owens.

“Maybe you should ask her if she saw anything. She's in here all day, every day. Makes the most beautiful greeting cards, by all accounts.”

Penny exchanged a few words with Miss Owens and then returned to Jimmy.

“She says she's only seen residents and staff in here. But she admits that she doesn't always pay much attention to who comes and goes.”

“So not a lot of help there.”

“No. Let's think this through. If we call the police, we'll have to inform the staff,” said Penny. “We can't just have the police turning up and the staff not know what's happening.”

“We'll have to be careful how we do this. If we tell the staff, one of them could come in here and remove the stuff.” Penny got up and took a picture of the cupboard's contents on her phone. “They might want to remove the stuff,” she repeated, “if they thought one of their staff might be implicated in an assisted suicide. I don't know the legality of it.”

“Oh, that's easy,” said Jimmy. “Assisting someone in a suicide is illegal in Wales.”

He straightened in his chair.

“I'm staying here until the police arrive,” he said. “Close the cupboard door and push my chair back against it.”

When Penny sat down again, he nodded. “Right, you call the police now and I'll wait here. Then tell a staff person that you've called the police and put in an appearance at the party. They'll be wondering where you've got to.”