The House of Women (25 page)

‘
Was it a miscarriage?’

‘
It was an inevitability. She had an ectopic pregnancy, and the Fallopian tube’s ruptured. She must have been in agony for days. Why in God’s name didn’t she come to see me?’

*

‘I’ve left the papers with George,’ Rowlands announced. ‘They’ll be quite safe because he’s not going anywhere. Did you ring the hospital?’

‘
Dr Ansoni called,’ McKenna said. ‘She had an ectopic pregnancy, and now she’s in a critical condition.’

‘
Are you going over?’

‘
Diana’s staying. She’ll be a lot more use than we would.’ Seeing the other man’s mutinous expression, he scowled. ‘Just stop making like Punch to her Judy, will you?’ Rummaging in his briefcase, he went on: ‘And as computers co-operate with you, find out why Annie Harris keeps getting these fixed penalty notices when she hasn’t been to Shrewsbury for years.’

‘
Because her car came courtesy of Jason Lloyd, I imagine,’ Rowlands commented, leafing through the documents. ‘Anything connected with that arrogant little sod must be suspect. I can’t think why Edith likes him.’

‘
Maybe she only pretends to, to keep Mina happy,’ McKenna said, locating Phoebe’s exercise book at the bottom of his brief-case. ‘Stranger things have happened.’

‘
Like your opinion of Edith changing from negative to positive in the blink of an eye?’

‘
She’s surprised me more than once this week,’ McKenna admitted.

‘
I expect she’s surprised herself even more, but with her sort, you can’t tell which state of mind’s calling the shots, so they’re not exactly reliable. Phoebe’s pretty much her mother’s daughter, as well.’

‘
And I think they both have a core of honesty and strength. By the way, Edith said we can search the house, so we’ll do it when Dewi’s back.’

*

In her essay, Phoebe struggled at times to give full voice to her ideas, McKenna thought, but amid the unruly wrangling with words, they were none the less forceful and uniquely experienced, burned in the crucible of her own imagination before being set down on paper. She built Llys Ifor stone by stone, from its past as the raw, carpentered environment of its infancy, to its future as the few tumbled stones of a decayed ruin, and each era was a new manipulation of the earth on which it stood, a new rearrangement of mossy stone, weather-bleached wood and lichen-stained slate, each the record of its own history, and of an indivisible partnership between man and nature.

Lingering over words and phrases, caught again between here and another place and time, he decided beauty could be defined only by the hunger it evoked, and thought of the gift she fought to bring to maturity. The taste of envy could still sour his throat when he remembered Ned
’s gift, and perhaps in that he was not alone, he realized, wondering who might have found the same gall too bitter to swallow.

The little breeze still drifted in from the sea, stirring dusty leaves on the trees outside and pulling cigarette smoke about the room. Sorting papers, he began to understand how his resentment and disappointment, and an unremitting sense of failure, impeded his own capacity to function, for the execution of police duties without malice or favour had implications beyond even-handedness. When Diana Bradshaw favoured her own comfort, she had set in motion the chain of events now leading him to fritter away his time escaping humiliation. Irritated beyond measure by his own stupidity, he telephoned Gladys to ask for a snapshot of Ned
’s erstwhile friend, and was then unreasonably pleased when she again invited him to visit Llys Ifor whenever he wished.

Through the half-open door, he saw Rowlands hunched over the computer console, chain-smoking in defiance of all instructions, pushing keys and frowning.
‘Are you sure that car belongs to Annie Harris?’

‘
Of course it does.’ McKenna went to the door. ‘How else would she be getting fixed penalty notices?’

‘
Did she check the number with her own? People can get so upset by these notices they don’t think.’

‘
I checked. It’s her car.’

‘
Then as the computer’s telling me that car belongs to a man from Rhyl, I think we’ve got a classic double-up on our hands. Who’s got the
bona
fide
vehicle, I wonder, and who’s driving round in a stolen car and total ignorance?’

‘
Probably both of them. Why stop at two, with new registration documents there for the asking? Get Rhyl to find out where the car was bought, and check the engine and vehicle ID numbers, then ask DVLA to do a thorough trawl.’

‘
I’ll put Iolo’s toy through while I’m at it, and I’d better do Dewi’s convertible, as he bought it off that villain Geraint.’ He glanced at McKenna. ‘Will you tell Annie, or shall I?’

*

Instead of quartering the cell, George was crawling around amid a litter of papers, studying one after the other and moving a sheet now and then to another heap. When McKenna appeared at the door, he sat back on his heels, brushing sweat from his forehead. ‘If truth is misrepresented often enough, and with enough guile, the misrepresentation becomes a new truth.’

‘
That’s a very philosophical assertion,’ McKenna commented. ‘How is it relevant in the real world?’

‘
As something to bear in mind, and not just when you want to fit a crime to a suspect. You may well have the suspect under your nose, but not know the crime’s taken place.’ He gestured to the papers. ‘Have you read this lot?’

‘
We read most of them. Dewi sorted them into loose categories.’

‘
Up to a point, his diligence obscured the issue.’ George searched for a particular document, then read out the poem which had caught McKenna’s attention, his execution of its ancient language quite beautiful.

‘
And?’ McKenna enquired, sitting on the bunk and lighting the last cigarette from his packet.

‘
Williams said these texts have been around for centuries, but they’re new to me, and I’ve seen virtually all the extant texts of the period.’ He pointed to the heap of press cuttings telling of the professor’s career. ‘Did you read those?’ As McKenna nodded, he said: ‘What’s missing, then?’

‘
How on earth should I know?’

‘
You’re a detective.’

‘
But not a document specialist.’

‘
You don’t need to be. It’s staring you in the face, which is what I meant about misrepresentation of the truth.’

‘
So why not put me out of my misery?’ McKenna asked, dropping ash in the empty packet.

‘
What’s in it for me? The key to the cell door?’

‘
As far as I’m concerned, you can stay here until you turn white.’

‘
You put Rowlands to shame!’ George laughed, teeth gleaming. ‘He’s scared shitless of being accused of prejudice, whatever he says to the contrary, and you don’t give a toss.’

‘
I heard about the “white honky” jibe,’ McKenna said, ‘but I’m “white trash”, so from that point of view, you and I are on a par. Now, what’s missing?’

‘
Provenance of the texts Williams discovered. You’d expect to find analyses of paper, watermarks, inks, quills, writing style, words and phrases current to the place and period, and anything else that might verify their history. As Ned kept everything else, I can’t imagine he’d overlook that.’

‘
Nor can I.’ McKenna smiled slightly. ‘Phoebe might well have been right about all the boxes being full of lies.’

‘
Which means Williams’s whole career is built on a fraud, and Ned probably found out.’

‘
What about the other texts, like that beautiful verse?’

‘
They need the attention of document specialists and Welsh scholars, but I suspect some were written by the same person trying out different hands,’ George said, then he grinned. ‘You’ll have to retrieve the originals of the professor’s alleged discovery from the National Library, won’t you? And as I’ve no doubt the manuscripts were accepted at face value, expect to see a cat the size of Phoebe’s routing the academic pigeon coop.’

*

‘It’s amazing how you find things when you know what you’re looking for,’ Rowlands commented, happily punching computer keys. ‘The man in Rhyl’s spitting feathers, because the vehicle ID details on the car he bought relate to an identical model reported stolen by Manchester Police. And,’ he added, pausing to light a cigarette, ‘DVLA unearthed two others with the same registration, one local, the other in Shropshire, which is probably the parking offender. If they had a decent computer in the first place, these things would show up at the time, and the double-up racket would be a lot harder to run.’

‘
All over the station,’ commented McKenna, ‘there are notices in big red letters warning us not to smoke near computers.’

‘
Are there? I always smoke when I’m working on my own. Seems to help it to think, or whatever computers do with themselves.’

Tearing the wrapping from a new cigarette pack, McKenna related the conversation with George.
‘We’ve been disgracefully negligent over these documents, but then, if George is right, so have some of the best brains in the field.’

‘
Do we haul in the professor, then, and hope he admits his deception?’ Rowlands asked. ‘Fat chance!’ He put his cigarette in the lip of the ashtray, and returned to the computer. ‘I’ve alerted the vehicle examiner about the suspect cars, and Shrewsbury Police will do their end.’ He paused. ‘And I called the hospital, but there’s no change.’

‘
But she’s been there nearly two hours. There must be
some
change.’

*

When she telephoned a little later, Diana Bradshaw could report only that Janet was still in the operating theatre, still losing blood, and still being transfused, while the distraught Pastor Evans roamed the hospital corridors, muttering to himself. Janet’s mother simply waited, in stunned silence.

‘
Why didn’t she tell me?’ Her voice was subdued. ‘Why didn’t she ask me for help? You knew, didn’t you? Just before she passed out in the ambulance, she said she wanted you to tell her parents.’ She drew a deep breath, then said: ‘And Prys knew. Everyone knew, except me!’

‘
Dewi probably guessed, which wouldn’t be difficult in the circumstances,’ McKenna said. ‘Janet told me because she’s known me a long time, and I know her family. She wasn’t trying to hide anything from you, and nor was anyone else.’

‘
I didn’t think you were!’ The waspish tone was never far away. ‘But at the very least, I might have persuaded her to see a doctor.’

‘
She wouldn’t go. She missed an appointment the other evening.’

After a long silence, she said:
‘Even if she pulls through, she might never be able to have children.’

‘
That isn’t always a tragedy. Some women don’t want children.’

‘
Only until they find they’re barren, and then there’s nothing on earth they want more.’ Then, before he could respond, she rushed on. ‘You’ll have to release Polgreen.’

‘
Without charge, or on bail?’

‘
Without charge.’

‘
And are you returning soon? There are several things to discuss, Rowlands among them.’

‘
He lost his temper.’

‘
He tells me he was very much out of order.’

‘
And what d’you suggest I do about it? Set the disciplinary machine in motion? I don’t think that would be warranted.’

‘
As I wasn’t there, I can’t give an opinion.’

‘
Quite, so we’ll chalk it up to experience. What else did you want to discuss?’

‘
Some developments with regard to Ned, and Rowlands has struck lucky with the cars.’

‘
Tell him to find mine, then, and I’ll forget what he said.’ There was a glint of humour in her voice.

*

The aged scholar whom McKenna eventually located through the document curator at the National Library struggled to entertain the possibility of fraud more than Phoebe ever fought with words. While admitting that technical verification of Williams’s discovery had not taken place, the need for such investigation, or the wisdom, was dismissed out of hand. ‘D’you realize the best Celtic scholars in Europe scrutinized those texts?’ he demanded. ‘Are you trying to gainsay their judgement?’

‘
The documents appear to constitute evidence,’ McKenna countered, ‘so they must be properly examined.’

‘
You can’t do that! Don’t you know how fragile they are?’

‘
No harm will come to them, I assure you.’

‘
Why are you doing this?’ the old voice was plaintive. ‘People have known of those texts since they were first written, and if you look through the literature, you’ll find hundreds of references and even quotations.’ He paused, in obvious distress. ‘By chance, every once in a blue moon, when the world thinks they’re lost for good and we’re all the poorer for it, there’s a hint they might still exist, or a clue to their whereabouts, and that’s how these were unearthed. the clues were there, but no-one saw them for what they were, until Eddie realized there might be a trail to follow.’ He paused again. ‘He got a job in Vienna during one of the long vacs, helping to sort some of the messes still left over from the war, and found the manuscripts among a pile of papers belonging to a Frenchman called de Tremont, who went to Vienna in 1809 as part of the French Occupation, then returned to France in a hurry when there was so much trouble after the 1814 congress. He left most of his stuff behind, expecting to collect it later, I imagine, but he never did.’