A Small Hill to Die On: A Penny Brannigan Mystery (15 page)

She had never heard Gwennie mention this room and wondered if it had been added since the Vietnamese people had taken over the house. The room might have existed when the Gruffydd family lived here, she decided, but perhaps the new occupants had installed a more modern locking system.

She stood up and, trailing a hand against the wall, walked around the small room, exploring and feeling the wall as she went. The walls were bare and the room contained next to nothing, just the carpet and a rack of metal shelving holding a laptop. Shelving, carpet, and a laptop. Since that was all there was, she would explore every inch of them, starting with the laptop.

Doubting that Wi-Fi would work in this enclosed, windowless room, she opened the lid. Password required. She halfheartedly tried entering a few … Ashlee, Ashlee1, Tyler, Ashty. Nothing. The password would probably be a Vietnamese word. She replaced the laptop on the shelf and turned her attention to the carpet.

She took off her boots and placed them neatly side by side near the door and walked back to the carpet. She ran her feet along the nap, seeing if anything would come up. Nothing did. But the colour looked refreshed, as if it had been recently cleaned. Why, she asked herself, why would someone bother to wash the carpet in a storage room? She lifted up the two corners of the carpet nearest the door and saw nothing. She did the same with the third corner and saw nothing. As she lifted the fourth corner, the carpet gave up its secret, revealing a glint of something shoved between the floorboards. She lay down on her stomach to get a closer look, and as she reached out to try to pry it loose, she stopped, her hand in midair. Don’t touch it, she told herself, it might be evidence. It was a dangly type of earring with a silver hook and a small purple stone, and she realized where she had seen it before. Gareth had shown one just like it to her and Alwynne; it was the mate to the one found on Ashlee’s body.

I wonder if poor Ashlee was held in this room, too, and she jammed the earring between the floorboards to let us know she was here, Penny thought. Clever girl. But if she’d been here, locked up in this room, did that mean …

With her next breath the antiseptic smell, which she’d been getting used to, seemed overpowering again and her heart banged against her ribs with such force she could feel its every wringing motion. A hard knot of fear tightened in her gut. The disinfectant smell nauseated her. She pushed the back of her hand against her mouth to stifle a scream.

Had Ashlee screamed, she wondered, when she’d been beaten to death? In this room.

Twenty-nine

“I just hope we’re not too late.”

“So do I,” said Sergeant Bethan Morgan. “If she’s there, that is. Because you don’t know for sure that she is, do you? She might have gone sketching with Trixxi and then met up with a friend and stayed for dinner. She could have done any number of things. Be any number of places.”

The two officers were in the lead car of a small convoy winding its way out of Llanelen and up the road that led to Ty Brith Hall. The last time they had driven that route was to advise Mai Grimstead to prepare herself to face the reality that the body Penny had discovered on the hillside was that of her daughter, Ashlee.

Davies grimaced and shifted in his seat. “When you’ve been a police officer as long as I have, Bethan, you just know when something is very wrong. And this is very wrong. We can’t take the chance that she’s okay somewhere and that she’ll just turn up wondering what all the fuss is about.”

Bethan, who was driving, stole a sideways glance to her left at Davies in the passenger seat. He had a binder on his lap and with a pinpoint flashlight was reviewing his operational notes.

“Now we have the CMU team ready to take the stables and secure the grow op. You’ll stay with me but keep in touch with Jones, who’ll be leading the team in the house. We want a full and thorough search. Attics, basements, everything. Hopefully we find her, but if not, look for anything that might indicate she was there.”

Bethan nodded. “I was wondering, sir, if you mentioned the grow op to Penny. Did she know about it?”

“Really, Sergeant, I’m surprised you’d even ask such a thing. Of course I didn’t tell her about it. Not only would that be highly unprofessional, but with an operation as sensitive and expensive as this one, putting it at risk would be the last thing I’d do.”

“I didn’t mean it that way, sir. Quite the opposite, in fact. I was thinking about her safety. You know how she always winds up getting involved somehow in our murder cases—despite our best efforts to keep her out. So I was thinking she might have stumbled into something really bad up here whilst trying to investigate Ashlee’s murder. When, in fact, if you’d told her what was really going on at Ty Brith—the grow op—she would have known to keep well away.”

“Oh, bloody hell, Bethan, I never thought of it that way. I was just doing everything by the book, which of course means tell no one. But you may be right. It might have been better if she’d known.”

Bethan flipped on the turn indicator, then slowed, easing the car onto the road that led to the Hall, as Davies glanced in the wing mirror at the cars following. Their headlights were on, but there were no flashing blue lights or sirens. As the vehicles reached the top of the road that led to the Hall, the convoy divided as some cars, led by Davies and Bethan, turned right toward the stables, leaving the last two cars to turn left toward the house.

*   *   *

“What’ve you done now, Derek?” sneered Tyler as they watched the two cars approach. “Fallen behind in your payments to the bookies, have ya?”

Derek let the curtain fall from his hand and turned to his stepson. “Here comes trouble. Big-time. It’s the police. Where’s your mother?”

Tyler shrugged. “I think she’s outside somewhere talking to Uncle Tu’.”

“What about Bruno? Is he with them?”

“How should I know? Oh, no, wait a minute. I think I heard Uncle Tu’ say he’s looking after something in Birmingham and he’s expected back Sunday.”

“Well, you’d better go and see if you can find your mother. She’s—” He was interrupted by a loud banging on the front door accompanied by shouts of “Open up! Police!”

Derek inclined his head toward the door. “It may be too late.”

By now the seriousness of the situation was dawning on Tyler. “But do we have to let them in? What do they want? Don’t they need a search warrant or something?”

“If they need one, they’ve got one. They know how these things work and they tend to come prepared.” The knocking continued. “Better let ’em in. They’re coming in anyway, so we might as well spare them the bother of having to break the door down.”

Derek walked toward the door, shouting as he went, “All right! Hold your horses. I’m coming.”

A moment later, Derek led PC Chris Jones from the Conwy station into the spacious reception room at the front of the house.

“We’re looking for a woman called Penny Brannigan,” Jones said, holding up his official identification, “and we have reasonable grounds to believe she may be in this house. Do you know anything about her?”

Derek shook his head. “No, I don’t know anything about her. Do you, Tyler?”

Tyler shook his head. “Who’s she, when she’s at home?”

“Well, you won’t mind if we search the house, then, will you, sir?”

“Have you got a search warrant?” Tyler asked.

“Yes, although we don’t need one. We have reason to believe that a crime is being committed here and someone’s in danger, and that gives us the right of entry.”

Derek’s shoulders sagged as Jones returned to the front hall where several officers stood waiting. He nodded at them and they spread out through the building.

“Mind you don’t break anything, now, lads,” Derek called after them.

He turned to Tyler. “What if they find…?” Tyler said in a low voice.

Derek shook his head. “They won’t.”

Thirty

Bethan Morgan ended the phone call and, shaking her head, turned to Davies. “They’ve finished the house search. Sorry, but they didn’t find any trace of Penny.”

Davies ran his hand over his upper lip. “Did they do the cellar and attic?” Bethan nodded.

“But, sir, I’ve had an idea. These old houses often have hiding places, secret rooms, priest holes, that sort of thing. Our team won’t be able to find them because they weren’t meant to be found. If anyone would know, Gwennie would. She was the housekeeper here for years.”

“Ring her. Victoria can give you her number. Tell Jones to stay where he is until he hears from you.”

A few moments later, Bethan nodded excitedly and turned to Davies. “There is one. It’s off the butler’s pantry between the kitchen and dining room.”

“Call Jones.”

*   *   *

Jones pressed the
END
button on his phone and turned to Derek.

“All right now, mate, there’s one more room we’d like to search. I think you know which one I mean. Show me where it is.”

Derek led Jones into the kitchen and then into a large butler’s pantry, situated between the kitchen and dining room. The walls were lined with bespoke cabinets, mostly empty, but at one time they would have held silver and crockery in a heavy, old-fashioned pattern. A small desk in one corner would have held the wine journal and other records of the day-to-day operation of a large household. The wide oak floorboards creaked under the men’s weight. Derek approached one of the cabinets and reached under the middle shelf. The cabinet then slowly swung toward them, revealing a solid door behind it. As the police officers exchanged glances, a mechanical bolt slid back with a loud click and Derek pushed the door open. He stepped to one side so the police officers could enter. The room was empty. Jones bent over and picked up a blue woolen glove.

*   *   *

“She wasn’t there?” said Davies. “How can that be? We’ve looked everywhere, but she’s here, somewhere. I know she is.” And then, more to himself, he added, “She’s got to be.”

Jones showed him the glove. “Is this hers?” Davies took it from him and, turning it over, he nodded. “We found that in the secret room. She must have left it behind to let us know she was there. Maybe they’ve taken her somewhere else. I hope not, but they could have moved her on.”

They were silent for a moment as a sudden burst of crackle over their radios drowned out any other sound.

“We’ve got the husband and son who were in the house waiting in the back of a car. Is there anything else you need us to do in here?” Jones asked.

“Not at the moment,” said Davies. He was about to add something when a voice came over the loud-hailer. “Stand clear.”

The officers took a few steps back, and several seconds later a huge explosion ripped through the stable. Large pieces of metal debris fell through the smoke, followed by loud, ringing clangs as they made contact with the cobbled yard. As the smoke cleared, revealing the extent of the damage, a disembodied voice shouted, “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off.”

As great shouts of tension-releasing laughter went up, a shadowy figure emerged from around the far side of the building. Jones spotted it first, tapped Davies on the arm, and pointed.

Ignoring the CMU’s warning to keep back, Davies ran toward Penny. He had just wrapped his arms around her when an intense humming sound, followed by a loud crackling, hissing noise, came from within the building. Seconds later, staccato bursts of high-voltage sparking signaled that the electrical wiring was about to reach the end of its vastly overloaded capacity.

“Here we go, everybody,” shouted the CMU commander. “Keep back and clear the way for the fire brigade.”

Thirty-one

After one more loud crack and a series of small explosions, smoke began billowing out of the hole in the side of the stable building where the reinforced steel door had been. A moment later, a boy stumbled out, coughing and covering his mouth.

“That’s Trung,” shouted Penny. As two paramedics went to help him, the boy began yelling and pointing at the kennels.

“Oh, my God, there must be dogs trapped in there,” Penny shouted. “Trixxi might be in there.” She grabbed Davies’ arm. “Do something! You’ve got to get them out.”

“Wait here,” he said. “Don’t move. I’ll tell the CMU commander.” He ran a few steps and then turned back to make sure Penny had not moved. He raised an arm toward her. “Stay where you are.”

Penny ran up to him.

“You can access the kennels through an interior door. They’ll be on the right if you go in through that hole you blew open. Tell them that.” She grabbed his arm. “Believe me, I’ve had more than enough for one day. I’m not going anywhere.” She took a few steps backward, her arms clutched in front of her.

Davies exchanged a few words with the CMU commander, who dispatched a couple of his officers. Soon, loud frantic barking could be heard as a couple of officers staggered from the smoking building. One had his hands full with four dogs on leads, and another had an armful of wriggling fur that might have been two or three dogs.

Penny ran up to the officer with the dogs on leads. “That Lab,” she said, “is mine.” She bent down and wrapped her arms around Trixxi, who wagged her tail vigorously, and her whole back end with it, as she buried her face in Penny’s arms. With tears streaking down her face, Penny stood up slowly, adjusting the blanket that a medic had placed around her shoulders.

Davies put his arm around her and waved over his sergeant, Bethan Morgan.

“Look, Penny,” he said, “I need you and Trixxi to wait in a nice, warm police car with Bethan. You’ll need to give us a statement, and if you feel like talking, Bethan can take it now. If you want to wait until tomorrow, that’s fine, too.” Bethan slipped her hand through Penny’s arm, and giving her a concerned but determined look, she led her to the staging area where the police cars had been parked.

“We’re just rounding everyone up now,” said Bethan, “and trying to sort all this out. It’s going to take a bit of time, but I could drive you home if you like.”

Penny shook her head.

“I think I’d rather wait and go home later. I don’t really want to be alone right now.”