Evan and Elle (2 page)

It had been another glorious day—the latest of a prolonged Indian summer that people were already calling a
drought. Of course one week without rain counted as a drought in North Wales. Evan could feel the windburn on his face, the result of a long day’s climbing on Glyder Fawr, the peak across the valley from Snowdon. His sore muscles were beginning to remind him that he was no longer in climbing condition. There never seemed to be time for weekend climbs these days. His job as community police officer in Llanfair couldn’t exactly be described as strenuous, but he found it hard to say no to the constant stream of volunteer projects.

And then, of course, there was Bronwen. The young village schoolteacher shared his love of the outdoors and expected to share his weekends. Not that he objected to spending his free time with Bronwen, but it meant that he hadn’t done any serious climbing in a while and he missed it.

His corduroy trouser legs swished through dying bracken as he continued down the mountain. To his right the dark square of a Norwegian Spruce plantation broke the smooth sweep of the pastures. Evan looked at it with distaste. Another ugly blot on the landscape, like the Everest Inn, Evan thought. Nobody asked the locals before they came in and planted their Christmas trees!

Lights were coming on in Llanfair. He’d better hurry if he wanted to get back before dark. Discreet floodlights already outlined the monstrous shape of the Everest Inn, perched, like an overgrown Swiss chalet, at the top of the pass. Like the rest of the villagers he felt that it looked completely out of place on a Welsh mountainside.

The village itself was a poorly lit straggle of cottages except
for the Red Dragon pub. Harry-the-Pub had invested in a floodlight this summer, now that more tourists were coming to Llanfair. Not everybody was in favor of a floodlit pub sign. The two ministers of Chapel Bethel and Chapel Beulah, usually deadly enemies, had teamed up for once to denounce this brazen advertisement of the demon alcohol—especially when lit on the Sabbath. Evans-the-Meat had gone one step further and lodged an official complaint, saying that the light was a public nuisance and shone directly into his bedroom. The joke around Llanfair was that Evansthe-Meat’s system couldn’t take the shock of seeing Mrs. Evans-the-Meat in her face cream and curlers. But nobody else had complained. In fact some people felt that the extra light had long been needed on the dark village street.

Sheep scattered at Evan’s approach and the sound of their bleating echoed across the valley. Now that the sun had gone down, a cold wind was blowing from the Atlantic. It sighed through the grass, rattled the dry bracken and moaned through the crags. Suddenly Evan felt a tension invading the tranquil scene. With his fine-tuned senses, he was almost certain that he was being watched. He stopped and looked around.

He heard the splashing of the young stream close by and the distant drone of a car as it climbed the pass. The dark shape of a ruined sheep byre loomed to his right. He peered in that direction, imagining he saw a fleeting movement. His torch was in his pack but he didn’t want to stop and retrieve it now—not when a pint of beer in the Red Dragon was calling. If anyone was sheltering up on the mountain, it was probably nothing more than a passing tramp or a courting
couple from the village, which would explain the tension and watchfulness he sensed.

He had only gone a few more paces when he heard the tread of boots on the path close behind him. He spun around.

“
Noswaith dda
. Evening, Constable Evans,” a deep voice called.

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Owens,” Evan breathed a sigh of relief as the farmer caught up with him. “You’re out late. Anything wrong?”

“No, nothing wrong. I’ve just been to take a look at Rhodri’s cottage—I wanted to make sure those English people closed the gate this time so that they can’t accuse my sheep of eating their bloody flowers!”

“They’ve gone, then?” Evan asked, looking across to the low squat outline of the shepherd’s cottage perched above the village.

“My wife saw them go this afternoon. And good riddance, I say.” Evan looked at him in surprise. Mr. Owens was usually the most mild-mannered of the villagers.

“Nothing but trouble they’ve been since they bought the place.” He moved closer to Evan. “I don’t blame old Rhodri for going to live with his daughter—he was getting on in years, poor old chap, but he had no right selling his cottage to foreigners, did he?”

“I hear they offered him a very good price,” Evan said. “And nobody in the village was interested.”

“Well, nobody in the village was daft enough to put all that money into an old shepherd’s cottage, were they? You should see it now, Mr. Evans. My wife goes up there to clean
for them and she says they’ve got all mod cons, including an indoor bathroom with one of those French beedy things. Must have cost them a fortune, but then the English always did have more money than sense.”

Evan grinned. “Still, it’s good for business to have visitors, isn’t it, Mr. Owens?”

“It would be if they bought anything locally. My wife says they come with ice chests packed full of food every weekend. They probably think good Welsh produce would poison them.” His wheezy laugh betrayed years of smoking and ended in a rattling cough. “I don’t rightly know why they want to come here. They don’t seem to like us very much.”

“Lots of English people are buying cottages in Wales,” Evan said. “They like to get away from the cities for the weekend, and I can’t say I blame them. I couldn’t wait to escape from Swansea like a shot when I lived there.”

“I don’t mind English people, look you, Mr. Evans,” the farmer said, leaning confidentially close. “Old Colonel Arbuthnot who used to stay with us was the salt of the earth, wasn’t he? But then he was of the old school—he had manners. I just don’t like it when they come here and act all toffy nosed, as if they’re the landlords and we’re the peasants.”

“Do these people act like that?” Evan asked. “I can’t say I’ve seen much of them, apart from their Jaguar driving past.”

“Too bloody fast, I’ll warrant,” Mr. Owens commented. “He nearly hit my dog the other day. She’s not used to cars, is she? That Englishman came up the track, driving like a
madman and at the same time my bitch decides to go after a sheep that’s wandering off. He bloody near hit her, and then instead of apologizing, he had the nerve to tell me to keep her under control. That’s the kind of people they are, Mr. Evans. Acting like they own the place.”

“Lucky they’re only here on weekends then, eh, Mr. Owens?” Evan said. “And I don’t suppose we’ll see much of them when the weather finally turns cold.”

“My, but it’s been a lovely long summer this year, hasn’t it, Mr. Evans?” Mr. Owens spoke with pride in his voice, as if he was personally responsible for the weather. “I’ve got the hay all stacked and ready for winter, which is more than I can say most years.” He looked at the rope hanging from Evan’s pack. “You’ve been climbing today, I see.”

“I have. Up on Glyder Fawr.”

“There’s some good climbing country up there—good challenging rocks.”

“A little too challenging,” Evan confessed. “At one point I thought I’d got myself stuck. I’m afraid I’m out of practice. I thought I’d have to call for the mountain rescue.”

Farmer Owens slapped him on the shoulder. “What you need is a pint at the Dragon.”

“That’s just what I was thinking,” Evan said with a smile. “A pint of Robinson’s would go down a treat. Are you heading that way too?”

The farmer glanced at the lights of his farm, just above the houses of the village. “Mrs. Owens is waiting for me, worst luck, and she doesn’t like it when my dinner dries out in the oven.” His face lit up. “But it’s Sunday, isn’t it? We usually have cold on Sundays! And she won’t know exactly
how long it took me to get up to the cottage and back, will she now?”

As the voices died away, a figure came out of the ruined sheep byre and stood watching. That was a close shave, having the local copper almost find him. One good thing—he now knew where the policeman was. He’d be safely in the pub until it was too late.

He could feel the blood pounding in his temples as the adrenaline raced through his body. He followed the track across the meadow to the cottage gate. A movement in the hedge to his left made him jump, until he saw an old sheep lumbering away into the darkness. Obviously hoping to get at those flowers again, he thought with a grin. Well, too late now. By the time he’d finished there wouldn’t be any flowers.

The garden gate squeaked as he opened it. He walked up the newly flagged front path to the door. Then he paused and took the pack from his back. The can clanked loudly as it put it down on the front step and he felt his heart jump again. Calm down, he told himself. There’s nobody for miles around. You have all the time in the world to do this.

He took the rags from his pack and put them down beside the path while he saturated them. Then, one by one, he dropped them through the letter box.

Then he went around to the back of the house. The windows were all locked but it was easy enough to break a pane and pour more petrol inside.

Then he used up the last of the can on the creeper growing up the front of the house and the bushes beneath the
front window. It would take a bit to get a really good blaze going in an old stone cottage like this.

Lastly he took out a fuse. It was the kind they once used in the old slate mines—especially slow-burning, to give the men time to get back to the surface. By the time the fuse burned all the way down from the letter box to the rags on the floor, he’d be far away.

He secured the fuse through the open letter box, then, fingers trembling with excitement, he lit it. There was a gentle hiss, like exhaling breath, and the end of the fuse glowed red. He stuffed the empty can and any other telltale bits of rubbish into his pack and hurried back down the path. At the gate he paused and took a piece of paper from his pocket. The note was made up of words he’d cut from a newspaper. It said,

He found a nail protruding from the gate and he stuck the note on it. When he turned to look, the fuse was glowing like a red eye in the darkness. Then he fled down the mountain.

The bar at the Red Dragon was crowded as Evan pushed open the heavy oak door and ducked under the beam to enter. A fire was burning in the big fireplace on the far wall. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke.

“Look you—there he is now!” A high voice rose over the murmur in the bar. Betsy the barmaid’s face lit up as she spotted Evan.
“Noswaith dda, Evan bach!”

Heads turned in their direction.

“We were wondering where you’d got to, Evan
bach,
” Charlie Hopkins called. “It’s not like you to miss opening time. Betsy was all set to send out a search party . . .”

“I was not!” Betsy said, her cheeks flushing. Evan was startled to see that Betsy’s hair was a dark, rich auburn color this evening. Ever since she had almost been seduced by a famous opera singer who liked his women dark she had been
experimenting with hair color. She was also wearing a leopard print velour tank top with a low scooped neckline. The result was disconcerting, to say the least.

“I know very well that Evan Evans can take care of himself,” Betsy went on, giving him a challenging smile. “I mean, he’s built for it, isn’t he?”

“Unless he managed to find himself trapped by you someday,” Charlie Hopkins said, and his skinny body shook with soundless mirth, revealing missing front teeth. “I’d like to see him fight his way out of that!”

Betsy smoothed down her tank top, pulling the low neckline to an almost X-rated level. “When I manage to get Evan Evans alone, he won’t want to fight his way out!” she announced to the assembled crowd. “And it won’t be bird-watching that will keep us busy, either . . . unless I decide to go ahead with those tattoos I’ve been thinking about.”

The low ceiling echoed back the laughter. Evan gave a good-natured grin and decided there was nothing he could say that Betsy wouldn’t take as encouragement.

“So what will it be tonight, Evan
bach?
Your usual Guinness?”

“I think I’ll join Mr. Owens-the-Sheep and have a Robinson’s tonight,” Evan said. “I’ve worked up a powerful thirst.”

Betsy’s hands deftly drew two pints of Robinson’s bitter with just the right amount of froth on top. “Here, get those down you, and then you can tell us where you’ve been.”

“I told you he went out climbing today,” Roberts-the-Pump said. “I saw him heading for Glyder Fawr.”

There was nothing that escaped the Llanfair bush telegraph.

“I heard that Bronwen Price had a teachers’ meeting at the university in Bangor,” Evans-the-Milk said with a knowing wink.

“Bronwen-bloody-Price!” Betsy muttered and set down a pint glass none too gently. Evan loosened his collar. It really was warm in here tonight.

“Young Betsy was dying for you to come back, Evan,” Charlie Hopkins said, “so that you could invite her to the new French restaurant.”

Betsy gave Evan a challenging smile. “I wouldn’t say no to an evening with Evan Evans, but I don’t fancy a French restaurant, thank you. They eat snails and frog’s legs, don’t they—and little birds with the heads still on them . . .”