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Authors: Rhys Bowen

Evan can Wait: A Constable Evans Mystery (21 page)

BOOK: Evan can Wait: A Constable Evans Mystery
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“Coal?” I heard a man behind me exclaim. “You want us to mine that filthy, dirty stuff? Gets in your lungs, coal does.”
“And dangerous, too,” another man muttered. “Always having cave-ins down there in the bloody coal mines, aren’t they?”
“And they’re all South Walesians, too,” a third man protested. “Can’t speak a word of Welsh down there, so I hear. And they don’t wash.”
The manager lifted his hands. “Boys. Boys. It’s no good complaining. My hands are tied. I’ve been given my orders to close this mine, and you’ve been directed to report for work in the Rhondda. There’s nothing else I can say. We all have to do our part to win the war, don’t we?”
“I bet he’s not headed down some bloody coal mine,” I heard someone mutter behind me.
“So go and get any tools you’ve left down at the work face and then we’re shutting down,” the manager said. “Good luck, boys. Do your best for North Wales, won’t you?”
The other men filed out, muttering and grumbling. I wasn’t even thinking about being sent down a coal mine. I was in a panic because I hadn’t managed to return the copy to the shed. Now I’d never get a chance. When the National Gallery came to get their pictures, they’d find one missing.
I wished Ginger was at home, but she hadn’t had a weekend off for weeks. She said they were short-staffed and she had to work two people’s jobs and they gave the women with families the weekends off. At the time I believed her.
I didn’t know what to do. We got our tools, the big iron grille was closed, and the mine was shut down. My father was philosophical about the whole thing.
“Had to happen sometime, I suppose.”
“But, Tad—you don’t want to work down a coal mine, away from home, do you?” I asked.
He grinned. “Won’t affect me, boy. I’ve got a lung condition, see.”
He’d never mentioned it before. He saw my horrified face and grinned. “Comes from breathing slate dust all those years. They’d never send me down a coal mine with my dicky lung.”
“So what will you do?”
“Don’t worry about me, boy. I’ll find myself something to do. I wouldn’t even mind working at the docks, or one of the RAF stations.” He patted my shoulder. “It’s you I worry about, down a
coal mine. Still, it’s not long until you turn seventeen. I reckon you can stick it out until then.”
Later that week, my father had a chapel meeting at our house. He was becoming a deacon, so I gathered. The other men in our front room were all miners, apart from the minister, of course. And the talk moved, as one would expect, away from chapel to the closing of the mine. Most of those men were being sent south, with me, and they weren’t very happy about it.
“I never thought I’d hear myself say this,” Howie Jenkins said, “but I’m going to miss the old place. We’ve had some memorable times, haven’t we?”
“Remember when Lloyd George came?” another man said. “Before your time, was it? My, but that was a splendid occasion. The town band played. I was playing the cornet, like I usually do.”
“And no doubt off key, like you usually do,” came the comment. Loud laughter followed.
“Was that right before the fire in 1922?”
“That’s right, it was. We all joked that now the Prime Minister had been, we could burn the bloody place down—there was nothing more to live for!”
“A fire down the mine, was there?” one of the younger men asked. “Bad, was it?”
“Oh yes,” my father said. “It was dreadful, just. It was the machinery in the lift that caught on fire, so there were flames and smoke all the way up the main staircase. If we hadn’t managed to make it to the back exit, I reckon we’d have all been goners.”
“We would indeed.” Old Howie Jenkins nodded.
I had been sitting in the kitchen, half listening to what they were saying. Now I came hurrying into the front parlor.
“I just heard what you said about a fire in the mine,” I said, as the men looked up at my entrance. “I never knew there was a back way out.”
“Never needed it, did you?” my father said. “In fact, I don’t think it’s ever been used since. But I imagine it’s still there.”
“Has to be by law, I think,” someone said. “You always need an escape route from a mine. Remember that, Trefor bach, when you’re down in the Rhondda. First thing you do is find out how you get out of the bloody place.”
“So this back exit is still there, at our mine?” I asked, trying not to sound too interested. “Where is it, then?”
They gave me a pretty good description of how to find it. First thing next morning, I was up at the mine. It was strange to see it silent and shut. There was a watchman on duty outside, but he was sitting in his but, not paying attention to anything other than his morning paper. I found the path they had told me about and the passageway into the mountain. There was a door across it, but I pushed it open without too much effort. They obviously hadn’t got around to locking it with the rest of the mine yet. I shone my torch on a narrow, dark staircase. Even a couple of years of working in the mine hadn’t prepared me for this. I had never been alone into total blackness. The steps were damp and uneven. I went down carefully, step by step. If I took a tumble now, they’d probably not find me for months. My, but it was spooky down there. No sound except the echo of my feet and the occasional drip of water into an unseen pool. My heart was racing a mile a minute. I was used to going up and down hundreds of steps every day of my life, but my legs felt as if they were made of jelly and I had to hang onto the wall for support.
At last I came out into a cavern. My small torch only lit a few feet in front of me, but I could feel the empty space. I really hadn’t thought what it might be like down here with no light except mine. How was I ever going to find my way to the big cavern with the sheds in it? And find my way out again?
I crossed the cavern and found the opening to a passage on the other side. It looked broad enough to lead somewhere important. I picked up a piece of slate and scratched a line on the wall. I kept scratching until I came out into another chamber, then another. At last there was an eerie glow ahead and I came out into the big cavern. A couple of lamps were alight on the main staircase—so
that someone could come down and check the paintings, no doubt. There was a faint humming sound that made my skin crawl until I realized that they’d kept the heating system running in the sheds. Well, they’d have to, wouldn’t they? It gets awful damp and cold down there.
I held my breath and looked around, half expecting to see a guard slumped in his chair as before. But there was no one. I found the frame where I had hidden it, put the picture in it, then rewrapped it in its packing. Not as well as it had been done originally, but well enough. They were going to know it was a fake as soon as they opened the package anyway. There was nothing I could do about that except pray that I was far, far away. Then I hammered the back panel of the shed properly into place and made my way to the surface again. I had done it. For the first time I felt rather pleased with myself.
The sky was clearing as Evan drove away from the Everest Inn, where he had deposited Howard Bauer. There was no sign of the other members of his team. Evan couldn’t blame them. At a time like this, facing more grilling by D.I. Hughes, he might also have chosen to stay in the comparative safety of his own room. He paused and toyed with the words that had just passed through his mind. Comparative safety? Had any of them a cause to feel unsafe? Did any of them know more than they were letting on? Did they, in fact, have their suspicions about who the killer might be? Another, more disturbing thought passed through his mind—had the killing of Grantley been somehow a joint effort, with Grantley lured to Wales to get rid of him?
“Ridiculous,” Evan said out loud, and smiled at the sound of his own voice. The trouble with being shut out from the main investigation was that it meant he tended to grasp at straws.
The cloud was definitely breaking. Tantalizing glimpses of blue sky appeared and then were swallowed up again. Going to be fine again tomorrow, he thought. That meant back to work at the lake. Tomorrow might well be the day that the plane finally floated to the surface, his last day to observe them interacting.
As he drove slowly down the hill, he noticed a figure on top of Capel Bethel. It was old Charlie Hopkins, and he was adjusting the star—no, he was replacing it with a bigger one. That meant phone messages from Mrs. Powell-Jones would already be waiting at the police station. Just past the chapels he braked as a crossing guard stepped out, waving a stop sign. Several small children sprinted across the road. The school day must just have finished. He tried to make himself drive on without looking for Bronwen, but he had already spotted her, standing by the gate, talking to parents. He was about to lift his hand in a sort of casual greeting when Bronwen saw him and came flying out of the gate.
“Evan, wait!” she shouted.
He waited and wound down the window.
“Where were you? I tried phoning but you weren’t at the station, and when I called your headquarters, a rather snooty woman said you weren’t on the case.”
“She’s right. I’m not.”
“So you haven’t heard, then?”
He looked up inquiringly.
“They’ve arrested Edward. They gave him one phone call and he called me. I don’t know what to do, Evan. What should I do?”
“Get him a good solicitor, I suppose,” he said, and then was ashamed at his callousness. He opened his car door. “Come on, hop in. We’ll go down to the station. This needs thinking about.”
She looked back at the school playground. It was almost empty now. Just a few older boys kicking around a soccer ball. “I’ve left the building open. I should go and lock up. You go on and I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“I’ll put a kettle on,” he said and was rewarded with a smile.
As soon as he had filled the kettle and turned up the heat, he dialed Sergeant Watkins’s mobile.
“You arrested Edward Ferrers?” Evan demanded. “On what evidence?”
“What are you, his bloody solicitor? And it wasn’t me who arrested him—it was the D.I., based on the fact that we identified the footprint outside the mine entrance. It came from Ferrers’s boot. And when questioned, he went to pieces. Sobbed that it was all his fault and he felt terrible about it. That was enough to make the D.I. bring him in for further questioning.”
“So has he confessed?”
“We’re waiting for his lawyer.”
“And do you think he did it?”
“Me? I’m just the sergeant, boyo. What I think doesn’t matter. But I’ll tell you one thing—he’s not protesting his innocence loudly. And he lied to us about not knowing that Grantley went to the mine. He obviously followed him that far, which might lead us to think that he followed him the rest of the way.” He lowered his voice. “Look, I’ve got to go. The D.I. has just come in, with Glynis in tow. I’ll let you know if anything happens.”
There was a click. The line went dead. Evan was just replacing the phone when Bronwen came in. She was wearing her Red Riding Hood cape and her cheeks were pink from the cold wind, but her eyes looked huge and hollow.
“Any news?” she asked.
Evan relayed his conversation with Watkins.
“They’ve arrested him just because a footprint matched?” she demanded. “Have they checked how many other people wear identical boots?”
“Apparently he said it was all his fault and he felt terrible about it,” Evan said. “He’s not saying any more until a solicitor arrives.”
“Am I supposed to be finding this solicitor, do you think? He was quite distraught when he called me. He never did handle stress very well.”
“I can call and find out, if you like,” Evan said. “You’d think he had a family solicitor, bloke like that from a posh background. Or was he another pretender like Grantley?”
“Oh no. His family has money all right. Yorkshire wool industry from way back. But Edward and his father don’t exactly see eye to eye. His father always thought he was too soft. Edward certainly didn’t tell his father he’d gone to live with Grantley. He wanted me to lie if his family called. I couldn’t do that. His father absolutely exploded, as one would have expected. So, no, I don’t think the family lawyer would be available.”
“They speak very highly of Lloyd-Jones in Bangor,” Evan said. “You could call him in for now and then see if Edward wants to get someone else. He may have someone in London.”
“I don’t think Edward was the kind of man who retained a lawyer,” Brownen said. “He was very naive in many ways. He told me he’d made a big mistake by getting joint credit cards with his and Grantley’s names on them. Grantley was charging left, right, and center and Edward was afraid …” She paused in midsentence. “This all sounds very bad for him, doesn’t it?”
“It doesn’t sound too good.” Evan poured the tea and handed her a cup. “I know you don’t normally have sugar but you need it for shock.”
“Thanks.” She managed a smile. “He has a strong motive and he had the perfect opportunity. And he’ll make a terrible witness. He’ll stammer and say all the wrong things. I don’t see any hope for him, unless you can find out who really killed Grantley.”
“Why are you so very sure he didn’t do it?” Evan asked.
She looked down at her steaming cup. “We had a mouse once, caught in a trap. It wasn’t quite dead and I asked Edward to finish it off, poor little thing. It took him ages to do it, and then he threw up. Then he insisted on burying it in the back garden. I’m not saying I can’t imagine Edward killing somebody, but not physically, like that. And if he did, he wouldn’t have the composure to weight the body with rocks and hide it in a pool. He’d be overcome with remorse and turn himself in instantly.”
“So why did he follow Grantley to the mine, and deny having done so?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait until we have
a chance to ask him.” She managed a sip of tea. “All I know is that he needs my help and I have to do everything I can.”
“Even after he walked out on you, you still love him?”
“I suppose I must do.”
Evan took a deep breath. “All right,” he said gruffly. “I’ll do what I can. I’m not sure it will be any use, though. I know nothing of Grantley Smith’s life and background. For all we know, someone could have followed him to Wales and decided the mine was a convenient place to finish him off.”
“You make him sound like a high-powered criminal!” She gave a nervous laugh. “Grantley liked to project a grandiose image, but he was really only a small fry—a fairly ordinary person. He got bit parts as an actor. He wrote a couple of screenplays that he couldn’t sell. Then he decided he’d try his hand at directing and he took a course at the film institute, which was where he met Howard, so I understand.”
“And a relationship developed there, do you think?”
“That kind of relationship, you mean?” She looked astonished. “Surely Edward would have told me.”
“Unless he was jealous. Unless Grantley was leaving him for someone else and he brought up the money problems to hide his pride at being jilted.”
“Oh dear.” She toyed with her teaspoon. “Jealousy. That’s always a strong motive, isn’t it? But maybe Howard was the one who was jealous. Has anyone looked into him?”
“I gave him a lift in my car just now. He swears he didn’t kill Grantley and I think I believe him. Throttling is such a violent way to kill. If you were down a mine, you could creep up behind someone and hit them with a lump of rock. Much easier. Or you could creep down the stairs behind your victim and give him a good push. I could imagine Howard doing either of those, but look at him. He’d be no stronger than Grantley, would he, if it came to a wrestling match.”
“And Edward would, of course.” She toyed with the spoon again. “Oh dear, you’ve got me doubting now. I’d better get
onto that solicitor right away. And I should call Edward’s parents, even if they don’t want to hear. I should be going … thanks for the tea. Sorry I didn’t feel like finishing it.” She got up, pulled her cloak around her, and headed for the door.
Evan felt he had just entertained a stranger.
Next day I was off down to South Wales and the coal mines. It was as bad as the men had said. Worse, in fact. We were used to working in large open caverns, but down the coal mine we were crouching like rabbits in dark, narrow tunnels. And hot? The sweat mixed with the coal dust to make us look like a lot of darkies. You never got the coal dust out of your nostrils or lungs, either. When you blew your nose, the snot was black. I’d thought that the slate mine was hell, but this really was.
They boarded me with a local family whose own son was off fighting in Africa. I can’t say that they made me welcome. In fact, they seemed to blame me that I was there while their boy was far away and in danger. I gave them my ration book, but I don’t know what they did with my rations. We hardly ever saw a piece of meat, or an egg, for that matter. It was a lot of stodge puddings, with scraps of streaky bacon in them, maybe, and toad in the hole, and cod, boiled until it was hard and gray.
I tried to picture Ginger as I worked down the mine. I’d see her laughing and dancing, like that time on the moors, and I felt as if my heart would break if I didn’t touch her soon. But it wasn’t until Christmas that I got a chance to go home. When I walked into our house, I got one hell of a shock—there, over the mantelpiece, was the Rembrandt I had stolen. I nearly passed out.
“What’s that doing there?” I managed to stammer. “That’s my picture.”
“I noticed it when I was dusting your room,” my mother said, “so I thought we might as well use it in here. A bit on the dark side, but a nice frame, isn’t it? Looks quite posh, I think. I’d really like flowers, but this is better than nothing, isn’t it? Where did you get it—one of those jumble sales?”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. My mother had one of the world’s most valuable paintings on her wall and she liked the frame, which came from Woolworths. I couldn’t think of a good reason to demand it back, so I left it there. At least it was safe and being dusted every day. When I told Ginger, she thought it was very funny. She only had the two days at home and no chance at all for us to be alone together, but it was better than not seeing her at all. I thought she looked even more beautiful than I had remembered.
It was a bleaker Christmas than the one before—that Christmas of 1941. Terrible bombing raids on lots of cities. Bath and Bristol had caught it, so had Cardiff docks. The war was getting closer all the time.
There weren’t even any chickens this year, but Mum had managed to wangle a piece of boiled bacon from a farmer who kept pigs, so we had that instead, and Christmas cake made with dried eggs. The only good news was that the Americans had got their share, too—whole navy caught by surprise at Pearl Harbor and bombed to pieces, so we heard. I don’t mean that getting bombed was a good thing. The good part was that it made the Americans come into the war. Everyone was saying that now the tide would turn. Soon we’d have bloody great American planes bombing the you-know-what out of Hitler.
Hardly any of our boys in uniform made it home for Christmas that year. Most of them were already fighting abroad, Egypt or in the Far East where there was no good news either. So I enjoyed being top dog at the few gatherings we had. I’d grown again, and you should have seen my muscles, working with that pickax all day. The girls clustered around me, but then Ginger came in and slipped her arm through mine. “It’s stuffy in here, Tref,” she said, glaring at the other girls. “What about you and me going for a walk?”
BOOK: Evan can Wait: A Constable Evans Mystery
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