Evan Only Knows (22 page)
Authors: Rhys Bowen
“You got the wrong bloke, mate,” Jingo said. “I didn’t have any luck with the birds last night. I caught the night bus home around twelve-thirty, and I was here, in bed, by one. You can ask my mum. She was still up watching the telly when I got home.”
“You caught the bus?” Bill Howells asked.
“Yeah. You can check with the driver. He’d remember me.”
“What’s wrong with your car?”
“What car? I’m a poor, unemployed lad, mate. I don’t have no car at the moment.” Again that insolent grin.
There was no other choice but to leave. Evan thought he detected a smirk on Jingo’s face as he watched them go. He couldn’t shake off the horrifying picture of Bronwen, tied up or even dead, somewhere in that house.
“Could we come back with a search warrant, do you think?” he asked.
Bill shook his head. “Wouldn’t be any point. By the time we got back here, they’d have hidden anything they didn’t want us to find.”
It wasn’t a comforting thought. Evan drove past his house again and crept inside. Nothing moved. He tiptoed upstairs to check Bronwen’s room and sighed as he looked at the empty bed.
“Is that you up and around, Evan
bach?
” His mother’s sleepy voice called from her bedroom. “It’s still the middle of the night.”
bach?
” His mother’s sleepy voice called from her bedroom. “It’s still the middle of the night.”
“It’s okay, Ma. Go back to sleep,” he said gently. “I’m going out for a walk. I can’t sleep.” He had no wish to do any explaining to his mother at this point. He certainly couldn’t tell her that he’d lost Bronwen.
“I can’t think what to do,” he said as he climbed back into the car beside Bill Howells. He imagined calling her parents. He imagined identifying her body when it washed up on some beach. The sky was glowing with early morning light now but the nightmare wasn’t ending.
“Not much else we can do right now,” Bill said. “I’m on duty at nine. I’ll have a word with the Major Crime Unit boys and the drug squad. See if they’ve got any ideas.” Evan dropped him off at his house, then started another round of aimless circling. He tried to give himself a comforting scenario—she had been asleep somewhere or hiding somewhere and now she was making her way home.
Kingsway was still deserted, the Monkey’s Uncle firmly locked. He wished he had checked the place out more thoroughly last night. Bronwen thought on her feet. Maybe she had left some small message or clue for him that he had overlooked. The problem was how to get into the building. If he went back to the police station, presumably he could find the name of the owner or some kind of contact phone number. But he might also find himself facing DCI Vaughan and be arrested for interfering. Bill Howells would come on duty at nine. He’d have to wait until then, unless he found a way in.
He parked the car and stood looking up at the building. There was no way into the club from the empty shop on the ground floor. He could see that by peering in through the grimy window. There were no windows in the front of the second story, in fact he didn’t remember any windows in the club at all. But there had been a small hallway at the back with toilets and maybe a storage room. One of them might have a window. He walked around until he found an alley at the back of the row of buildings. It was piled with bags of refuse, and it was impossible to tell which building might be the club. When he came to what he thought was the right place,
he saw a fire escape that ended just above his head. A little to the right there was a Dumpster. If he climbed on that, then traversed the window ledge, he could reach the bottom of the fire escape and haul himself up. He scrambled up onto the Dumpster, then inched his way across the grimy window. It was lucky he’d done a bit of climbing in his life, he decided. It was even luckier that he had started training again. It was hard work to hold onto the metal grid of the fire escape and then swing his legs up so that he got a foothold and was able to heave himself up and over onto the stairs. He made his way up and stood staring into the window of a strange office. He was climbing the wrong building.
he saw a fire escape that ended just above his head. A little to the right there was a Dumpster. If he climbed on that, then traversed the window ledge, he could reach the bottom of the fire escape and haul himself up. He scrambled up onto the Dumpster, then inched his way across the grimy window. It was lucky he’d done a bit of climbing in his life, he decided. It was even luckier that he had started training again. It was hard work to hold onto the metal grid of the fire escape and then swing his legs up so that he got a foothold and was able to heave himself up and over onto the stairs. He made his way up and stood staring into the window of a strange office. He was climbing the wrong building.
He looked up. It would be easy enough to get onto the roof. Maybe he could find out which building housed the Monkey’s Uncle from up there. He scrambled over the tiles of the attic and stood panting on the flat rooftop. He saw at once that he’d wasted his effort coming up here. The building to his left had a steeply pitched roof with slick slates on it and a very rickety-looking gutter at its edge. He wasn’t about to try to traverse that one. And he was pretty sure that the Monkey’s Uncle had to be in that direction.
“Bugger,” he said out loud. So much for James Bond—style heroics. They never worked in real life. He had just lowered himself successfully onto the fire escape and was about to climb down again when there was a scrabbling sound and pigeons fluttered out from a rooftop to his right. He looked up and saw a face staring down at him.
“Evan?” a voice called. “Is it really you?”
Relief flooded through him. “What are you doing up there?”
“Watching the sunrise, how about you?”
Anger spilled over with the flood of relief. “I’ve been out looking for you all night. I’ve been worried out of my mind.”
“Well, it hasn’t exactly been pleasant sitting up here getting wetter and colder and very scared. It was very clever of you to find me.”
“How do we get you down?”
“Good question. I’ve been asking myself the same thing.”
“How did you get up there in the first place?”
“I climbed out of the ladies’ loo window and up the drainpipe. Then some idiot closed the window. So I’m pretty much trapped up here. I was worried sick that that creepy man would find me.”
“Jingo?”
“You know him?”
“Red hair. Tall bloke.”
“That’s right. That was him. He was hanging about at the top of the stairs when I was about to leave the club. He stepped out in front of me and asked me if I was the one who had been asking about Alison and Tony. He said he could probably help me because he knew some people who hung around with Alison. They were at a party he was going to, he said. Did I want to come along and meet them?”
“Thank God you didn’t go. I’m glad I’d warned you about him.”
“But you didn’t. Or if you did, I didn’t take it in. I was all set to go with him. I told him I needed to go to the loo, and I’d meet him outside. As I came down the stairs, he was on his mobile. I heard him say, ‘You were right. She’s coming with me. Peterson’s then.’ And he laughed. Suddenly I got a bad feeling. I mean you’d just been to Peterson’s builder’s yard down on the docks, hadn’t you? That was too much of a coincidence. Either way, I got cold feet. I looked around but my friends had left. Almost everyone had left, and I could see him waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. He looked at his watch, then he started to come up the stairs again. I didn’t wait. I rushed into the ladies’ loo and locked the door. I heard him saying to someone else, ‘So where did she go? She can’t have got out past me.’ And the other chap said, ‘Maybe she’s still in the toilet,’ and I knew they were going to come looking, so I didn’t know what to do. Then I realized the window was open. I unlocked the door and climbed out of the window. Luckily the ledge was quite wide and there was a drainpipe to hang onto. Then I didn’t feel safe there, because anyone could look out and see me, so I managed to scramble up onto this bit of roof that sticks out. That’s when I found it doesn’t lead anywhere. I was stuck here.
Nowhere to hide. I was sure they’d find me. I kept picturing that face coming up the drainpipe toward me, so I crouched down and didn’t move for hours.”
Nowhere to hide. I was sure they’d find me. I kept picturing that face coming up the drainpipe toward me, so I crouched down and didn’t move for hours.”
“You poor thing. It must have been terrible for you.”
“It was stupid of me, really. I don’t know why I panicked. I could have just gone down and told him I’d changed my mind. What could he have done on the street?”
“Bundled you into a car and driven off with you. Poked a gun into your side.”
She laughed. “A gun, Evan? Aren’t you being overdramatic?”
“He had a gun when my father was shot. He didn’t do the actual shooting, but it was his gun.”
“Oh,” she said. Then, “Evan, do you think you could get me down now, please?”
“I’ll go for help.”
“Take care,” she called as he went down the fire escape, “and please hurry back.”
“Well, here you are then, thank goodness for that,” Mrs. Evans said as they came in through the front door. “I was worried something might have happened to you. You’ve never been out partying all night, surely? At least you’re back just in time for chapel.”
Evan left Bronwen tucked in bed with a glass of warm Ovaltine, and hastily changed his clothes to escort his mother to chapel. Trying to get out of going would take more effort than accompanying her, besides he could sleep through the sermon. It was pleasantly cool inside the chapel building, with the comforting smell of generations of furniture polish. Jingo and Peterson, he thought. How were the two connected? If Jingo had been going to take Bronwen to Peterson’s, did that somehow mean that Peterson was in charge, or was a builder’s yard beside the docks a convenient place to dispose of somebody? The pleasant coolness suddenly made him shiver. Bronwen had joked about it and made light of her night stuck on the rooftop as they drove home. He wondered if she knew how close she had come to dying.Did the Turnbulls suspect Charles Peterson? Was he worth protecting, or did he have some hold over them? He was certainly the type nobody would suspect—large, awkward, bumbling. Evan resolved to go back to the Hartley’s immediately after he had taken his mother home to see if Mrs. Hartley was alert enough to answer questions today. He felt sleep overcoming him and closed his eyes. Through the open window he could hear outdoor sounds—a cricket match being broadcast on somebody’s TV. Children playing in a back garden. A dog barking.
Evan opened his eyes again. The Turnbulls’ dog—Peterson had said it started barking so he decided to leave. But the dog had not barked when Tony Mancini was told to go, and he overheard Alison arguing with someone. Why was that? Wouldn’t the dog have been shut in the kitchen all evening if one of the women was afraid of it? In which case how did it hear one person and not another? Yet one more question to try and ask Mrs. Hartley.
Evan felt a dig in his side and found the congregation had risen to its feet for the singing of “Calon Lan,” one of the good old Welsh hymns he usually loved to belt out with everyone else. Now he couldn’t wait for it to be over. His mother dawdled her way out of chapel, stopping to talk to everybody and proudly introducing her son. He gritted his teeth with impatience. Then at last he got her into the car.
“There’s no need to rush, it’s Sunday,” she admonished him.
When he deposited her outside the front door and claimed he had to run a quick errand before lunch, she started to protest. “You’re never going shopping on a Sunday.”
“Not shopping, Ma. Just someone I have to talk to.”
“And you’re not still trying to meddle in that police case, are you?”
“I’ll be right back, Ma.” He got into the car and drove away, watching her staring after him in the rearview mirror. The Sunday morning streets were deserted and steaming as the sun evaporated last night’s rain. As he drove into the cul-de-sac, he saw an ambulance in the Hartley’s drive. He jumped out and ran up to the front door. It was open and he went in. Through the open French doors, he could see people out in the back garden. A blanket covered something on the patio. Two ambulance men were setting up a stretcher while Dr. Hartley watched, one hand over his mouth. Dr. Hartley heard Evan’s footsteps and looked up. The pain on his face was transparent.
“She did it,” he said in a choked voice. “She managed to get the window open, and she fell out. Well, I suppose it’s for the best, really. Her suffering is finally over.”
“I am so sorry,” Evan said. “What an awful shock for you.”
Dr. Hartley nodded. “I told you she was strong and cunning, didn’t I? But I didn’t think she’d find a way to unlock those windows. Some days she couldn’t even remember how to open a drawer. It’s my fault. I should never have left her.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” Evan said.
“I only popped out to get milk. The milkman didn’t leave our usual pint, and she does like her milky coffee in the mornings. I checked the neighbors but nobody was home, so I thought it would be all right if I just drove to the nearest shop that’s open on Sundays. I hadn’t realized it would be all the way in Oystermouth. I came back to find the window open and her—lying there.”
“You didn’t pass any cars on your street, did you?” Evan asked. “A large white van, for instance?”
“No. Nobody. Why?”
“Just a thought,” Evan said.
Dr. Hartley face clouded. “What are suggesting?”
“Could anyone have got into the house while you were away, do you think?”
Dr. Hartley looked puzzled. “I locked the front door after me. All the other doors and windows are kept locked because of her.”
“And nobody else has a key?”
“Well, the neighbors on both sides know where I keep my spare key. Just in case, you know.”
“But the neighbors were out, you say?”
“Yes. The Havershams on the left are away on holiday in France. The Turnbulls were out. He always golfs on Sundays. She goes to church. Why are you asking these questions? Do you think it might not have been an accident?”
He looked at Dr. Hartley’s worried face. Poor man, he was suffering enough without any extra guilt and worry. “It’s my policeman’s mentality, always being too suspicious. I’m sure it happened exactly as you said. She managed to open the window and was trying to escape again.” He put his hand on Dr. Hartley’s shoulder. “Look, I’m very sorry about your wife. I’ll be back if there’s anything you’d like me to do for you.”
“Thank you. You’re most kind, but there’s nothing anyone can do now.”
“Thank you. You’re most kind, but there’s nothing anyone can do now.”
He felt a twinge of conscience as he left Dr. Hartley and made his way back to his car. Was it too much of a coincidence that the Turnbulls knew where the spare key was? And even more of a coincidence that the milk wasn’t delivered and Mrs. Hartley fell to her death the very day after Evan had started digging deeper into the Turnbull set?
The least he could do was to check on alibis—the Turnbulls first, since they knew where the spare key was. He put his foot down along the Oystermouth Road until he came to the Langland Bay Golf Club. The girl at the reception desk told him that Mr. Turnbull was part of a foursome that started at nine-thirty. “They’ll still be out on the course,” she told him. “They always walk. Not into carts, these older players.”
He took her word for it and drove back to the church. The service had ended and the church was deserted, so Evan rang the bell at the vicarage. This time it was the vicar himself who answered, a thin, worried-looking man with a bald head that made him look older than he really was. No, Mrs. Turnbull wasn’t at the service this morning. He was surprised she wasn’t there and hoped nothing was wrong. She never missed matins. In fact she usually came early to do the flowers.
“Poor woman,” he said. “I’m afraid this has been too much for her. I had hoped that she would find comfort in her faith. But sometimes faith isn’t enough, is it? She must be suffering. I suspect she has suffered a lot over the years, one way and another.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“One hears things. Not the easiest of husbands. A very demanding social calendar. And now this—her child, the most precious thing in the world to her. I tried to find comforting words, but I’m sure they were inadequate.” He sighed. “And I have always suspected that she was rather fragile, emotionally, even though she concealed it well.”
Evan walked back to the street along the little flagstone path. Flowers were blooming in herbaceous borders. Bees were buzzing
among the lavendar. Rooks were cawing in the churchyard on the other side of the wall. The peaceful scene contrasted with the turmoil of thoughts racing around inside his head.
among the lavendar. Rooks were cawing in the churchyard on the other side of the wall. The peaceful scene contrasted with the turmoil of thoughts racing around inside his head.
There were just too many coincidences for Evan’s liking. Mrs. Hartley had chosen that very morning to fall from a locked window. Mrs. Turnbull had not gone to church. Why hadn’t she gone? Where was she now? Why wasn’t the milk delivered to Dr. Hartley’s house?
He jumped into his car and drove back along the waterfront. Traffic in the other direction was bumper to bumper as everyone left the city for the beaches. A church bell was ringing somewhere in the distance. Boats were bobbing on blue water. Evan’s pulse was racing, still on high alert after the terror of his sleepless night. Deep down he was sure that Mrs. Hartley’s death was connected to Alison’s. Did the murderer believe that Mrs. Hartley was more lucid than she really was and had seen him that night? Evan remembered mentioning to Charles Peterson that he had been seen in the garden. Had he signed Mrs. Hartley’s death warrant by telling him? He pushed the accelerator pedal toward the floor so that the old car groaned in protest. He wasn’t even sure where he was going, but the sense of danger that had accompanied him last night was still hovering.
Obviously the logical thing to do would be to go to the police station. Bill Howells was on duty. Evan could tell him his suspicions. This would probably bring down the wrath of the DCI and the rest of the station on him again, but surely they would have to see that Mrs. Hartley’s untimely fall meant that a killer was still on the loose. He’d suggest to the police that they dust the Hartleys’ house for fingerprints and see if they matched Charles Peterson’s. He could also tell them that the name Peterson had come up in Jingo Roberts’s overheard conversation. What was the connection there?
He was passing the road that led to the Turnbulls’ house, and it occurred to him that he should at least warn Dr. Hartley not to touch anything before the police had had a chance to dust surfaces. He pulled up outside the Hartleys’ house. As he started up the
driveway, he became aware of a dog’s insistent barking. It seemed to be coming from inside the Turnbulls’ house. It wasn’t the deep, threatening bark that had greeted him each time he had approached the house before. It was a high, strangled yelp of a dog in obvious distress, and it went on and on.
driveway, he became aware of a dog’s insistent barking. It seemed to be coming from inside the Turnbulls’ house. It wasn’t the deep, threatening bark that had greeted him each time he had approached the house before. It was a high, strangled yelp of a dog in obvious distress, and it went on and on.
Why hadn’t Mrs. Turnbull gone to church? Evan’s heart was racing as he ran down the Turnbulls’ driveway. The front door was unlocked. He opened it, fearing an attack from the dog, but the barking was coming from upstairs. He went up the stairs, following the sound through a large bedroom with a four-poster bed and rich brocade drapes then into the bathroom beyond. The dog looked up at him and growled.
“Good boy,” he said uncertainly. “Good boy.”
Then he saw what the dog had been barking at. Mrs. Turnbull lay in the bathtub. The water was pink, and blood was oozing from her wrists.
He forgot to worry about the dog. He pushed past it and lent forward to feel a faint pulse at her neck. He was still in time. The dog must have sensed he was trying to help and had dropped to the floor, whining now. Evan snatched a couple of towels from the towel rail and grabbed Mrs. Turnbull’s wrists, lifting her arms up and pressing the fabric hard against the slashes. It looked as though he might be in luck. She hadn’t succeeded in severing the arteries properly. When he had kept the wounds clamped shut for long enough to risk letting go for a few seconds, he dragged her from the bathtub and wrapped her in the biggest towels. He bound smaller towels around her wrists, then dashed through into the bedroom to find a phone.
As he hurried back to her, he wondered how he could have been so stupid and so blind. All the signs had been there. She was the one who had complained to the police that he was harassing her and her friends. The vicar had said she was fragile emotionally. A woman on the edge, living a stressful life in the spotlight, hearing the gossip about her husband’s infidelities. Alison was growing up
beautiful just as she was losing her looks. Alison’s friends had said that her mother was jealous of her and sent her away to school. And Alison hated her mother. It seemed significant that there wasn’t a single picture of Alison in the Turnbulls’ living room and yet there was that big, beautiful picture on Mr. Turnbull’s desk. Evan wondered what had made Mrs. Turnbull snap that evening. Had she seen Alison and Tony together when she went to get her headache pills?
beautiful just as she was losing her looks. Alison’s friends had said that her mother was jealous of her and sent her away to school. And Alison hated her mother. It seemed significant that there wasn’t a single picture of Alison in the Turnbulls’ living room and yet there was that big, beautiful picture on Mr. Turnbull’s desk. Evan wondered what had made Mrs. Turnbull snap that evening. Had she seen Alison and Tony together when she went to get her headache pills?
The bigger question was—how could she have killed her?
She was a tall woman and Alison might have just taken some of the cocaine Tony had brought. Evan wasn’t quite sure of the effects of cocaine, but surely any drug would make reality and danger seem less real until too late.
He checked the wrists and noted they had almost stopped oozing blood, so her apparent unconsciousness was strange. From the color of the bath water, she hadn’t yet lost enough blood to kill her.
“Mrs. Turnbull,” he shouted. “Can you hear me?”
Eyelids fluttered open.
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