Good People (17 page)

I took off my jacket. By craning my neck I could make out the blood on the back of my shirt. It had dried into the wound, and I felt it tugging painfully as I tried to ease my shirtsleeve off.

‘Whoa …’ She stopped me, placing cotton wool, a bowl of hot water, and a bottle of antiseptic on to the table. ‘You’ll just start it bleeding again if you do that.’ She dipped cotton wool into the bowl and started sponging round the wound, slipping out a mischievous little laugh when I winced. ‘This is nasty. What happened?’

I recalled the pain I had felt when Emrys Hughes had pushed me against the barn wall. I must have hit one of the rusty nails they used to hang stuff from. I gave her a stoic grin and shook my head. ‘I don’t know. I must have bumped into something in Trevor Vaughan’s barn.’

She looked at me sceptically. ‘You should really have a tetanus shot for this.’

I winced again as she freed the cloth from the wound. Deftly, she pulled the shirt off and tossed it in the direction of the washing machine.

‘I need that,’ I protested.

‘Not in that state. I’ll lend you something. Now just sit still while I try and clean this up.’

The irony was not lost on me that I had just come from a hospital where no one had noticed the injury. I sat as still as I could, conscious of her fingers working on my back, and the moist warmth of her breath on my neck. I felt self-conscious and exposed, aware of my body as something white, lumpy and exuding musk, but, at the same time, appreciating the intimacy that had been created.

‘You’ve got good skin,’ she said, stretching her fingers across to the base of my neck.

‘For a man my age?’

‘I didn’t introduce any qualifiers.’

I looked round at her. She smiled down and blushed. I saw the nervousness there, but also a spark, pheromones stirring, her own curiosity rekindled. The smell, the taste, and the fit of the other. I realized that it had probably been a long time for her as well. She gently smoothed out the dressing, and, almost imperceptibly, I felt her filling up the space behind, me, the back of my head almost nestling between her breasts.

I swore inwardly. Because I was going to have to spoil it.

‘Sally?’

‘Mm …’ she murmured behind me.

‘I have to ask you about Wendy Evans.’

The moment snapped. It was like an anvil dropping on to a picnic table, shocking the partygoers into the memory that there was real weight in the world. She walked around the table to face me, her expression grim. ‘What does
she
have to do with anything?’

‘She’s Paul Evans’s sister. I’ve only just found out that it was her your husband went away with.’

‘What does she have to do with anything?’ she repeated coldly.

‘I’m sorry, I wouldn’t be asking this if I didn’t think it was important.’

She turned and left the kitchen. She returned carrying a sweatshirt. It was pink. She was punishing me. She threw it across the table . ‘Cover yourself.’

I struggled into the sweatshirt. It was tight on me. I had an image of how ridiculous I must look. She didn’t smile. She stared hard, challenging me to see how much longer I dared to continue sitting there abusing her hospitality and care.

I owed her the truth. Some version of it was going to be out there shocking the community before too long anyway.

I faced into her stare. ‘Sally, when we found Trevor Vaughan he was wearing a pair of Wendy Evans’s pants.’

The thought was too left-field; her face crumpled, trying to get a grasp on it.

‘There are connections I need to know about.’

She pulled a chair out clumsily and slumped on to it, facing me. She shook her head, demonstrating her incomprehension. ‘I don’t understand … Was he dressed up as a woman?’

‘No, only the pants.’

She frowned. ‘How do you know … ? That they’re hers?’

‘Her mother’s identified them. They were part of a set she bought on a school trip to London. She took the others with her when she …’ I paused, trying to come up with a softer way to put it.

‘When she ran away with my husband,’ she finished it for me bitterly. ‘Okay, so what are these connections you need to know about?’

‘Do you have any contact information for your husband or Wendy Evans?’

‘No.’

I nodded, accepting the finality of her answer and moved on. ‘Did you know that Trevor Vaughan was probably homosexual?’

‘I haven’t seen Trevor for a long time. And we were never that close. He was just one of the people my son hung around with. As a parent I wasn’t introduced into the workings of the circle.’

‘Boon never mentioned anything?’

‘I doubt that he would have said anything to me, even if he had suspected.’ She went back into memory. ‘Trevor was the quietest one. He was always in the background when they were together. Very polite, very nice. Quite awkward too.’

‘Were he and Paul Evans close?’

She looked at me questioningly.

‘I’m wondering how Trevor got the opportunity to get close enough to Wendy’s things to steal a pair of pants. I’m assuming here that she didn’t give them to him herself.’

She shook her head. ‘Trevor and Paul were two extremes when it came to personality. I don’t see them socializing together outside the group.’ She closed her eyes tight and winced audibly.

‘Are you all right?’

‘It’s such a tragic image. Why? Why wear her pants?’

‘I think that he might have been trying to tell me something.’

She looked hard at me. She didn’t smile. Okay, she wasn’t in the mood for smiling, but she didn’t pull any other face to ridicule the suggestion. She was taking me seriously. ‘Such as … ?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. It may have nothing to do with Wendy. She may just have been a random provider of underwear. But to get there, I need to know something about her. And I don’t know who else to ask.’

‘The Evans family?’

‘I want to continue living as a whole person.’

It wasn’t much of a laugh, but it was progress. She stood up. ‘We can talk in the car.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘You can drive me to work. You haven’t spoken to Joan Harvey yet, have you?’

‘I haven’t had a chance.’

‘The poor woman’s getting more and more upset. Ever since I told her that I’d mentioned Donna and Colette to you, she’s been worrying that perhaps she didn’t make enough of the right noises at the time. I think you should talk to her and put her out of her misery.’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’

She scowled. ‘Why not?’

I stood up. ‘This particular shade of pink doesn’t work for me.’

She nodded, and allowed herself a small smile. ‘I think I see what you mean.’

We settled for a charcoal-grey wool sweater, which, under my jacket, wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. She was in a better mood when we got into the car. A shower had calmed her.

‘If I drive you there, how are you going to get back in the morning?’ I asked.

‘You’re going to pick me up and buy me breakfast,’ she stated matter-of-factly.

I must have frowned involuntarily. Already worrying about where I was going to find somewhere suitable at that time in the morning in this culinarily bereft part of the world.

She smiled and touched a finger lightly and briefly to my lips, as if removing a shred of tobacco. It felt like I had been brushed with a nettle. ‘Don’t be such a literalist, Glyn. We’ll take it where we find it.’

‘Breakfast?’

The smile expanded. ‘What else?’

I shook my head inwardly. I would never understand the bounce of a woman’s moods.

I started the car. ‘You’re going to tell me about Wendy Evans?’

A frown fluttered her forehead. ‘God, you sure know how to smooth-talk a girl, don’t you?’ I pulled away, leaving the timing of the silence up to her. ‘I know that I look like the obvious choice for this – the abandoned woman. But I really don’t think that I’m going to be much help.’

I glanced round at her questioningly.

‘I never actually met Wendy Evans, in the sense of being introduced to her. I saw her. I knew who she was. Malcolm always pointed out the kids he taught. And he talked about her.’ She thought about it and laughed mirthlessly. ‘I never once thought,
Look out for that one, there’s a threat in the making there.
She was short, still baby plump then. I have a memory of her smoking a cigarette in that challenging way kids do, daring you to say something about it. She was probably trying to get Malcolm to think that she was exciting.’

‘It came completely out of the blue?’ I asked.

‘My husband left for work one morning and never returned. Separations don’t come much more sudden than that.’

‘You had no idea that a relationship had developed?’

She shook her head. ‘Not that kind of a relationship. As I said, he used to talk about her. She was one of the kids that he felt sorry for. He told me that she was damaged.’ She eased out a brave smile. ‘You never worry about the damaged ones. Pity’s supposed to make you feel emotionally superior.’

‘How was she damaged?’

‘I don’t know precisely. I don’t even know if Malcolm knew in detail. It was a school thing, teacher/pupil confidentiality. I didn’t like to pry too much. I just remember him telling me once that he thought she was carrying a lot of weird emotional stuff around for her age.’

‘When did Malcolm go?’ I asked.

‘Just over two years ago.’

‘So, Trevor Vaughan had been storing those pants for at least that long.’

She looked puzzled.

‘She took the rest of the set with her,’ I explained. ‘They were obviously special, she wouldn’t have left that one pair behind if she still had them.’

‘So, had Trevor been wearing them all this time?’

‘Impossible.’ I flashed on how the elastic had cut into his waist and thighs. ‘They were too small for him. He would have ruined them after the first couple of times. He had to have been saving them for something.’

She pulled a face and shuddered. ‘That’s creepy.’

Another thought hit me. If Trevor had been gay, a young girl’s pants would have been no kind of a turn-on. So, what if he had been hiding them rather than savouring them? To cover for someone? But why bring them out now to figure so prominently in his death?

Because, where he was going, he no longer had to worry about the person he’d been protecting?

Sally took me to the top storey of the Sychnant Nursing Home where Joan Harvey had her private quarters. ‘Seven o’clock tomorrow morning,’ she said quietly in the corridor. ‘I’ll see you in the car park.’

‘I’ll be there.’

‘You’d better be.’ She knocked on the door.

I half expected a parting kiss. I must have shown my disappointment, because she grinned at me knowingly as the door opened.

‘Joan, this is Detective Sergeant Capaldi – the one I was telling you about.’

Joan looked to be in her early sixties, with fine lines fanning out at the corners of her mouth and eyes, slightly puffy cheeks, and a tired, intelligent expression.

She shook my hand. ‘Please come in, Sergeant.’ A soft South Wales accent.

We both watched Sally go down the corridor. ‘She’s a good person,’ Joan said. ‘I wish I could get her to take on more responsibility.’

‘She won’t?’

‘She doesn’t want it. She wants to feel that she’s only here temporarily. That there’s something better waiting just round the corner.’

I didn’t say anything to Joan, but that was another thing Sally and I had in common.

She led me into a spacious room in the slope of the roof, which managed to contain some big period pieces of furniture and a baby grand piano without feeling cluttered. I sat where she pointed me, in one of the armchairs.

She sat on the sofa to one side of me and poured tea. ‘Sally has told me of your interest in missing persons.’ She passed me a bone-china cup and saucer that felt as fragile as wren’s bones.

‘She said that potentially you may have two?’

She grimaced. ‘We didn’t think about it at the time, but I’m now wondering whether I might have been remiss in my responsibilities.’

‘Two girls who left suddenly?’ I prompted.

‘“Suddenly” implies a mystery, Sergeant. It didn’t seem like one at the time. It was just that we weren’t expecting them to leave. They didn’t give notice. They left sometime in the night or early morning. They did pack all their belongings, and it was the day after they had been paid. I’m trying to give you reasons why their departures didn’t concern us more.’

‘I understand. But weren’t they paid in arrears? Wouldn’t they still have been owed money in hand?’

‘Yes, that’s right, and one of them more than made up for the value of that in what she took with her.’

‘Who was that?’

‘Colette Fletcher. I’ve put some things together for you.’ She leaned forward and took a photograph out of a file folder on the table. ‘That’s Colette,’ she said, passing it to me.

It had probably been taken on the lawn outside the home. An unsmiling girl, in the pink Sychnant housecoat, with straight brown hair pulled back off a wide, pale forehead, propping up an elderly woman who was smiling into a distance only she could connect with.

She passed me another picture. ‘This is Donna. Donna Gallagher.’ The same housecoat. But indoors this time, a shorter, plumper girl, fair hair in a ponytail, managing a smile, but self-conscious in front of the camera.

‘Did you report them missing?’ I tried not to sound accusatory. I was only interested in knowing if they had been logged somewhere.

She grimaced. ‘I feel slightly awkward about that, Sergeant. I did contact the police in Colette’s case, to report the things that she had taken with her. I needed a case number, or whatever it is, for the insurance claim. As for reporting them missing, I have to say no. You see, as far as we were concerned, they weren’t missing. They had simply left our employment. They had exercised their right to go whenever and wherever they chose.’

‘You didn’t get in touch with the families?’

She looked at me remonstratingly. ‘Of course I did. The nearest thing that they had to a family, at any rate: the children’s home that they had both come from.’

I felt the tug. Unexpected information sliding home. New pathways of possibilities opening. ‘The same home?’ I asked, keeping my tone neutral.