Good People (18 page)

‘Yes, but not at the same time. It’s in Manchester. I’ve put the details in the folder, in case you want to contact them.’

‘How far apart were they, time-wise?’

She thought about it. ‘Off the top of my head, Colette was with us roughly five years ago for three or four months over the summer. Donna came about three years ago, again in the summer, and stayed till just after Christmas, if I remember correctly. The dates are in the folder.’

‘Could they have been running away from something?’ I asked.

‘When they left here, or to come here in the first place?’

‘Either.’

She shook her head slowly. ‘I really have no idea, I’m afraid. They came here because they needed the work. I’m not aware of any problems with either of them that could have caused them to want to run away.’ She shrugged. ‘But then I didn’t know the intimate details of their private lives.’

‘Is there anyone here who might?’

‘I doubt that very much. We have quite a high rate of staff turnover. Apart from that, Colette kept herself to herself. Donna was slightly more sociable, but not much.’

‘What kind of girls were they?’

She smiled wryly. ‘They came from a tough background, Sergeant. They had had to acquire the appropriate survival skills. They were much wiser in the ways of the world than the local girls. That’s why I was not unduly concerned when they left. I felt that it was voluntary, and that they were more than capable of looking after themselves.’

‘Would they have gone back to the city?’

‘Almost certainly.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘I wouldn’t have said that either of those girls had been filled with the joys of Nature.’

‘So, why come here in the first place?’

‘For the work,’ she replied, looking surprised by the question.

‘No, to Mid Wales. To Dinas. To the country. This is such a far cry, both geographically and culturally, from the streets of Manchester.’

‘There must have been something about it that appealed. To bring them back.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘In both cases, they had spent the previous school summer holiday in Dinas. It was something that Sara Harris had been doing for a few years. She had some sort of connection with the children’s home. Every summer, she had a girl from Manchester to help in the salon, to get them out of that grim environment, and hopefully, spark some interest in them.’

Sara Harris? The name meant something. ‘So, what you’re saying is that both girls had done a summer-holiday stint at the hairdressing salon, about three years apart?’ She nodded. ‘Then they go back to Manchester, and the following summer they both come back? And get jobs here?’

‘That’s right. Despite their apparent lack of enthusiasm for rural life, there must have been some attraction.’

But what? And then it locked into place. Sara Harris … David Williams telling me: Sara Harris ran the hairdressing salon in Dinas. Sara Harris was Les Tucker’s long-term girlfriend.

Les Tucker was Gordon McGuire’s best friend.

Les and Gordon paid to fuck Monica Trent until her services got too mundane for them.

Magda, Donna, Colette. I now had three young women in the chain of connection.

And Boon Paterson?

I preferred to use the back bar in The Fleece. Where the older men congregated. It was quieter, I could mope peacefully, or talk to David or Sandra without straining. The front bar was the reserve of the energy crowds, the young farmers, the rugby aficionados; shoal culture in all its deafening and jostling glory.

I should have been warned when I walked in that evening and the old guys turned their backs on me and shuffled a portentous half-step away from their usual positions. But I was too preoccupied with what Joan Harvey had told me. Wondering what the best approach to Sara Harris would be. Bearing in mind who her boyfriend was.

David, serving at the front bar, turned and saw me. His face dropped visibly. I smiled mock wearily, and waited for him to come over and explain the joke. But another signal interrupted. Hairs pricking on the back of my neck. An alarm response.

I was aware of the entire raucous mass in the front bar turning silent. Sound snuffing out on a ragged wave of curtailed laughs and shouts, glasses and bottles being put down with an unheard of delicacy.

And I knew that I was the cause.

Even before I saw Gordon McGuire, Les Tucker and Paul Evans in the opening that connected the two bars. The crowd behind them shuffling quietly for vantage points.

Not having a glass to raise, I just nodded at them.

‘You’re not wanted here, Sergeant,’ Gordon stated.

‘It’s a public house, Mr McGuire.’

‘Tell him, Dave,’ Les prompted David Williams.

David shook his head uncomfortably. ‘Perhaps it would be better, Glyn.’

I let them see me ponder it. Using the moment to prevent my fear response from showing, keep the adrenalin surge under control. Smelling the animosity in that crowd, there was nothing that I would rather have done than get up off the stool and walk out. But I had to live with these people, and if I was going to be railroaded, it would not be without anger.

‘I’ll have the usual please, David.’

‘Don’t do it, Dave – not if you want to keep the rest of us as customers,’ Les warned. A rumble from the crowd backed him.

David looked at me imploringly.

‘What’s your problem, Mr Tucker?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice reasonable, not let them hear the tremble in it.

‘You’re a fucking shit,’ Paul Evans snarled, a small rumble of assent running through the crowd behind him.

Gordon raised his hand slightly to control him. ‘We don’t like to hear rumours being spread about our friends. Especially from people who don’t know them.’

‘Be specific, please.’

‘You concocted a story about Trevor Vaughan being queer, and then you threatened him with exposing it.’

‘Which probably drove him to do what he did,’ Les chipped in.

‘Are you accusing me of causing Trevor Vaughan’s death?’ I asked.

‘Yes!’ Paul Evans shouted.

Gordon shook his head. ‘You can see the mood here, Sergeant. I suggest that you get out now. I’d also recommend that you apply for a transfer, anywhere well away from here.’

‘Oh, believe me, Mr McGuire, there is nothing I would like better,’ I said wholeheartedly. ‘But tell me something: did any of you think that Trevor Vaughan was gay?’

The shouts and abuse turned on like a tap. Paul Evans actually spat at me. Gordon and Les calmed the crowd before Gordon turned back to me. ‘Of course not. He was our friend, we knew him. We don’t have the same bent, malicious streak as you.’

Oh shit, I had missed it …

‘You bastards!’ I screamed. The unexpectedness of it, the suddenness, the speed with which I stood up, stunning them all. For a moment I was a shockwave. They swayed back en masse, as if they were nailed to the floor. Then I was out of the door.

I had missed it. I berated myself again. I had let myself be tripped up by illusion and reality. I had confused truth with invention when Monica had been telling her tale. I had actually accused her of not being there, and then not picked up on the crucial point of her story.

Monica had told me that Trevor Vaughan was homosexual. But Monica had not been there. Everything in her story had been told to her. She didn’t know Trevor Vaughan from Adam. But she knew Gordon and Les.

Why had she been instructed to push Trevor Vaughan out of the closet?

I worked on the assumption that Monica wouldn’t live at the walk-up. She would have another life. A house in a nice suburb, or a swanky apartment in a new complex in the regenerated Docklands. If I got to Cardiff early enough I could catch her before she reached sanctuary in her fortress.

It was after one o’clock in the morning, I was belting round the Brecon bypass, when I remembered Sally. Our appointment for breakfast. All the possibilities that rippled out from there. I groaned out loud, and pulled into a lay-by.

‘Sally, it’s Glyn …’

‘You’re calling to ask me if I like champagne because you’ve booked us into a place that does smoked salmon and New York bagels?’

‘I wish I was, but I’m not going to be able to make it. I’m out chasing the bad guys.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Can’t tell me or won’t tell me?’

‘Can’t tell you.’

I felt the silence and pictured her sitting in that kitchen surrounded by cold stainless steel.

‘Sally … ?’

‘I’m still here.’

‘I’m really sorry.’

‘We haven’t got very far, have we, Glyn?’

‘I’ll make it up to you.’ I suddenly knew that I had to be decisive. ‘Take tonight off, I’ll take you out to dinner.’

She laughed. ‘Okay.’

I remembered my confrontation in The Fleece. ‘I’d better warn you, I’m not very popular in town at the moment.’

She laughed again. ‘From what I’ve heard on the grapevine, you never were.’

I was parked outside Monica’s by two thirty. It was a grey, sluggish night, not quite drizzling, and no wind disturbing the discarded fast-food packaging in the gutters and on the pavements. I set the alarm on my mobile phone and tipped my seat back, reckoning I was safe sleeping until five o’clock.

I was awakened by a tapping on the window. I opened my eyes into the harsh beam of a torch. I squinted away from the glare. ‘Would you put your window down please, sir?’ asked the uniform cop holding it.

I complied. ‘Good evening, officer,’ I said politely.

He ignored me and ran the torch over my face and the inside of the car.

‘I was just trying to catch up on some sleep.’

‘Have you been drinking, sir?’

‘No,’ I answered truthfully. I didn’t bother explaining that I had been prevented by a vigilante pack.

‘Is this your car?’

Bang … There goes incognito. I opened my warrant card. He peered down to inspect it. ‘Sergeant Capaldi?’

‘Can we keep this between ourselves?’

‘You’re a long way from your new home, Sarge.’ He had recognized my name, and obviously knew my history.

‘I don’t want to blow a surveillance gig here.’

He took out his notebook. ‘You’re a celebrity, Sergeant. We’ve had a request from Carmarthen to log and report if you ever show up in Cardiff.’

I smiled winningly up at him. ‘You don’t have to do everything they tell you, do you?’

He leered back maliciously. ‘Is that how you got to be where you are today, Sarge?’

The only consolation was that they were not going to wake Jack Galbraith up at four thirty in the morning to tell him that I was on the loose in Cardiff. I could tuck it away into my malfeasance sack and forget about it until the time came to invent excuses.

When I woke, the early risers were on the move, heading off to work, a couple of crazy people jogging, dogs being walked, a milk float gliding past. The street lights and the grey pre-dawn light combined to make the place feel even grubbier. This was my town, I reminded myself; I should feel happy to be back. Instead, I felt tired and gritty, with a taste like raw soot in the back of my throat.

I was parked outside the stair tower that led up to Monica’s flat. No one was going to get up those stairs without me seeing them first. Even if she recognized my car, there wasn’t much evasive action that she could take. I was fairly certain that this was the only access, and I was in control of the pass.

She turned up just after seven, earlier than I had expected, in a silver Mercedes. The driver double-parked on the opposite side of the road from me, and she got out of the passenger’s side. A blue wool scarf was wrapped and knotted around her neck over an expensive camel coat with the collar turned up at the back. Her eyes locked on to me.

Was the guy in the car just a cab driver?

She ducked her head down and said something into the car. I had my answer. I should have realized. Whether he was a lover or a professional minder, she wouldn’t have taken the chance of running the gauntlet of potential stalkers or deranged former clients without protection.

We got out of our cars together, the driver and I, fixing Mexican stand-off stares on each other. He was young, but a big guy, with a dirty blond ponytail and heavy stubble on his face, black jeans and a loose light jacket that would be useful for concealing tools without encumbering his movements.

I held up my warrant card. ‘I’m a cop,’ I shouted across the road at him.

He glanced at Monica. She had obviously neglected to tell him that. He turned back to face me down. ‘Miss Trent wants to get into her place.’

I smiled affably. ‘And Miss Trent shall. I just need to speak to her.’ I gestured towards the stairs. ‘It won’t take long. Up there, or in my car, whatever suits her.’

‘Miss Trent only sees people by appointment.’

‘You’ll be obstructing a police investigation,’ I warned him pleasantly.

‘There is no investigation.’ Monica spoke for the first time.

A man in a bus driver’s uniform walked past, eyeing us curiously, smelling a situation. ‘I’ll talk to you in your car,’ I offered another compromise.

Monica came round to the driver and put her hand through his left arm. He took it as a cue, and they started crossing the street towards me. I backed away from them to block the entrance to the stairs. They stopped in front of me.

‘You’ll be done for assaulting a cop,’ I told the driver. ‘There’s a special kind of pain that goes with that.’

Monica shook her head. ‘I know people in this town. Lloyd will be defending me from an off-duty policeman, off his patch, who was trying to extort a free fuck.’

I let my deflation show.

‘I’ll pay you again,’ I said despairingly.

‘There’s nothing more to tell you.’

‘Please think about it,’ I wheedled, moving dejectedly to the side to let them past, showing them the equivalent of baboon-ass submission. But making sure to give them not quite enough room. Making Lloyd have to nudge me contemptuously to the side to clear the space. I shuffled abjectly, and he let his guard come down in the conquest moment.

I swung for his ponytail with both hands. He read it coming, but I was too quick to leave him with any other reaction than shock and surprise. I grabbed the ponytail and ran with it, turning to spin him, feeling the live weight as he gyred off balance, the scream as his scalp took the strain of momentum and bodyweight. Somewhere in the moment, I heard Monica scream as well.