Good People (9 page)

‘What kind of a job?’

‘History teacher. Head of a small department. And then he ran away.’ She smiled, punishing herself. ‘It looks like that pattern’s repeating itself.’

‘How did Boon get on?’ I asked quickly, to stop her dwelling on it. ‘Socially? As a boy growing up here?’

She looked at me, and for a moment a sparkle came back into her eyes. She had recognized the question that I had been waiting to ask. ‘This brings it round to the others, doesn’t it?’

I nodded. ‘Do you like them?’

She was silent for a moment. ‘In their own way they were kind to Boon, I suppose.’

‘In their own way?’

‘It’s not their fault, they were children, but there is a certain endemic ignorance in country people. When I say “ignorance”, I probably mean intolerance. They don’t like change. They’re not used to things being different. Somehow it’s not quite right.’

‘They gave Boon a hard time?’

‘Let’s just say that they made him aware of his difference.’ She pulled a face. ‘I’m being unfair to them. They did become his friends. And they stayed that way.’

‘But … ?’ I prompted.

She smiled weakly. ‘I think that he was always made aware that that friendship was a gift. I remember one time he came home after a football match. He must have been about ten. They had been playing a team from another school who started giving him a hard time, calling him names. But what he was so pleased about was how his friends had stood up for him. “Mum,” he said to me, ever so excited, “Mum, and do you know what Gordon said back to them? Gordon said, ‘He may be a bloody Coon, but he’s our bloody Coon.’”’

Neither of us laughed.

‘He broke the bond?’ I asked. ‘He went away to join the Army?’

‘That was another difference. They all had farms or family businesses to move into.’

‘And he liked the Army?’

‘Yes. He was a bit overawed at first. A bit scared, although he wouldn’t admit it. You know, out there in the bigger world, and the regimentation, and the discipline. And then he discovered his Soul Mates, and I turned into the cruel bitch who had deprived him of the funky upbringing that they had all shared. Boys and the Hood, or whatever the hell it is.’

‘Why would he not turn up at Brize Norton?’

It was a question she had been torturing herself with. She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I told you, he didn’t talk to me any more.’

‘Was there a girlfriend?’

‘If there was a current one, I hadn’t been told about her.’

‘Current?’

‘He had quite a serious affair with a Czech girl he met in Germany when he was stationed there. Then he was posted to Cyprus. As far as I know, he hasn’t had a long-term relationship since then.’

She tried to smile to cover her distress, but her hands came up to her face, and she gave in to her tears. ‘I just hope something awful hasn’t happened to him,’ she wailed.

I went round to her and put my hands on her shoulders. It had been a long time since I had tried to comfort a woman. I felt awkward and unpractised. I kept my hands light and unthreatening, and felt her muscles relax slightly. The touch began to feel both intimate and sanctioned.

‘Please,’ I said, ‘you mustn’t worry. Let me put the word out, so that we can at least discount the worst of your fears.’

She reached a hand up to lightly cover mine. It was damp from her tears. ‘Thank you.’

She walked me to the front door. I hesitated to ask, given the state she was in, but I had to keep the momentum going for Magda’s sake. I turned to her on the threshold. ‘You mentioned, when we first met, that I shouldn’t believe them when they said that young women didn’t disappear around here.’

It took her by surprise. She nodded hesitantly. Then she surprised me by smiling. ‘How about a girl going on for eighteen who leaves for school one morning and is never seen again?’

I took my notebook out. ‘Can you give me details?’

She put two restraining fingers on the notebook. ‘I’m sorry, I’m being selfish at your expense. There is no mystery. I told you that my husband left me?’

I nodded, watching her.

‘He went out that morning too. They left together. Him and the schoolgirl.’

Okay, I could sympathize with Sally Paterson. The anxiety that her missing son was causing her, coupled with the other kicks in the teeth that life had dealt. But I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t experiencing a lift of professional elation over the gift that had just been handed to me. Now I had legitimate questions to ask the group about the disappearance of their buddy Boon.

Bryn Jones didn’t quite share my enthusiasm.

‘It’s an Army matter,’ he stated drily, when I called him in Carmarthen. ‘Let them clean up their own mess.’ In that terse sentence I realized that Bryn and the military shared a history.

‘It could be germane, sir.’

‘There is nothing for it to be germane
to
, Glyn. And don’t even think about mentioning a missing woman.’

‘The people on the minibus were the last people to see him, sir.’

‘The last people that we know of,’ he corrected me.

‘Don’t we have a duty to his mother, sir? To try and get close to what was on his mind that last night. In case it has some sort of bearing on why he didn’t turn up for his flight to Cyprus.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘Distraught, sir.’

‘You’re a sly bastard, Capaldi.’ I heard the contained laugh under his voice.

‘Is that a yes, sir?’

‘You know it’s not a yes. But I’m not in control of your actions until I get a chance to confer with DCS Galbraith on how we should instruct you.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ I disconnected quickly before he could remember his beef with the Army and rein me back in.

Trevor Vaughan was my obvious choice. But going to his farm would be pointless; it would just end up as a stand-off between me, him, and whoever had been appointed as minder for that day.

Even in the sad dead grip of winter an amateur like me, who was still trying out for his country-boy badge, could tell that Rhos-goch was a prosperous farm. The hedges were tidy and the drive was smooth, lined with beech trees that someone had had the unselfish foresight to plant a few generations ago.

Ken McGuire’s grey Discovery was parked in front of the house along with a red Audi A3 and a low-slung, black, two-door BMW 3 Series. All swanky machinery for these latitudes.

The house was a big architectural hybrid; a Victorian copy of a Georgian façade in stone, with a two-storey yellow-brick side extension. It was all in good shape and, I was glad to see, the dogs were kept locked up.

The woman who answered the door disappointed me though. She didn’t go with the house or the cars on the drive. A myopic woman in an apron, who peered at me as if she had forgotten that opening front doors sometimes revealed people standing there.

‘Is Mr McGuire in?’

‘No, he’s out in the cattle shed, checking the bedding.’

‘Can I wait for him?’

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘Birdie … ?’

The woman at the door cocked her head at the sound of the voice down the corridor.

‘Who is it?’ the voice asked, coming into view. She was in her mid-twenties, loosely styled brown hair, outdoor cheeks, a slight build, and the natural confidence of a woman who had learned to master horses and brothers at an early age.

‘Detective Sergeant Capaldi.’ I held up my warrant card. ‘Mrs McGuire?’

She nodded, an all-purpose smile masking her scrutiny and curiosity. Taking just a little bit longer over it than she needed, to fit me into place. ‘It’s all right, Birdie, I’ll take care of the sergeant. I’m Sheila McGuire. Please, come in.’ She used the act of opening the door wider as an excuse not to shake my hand. ‘Ken isn’t around at the moment. Assuming that it’s him you’re here to see?’

‘Would you mind me waiting?’

‘Not at all. We’re in the kitchen. I’ll put the kettle back on.’

I followed her. She was wearing a baggy sweater, and swung a good bum in a pair of tight-fitting, navy blue riding breeches that were stained at the contact points with something that I assumed was equestrian.

When I walked into the big kitchen, the other woman sitting at the long refectory table, with a cigarette and a mug of coffee, made no pretence of welcoming me into the tent. She looked at me as if I was something that had turned up on her plate that she hadn’t ordered.

‘This is Zoë McGuire, my sister-in-law.’ Sheila introduced us. Zoë raised her eyebrows in mock surprise, and then deigned to incline her head at me, still watching, as if she had been tipped off that I was about to do something really stupid.

So, this was Gordon’s wife. The younger brother, the auctioneer. I marked her down for the black BMW. I was in the presence of both the McGuire ladies and had not prepared myself for the eventuality.

Zoë was wearing make-up and showing cleavage. Both were artfully presented. Her hair was blonde and cut short, gamine style, setting off the sculptural forms of the long neck, chin and cheekbones. She had played it wild with the make-up around her eyes, making them hard to read.

‘I hope that you’re here to arrest the bastards,’ Zoë declaimed. I thought that the accent might be Shropshire or Cheshire.

Sheila laughed.

‘What reason would I have to arrest them?’

‘They’ve reneged on the deal, the cheapskates.’

‘Zoë …’ Sheila protested amiably.

‘What deal would that be?’ I asked, playing it slightly dumb and nervous in the presence of glory.

‘You tell him,’ Zoë instructed Sheila. ‘You’re pissed off about it too.’

Sheila smiled, apologizing for her sister-in-law. ‘Our husbands have cried off taking us to the rugby in Dublin.’

‘It’s a bloody institution, the Dublin trip,’ Zoë wailed.

‘They’re not going?’

‘Oh, they’re going all right, they just don’t want the WAGs with them this time. Selfish buggers,’ Zoë snarled.

‘Ah.’ I grinned, pretending that I had only just seen the light. ‘I thought you meant arrest them for what happened on Saturday night.’ I segued into a big, dopey cop smile, and waited for the reactions.

Sheila had the grace to look uncomfortable. Zoë just shrugged and pulled a face. ‘Bloody schoolboys,’ she hissed.

‘It was a silly stunt that went wrong, Sergeant, and now the episode is closed,’ Sheila said firmly.

‘And they learnt a lesson,’ Zoë added.

‘What lesson was that, Mrs McGuire?’

‘Getting ripped off by that dirty bitch, and spending a freezing night out in the forest. And then having to pay for the repairs to that minibus.’

‘Zoë, Sergeant Capaldi isn’t here to talk about Saturday night,’ Sheila said, and from the look she gave me, I realized that I was meant to recognize that as an instruction.

‘What are you here for?’ Zoë asked.

‘Do you know Boon Paterson?’

‘Of course,’ Zoë answered.

Sheila just nodded, but I thought that I picked up a small surge in the current of her concentration.

‘He didn’t turn up for his flight back to his unit in Cyprus.’

‘Has there been an accident?’ Sheila asked, and this time it was Zoë’s attention that seemed to be nailed.

‘Not that we’re aware of.’

The back door opened and Ken McGuire walked through in socks and a pair of faded blue overalls, a light dusting of chopped straw in his hair and on his shoulders. The air of slightly preoccupied contentment that he had carried from the cattle shed was wiped into a big, puzzled, angry frown as soon as he saw me. This time he wasn’t faking the surprise.

‘You …’ he spluttered angrily. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘He’s here about Boon, Ken,’ Sheila explained, cutting in over the erupting tirade.

‘Boon?’ It took a moment for it to register; he was still so affronted at the sight of me in his kitchen. ‘What’s Boon got to do with anything?’

I explained, taking it as far as I had got with Sheila and Zoë. He looked thoughtful as he listened.

‘Did he mention anything on Saturday night that might have made you think that he didn’t want to go back to his unit in Cyprus?’ I asked. ‘Did any conversation or discussion like that come up while he was home on leave?’

Ken shook his head. ‘Not in front of me. None of the others mentioned it either. If he had said anything, it’s something we would have talked about, believe me.’

‘He was drunk, wasn’t he?’

Ken frowned and looked at me sharply. ‘Why do you say that?’

I smiled pleasantly. ‘I would have thought that it might have loosened him up. If it was on his mind, that’s when he would talk about it.’

He relaxed. ‘I take your point. And I suppose we all had a pretty good skinful that night.’ He smiled mock-ruefully at the ladies, and then shook his head. ‘But the subject didn’t come up. Only the inevitable fact that his leave was over.’

I nodded understandingly. ‘How did he get home?’

‘Pardon?’

‘You dropped him off in Dinas. It was late, it was cold, and, you said it yourself, he was very drunk. So how did he get home?’

‘You didn’t abandon poor old Boon, did you,’ Zoë protested, ‘in your rush to get that dirty bitch up into the hills?’

‘Zoë!’ Sheila hushed.

Ken smiled to include me in the conspiracy that we shouldn’t take his sister-in-law too seriously. ‘We dropped him at his house. He asked us to. He was supposed to be travelling in the morning.’

I stared him out for a moment, giving him the opportunity to retract. ‘DCI Jones told me that you said in your statement that Boon Paterson asked to be dropped off in Dinas.’

He shook his head. ‘No, sorry, he’s got it wrong. He must have misheard us. Boon asked to be dropped off at home. Your Inspector Jones must have heard us saying that we drove through Dinas on the way out to Boon’s.’

‘He was okay with that?’

‘Who was okay with what?’ Ken asked, puzzled by the question.

‘The pimp who was doing the driving. He didn’t mind running a taxi service?’ I asked, deadpan.

His eyes drilled into me, trying to find what level of belief I was working on. ‘He didn’t have a choice. We were the paymasters.’ He flicked a glance of apology at the ladies.

‘Why did Boon want to be dropped off?’