A Small Hill to Die On: A Penny Brannigan Mystery (20 page)

Victoria held up a finger and seemed about to say something and then caught herself.

The man folded the tissues over, dabbed at his nose, and then examined the results. Satisfied that the bleeding was slowing down he looked around for a rubbish bin. Seeing none within arm’s length, he seemed about to toss the bloody tissues on the pavement so Penny reached in her pocket and held out a small bag. “Just put them in here and I’ll get rid of them for you.”

“Oh, right.” He dropped them in the bag and then gazed longingly at the pub. “Well, I guess there’s no point in going back in there. Might as well head home. My missus’ll be wondering what’s happened to me.” He gave a sheepish smile and strolled off.

“Creeps me out when men do that,” Penny remarked as they watched him go. “That eyeing you up and down.”

“I know him,” Victoria said. “Or at least I know who he is I thought for a moment he was about to recognize me. I’ve seen him before and you’ll never guess where.”

“Tell me, then.”

“In the kitchen of Ty Brith Hall. He was with the family when I was up there pretending to be a cleaner.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Oh, what was his name? Oh, damn. Starts with
B
.”

“Do we still want to go to the pub?” Penny asked. “Why don’t we pick up a bottle of wine and something to eat and go back to yours? I’m sure his name will come to you.”

“Good idea.”

Their shopping done, they walked past the now shuttered Handz and Tanz back toward the Spa to Victoria’s comfortable flat on the top floor.

“I wonder where everybody who used to work there went,” Victoria remarked, with a little gesture at the closed nail and tanning salon.

“Gareth says the whole business is a tangled mess of extortion, people-smuggling, money laundering, and prostitution, not to mention the grow op. Where there are drugs, there are guns, he said. They’re still working with the police in Birmingham to sort it all out. They’ve got some of the gang in custody, but there are more back in Birmingham and some have probably left the country.

“Oh, and remember that boy who was in the stables? Trung, I think he said his name was. He’s been taken into care, and Gareth said that’s actually the second time they’ve picked him up. They caught him once before working at another grow op, but he ran away. They think he was smuggled into the country just so he could work in the grow op, looking after the plants. Sad, that.”

As they passed a rubbish bin, Penny reached in her pocket, pulled out the bag containing the bloody tissues, and dropped it in.

They walked on, and just as the Spa came into sight, Penny stopped, thought for a moment, then turned around and walked back to the rubbish bin and picked up the bag.

Thirty-nine

“While you’re heating up dinner I’m going to phone Gareth,” she called to Victoria in the kitchen. A few minutes later, she joined Victoria, who handed her a couple of plates.

“Better make it one more,” Penny said. “He refused to talk to me on the phone. Said he couldn’t. Told him we were about to have dinner and he invited himself over.” She gestured at the meal Victoria was preparing. “I thought you wouldn’t mind. Can we stretch it to three, do you think?”

“’Course we can. Unlike you, I always have food in.” She opened the fridge door and started handing out things. “Here’s some cheese, there are bread rolls in the freezer, and there’ll be tons of pasta. Oh, look, here’s a red pepper. I’ll chop that up and toss it in the salad.”

“He said he’d pick up a bottle of wine.”

“Well, that’s good, then. We’re all set.”

*   *   *

“Hello, love. How are you? All right?”

“Mmm, fine. You?”

“Good.” He handed his coat and a bottle of wine to Penny with a gentle smile and the two of them walked into the sitting room. “Dinner’ll be ready in just a few minutes,” said Victoria, handing Penny some cutlery. “Just put those out, please, and, Gareth, perhaps you’d be good enough to pour us some wine.”

A few minutes later, they were seated, and Victoria passed the large bowl of pasta to Davies. “This looks delicious,” Davies said as he helped himself. “I’m hungry.”

Victoria reached for the basket of warm bread rolls and passed them to Penny. As Penny took the basket from her, the two exchanged subtle glances and Victoria gave a tiny nod.

“Now then, Gareth,” Penny began. He looked up from his plate. “Victoria and I had an interesting encounter just outside the pub today.” He raised an eyebrow. “Yes, we met a fellow who had been set upon by a jealous husband. And it turns out that Victoria met this fellow a few weeks ago—in the kitchen of Ty Brith Hall, of all places.”

“That’s right,” chimed in Victoria. “He was well in with the family, it looked to me. Very comfortable. Sitting at the table, drinking tea.”

“What were you doing up there?” Gareth asked.

Victoria and Penny exchanged nervous glances.

“Nothing much, really,” Victoria said. “We just wanted to see if we could find out a bit more about their business plans. When they first opened their nail bar we were a little nervous about the competition, you see. But it turned out their clients weren’t our clients, so it was no threat to our business.”

Davies put down his fork. “So you were up there and met the family? Of course, you weren’t to know, but that could have been dangerous for you, very dangerous if you’d seen or heard something you shouldn’t have. There was a lot of illegal activity going on, and these gangs mean business. They are not the forgiving type.”

“Do you think that’s what happened to Ashlee? That she saw or heard something?”

“We don’t know how much the kids knew, but they were old enough to know something was going on. There would have been lots of traffic with collectors showing up, and everybody would have had to be kept away from the grow op.”

“Collectors?”

“In the drug trade, collectors pick up product from the growers and move it to the distributors. It’s a very sophisticated business now.” He took a sip of wine. “You know, ten years ago about ninety percent of the illegal drugs in Britain were imported. Now, it’s just about all homegrown or homemade. It’s a multibillion-pound business. There’s a lot of money at stake and this operation was huge. The plants alone were worth millions. It’s going to be difficult sorting it all out.” He let out a weary sigh. “Oh, how we long for the good old days of the Kray Brothers. At least back then, our criminals were British, we all spoke the same language, and everybody knew the rules. Now, we’re up against Eastern European and Asian gangs, so it’s not easy for us poor old plods.”

Penny leaned forward. “Go on.”

“Well, it’s almost impossible for us to infiltrate these gangs. We’re working with the RCMP on this case, because the plants come from Canada. There could be a connection to the big grow ops in British Columbia.”

“Hmm. Interesting. But I’ve been thinking about that blond good-looking man in the kitchen, who’s close to the family. The same one Penny and I saw fighting outside the pub. Remembered his name. Bruno he’s called. Could he have had anything to do with Ashlee’s death, do you think?”

Davies thought for a moment.

“We’ve looked into him, of course.”

“And?”

“And he’s an old friend of Derek’s. We found him useful.”

“Useful? Useful how?”

“He’s a police informant. Or was. He was working for us. That’s how we knew so much about the grow op.

“But…” Davies held up his hands in a good-natured way. “That’s all I’m going to say. That’s all I can say.”

*   *   *

Davies set down his coffee cup and stood up. “That was lovely, Victoria, thanks so much, but now I must be off. Meeting in Birmingham in the morning.” He looked at Penny. “Am I driving you home?”

“No, I think I’ll stay here for a bit and help Victoria tidy up.”

“I’m fine, Penny, honestly, you go home now.”

“I’d like to stay for a bit.”

“Well, all right, but what about Trixxi?”

“Gwennie’s been over to walk her, she’ll have fed her. She’ll be fine. I’ll just see Gareth out and then I’ll help with the clearing up.” Victoria picked up a tray and began piling the coffee cups on it.

A few moments later, Penny joined her in the kitchen.

“Leave the dishes for a few minutes and come into the sitting room.” Victoria turned off the tap, and wiping her hands on a small white towel that looked suspiciously like the ones in the Spa, she followed Penny into the sitting room. When they were seated, Penny leaned forward.

“I need to talk this through with you. I think Gareth’s wrong about Bruno. Here’s my theory. When Ashlee came to me for the snakeskin manicure she told me how unhappy she was here in Llanelen, and I said something like, well, maybe you’ll meet a nice lad. And she said, oh, I’m not interested in boys. And I thought she meant she wasn’t interested in boys—”

“That she was interested in girls,” Victoria finished for her.

“Exactly. But now, I think she meant she wasn’t interested in boys, she—”

“Was interested in men.” Victoria finished for her again. “I see where you’re going with this.”

“Yes. There was something about the way she said it. A certain smugness. I think she was very pleased with herself because she had the attentions of a man who must be, what, in his early thirties?”

“And apparently she wasn’t terribly good-looking, so it must have all been very exciting for her.”

“He probably told her all kinds of lies, everything she wanted to hear, but for him it was all just a bit of fun. You know what men like that are like. But when she told him she’d fallen pregnant, it all went wrong. Maybe she threatened to tell his wife. Maybe he laughed at her and mocked her.”

“I think he killed her in that little room.”

“I think you came pretty close to getting killed in that little room yourself.”

“I don’t think her death had anything to do with the grow op. I think she was killed because of the pregnancy.”

“And what about Dilys?”

“I think she saw something. Or knew something.” She snapped her fingers. “That’s it! She knew that Bruno was the father of Ashlee’s baby because he asked her for something to get rid of it. Like that tansy tea.”

“But why would he do that?” Before Penny could reply, she answered her own question. “Of course. Because Ashlee liked being pregnant. It gave her a hold over him and she would never have consented to an abortion.”

“Exactly!”

They looked at each other, the excitement between them growing. “But how would he have known that Dilys knew about that sort of thing? That she had access to those types of herbs?” They thought about that.

“Well, she lived in the cottage just down from the main house. He might have bumped into her one day when she was coming back through the fields after a foraging mission with her basket full of plants and got talking to her. I’ll bet he can be very charming on a good day and when he wants to be.”

Victoria nodded.

“And persuasive.”

“So what do you think we should do next?”

“Well, for starters, we have to be very careful. If we’re right, and I think we are, we know he’s dangerous. We can’t confront him, that’s for sure. So we have to find some proof to give to Gareth so he’ll believe us.”

“And we have the tissues with the blood so they can run a DNA test.”

“True.”

Penny stood up. “Do you like gambling?”

“Not particularly. Why?”

“Because one of us has to visit the bookies in the morning.”

“You go. I’ll take care of the business.”

Forty

The overhead bell tinkled as Penny opened the door to the bookmaker’s. A few customers watching the television screens took no notice of her as she walked to the counter at the rear of the shop.

“Hello,” she said to the clerk. “I wondered if I could speak to, well, I’m afraid I don’t know his name. You see, I saw a little dustup outside the pub yesterday between—”

“Oh, that.” He turned toward the back room. “Glyn! Lady here wants a word.”

A few moments later, the man who had been fighting in the street emerged, carrying a mug of tea, which he set down on the counter before making eye contact with Penny.

“Yes?”

“Hello. My name’s Penny Brannigan and I wondered if could ask you a couple of questions about that incident outside the pub yesterday.” She glanced at the other man and seemed unsure whether to continue. “You were having a disagreement with, I think his first name is Bruno, but I don’t know his last name, sorry.”

“Bishop, would you believe. That’s his last name. What about him?”

“I overheard what you said about him being interested in your wife and I just wondered—”

“He’s not particularly interested in her,” Glyn replied, emphasizing the word “her.” “He’s interested in anything in a skirt.” He looked at the man beside him. “Do women still wear skirts?” And then back to Penny. “Well, you know what I mean. Some towns have a drunk, some villages have an idiot, apparently we have our womanizer. I told him to clear off and I think he heard me, loud and clear.”

His colleague nodded. “You’re right about that, Glyn, he got the message, loud and clear, right enough.”

The assistant folded his arms and leaned on the counter. “I was telling the wife all about the fight last night and she said he’d been into her shop and didn’t try anything on with her.” He laughed. “She didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted.”

Penny smiled. “And what shop does she work in?”

“The jeweler’s. She remembered selling him something. Pair of earrings I think she said it was.”

“Did they have a purple bead?” Penny asked.

The man made a wry face. “Ah, well now, you’d have to ask my wife that, wouldn’t you?”

“Probably bought them for his wife,” said Glyn. “Jewelry makes a good makeup gift, doesn’t it?”

The assistant laughed. “I wouldn’t know, thank God.” As Glyn joined in the laughter, they turned their attention to the jingling doorbell just in time to see the door close behind Penny.

*   *   *

Penny’s eyes swept up and down the counter, not seeing what she was looking for.