The House of Women (2 page)

3

Draughts of hot air riddled with the smell of exhaust fumes billowed through the car’s open windows as McKenna waited for a break in the traffic hurtling down the road outside the main gate of the police headquarters.

‘
I’ll never see this place again unless I drive by specially,’ Owen Griffiths commented, craning his neck to look back at the tall grey building roofed with a forest of antennae. He wiped a bead of sweat from the end of his nose. ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.’

‘
Either’s good medicine at the right time.’ Beside him on the rear seat, Eifion Roberts unfastened his collar button, loosened his tie, and fanned himself with the ends. ‘Mind you, you’ll have a laugh taking that cheque to the bank. How much did you get?’

‘
More than enough for two holidays.’

‘
Then somebody’s pleased to see the back of you, because at one time, you’d only have got the gold clock, whereas you got both.’ Prodding McKenna’s back, Roberts said: ‘I’ve never understood why folks get clocks when they retire. Do you?’

‘
It’s a subliminal message,’ McKenna offered. ‘“Watch this space, your end is nigh.”’

‘
God, you’re cynical!’ Roberts commented. ‘Still, it’s as well, ’cos if your masters’ smiles and sycophancies were anything to go by, you’ll be filling Owen’s boots come Monday.’ Smirking, he went on: ‘You’ll look more fetching in uniform, so you might score once in a while. I’m told women find power a real turn-on.’ He nudged Griffiths. ‘Isn’t that a fact, Owen?’

‘
I wouldn’t know.’ Griffiths’s voice was plaintive. ‘A purple past must be nice, though, mustn’t it? Something secret and special and all yours to think back on.’

‘
See?’ McKenna felt himself prodded again. ‘Owen won’t be the only one missing nearly every boat to set sail. Get yourself a life while you can. You must be so short of the necessary your guts turn somersaults every time a bit of skirt passes by.’

‘
Oh, be quiet!’ McKenna snapped, ‘and stop bouncing on the seat. I don’t have reinforced suspension!’

‘
I’m on a diet, I’ll have you know.’

‘
About time, too!’

‘
As I’ve said before, I’ll find vinegar in your veins when I come to cut you up,’ Roberts said. ‘And fag smoke invading every cell in your body.’

‘
And what makes you so sure you’ll have the pleasure of me on your mortuary table?’

‘
Because I’ve calculated the amount of fag smoke gunging up your innards already, so don’t get cocky just because you’re younger than us.’

‘
You two bicker like children,’ Griffiths said irritably. ‘And always about the same things. It’s very boring!’

‘
Excuse us!’ Roberts winked at McKenna in the rearview mirror. ‘We’ll try to confine our puerility to the beach. We should be there soon.’

‘
And why are three grown men going to the beach?’ Griffiths wondered. ‘What’ll we do there?’

‘
Well, I’m going to buy myself a bucket and spade, and play in the sand,’ Roberts said.

‘
And I could paddle, couldn’t I?’ Griffiths added.

‘
You could even take off your shoes and socks first,’ McKenna suggested.

‘
And what will you do, Michael?’ Roberts asked. ‘I’ll watch,’ McKenna replied, turning off the expressway towards Llandudno.

*

Bedazzled by the glitter of water against a sky of almost tropical blue, McKenna sat cross-legged on a tartan rug from the car, Griffiths beside him with sand encasing his wet feet and clinging to the fuzz of grey hair on his shins, and a white handkerchief, knotted at each corner, covering his pate. Near the water’s edge, Roberts dug vigorously with a yellow spade, gouging a channel to carry the tide into the moat around his lop-sided edifice. Every so often, he smiled winningly at the two near-naked young women stretched out nearby.

‘
He’s quite brazen, isn’t he?’ Griffiths said. ‘Still, I suppose seeing so much raw flesh still on the move is bound to get him over-excited.’

McKenna grinned.
‘He’s in his element.’

‘
Second childhood, more like,’ Griffiths commented. He looked down at his own disarray and smiled ruefully. ‘You might say we’re both in our dotage.’ He sighed. ‘But I’ve had my day, I suppose. A short one, but sweet in its own way. It’s just a pity it seems so distant and hazy, like childhood.’

‘
I can imagine you both as kids,’ McKenna said. ‘Dressed in sailor suits and sun-hats, playing on some beach half a century ago.’

‘
Eifion, perhaps, but not me.’ Griffiths smiled gently. ‘My parents couldn’t afford holidays, so I was sixteen before I saw the ocean. I saved every penny from my job shifting cinders at the railway yard and took a cycling trip to Devon and Cornwall.’

‘
You must have had days out. Your place was quite near the coast.’

‘
Summers went by bringing in the harvest, then battening down the hatches and praying for a kind winter. We didn’t travel the way people do these days, and anyway,’ he added, grinning, ‘we only had a tractor, and I don’t think my mother would’ve taken to arriving at the beach in the trailer my dad used for his muck-spreading.’ Watching the pathologist’s castle collapse into its moat, he asked: ‘Your ancestors worked the land too, didn’t they?’

‘
They worked it to the bone. Some of the Irish peat lands are as bleak as moonscapes now.’

‘
You’ll feel at home in Wales, then.’ Griffiths smiled.

After a long silence, McKenna said:
‘I’ve never felt at home anywhere. I’m Welsh to the Irish, Irish to the Welsh, and trouble either way to the English.’

‘
Come on! Your dad was Anglesey born and bred, like you.’

‘
Maybe so.’ He picked up a marbled pebble, and rubbed it clean of sand. ‘But the past always catches up with you.’

‘
What past? I imagine your grandparents left Ireland to escape from something, like every other emigrant. Poverty, oppression, whatever.’ Griffiths paused, then added: ‘Or to look for something better, like Dick Whittington, although nobody’s ever found the streets of Holyhead paved with gold, except our latter-day drug peddlers.’

‘
One of our kinfolk was executed by the British after the Easter Rebellion in 1916, and there’s no escape from something like that, or what it means.’ He frowned, massaging the pebble. ‘And when my parents took me visiting our relatives across the water, I used to wave my toy gun around with the rest of the local kids, but we’d be playing “Irish and English” instead of “Cowboys and Indians”. So what does that make me?’

‘
The sum of your history, like the rest of us, so quit bellyaching about it!’ A huge dark shape eclipsed the sun as Roberts loomed over them, and dropped the bucket and spade by McKenna’s feet. Filthy, sweat-stained, face ruddy with exertion, he went on: ‘I haven’t played on the sand for donkey’s years, and I’d forgotten how bloody tired you get, so I’m going for ice creams. Who wants what?’

‘
You’re on a diet,’ Griffiths said.

‘
It starts tomorrow with my hols, and you can’t have an afternoon on the beach without ices.’ He smiled down at McKenna. ‘Why don’t you take off your shoes and socks, like Owen here, and go for a paddle. Loosen up, man! Get your feet wet, for once in your life. It’ll do you no end of good.’

4

The white van belonging to the forensic team was still parked outside the house in Glamorgan Place when Dewi arrived. He walked to the front door, almost compelled to step over the long shadows thrown by the trees, and pushed the bell, looking at the manicured lawns and weedless borders, a drift of night-scented stock beguiling his senses. Behind the leaded lights of the half-glazed door, he saw a dark shape flitting towards him.

She pulled the door wide, smiling brilliantly.
‘Hello! And who are you?’

Another perfume drifted towards him, a musky, heady scent which sent a frisson through his innards.
‘I’m a police officer.’

‘
Are you, really? Come in.’

He followed, drawn by invisible threads into a cool hallway scented with polish, where the fading colours from the landing window lapped against the walls as the sun sank to the west. Watching her, he marvelled at the corn-coloured hair swinging to her waist, the golden skin of her shapely arms, and the beautiful moulding of hip and buttocks. She opened another door, and stood aside, then flitted away, leaving the perfume in her wake.

Still wringing her hands, Edith Harris perched on a dusky brocade sofa set at right angles to a grand fireplace inlaid with blue Delft tiles, tall vases of creamy pampas grass framing the unlit grate. Opposite, her youngest daughter occupied a matching sofa, the tabby cat on her knees.

‘
Yes?’ Edith looked up, her eyes glittering.

‘
I’m Detective Constable Prys, ma’am,’ Dewi said.

‘
What do you want? And why are those other people still here?’

‘
It’s just standard procedure, ma’am.’

‘
That’s what that girl said earlier!’ Edith snapped.

‘
They took Uncle Ned away ages ago,’ Phoebe offered. ‘To the mortuary.’

Dewi nodded.
‘I’m sorry about all the upset, but we don’t have a choice.’

‘
It’s ridiculous!’ Edith insisted. ‘All this fuss, when not a day went by without Ned having
something
wrong with him! One thing after another, day after day, week after week, year after year!’ She fell silent, then announced: ‘It must have been his heart! He’s complained of pains in his chest for years.’

‘
What treatment was he having?’ Dewi asked.

As Edith opened h
er mouth to reply, Phoebe intervened. ‘He wasn’t having any, because everybody thought it was all in his mind, so it’s a waste of time cutting up his body, isn’t it?’

‘
Phoebe!’ Edith exclaimed. ‘Don’t be so horrid!’

The girl
’s eyes, Dewi thought, were the colour of slate on a rainy day. He wondered how old she was, and if there was still time for the swan to vanquish a very ugly duckling.

‘
Somebody’s bound to say Uncle Ned was mad,’ she countered. ‘You’ve said it often enough.’

‘
He had problems.’ Edith’s admission was reluctant.

‘
What sort?’

‘
The usual sort crazy people have,’ Phoebe said acidly.

‘
Had he ever tried to hurt himself?’ Dewi asked.

Edith looked at him warily.
‘I don’t know.’ She pulled a handkerchief from her dress pocket, and dabbed her eyes. ‘You’ll have to talk to Dr Ansoni about that.’

‘
Well, I won’t bother you any longer.’ Dewi smiled. ‘Can I have a word with my colleagues before I go?’

Edith wafted the little square of clean linen.
‘Phoebe will show you upstairs. I’m really quite worn out.’ She slumped in the sofa, the back of her hand against her forehead.

Gathering up the cat, Phoebe struggled to her feet, and as she led him into the hall, he glanced into the shadows, searching for the other girl.
‘Who’s the young lady who let me in?’

‘
Minnie. She’s one of my sisters, but she isn’t a lady.’ Clumping up the staircase, the cat over her shoulder, she added: ‘Annie is, though. She doesn’t live at home any longer.’

‘
Where does she live?’

‘
Llanberis. She’s a teacher.’

‘
And what does Minnie do?’

‘
You’ll have to ask
her
that.’

‘
Why don’t you like her?’

‘
You’ll have to ask her
that
, as well,’ Phoebe said. ‘Why are you so nosy?’

‘
Because I’m paid to be.’ As she paused at the turn of the stairs, shifting the burden of the cat to her other shoulder, he asked: ‘Has that animal lost the use of her legs?’

‘
Don’t be stupid! And he’s a him, not a her.’ She frowned. ‘Well, he
was
a him. He’s an it now. Will he know there’s something missing, d’you think?’

‘
I most certainly would.’ Dewi grinned. ‘And whatever he is, he needs more exercise. He’s quite fat.’

At the head of the stairs, she stopped, staring gravely at him.
‘I’m quite fat, and I get lots of exercise.’ She hugged the cat. ‘I like holding him. He’s a comfort.’

‘
What’s he called?’

‘
Tom.’

‘
Couldn’t you think of something more original?’

‘
He was already christened when I had him. Uncle Ned brought him from the farm.’

‘
What farm?’

‘
The family farm near Bala. It’s called Llys Ifor.’

‘
Who lives there?’

‘
Auntie Gladys and Auntie Gertrude.’ The slatey eyes darkened to basalt. ‘Mama didn’t know what to say to them, so she rang Annie and asked
her
to tell them about Uncle Ned.’

‘
You’ll miss him, won’t you?’

She nodded, clutching the cat.

‘And I expect it was a terrible shock when you saw him dead. Is that why you said someone must’ve killed him?’

Gesturing towards a closed door at the end of the landing, she said:
‘That’s his room.’ Then she began to walk away in the opposite direction, stopping by another door. ‘I said that because it’s true, and you’ll find out I’m right, if you’re any good at what you get paid for.’

He heard the creak of hinges, and the door thudded shut.