CHAPTER TWELVE
Adam was feeding the cat when she got home. As soon as the food hit his bowl,
the cat began wolfing it, gulping it down like a feline Labrador.
‘He’s definitely gone feral in the food department,’ Julie put her bag on the table and peered into the oven. ‘Rather like you.’ She wrinkled her nose at the brown concoction on the middle shelf and closed
the oven door. ‘What is it?’
‘That,’ said Adam, ‘is cauliflower korma.’
Julie’s shoulders sagged. ‘Really? What is it with ruddy cauliflower? Cauliflower mash, cauliflower pizza
bases – it’s just cauli squashed into submission. How can you call curried cauliflower a
meal?’
‘I’ve made bread to go with it.’ Adam looked hurt and she was sorry for that, but this new food thing of his
just wasn’t normal. Was it?
‘That’s more like it.’ She cut two large chunks from the still-warm granary cob and dolloped butter
onto them, waiting as it melted into the bread. ‘That’ll do me,’ she said, wiping butter from her chin. ‘I’ve got to nip out again anyway.’
‘Aw Jules, have they never heard of shift patterns in Wales? You never seem to
have stopped since we’ve been here.’
‘It’s only to ask a few questions, and then we can get moving again first thing
tomorrow.’
‘How long will you be? Shall I keep your curry warm?’
‘I’m not sure. Best not. I’ll sort myself out when I get back’. She put the butter back in the fridge and watched Adam as he tasted his korma
and added some sort of oddly lurid green herb. ‘So have you heard any more from Tiffany?’
‘Well, I’m not sure.’ He dropped his spoon onto the draining board and turned to face her.
‘Not sure? How does that work?’
‘The school secretary handed me an envelope today. It was addressed to me and it
was marked strictly private and confidential, so she didn’t open it.’
‘And?’
‘Well that’s just it. When I opened it, there was just a blank sheet of paper inside.’
‘Was there a postmark?’
‘It’s a bit smudged, I can’t make out where it’s from.’ He pulled the padded A5 envelope from his jacket pocket on the back of a chair,
unfolded it and handed it to her. What do you think?’
‘I think I’ve an aversion to padded envelopes at the best of times. It could have been much
worse than a blank sheet of paper in here you know.’ She smoothed the creases and nodded. ‘Definitely illegible. I’ve not a clue where it’s from. She turned it over and inspected the back. ‘And you’ve not ordered anything online? They could have slipped up in the packing
department.’
‘I did order a second hand book about the Drovers’ roads.’ Adam grinned sheepishly, and Julie laughed.
‘You always know what to say, don’t you?’
‘But if it is her, what do we do?’
‘Tiffany you mean?’ Julie shook her head. ‘There’s still nothing we can do, even if it is her. It’s not an offence to send someone a blank sheet of paper, and it’s not exactly as though we’ve a huge amount to go on, is it?’ She sighed. ‘Not unlike the situation with our poor lass in the Elan Valley.’
‘Is that where you’re off to now?’ Julie nodded, and Adam took back the envelope and studied it carefully.
‘Let’s have a look at that again.’ Julie opened the flap and retrieved the single sheet of white A4. She held it
at an angle, checking both sides, then straight ahead of her, catching the
light from the small window.
‘Anything?’ Adam crouched down to look over her shoulder.
‘Nope. No indentations that I can see, no watermarks.’ She picked up her bag, pecked him on the cheek and collected her car keys. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll probably be a couple of hours.’
Looking back as he closed the door, she could see that her advice would
definitely not be heeded.
*
The chicken in black bean sauce in the foil container on the dashboard was
gently fogging the windscreen. One thing that working with Helen had taught her
was to be prepared for any culinary eventuality. In a plastic box in the boot,
she kept a spare plate, cutlery and packets of salt, pepper and a selection of
little packets of sauces and mayonnaise from various pubs. The tomato ketchup
that she added to the fried rice on her plate was from the Roebuck, the pub
where they’d sometimes gone after work in Manchester. Without warning, a tear splashed onto
the lurid red plastic and she sniffed. Had it been easier then, when Adam was
always working late and she and Helen had eaten greasy chips and congealed
beans in the pub after work? But he hadn’t been working late, had he, and deep down she had known it, even then. She had
just turned a blind eye and hoped she was wrong. She sniffed again and poured
the chicken over the rice and ketchup. She ate it alone, in the empty car park
on Dark Lane, watching the dog-walkers and wet-haired swimmers on their way
home.
*
Mrs Wilkinson opened the door and looked past her. She seemed displeased, or
possibly disconcerted that Julie was on her own, but she was civil, with none
of the superiority they had seen earlier in the day.
‘My husband is in here, Sergeant. We thought you ought to have a word with him on
his own first, if you don’t mind.’ She glanced at the ketchup stain on Julie’s blouse and smiled. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Could I have coffee, please? The stronger the better.’ Mrs Wilkinson scurried away and Julie turned to her husband, who thrust out his
hand. She was surprised how hard the skin was and, although his hands were
clean, she noticed that the creases around his knuckles were ingrained with
regular contact with soil. So he didn’t just direct operations then. He motioned for her to sit.
‘Thank you for coming to see me, Sergeant,’ he said. Julie raised an eyebrow at the subtle shift in their relative
positions with this opening gambit.
‘Not at all. I was hoping to be able to speak to your employees.’ She chose the word carefully and noted that Howard Wilkinson bridled slightly
before regaining total composure.
‘As my wife said, I would prefer to set the scene for you before you speak to
them. We are very careful not to force them into stressful situations. Two of
them are still undergoing quite intensive treatment and we wouldn’t want to undo all the good work, would we?’
‘No, Mr Wilkinson, we wouldn’t. But I do need to ask some routine questions to rule out any involvement in an
extremely serious matter.’ Julie opened her notebook and flicked to a blank page. ‘So perhaps we could start with you.’
Wilkinson frowned. ‘I can assure you, Sergeant, that I have absolutely no information about the
deceased person, nor indeed of any involvement of any of our guests in that
matter.’
‘So you hadn’t seen a young woman in the area at any time prior to the discovery of her body
on the Monks’ Trod?’
‘Definitely not.’
‘And you haven’t noticed any strangers around the farm, vehicles parked for long periods of
time, anything out of the ordinary?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘And you would have noticed if there was anything, would you? You’re an observant sort of person?’
Wilkinson raised his eyebrows. ‘Sergeant, I have had a very long and very distinguished military career. If my
powers of observation were not outstanding, I doubt if I would still be here to
answer your questions.’
‘Quite, Sir.’ Julie beamed at him. ‘Jolly good.’
Mrs Wilkinson bustled in with cups and coffee pot on a tray and set them on the
low table. Once coffee was poured and distributed, she perched on the arm of
the sofa.
‘Just for the record, Mrs Wilkinson, I have to ask whether you have noticed
anything unusual around here in the last two or three weeks.’ Julie smiled at her. ‘Anything at all?’
‘Nothing that I can think of, unless…’ she turned to her husband, who gave the slightest shake of his head and
continued the movement more obviously as he bent to pick up his cup.
‘No, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘I think it must have been an errant rambler. We heard the sheep making rather a
lot of noise late one evening recently, and we thought it might have been a
fox, but the alpacas are extremely good guard dogs. If it been a fox out there we would have heard them too.’
‘And can you remember when this was, Mrs Wilkinson?’
Howard Wilkinson put his cup down in the saucer so forcibly that coffee slopped
onto the woollen rug beneath. Mrs Wilkinson leapt to her feet and scurried into
the kitchen.
‘My wife tends to get a little confused about dates, Sergeant. It must have been
at least two or three weeks ago now.’
‘That’s fine.’ Julie stood up as Mrs Wilkinson reappeared with a cloth and sheets of kitchen
roll. ‘I’ll talk to your employees now, if I may, and then I’ll be out of your way.’
The three men were together in the first cottage. The bright red front door and
pale oak and chrome interior were at complete odds with the men’s appearance. All three were on the thin side of slim and dressed in black
walking trousers and navy polo shirts with the legend ‘H W Alpacas’. There was a small silver animal embroidered on the shirts, above the name, but
it could have been a donkey or a large dog, for all Julie knew. The men stood
in unison when Julie and Wilkinson entered the room.
‘As you were,’ Wilkinson said, as though speaking to one of the small silver animals on their
chests, and the men sat, but they were, she noted, definitely not at ease.
‘This is Detective Sergeant Kite. She has a few routine questions for you. Please
be as accurate and truthful as you can.’
‘Thank you, Sir, I won’t be long here and I’ll come and find you when I’ve finished.’
Wilkinson hesitated, but Julie held the door handle, looked out into the yard
and waited for him to walk from the room. He didn’t say a word, but the rising colour in his veined cheeks gave the game away.
Julie shut the door firmly behind him and turned to the three men.
‘There’s nothing to worry about guys, and whatever is said in this room won’t go any further unless it’s pertinent to the case. Is that understood?’ Two of the men nodded. The third stared steadfastly at his boots.
‘All I want to know from you is if you’ve seen anyone or anything up here in the last couple of weeks that might be
useful to our enquiries.’ She pulled up a chair and sat facing them. ‘What exactly is it that you do here?’
‘We help out on the farm.’ The tallest of the three smiled at her. ‘It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s out of doors and heavy duty, which helps you sleep sometimes.’
The second man, a good head shorter than his colleague and looking all of
sixteen, nodded. ‘And it’s teaching us a lot about farming, growing, looking after animals. It’s good, we’ll be able to get a job when we leave.’
‘And what about you?’ Julie turned to the third man, who was still staring at the floor. Unlike the
other two, he had long, lank hair, which provided a curtain protecting him from
his questioner. ‘Do you enjoy the work?’
The third man shrugged. ‘It’s OK.’
‘And have any of you seen anything unusual around here lately?’
The tall man leaned forward and spoke to the other two, quietly but forcefully. ‘We have to tell her, guys. It’s all going to come out in the end, one way or another.’
The younger man nodded. ‘Maybe the Sergeant won’t have to tell Major Wilkinson.’ He looked up at Julie and she wondered who had let this child go to war at all.
‘Well, if he doesn’t need to know, then I won’t have to tell him, will I? What is it that’s troubling you?’ she said to the third man. She bent down to peer under the curtain of hair and
was horrified to hear that he was weeping quietly. She fished a crumpled tissue
from her bag, straightened it, gave it a quick visual check and handed it to
him. Now she knew how Swift’s clean linen hankie idiosyncrasy had developed.
‘He’ll throw me out.’
‘Who will?’
‘Wilkinson. It’s in his rules and regulations.’
‘What is?’ Julie resisted the urge to part the curtain of hair and get a good look at the
man’s face, but he blew his nose and glanced up at her.
‘No visitors and no overnight stays. But he was in a bad way. Upset. Had nowhere
to go.’ He sniffed. ‘And it was only for a couple of nights. He was no trouble.’
‘Let’s not worry about that now.’ Julie crouched next to the man and looked up at him. ‘So who was this man, and why was he here?’
There was a shrug, and the hair fell back into place. ‘He just said his name was Ard.’
‘Would that be short for something?’
Another shrug. Julie looked at the other two men. The tall man grinned. ‘Funny sort of name, I thought. He said he was Ardal. I only remembered it
because it means in Welsh.’
‘So you speak Welsh?’
The man shook his head. ‘I’m from Dorset, just a learner. I wanted to know what all the place names mean
and how to pronounce them. It’s like being abroad again and I felt bad that I couldn’t even say the names.’
Julie nodded. ‘I know that feeling.’ She stood up slowly. ‘Well, at least we have a name for him. So, Ardal what? Any idea?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Well, why was he here? Did he stay here with you?’
The curtain of hair moved again. ‘We put him in one of the spare cottages. Well, I did. It was nothing to do with
the others, it was all my idea. They just helped with a share of their food. He
was out on his feet, starving. We didn’t think Mrs W would mind.’
‘Did you tell her?’
The three men exchanged glances and the tall man finally spoke. ‘We don’t want to get her into any bother. She’s been very good to us. She’d never have known, but we were cleaning the place after he’d left and she came round with a cake she’d just baked.’ He smiled. ‘She caught us with the hoover out.’
‘So you did tell her. But not the Major, is that about the size of it?’
The younger lad sighed. ‘We only told her after he’d gone. She didn’t know anything about him being here. We felt bad about not being straight with
her.’ He shrugged. ‘But she made us promise not to tell him, the Major. He’s a really good bloke, but he won’t tolerate anyone breaking his rules.’
‘OK, that’s fine, I won’t tell him either, not unless I have to, but I do need to know as much as you
can remember about this man. How old was he, what colour was his hair, what was
he wearing, were there any distinguishing features.’
‘Whoah, Sergeant.’ The tall man laughed. ‘Steady on. One question at a time. Didn’t anyone tell you’re we’re damaged goods?’
Julie laughed. ‘Sorry, I do that. Put it down to being impatient. Go on then, what can you tell
me?’
‘Well I’d say he was probably late twenties, early thirties, blonde hair, blue eyes,
leather jacket, jeans. Fancied himself a bit, but likeable all the same.’
Julie nodded. ‘Did he have transport?’
The young lad shook his head. ‘He said he’d walked from Ray… Where is it, Baz? You say it.’
‘Rhayader. He’d walked from Rhayader. He was looking for someone. He said he’d been let down.’
‘About what?’
‘Dunno. Did he say anything to you, Mick?’
The hair moved again, but this time it parted, and Julie saw Mick’s face for the first time. She had to stop herself staring. In all her years in
the job, all the things she had seen and wished she hadn’t, this face was one she would never be able to get out of her mind, especially
at three am when her insomnia kicked in. It wasn’t the puckered skin around his left eye or even the jagged scar, which ran from
his nose to a point just below his jaw line. It went much deeper than that. His
expression seemed devoid of anything at all, as though there was nothing
beneath the flesh and bone. But it was his eyes that would haunt her. The only
other time she had seen eyes like these, they had belonged to a young dog – a bearded collie – which her father had brought home when she was about seven. The dog had been
badly beaten and her father had wrestled him away from the man who owned him.
Julie had been so upset because the dog wouldn’t even look at her, he just sat cowering by her father’s chair. Weeks later, once the dog had been persuaded out of his new refuge
under the kitchen table, he had looked at her with eyes just like these.
Slowly, he’d learned to trust her, and for the next twelve years, until he died of old age,
he was always by her side, protecting her. Would Mick ever trust anyone again?
He spoke quietly, to a pattern on the rug at his feet.
‘He said a woman had stolen his sister’s son and he had come to find him.’ Mick looked up at Julie ‘He said he thought he knew where she was.’
Julie snapped the elastic band off her notebook and Mick flinched.
‘Sorry. Did he tell you where he thought she was?’
Mick shook his head. ‘Just somewhere not too far away was all he said.’ He hooked hair behind his right ear and looked at her. ‘Do you think he had something to do with what happened out there?’ He nodded towards the moorland.
‘It’s possible,’ Julie conceded eventually. ‘But even if he wasn’t involved, we’d like to speak to him, to eliminate him from our enquiries.’ She tapped her notebook with her pencil. ‘Did he give any indication of where he was going?’
The three men shook their heads.
‘Any sort of accent or dialect? Do you think he was local?’
Baz laughed. ‘He sounded a bit like you, Sarge. Up north was all he said when we asked him
where he was from.’
‘So no idea of where up north he was talking about? He didn’t mention a town?’
The three of them shook their heads in unison. It was like trying to get
information out of the three wise monkeys.
‘And how long was he here?’
‘Two nights,’ Baz said.
‘And can you tell me the dates?’
A shrug and two head shakes. ‘Every day’s pretty much the same up here.’ The youngster spoke this time.
‘But Mrs Wilkinson came up here the day after he’d left, bearing cake, didn’t she?’ Julie tapped her pencil on her teeth. ‘She might remember when it was. And you said he was here for the two nights
immediately before that?’
‘Don’t speak to her when he’s there.’ Mick suddenly flashed her a look that gave her hope that he might have fight
left in him. ‘Promise you won’t drop her in it.’
Julie held up a hand and shook her head. ‘I promise I won’t drop her in it. But I do need to establish exactly when he was here, what time
he arrived and what time he left.’
‘That’s fair enough, Mick.’ Baz stood up. ‘If you let us have a word with her while he’s not around, we’ll phone you tomorrow with dates and times.’ He walked towards the door. ‘Is that it, then?’
‘Almost. Did you notice any distinguishing features? Scars, tattoos, anything
else you can remember?’
‘He had a tattoo.’ Mick pointed to the inside of his wrist. ‘Here. It was some sort of flower. It could have been a rose. A red rose.’
Julie closed her notebook, stood up and walked to where Baz was standing. ‘I’ll need one or all of you to come to the station tomorrow and we’ll put together an impression of what this man looked like.’
Baz blushed. ‘I’m not sure we can do that, Sarge. The Major doesn’t like us to leave the farm without him or Mrs W. It might be difficult for us
to get to you without causing problems. He’d need to know why wouldn’t he?’
‘I can draw him for you if you like.’ Three heads turned towards Mick.
‘I didn’t know you could draw,’ Baz laughed. ‘You’re a dark horse.’
‘There’s a lot about me you don’t know,’ Mick said. He walked over to the dresser and pulled out an artist’s pad and a tin of drawing pencils and pastels. He smiled, almost imperceptibly.
‘Make the Sarge a brew while I do this.’