‘The DVLA reckon it’ll take all day at least to put the various names through the computer,’ Dewi told McKenna.
‘Can’t be helped. We’ll have to wait.’
‘Mr Tuttle’s in your office, getting together the things you want doing.’
‘Did you see Beti again?’
‘Yes,’ Dewi groaned. ‘Drives you potty trying to talk to her, sir, because with the way she talks, it’s bloody hard to follow what she’s saying. Apart from the fact she rambles as well…. I showed her a picture of a Ford Scorpio, only we’ve only got a photo of a black one, so all I got from her was a maybe. Or, then again, a maybe not, I suppose.’ He grimaced. ‘She was a bit more help with the ornament. It’s a gonk, she reckons. Have you any idea what one of those looks like? Because I haven’t, and neither has Mr Tuttle.’
‘A gonk.’ McKenna racked his memory. ‘I think it’s one of those hideous toys with an ugly face.’
‘Sounds like Beti Gloff,’ Jack said, walking into the room with a pile of folders in his hands. ‘Probably why she remembered.’
Closing the door of his own office, McKenna regarded the ill-tempered features and unkempt appearance of his deputy. ‘How are things with you?’ he asked.
‘You really want to know? Sodding awful!’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know why!’ Jack snapped. ‘Emma’s had a right cob on her since the weekend, and takes every opportunity to drag up every little thing I might’ve done wrong in the past sixteen years!’
‘What happened at the weekend?’ McKenna asked.
‘For a start,’ Jack began, ‘I wouldn’t go to that bloody wedding. I didn’t want to, I didn’t get a special invite, so I don’t know why the hell she’s making a fuss … but she says I should’ve gone to see the twins being bridesmaids.’
‘Maybe you should.’
‘Why?’ Jack frowned. ‘The twins didn’t want me there.’
‘You know mothers have different ideas.’
‘She should’ve said, then, instead of letting me think it didn’t matter one way or the other. Why are women so bloody unreasonable?’
McKenna lit a cigarette, and leaned against the window ledge. ‘I suppose she saw Denise there, Jack.’
‘And that’s another thing. Emma’s mad as hell because I won’t tell her where you are so she can tell Denise.’
Standing on Emma Tuttle’s front doorstep, McKenna thought that death could never be as bleak and empty as life. The last time he stood here, he and Denise were together, and if not happy, with no real or urgent thought of separation. He had torn apart the remaining fabric of their marriage, wilfully and with no thought to the outcome, perhaps unable to believe that some miracle would not stitch up the holes, pull the tattered bits back together into some form wearable for a few more years without too much discomfort. And he had been so sadly wrong. The marriage lay behind him, a few rags trodden into the mud.
Emma, never at ease with him in the past, did not know what to do with this new McKenna, the one who suddenly walked out on his wife, had bared his teeth and bitten Denise where it would hurt her most.
‘I want to talk to you, Emma,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure it’s either the best thing to do, or the right one, but I think it’s necessary.’
‘Does Jack know you’re here?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Oh, well, I won’t tell him, then.’ She smiled slightly. ‘What he doesn’t know won’t hurt. Have you had lunch? It’s getting quite late.’
‘Is it? No, I haven’t.’
She made sandwiches and a pan of coffee, and buttered scones still hot from the oven, their sweet yeasty smell filling the kitchen. He ate absently, silently. She waited.
‘I’ve been to see Denise,’ he told her, ‘because she and I seem to be causing trouble for you and Jack.’
‘What’s Jack said?’
‘Only that you’ve had a disagreement. I virtually had to drag that out of him,’ McKenna said. He sipped the scalding coffee. ‘He’s upset. He can’t understand why you and he should be fighting over other people’s problems.’
Emma stirred her coffee. ‘We haven’t before, even though we knew things were getting worse by the day with you and Denise…. But since last week, Jack seems to have taken sides.’
‘He mustn’t.’ He ate a scone, wiping buttery fingers on one of Emma’s napkins. ‘And neither must you.’
‘I know,’ Emma said. ‘But these things happen, don’t they? Before you know it.’
‘Only when other people make them, Emma,’ McKenna said. ‘Don’t let Denise use you and Jack to get at me.’ He reached out to squeeze her hand, his warm and fine-boned over hers. She felt the treachery of desire thump her body, and rose. ‘Have some more coffee.’ Standing at the cooker with her back to him, she said, ‘Will you tell Denise where you’re living?’
‘When she needs to know. It’s not urgent.’
‘I’ll tell you what is urgent.’ Emma turned. ‘You should get yourself a solicitor. Denise has.’
‘How can nobody know anything at all about this woman?’ Jack demanded. ‘No trace of her husband, no sign of parents or family, nothing on the car.’
‘There’s no record at DVLA of any car belonging to our body under any of the names,’ Dewi offered. ‘They’ve double-checked, tried the husband’s name and Allsopp’s. He’s got just the one car registered, bought a couple of years back…. Our body must’ve sold the car to somebody. And,’ he added gloomily, ‘unless we find out the registration number, there’s not a cat in hell’s chance of finding out who’s driving it around now.’
Romy Cheney remained an enigma, even her name unreal, stolen from the pages of a novel to promote some treasured private image. What brought her to the foreign territory where only death awaited her? Why did she leave her husband? Why had she twice aborted children? No one missed her, except perhaps Robert Allsopp, after his own casual fashion. Enquiries met with apathy, almost indifference, for there were no tearful children or gaunt-faced husband to make plaintive appeals on television, no gruff-voiced father or harrowed mother to care if the killer died a free person in their own bed, if Romy’s body busied a niche in the mortuary until Judgement Day. Her file was already hidden under new files, under reports of burglaries and assaults and suspected fraud. Life went on, and simply forgot about the woman who had called herself Romy Cheney, if it had cared very much in the first place.
McKenna requested authority from police headquarters to have a head cast from her skull, convinced the request would meet only exasperation, then asked DVLA to search under all the names she had used for the past ten years. On the desk, he found a cutting from the local paper, and read that the vicar of Salem village was anxious to lay Rebekah to rest at the expense of the church. McKenna smiled a little, wondering what vengeance Simeon might devise for those who gave his wife a Christian burial, then put the cutting in the file, glancing at his watch. Time dragged its feet, only moving when he engaged in some burst of activity, and McKenna could not bear to think that such spasmodic and fitful behaviour might characterize his time for the rest of his days.
On a whim, he telephoned Prosser.
‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ Trefor Prosser greeted him.
‘Yes, Mr Prosser.’ McKenna tried to put a smile in his voice. ‘You can probably help tie up a few loose ends. Who cleared out Gallows Cottage when Ms Cheney’s tenancy came to an end?’
‘Who cleared it out?’ Prosser snapped. ‘How the devil should I know?’
‘Well, who handed in her keys?’
‘Nobody. Nobody handed them in, that’s who!’ Prosser said sharply. ‘I had a spare set in the office, so it didn’t matter.’
‘When you checked the cottage after she’d left, what was in there?’ McKenna asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Well, how long after she’d left did you go there?’
‘I don’t know!’ Prosser exclaimed impatiently. ‘I don’t know when she left, do I? According to you, she was dead and gone long before the tenancy lapsed. I don’t go spying on people. She’d paid her rent so it was her business what she did.’
‘D’you know, Mr Prosser, I find you singularly unhelpful.’
‘Do you indeed!’ McKenna could almost see him bridling. ‘Well let me tell you what I think about you!’ Prosser squealed. ‘I’m sick to death with all the trouble you’re causing! Not to mention harassing me morning noon and night! Anybody’d think I murdered the woman myself! You’ve caused no end of trouble!’ he raged. ‘Did you know that? First you find that silly mare’s body in the woods, then you have to go and dig up some two-hundred-year-old corpse! I’ve had reporters and nosy parkers trampling all over the bloody place for days!’
‘Did you, Mr Prosser?’ McKenna asked.
‘Did I what?’
‘Murder Ms Cheney?’
McKenna heard Prosser gasp, then the telephone went down with a slam which made his own receiver whine.
Tears glittered in Mary Ann’s eyes as she buried her face in the sheaf of daffodils and freesias McKenna handed to her. ‘First signs of spring,’ he said. ‘I thought they’d brighten up your parlour.’
‘I can’t remember when a man last brought me flowers.’ She smiled a watery smile. ‘You’ve taken me back years.’ Mischief glinted behind the tears. ‘My Dafydd was never a one for flowers … if I remember right, the last time I had flowers off a man was before we married, when Dafydd was away in the war, and I walked out for a bit with his friend. That shows you how long it’s been.’
McKenna stretched out his legs, feeling the heat of her gas fire singe his skin through the cloth of his trousers.
‘How’s Beti?’
‘Pah!’ Mary Ann choked on the cigarette she was lighting. ‘That one wants her backside kicking! She’s got a gob on her bigger than the hole that quarry makes in the mountain!’
‘I hear she’s seen Simeon,’ McKenna said. ‘Dewi tells me the local paper’s doing an article about her.’
‘I’ve told her it’s one of them gippos, but will she listen?’ Mary Ann seethed. ‘Making a fool of herself, she is, coming out with any old tale just to get noticed! Well,’ she added, with grim satisfaction, ‘I’ve told her. Things always come home to roost, one way or another. You see if I’m not right.’
The cat arrived, mewling at the back door, while McKenna was listening to a late news bulletin on the radio. A freshly slain mouse, her gift to him, lay on the doorstep at his feet. He watched happily while she ate the food he put out for her, imagining the dusty coat bathed and brushed and gleaming. Instead of leaving as usual, she explored the parlour, rubbing the back of her ears on furniture and walls, laying a scent. He followed her outside, watched her nosing through the plants in the little garden, and decided he would spend time at the weekend weeding and tidying up, cutting back the overgrown bushes straggling along the fence. She followed him back into the house, and went to sleep in front of the fire after proudly grooming every part of her scruffy little body.