McKenna stood at the wide bay window on the middle floor of his house, the cat in his arms, watching an exquisite dawn break in the east to bring in the first day of May. At the stroke of midnight from the cathedral clock, he had said “white hare” for luck, laughing at himself as he did so.
Beyond the wooded crest of Bangor Mountain, a sky so brilliant it seared the eye spread pink and gold ripples across the waters of Menai Straits. Gulls wheeled over the city, their wings tipped with light, settled on roof ridges and began calling and screeching, disturbing the still sleepy cat. High in the sky, the tailstream of an aeroplane turned to ragged pink streamers, dragged by the wind.
Summer would come soon, dulling the sparkle of spring green upon the trees, fresh new grasses in the parks and on the great sweep of hillside below the old university building. Under the trees there, bluebells cast a purply mist upon the ground, and on the mountain opposite, heads of bright yellow gorse shone from the bracken. McKenna loved the early months of the year, even February, when bitter winds shrieked in from the east, snow riding their back and the scent and sense of distant lands upon their breath. The sap rose in his spirit as it rose in the earth, and fell prey as quickly to the decay of autumn and the barren spirit of winter, when sickness and weariness reconnoitred for the Grim Reaper, marking out souls for harvest.
He hoped to die on a fine spring morning such as this, his soul with the strength to rise to heaven, and knew that without understanding of mortality, there could be no joy in life. His time seemed to pass more swiftly with each week or month laid to rest, whole days disappearing in the blink of an eye, the sigh of a breath. Today was Thursday, yet like no time at all since he stood, Dewi Prys at his shoulder, in the sadness of Jamie’s caravan, and looked upon Death yet again. Craving for immortality grew apace with his years, even in those fleeting moments when the weariness of life became leaden and the beauty of final peace seduced the mind of man, but there was no child to carry his legacy into the future, no wife to mourn him, few friends to grieve. Bored, hungry for her breakfast and the sweet fresh air of morning, the cat struggled to be let free. He put her on the floor, and followed her tittupping tail downstairs, thinking it would be enough that he had lived and died.
‘Bloody paper!’ Jack complained. ‘Look at it. I’m surprised we don’t disappear under a paper mountain.’
‘Computers were supposed to stop the world being smothered with paper,’ McKenna said. ‘And save some of the trees.’
‘So why haven’t they? Why is there more bloody paper than ever before?’
Dewi sifted and sorted, glancing at Jack and McKenna. ‘Computers actually generate paper. Folk learned the hard way.’
‘Learned what?’ Jack asked.
‘Information gets lost in computers, sir. Data gets buggered up by power cuts and electronic memory blips and microchip faults. And if you haven’t printed it all off, you may as well kiss it goodbye. What shall I do with these court orders?’
‘How many are there?’
‘Blood and tissue samples from Mrs Stott.’ Dewi placed one sheet on McKenna’s desk. ‘Handwriting samples.’ Another sheet drifted down on top of the first. ‘And the bank in Leeds.’
‘Mr Tuttle will see to Mrs Stott,’ McKenna said. ‘You can take a statement from the taxi-driver who dropped her off near the caravan on Sunday afternoon.’
‘Which taxi-driver?’ Jack asked.
‘The one who came in last night after his boss told him we were wanting information about women taking trips out on Sunday,’ McKenna said. ‘He’s already identified her.’
‘Nobody told me about that,’ Jack grumbled.
‘Probably because you weren’t here.’
‘Some of us do have homes to go to. Even though mine’s like a bomb site at the moment. Still, they go on holiday tomorrow, so things should settle down.’
‘Do we know how Gwen Stott got back?’ Dewi asked.
‘Oh a broomstick, probably,’ Jack said. ‘When do we interview her again? There’s a lot of questions need asking.’
‘And no guarantee we’ll get any answers,’ Dewi said.
‘There never is,’ Jack pointed out. ‘Par for the course in this job. Shouldn’t stop us asking, though.’
‘Speaking for myself,’ Dewi added, ‘I can’t say I even want to set eyes on that woman ever again, never mind talk to her.’
‘That’s all very well, Prys,’ Jack said. ‘We’re entitled to our feelings, but we can’t let them interfere with the work.’ He stood up, pulling in his stomach, and McKenna wondered if he would lose any weight while Emma holidayed in the sun, denying her husband the comforts of bed and food. ‘I’ll make a start,’ Jack added, taking the court orders. ‘Get the samples we want.’
‘Suppose she won’t co-operate?’ Dewi asked.
‘Don’t be stupid, Prys. She’ll be done for contempt of court if she doesn’t.’
‘I can’t see that bothering her. She’s locked up already and likely to stay that way, so a few more months for contempt won’t be any hardship.’
The newly painted walls of Gallows Cottage glittered in the sunshine, vestiges of an early morning mist drifting against its footings and sidling around McKenna’s ankles. On ground still sodden from the rains, and squelching underfoot, he stood where the track gave out to the cottage garden, listening to a silence unbroken save for the muffled distant clank of machinery on Port Penrhyn, a whispering in the trees behind him. Fresh grass already sprouted along the ridge of the trench where Rebekah’s remains languished for so long, weaved a carpet of bright green over the top of the septic tank. Within a few weeks, there would be no trace of Wil’s passage, and summer visitors would search in vain for Rebekah’s sad resting place.
‘Did you come to look at the view, or was it something else you wanted?’ Wil stood in the shadow of the door, head slightly to one side.
McKenna walked down the little slope towards him, feeling cold damp from the ground wrap itself around his feet, for all the warmth in the sky above. ‘Just thought I’d call in to say hello.’
‘Hello, then,’ Wil grinned. His eyes darkened. ‘Thought for a minute you might be the other one, until I saw you wasn’t.’
‘What other one?’
‘The other one some folk say is a gippo, and I know is nothing of the sort.’
‘How d’you know?’ McKenna recalled the night on the path beside the village graveyard, the cold on the back of his neck and the fear crushing on his heart.
Wil regarded him searchingly, unsure, reluctant to make of himself a fool or worse. McKenna touched the carving above the doorway, new paint smooth and thick on the three heads of the dog.
‘I see you’ve painted this. Odd thing to have over the door to your house, don’t you think? Can’t think why anyone should want it there.’
‘Why? What’s it supposed to be? Apart from bloody ugly, that is.’
McKenna followed him inside. ‘The only three-headed dog I’ve heard tell of is Cerberus. Legend has it he guards the entrance to the Underworld.’
Wil shifted an upturned crate for McKenna to sit down, then put the kettle to boil on the Primus. ‘That figures, doesn’t it? Just the thing for this benighted place.’ He leaned against newly fitted kitchen units, stuffing tobacco into his pipe. ‘Must be where the gippo who isn’t a gippo comes from then,’ he said, squinting at McKenna. Despite its new paint and sparkling windows, the bright yellow sunshine outside, the cottage was shadowy and chilly, its sad history imprisoned inside thick stone walls, crowding out the living.
‘Does he come often?’
From behind puffs of sweet-scented smoke, Wil said, ‘Once would be too bloody often with the likes of him, wouldn’t it?’ He turned away, placing his hand against the side of the kettle to test the heat. ‘Know who I’m talking about, do you?’
‘Yes.’
Wil turned back, his face grave. ‘Fair makes your scalp crawl, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ McKenna repeated.
‘Ah, well.’ Wil put three mugs in a row, and a handful of teabags in a stained metal pot. ‘It’s a comfort to hear you say I’m not going out of my mind with it.’ The kettle whined to the boil. Wil made tea, put the pot back on a low flame to brew for a while. ‘Not the sort of thing you want to talk about with most folk.’ He disappeared up the staircase to return with Dave.
‘The bloody English and all the other bloody foreigners are welcome to the place. And everything in it.’ He poured tea and handed round the mugs. ‘See you’ve solved one of your murders, then. Found out who strung up her in the woods yet?’
‘What happens if I refuse?’
Jack looked from Gwen Stott to her solicitor, the three of them crowding the fusty dismal interview room where the tape recorder blinked and whined. Beyond the open door, a young policewoman leaned against the wall, staring down at her scuffed shoes.
‘You can’t refuse, Mrs Stott,’ the solicitor said. ‘The police have court orders.’
‘I can!’ Gwen Stott insisted.
‘If you do, you will be charged with contempt.’
‘Then what happens?’
‘Then you can be sent to prison.’
‘Are you sure?’ Doubt, a small uncertainty, drew a frown on her face.
‘Absolutely positive. Usually for quite a while. Contempt is regarded with the seriousness it merits.’
‘And you always go to prison?’
‘Of course you do! Where else d’you think you’re likely to go? Butlins Holiday Camp?’
‘Well, there’s a lot in the papers about juveniles getting fancy holidays when they’ve been robbing and mugging, isn’t there?’ She leaned back in her chair, her weight forcing creaks from the plastic shell. Curdles of fat around her thighs overflowed the edges, the dingy fabric of her skirt creased under her buttocks. In his mind’s eye, Jack tried to clothe her in the suit from Gallows Cottage, and failed to put the picture together. He stared unashamedly, seeking visible signs of the person who dwelt inside the unlovely body, behind the plain and pudding face; searching for the one who went with murderous intent to Jamie Thief, fought with him, felt his nails draw blood, and crushed the breath and the life from his body. Now her face was scrubbed of make-up, Jack saw the scratches clearly, fading jagged brownish lines on her pasty skin, a little bruised about their edges, as if drawn by a child with a smudgy crayon in its hand.
And he sought the will and determination which manipulated money and people and time, the cleverness which covered her faint tracks through the paths and thickets of Snidey Castle woods, the wickedness which probably tied a noose about the neck of Romy Cheney and hung her body from a creaking branch, but found nothing of what he sought, could imagine nothing of what had happened. She was ordinary, a person one would pass in the street without thought or glance, a person without true dimension or substance or presence, as if merely cut from paper. So very ordinary, he thought; almost banal. He saw her only in the shadow of his own prejudices, unaware that evil, like every other human condition, wore the same ordinary face.
‘Yes,’ McKenna said. ‘I know I must interview her.’
‘When are you going to do it?’
‘When we have a match for the blood and tissue samples.’
‘Well it’s a near miracle we got them. I’ve never come across such a rigmarole.’
‘Eifion Roberts said she’s nobody’s fool.’
‘You also said he said she’s a moral imbecile,’ Jack said. ‘What d’you think he meant by that?’
‘She’s a bloody psychopath! What d’you think he meant?’
‘I don’t know, do I? I do know she’s spread one almighty pile of shit on people.’
‘And it rubs off on us.’ McKenna lit a cigarette. ‘Like all the other shit off all the others rubs off on us. And God knows what effect it has in the long run.’ He stared at Jack, smoke pluming towards the ceiling. ‘It probably all adds up like a huge supermarket bill you can’t afford to pay, or a debt from a loan shark … I’d like to throttle the bitch. But I won’t. I’ll talk to her nicely and take a statement from her, and do my job properly, and talk to her daughter again, and turn the knife in the child’s guts to get her used to the feeling.’
‘D’you have pictures in your head? Is that why you talk the way you do?’
‘How do I talk?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Jack shivered while fresh warm air breezed through the open window. ‘I just don’t like the pictures you make in my head.’