In Guilty Night Page 2

  ‘What was he doing with his time?’

  Hogg shrugged. ‘Same thing they all do.’

  Jack accelerated down the hill towards the main road. ‘Perhaps you’d make sure the staff are available for questioning later. I intend to question the children, too.’

  ‘Oh, I think your senior officers will need to clarify areas of responsibility with the director of social services first. That boy went missing almost a week ago, and you heard what the pathologist said as well as I did.’

  ‘Dewi says the locals reckon Hogg’s a pompous, loud-mouthed arsehole,’ McKenna said. ‘And a bully.’

  ‘You’re off sick,’ Jack said. ‘Why don’t you go home?’

  ‘Why don’t you? You’re exhausted.’ Lighting a cigarette, McKenna asked, ‘When’s Eifion doing the post-mortem?’

  ‘He was about to start when I turned up with Hogg.’ Jack yawned, and yawned again, jaw cracking. ‘Hogg reckons Arwel was a bad lot, for all he was so “pretty-looking”.’

  ‘“Pretty” isn’t an adjective usually applied to teenage boys, is it?’

  ‘Depends on how you see them, I suppose.’ He yawned again. ‘Hogg sees teenage boys as a general pain in the neck. Girls too, I imagine.’

  ‘Where’s Jack Tuttle?’ Eifion Roberts asked.

  ‘At Blodwel,’ Dewi said. ‘Mr McKenna’s gone to see Arwel’s parents. Janet Evans is driving him.’

  ‘I’m surprised he’s not laid up. Dislocating your shoulder’s no pleasant thing. Must be tougher than he looks, eh? Still, he’s more use to himself at work instead of brooding and fretting about the house.’ He fell silent, then said, ‘The autopsy’ll take longer than I expected.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  Roberts sighed. ‘Anal injury, Dewi. Old healed lesions, and every indication the lad was savagely raped not long before he died, so I have to proceed on the assumption HIV may be present, and that’s quite a rigmarole.’

  ‘The director of social services issued instructions, Inspector,’ Ronald Hogg announced. ‘I’m in no position to disobey him.’ His office was well furnished and stiflingly hot.

  ‘And where else do we start if we can’t interview staff and children?’ Jack demanded.

  ‘The boy was a runaway.’ Hogg tapped a thin sheaf of papers on his desk. ‘I’ve already had to disrupt important routines and treatment plans on his account, and been left with a bunch of kids more het up and disturbed than ever. Whatever you need to know is written down here, although nobody knows anything to speak of.’

  ‘Did Arwel have any money?’

  ‘Pocket money’s locked up in the other office.’

  ‘What was he wearing?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘Nobody. The children had other things on their mind, and Dilys Roberts was in bed.’

  ‘Why does she do so many sleeping-in duties?’

  ‘I’ve already told you we’re chronically short-staffed.’

  ‘Surely you keep clothing lists?’ Jack persisted. ‘You must be able to tell what’s missing from Arwel’s things.’

  ‘You can’t know from one day to the next what belongs to anybody.’ Hogg smiled disarmingly. ‘And you know exactly what I mean because you’ve got teenagers of your own.’

  ‘Did your boss tell you to be obstructive?’

  Hogg sighed. ‘I’ve got to shield everyone from thoughtless interference, and we often encounter prejudice, so you’ll have to forgive me if I seem defensive. I’m only human, after all. Too many police officers think locking up youngsters is the answer to everything.’ He smiled again. ‘If only they realized social workers just shovel shit another way!’ Pushing the sheaf of reports across the desk, he added, ‘Don’t think I’m being impertinent, but isn’t it more important to find out where the boy spent the last week? He wasn’t with the others. Talk to that man they call Dai Skunk. I’m sure you’re acquainted with him.’

  Crackling over the car radio, Dewi’s voice eddied like the mist from Menai Strait rolling over the cars and trucks and the roadworks traffic signal, and on towards the mountainous hinterland. The car heater blasted fuggy air in McKenna’s face, a mix of exhaust fumes and that foul stench coming off the sea at low tide.

  Janet switched off the radio. ‘The phone won’t work either, sir, there’s too much static.’ She shivered. ‘My father’d call mist like this a cloud of human wickedness. He’s surprised God doesn’t use the cover to destroy all the points of reference on the human landscape, and start again.’ The traffic light changed to amber, and she put the car in gear.

  ‘Eifion Roberts says God wouldn’t have a choice about starting again if He knew what sort of Christians inhabit North Wales.’

  ‘My father actually believes Dr Roberts is a heretic. His name’s forbidden at the manse.’ She followed the long tailback of traffic, accelerating in the wake of a sleek silver car. ‘I expect his work made him like that, don’t you?’

  An extension of its eastwards counterpart, this new road between Bangor and Caernarfon obliterated all sense of place, the landmarks of centuries obscured behind mounds of clay and man-made bulwarks. Dubbed by politicians as the Road of Opportunity, it was better named the Road to Hell, McKenna thought, opportune only for criminals bringing further ills to a poor society already beset.

  ‘HQ say to expect the ram-raiders in Caernarfon and further west now the road’s finished,’ Janet commented. ‘Crime’s our only growth industry, isn’t it? Still, I suppose that’s not surprising in a place people call the fag-end of Creation.’

  Like the new road, the council estate beyond Caernarfon was stripped of individuality and character, a model of cultural conformity reduced to the lowest common denominator. Housed in a terraced block at the centre of the estate, the Thomas family lacked even a glimpse of the Snowdon range to the south or the sea to the north, their horizons limited by the narrow-mindedness of others. Waiting for Janet to lock his car and set the alarm, McKenna was slapped in the face by freezing air, and around the ankles by litter cavorting on a rising breeze. Light-headed, a little hungover from too many analgesics, he pushed open the decrepit wooden gate, and led the way up a scabrous concrete path. As she knocked on the door, he massaged the hand drooping from its sling, the fingers bluey tipped.

  ‘You should wear gloves, sir,’ his companion offered. ‘It’s cold enough to give you frostbite.’ She smiled. ‘What Inspector Tuttle would call a “worst case scenario”.’ She let the smile die as the front door opened.

  ‘Yes?’ the woman asked, looking from McKenna to the girl. ‘I’m not buying, so if you’re selling, you can sod off! And we don’t owe nothing to nobody except the council and Manweb, and they can sod off as well.’

  ‘Mrs Thomas?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘We’re police officers,’ McKenna said. ‘My name is McKenna, and this is Detective Constable Janet Evans.’

  Thin of face, scrawny of body, she stood on the doorstep and chewed the inside of her mouth, looking somewhere beyond McKenna’s shoulder, while he looked in vain for a shadow of the beauty which had emblazoned the face of her son. ‘He’s not here,’ she said. ‘He’s not been here either. I told that copper come the other day. If he’s legged it from that Blodwel it’s their fault. Nothing to do with me or his father. He’s gone on the run before. They should keep him under control. He’s worse now than when he went there.’

  ‘Might we come in?’ Janet asked. ‘We need to talk to you, and it’s bitter cold out here.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She turned to walk inside. ‘Shut the door behind you.’

  She led them to the back parlour, a cramped and shabby room overlooking a cramped and shabby patch of garden. As poorly proportioned as her dwelling, she sat in an armchair covered in dull brown vinyl, and chewed the inside of her mouth again. ‘What d’you want?’

  ‘Is your husband at home?’ McKenna asked, easing himself into another armchair. Janet sat at the
table, crimping the cloth between her fingers.

  ‘No, he’s not.’

  ‘At work?’ Janet asked.

  ‘Gone to town.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Gone to sign on, hasn’t he? What’s it to you, anyway?’

  ‘When d’you expect him back?’ McKenna asked.

  She shrugged. ‘When he comes.’

  McKenna wondered how old she was, this care-ridden creature. ‘Mrs Thomas,’ he said, ‘is there anyone who could come in for a while?’

  ‘Why?’

  Jack began to munch his third sandwich. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘You’ll put on weight,’ McKenna observed.

  ‘Probably. I’m not blessed with a supercharged metabolism like you.’ He wiped his fingers on a napkin. ‘You can light up now I’ve finished eating.’ Gesturing to the Blodwel reports, he added, ‘They’re not worth the paper they’re written on, and Hogg won’t let anyone talk to us. How did you fare with Mrs Thomas?’

  ‘Little better.’ McKenna fidgeted with an unlit cigarette. ‘She didn’t cry, or do anything very much except chew her mouth and say Arwel would never be told.’

  Jack sighed. ‘They’re heaping all the blame on the lad. He’s reaped whatever he sowed.’

  ‘It’s a very bitter harvest for a fourteen year old. Any news from Eifion?’

  ‘He won’t’ve finished.’ Jack yawned. ‘Did Mrs Thomas have any idea why Arwel ran away, or where he went?’

  ‘Nothing, or so she said.’ McKenna lit the cigarette.

  ‘Hogg said kids often abscond when they’re due in court, only Arwel wasn’t, so there wasn’t much point saying it. There’s nothing on Hogg in the computer. Pity, really.’

  ‘That would be too easy,’ McKenna said. ‘Brace yourself for a trawl of the sex offenders and deviants feeding on the underbelly of our little society. We’d better take Hogg’s advice and start with David Fellows, even though he rigorously confines his activities to those over the age of consent as far as I know. I expect you’ll persuade him to part with the names of those who don’t share his refined sensibilities.’

  ‘Has he harboured kids on the run before?’

  ‘If he has, no one told us,’ McKenna said. ‘I’m going to see Mrs Thomas again. We left her with a neighbour ’til her husband came home.’

  ‘Arwel’s social worker from Area Office should be able to tell us more about his admission to care. Dodging school doesn’t seem much of a reason, and he’s got no criminal record.’

  ‘Make an appointment for this afternoon.’ McKenna stood up, embattled by the pain which consorted with every movement. ‘Which school did he go to?’

  ‘He didn’t. Blodwel’s got a schoolroom and one full-time teacher. The local schools don’t want kids from care on their patch,’ Jack said. ‘Folk probably don’t think they’re worth educating. Written off right from the start.’

  The last dying leaves, bronzy-green and edged with black, withered on the branches of the ash tree outside McKenna’s office window, and shivered in a wind rising off the Strait. Ragged ends of mist lingered between the tall narrow buildings behind High Street, drifting around their footings.

  As he pulled his arm from its sling and stretched carefully, Eifion Roberts walked in without knocking and sat down.

  ‘You’re a very depressing sort of person to have around.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘Never functioning on all cylinders, dying by visible degrees, ergo a very uncomfortable reminder of my own mortality. Hurts, does it?’

  ‘The rest of me’s in agony. This is numb.’

  ‘I daresay it’ll be hurting soon for you.’

  ‘And is that good or bad?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘I won’t ask on what, because I’ve an appointment with Arwel’s social worker at half two.’ McKenna lit a cigarette. ‘Finished the post-mortem?’

  Dr Roberts nodded. ‘Done the cutting up, and the stitching up, and sent samples off for analysis, and I’ve never seen such a mess on a boy that age. What’s his background?’

  ‘Taken into care for non-school attendance. No convictions. The commonplace story of an aimless juvenile at the edge of delinquency.’

  ‘Any rumours about Grandad or Uncle or Mam’s boyfriend?’

  ‘Not a whisper. His social worker might know.’

  ‘You’re an optimist, aren’t you? Social Services’ll deliver a load of garbage about professional ethics, and hope the problems’ll resolve themselves without intervention. Some hope, especially if the HIV tests come positive. That’ll put the fear of God into whoever’s been buggering the lad.’

  ‘They’d have to know,’ McKenna pointed out. ‘We’re not advertising the fact. Is there any risk to people who handled the body?’

  ‘The railwaymen wore gauntlets, else they’d’ve had ice burns off the track, and the rest of us are too canny.’ The pathologist fell silent, age and disillusion shadowy on his face.

  ‘You don’t look too good yourself,’ McKenna said.

  ‘When I have to cut up a child, I feel like the child under my own knife.’ He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘I contacted the GP practice which looks after Blodwel children. Arwel had a routine medical on admission, and they saw him once after, when he had summer ’flu. Glandular-fever tests were negative, and he wasn’t tested for anything more sinister.’

  ‘And what killed him?’

  ‘A huge depressed fracture on the left side of the skull and a broken neck. He fell, or was thrown, very hard against some smooth solid object. There’s no external wound, and no visible debris.’

  McKenna fidgeted with his lighter. ‘Can’t you be more precise about the time of death? Some time between Friday night and Sunday morning isn’t really much use.’

  ‘It’s been so cold, and I don’t know how long he’d been exposed naked, so it’s the best I can do for now,’ Dr Roberts said. ‘There’s substantial subcutaneous bruising, variously healed, around the lower torso and thighs, so he’s probably taken more than his share of beatings. You should be taking Blodwel apart, whereas I hear you can’t get your foot through the door. Can’t your boss lean on the director of social services? There must be some old favour due in between blood brothers of the Taffia, unless it’s already being repaid.’

  Arwel’s social worker was perfectly adjusted to her role, McKenna thought, irritated by the dribble of platitude and evasion. ‘One of the children in your care is dead,’ he snapped.

  ‘He wasn’t in my care, and he was on the run, anyway. Runaways come to grief, but they won’t be told.’

  ‘Having a client murdered doesn’t sound like a new experience for you,’ Janet said. ‘Are many of them persistently beaten up, as well? And persistently sodomized?’

  ‘Blodwel’s placements are Mr Hogg’s responsibility, and he reports to the director. I’m not involved with those children on a daily basis.’

  ‘So when did you last see Arwel?’ McKenna intervened.

  ‘Six weeks ago. Seven, perhaps.’

  ‘Why not check your records?’ Janet suggested. ‘Where did you see him?’

  ‘I had a word with him when I took another child to Blodwel.’

  ‘Mrs Thomas tells us Arwel wasn’t allowed home leave,’ McKenna said. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘I can’t discuss casework decisions with you.’

  ‘Can’t you discuss them with the parents, either?’ Janet asked. ‘How was he when you saw him?’

  ‘The same as usual.’

  ‘And how was that?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘Uncommunicative at first, then quite insolent when he eventually condescended to open his mouth. Mr Hogg said he was involved in a lot of trouble with the others, so that’s probably where he got the bruises you’re talking about.’

  ‘And where’d’you think he might’ve got the anal injuries?’ Janet asked.

  ‘He was obviously up to something nobody knew about.’ Staring
at Janet, she added testily, ‘We can’t help people who don’t want help, and he rejected all the treatment plans we drew up.’

  ‘You didn’t like him, did you?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘Personal feelings aren’t an issue. We give every client the best possible service.’

  ‘Then I’d hate to see your worst,’ Janet said.

  ‘I haven’t noticed the police doing much good with juveniles! We’ve had some notable success with Blodwel placements, probably because Mr Hogg’s seen as an ideal father-figure. His wife puts many of the children’s own mothers to shame.’

  ‘What good is that for the parent-child relationship?’ Janet asked.

  ‘The children learn to overcome their parents’ failings.’

  ‘Which children on your books would know Arwel?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘I can’t tell you. Our client files are confidential, children’s included. You wouldn’t open your records to us, would you?’

  Janet hunched over the wheel of McKenna’s car. ‘I toyed with the idea of social work for a while. Did you ever hear such claptrap?’

  ‘Social-work speak.’ McKenna lit a cigarette. ‘And she’s in thrall to Mr Hogg, like the rest of the world.’

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t smoke so much, sir.’

  ‘Not you as well!’

  ‘I’m trying to stop, but it’s awfully hard, and the fag-fascists give you the evil eye if you dare smoke in the canteen.’

  ‘You can have one if you want,’ McKenna said, ‘though it’s a bit like offering the needle to a heroin addict.’

  ‘You’ll get done for sexual harassment if the senior lady officers with the short sharp haircuts and jolly voices hear about you.’ She ran her fingers through her own luxuriant dark hair. ‘I’d love a cigarette, and I don’t think Mr Hogg holds people in thrall. He’s just persuaded everyone he’s Mr Clever Dick with the answer to all their problems, so there’s a huge vested interest in keeping him sweet.’ Taking the cigarette, she added, ‘Arwel’s social worker’s such a stereotype, isn’t she? She read the label round the lad’s neck, and that was the end of it. Sociology calls it the process of dehumanization: first the label, then abuse, then extermination. I suppose it’s one way to rid the world of its problems.’