Evan can Wait: A Constable Evans Mystery Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Glossary of Welsh Words

  Also by Rhys Bowen

  Copyright Page

  This book is dedicated to my two newest readers, Sam and Elizabeth, by their adoring grandmother.

  I’d like to thank forensic specialist Mike Bowers for his advice on decomposing bodies. Thanks to Susan Davies and Megan Owen, who are my eyes and ears on the spot in North Wales. Also thanks, as always, to my faithful team of advance readers and merciless critics—John, Clare, Jane, and Tom.

  Llanfair and its inhabitants exist only in my imagination. The rest of North Wales is real, as are the background stories about World War II. A German bomber really did vanish without a trace and the contents of the National Gallery really were stored in a slate mine.

  Chapter 1

  Do I remember anything of those days? It’s as clear as if it was yesterday. I remember the first time she noticed me. It was at Johnny Morgan’s going-away party. He’d just joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers and he was being sent to France. I thought he looked the cat’s whisker in that uniform. All the girls did, too. They were all clustering around him, giving him their addresses and promising to write to him. Then She came into the room. I didn’t recognize her at first. Then someone said, “Mwfanwy? It’s never Mwfanwy Davies.”

  And she laughed and said, “You’re right. It’s not Mwfanwy Davies. The name’s Ginger from now on, honey. Ginger, like Ginger Rogers.” She did a pretty good American accent, too.

  The girls all crowded around her. “Your mam’s going to kill you,” Gwynneth Morgan said.

  “She’s already tried, but there’s not much she can do about it, is there?” She put her hand to her platinum blond hair. “I can’t unbleach it. She’ll have to wait until it grows out. And anyway I like it and she can’t tell me what to do with my own hair.” She pushed through the circle of girls and went over to the punch bowl. “Just wait until I get to Hollywood, then she’ll be sorry, won’t she?”

  “So how are you getting to Hollywood, then?” one of the boys asked. “I don’t think the train from Blenau goes there.”

  Some of the other kids laughed; but Ginger looked at him coldly. “I’ll get there,” she said. “Some way or other. I don’t know how yet, but I’ll get there.”

  Then she looked at me. She had the clearest blue eyes and they sparkled when she smiled. “Find me a cigarette, will you, Trefor love?”

  I was too young to smoke, but I ran all the way to the corner shop and bought a packet of Woodbines with all that was left of my weekly wage packet. I’d just started as an apprentice at the mine and it was only a few shillings a week. I only kept enough for the cinema and a beer or two for myself. The rest went straight to my mam.

  Then I ran all the way back from the shop. By the time I got back, Mwfanwy was sitting on the sofa with Johnny Morgan, smoking one of his cigarettes, and she had forgotten all about me.

  That’s the way it was with Ginger. I knew I should stay well clear, but it was too late. I was already in love with her.

  Trefor Thomas, memories of World War II, recorded.

  “Is this it?” Grantley Smith roused himself from the backseat and peered between the two occupants of the front seats as the Land Rover slowed. Rain was peppering the windscreen too fiercely for the wipers to handle, but the frantic swishing allowed brief glimpses of a steep, narrow road lined with gray stone cottages. A couple of bedraggled sheep cropped the grass beside the stream as the Land Rover went over a stone humpbacked bridge. It was early evening and the light was fading fast, yet no welcoming lights shone out from windows. In fact, the village gave the appearance of having shut down for the winter.

  “This is it,” the driver said without looking around. “The sign said ‘Llanfair.’”

  “Surely you jest,” scoffed Grantley Smith in a voice that had been compared to that of the young Larry Olivier. He swung around to the girl beside him in the backseat. “You must have given us wrong directions, Sandie. I thought I told you to get a printout from the Internet. This can’t be right.”

  “I did get a printout, honestly, I did, Grantley,” the girl said, gazing at him with large, pleading eyes. “This has to be the right place. We’ve been doing exactly what it told us to, all the time you’ve been asleep.”

  “You must have taken a wrong turn somewhere,” Grantley insisted. “I mean, really, I know we have to get the feel of the place because we’re going to be shooting up here, but that doesn’t mean that I actually crave a bath in front of the kitchen fire with the slate miners … . .”

  If he expected a laugh, he didn’t get one. The other occupants of the vehicle had taken turns at the wheel all the way from London in driving rain while Grantley slept, sprawled in the back.

  “If the site is up here, then it makes sense to stay somewhere close,” the driver said in a clipped voice. In contrast to Grantley, who worked at looking sleek and mercurial like a young Lord Byron, Edward Ferrers was pink and solid, like an overgrown cherub. “The only big hotels are on the coast and you wouldn’t want to commute up this pass every day, would you? I have to be on the spot to keep an eye on the salvage crew. I don’t want anything touched when I’m not around.”

  “Edward and his precious plane,” Grantley muttered. “Nobody’s touching my toys!” He took out a packet of Gitanes and lit one, filling the car with pungent, herby fumes. Edward looked back in annoyance as the smoke wafted over him.

  “Jesus, Grantley, so it’s not exactly Beverly Hills up here,” the passenger in the other front seat drawled in a voice that betrayed transatlantic origins. “I just don’t think you’d have found any better accommodation even if we’d stayed in one of those hotels on the coast.” He was an older man, dressed in a checked shirt, old jeans, suede waistcoat, and a faded black French beret. If the words “Movie Director” had been printed across his back, his profession could not have been more obvious. “This place is supposed to be okay.”

  “Howard, we all know that you are the intrepid one.” Grantley rested his elbows on the two front seats so that his face was now between them. “Your definition of quite good is sleeping in a tent on the African veldt when the hyenas aren’t biting your toes. Your idea of luxury is probably an outhouse with running water.”

  “It will be fine, Grantley. Just shut up,” Edward said tersely. “I’ve made the reservation and if you don’t like it, you can find somewhere else in the morning, okay?”

  “Keep your hair on, Edward,” Grantley said. “If you two have discovered this little gem, then I’m sure it is just perfect. My only question is, where the devil is it? We’re almost out of the village again.” He moved across to the side window and cleared a circle of condensation with his hand. “This really doesn’t look like the kind of place anyone in his right mind would build a luxury hotel. Wait—there’s some kind of sign on the left. In front of that big white building … .”
/>   The sign was swinging wildly in the wind and it took them a while to make out the red dragon on it.

  “It’s only the local pub,” Edward said.

  “Thank God. It looked positively dismal.” Grantley gave a long, dramatic sigh. “In fact, everything about this place looks dismal. Look at those shops over there. R. Evans. G. Evans—you obviously have to be called Evans to live in this place, and what the devil is ‘Cigydd’?”

  “It has a window full of meat, Grantley. I think even you can figure that one out,” Howard muttered, but Grantley went on, “It’s a bloody foreign country! Whose crazy idea was it to come to Wales in the middle of winter anyway?”

  “You were excited when I told you about it,” Edward said. “You were the one who thought it would make a great documentary.”

  Howard put his hand on Edward’s arm. “Let’s stop and ask someone.”

  Edward laughed. “Any suggestions? The place isn’t exactly pulsing with life.”

  As if on cue a door opened, light shone out, and a young man in uniform appeared. He was wearing a navy raincoat and when he noticed the severity of the rain, he stood in the doorway, turning up his collar, before heading out into the street.

  Grantley gave a delighted laugh. “Incredible. They even have policemen in this godforsaken place. Don’t let him get away, Edward,” as the policeman was clearly about to sprint for cover. “Now let’s just pray he speaks English. People do speak English here, don’t they, Edward?”

  “It’s not Kazakhstan, Grantley. It’s Wales,” Edward said. “I expect they’ll understand you if you wave your arms a lot, like you do in France.”

  “My French is bloody good,” Grantley said. “Go on, catch up with him.”

  They pulled to a halt beside the policeman, who stopped obediently, rain plastering dark hair to his face. He was a young man, broad shouldered, with a pleasant boyish smile. “Can I help you gentlemen?” he asked. His voice betrayed just a trace of a Welsh lilt.

  “We’re trying to find a hotel called the Everest Inn.” Howard leaned across Edward. “It’s supposed to be around here but I guess we must have missed it somehow.”

  The policeman gestured to his left. “It’s just up the road past the village. You’ll come to the big stone gateposts. Turn in there and you’ll see it off to the right. In fact, you can’t miss it.”

  “Is it all right? A decent sort of place?” Grantley leaned forward from the backseat.

  “I haven’t stayed there myself, look you, but it’s very posh,” the constable said. “I understand it’s got five stars.”

  “Well, thanks a lot, Officer,” Edward said. “We mustn’t keep you. You’re getting very wet.”

  “Oh, we’re used to that kind of thing around here, sir,” the constable said. “It rains quite often.”

  He gave them a friendly grin, then crossed the street behind the car.

  “There you are. All that panic for nothing,” Edward said as they drove on.

  “Panic? Who was panicking? It was just concern born from exhaustion.” Grantley sank back into his seat and took another draw on his cigarette.

  “I like that. You’ve slept all the way here.” Howard gave a dry chuckle.

  “Ah, but we don’t all have your stamina, Howard,” Grantley said smoothly. “All that endurance built up tramping through jungles at night, avoiding E. coli and cholera and not getting hacked to death with machetes by gangs of child soldiers.”

  “One of these days you’ll go too far, Grantley,” Howard said.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Grantley said. “I don’t think so for a moment.” He leaned forward again, grabbing their shoulders as he peered out of the windscreen. “Oh look, there it is!”

  To their right the shape of a large building loomed through the rain, lights twinkling on the wet tarmac of the car park.

  “Christ, Edward,” Grantley exclaimed as they swung off the road up to the car park. “You see, I was right. You did take a wrong turn somewhere. You’ve landed us in bloody Switzerland!”

  The building revealed itself as an overgrown rock and timber chalet, complete with carved wooden balconies adorned with boxes of late geraniums.

  “Either Switzerland or Disneyland, I’m not sure which,” he went on, giggling like an overgrown schoolboy. “It’s delightfully monstrous, isn’t it? You know, I think this is going to be fun after all.”

  Howard Bauer and Edward Ferrers exchanged a quick glance that Grantley, still gazing up at the building, didn’t notice.

  Chapter 2

  Constable Evan Evans often regretted that the one window in his little sub-police station faced toward the mountains and not onto the street. Firstly, he couldn’t see what was going on in the village from his desk—an oversight he had reported to his superiors more than once—and secondly because he found it a constant distraction to be able to look up at his beloved mountains when he was bogged down in paperwork, as he was today.

  It was time for his quarterly expense report. He knew in advance that he was going to receive a rebuke for turning the heating on in mid-October, but his superiors down in Caernarfon and at HQ in Colwyn Bay had no idea how cold it could be, a thousand feet higher on the flanks of Mount Snowdon. He glanced out of the window at the mountain slopes and sighed. It was a sparkling day, after almost a week of rain. New rivers were cascading down the steep slopes in bright parallel ribbons. The lower slopes glowed with emerald green grass on which raindrops still sparkled like diamonds. The sheep looked like advertisements for laundry bleach. Even the rockfaces glowed warmly in the soft November light.

  A perfect day for walking or climbing, and he was stuck in an office. It had rained all weekend so that he had been trapped indoors, watching rugby on the telly and playing Scrabble with Bronwen. The latter hadn’t been a good experience; she was too well-read to make it a fair game.

  The moment Bronwen came into his thoughts, his gaze went to the shell of the ruined cottage, perched high above the village. An English couple had owned it until arsonists burned it down. Was it an impractical dream to think that he might be able to rebuild it, finally giving him a place of his own? He was sure that the English owners would have claimed on their insurance and wouldn’t be likely to return. They’d probably be only too glad to sell it for a song, but he’d still have to get permission to rebuild from the National Park Service. They were very sticky about issuing building permits, but it was worth a try. He doodled the shape of a cottage, with solid walls and smoke coming out of its chimney, on the edge of his notepad until the sound of the telephone made him jump.

  “Constable Evans?” A woman’s voice. “It’s P. C. Jones from HQ. Chief Inspector Meredith would like to see you right away.”

  “Damn,” Evan muttered as he got up. It was never good news if the old man wanted to see him right away. As he got into his car and drove through the village of Llanfair and down the pass toward Caernarfon, he tried to think of what he might have done wrong this time. He couldn’t come up with anything, though. The only things his chief had cause to complain about were the times he’d poked his nose into murder investigations. And even then he hadn’t been able to make too much fuss, since Evan had been instrumental in solving several major cases.

  There had been times when his superiors had suggested that he might want to apply for a transfer to the plainclothes branch. But when he’d finally taken the plunge and sent in his application, they’d turned him down. Oh, they’d been very nice about it. Nothing to do with his ability or lack of it, they’d told him. But the directive had come from Colwyn Bay to appoint more women detectives before hiring any more men.

  He swung the car into the Caernarfon police station car park and took a deep breath. Better get it over with as quickly as possible. Just as he neared the door, a slight, sandy-haired man in a fawn raincoat was just coming out.

  “Hello there, boyo, fancy seeing you,” Sergeant Watkins called to Evan. “Don’t tell me you’ve found another body—I’ve been enjoying a
quiet life for the past few weeks.”

  Evan grinned. “No body, Sarge. My chief wants to see me.”

  “Been a bad boy, have you? Cheating on your expense report?”

  “Not that I know of,” Evan said. “I’d better get in there and find out. The suspense is killing me.”

  “And I’ve got to get back to my thrilling stakeout at Tesco’s.”

  “Tesco’s? Is someone planning to rob superstores then?”

  “Nothing so glamorous. Someone’s been nicking Christmas puddings and wrapping paper—nonperishables that have been turning up on market stalls a week later. We think it’s a local gang but they’re quite good at it. The security cameras haven’t managed to catch them yet.” He rolled his eyes. “Sometimes I think a quiet life is overrated.”

  Evan went into the building and was surprised by the pleasant warmth. They certainly had their heating on high enough. So they couldn’t begrudge him his humble gas fire.

  Chief Inspector Meredith was a large, florid man with sagging jowls and rolled up shirtsleeves. He looked up as Evan came into his office. “Ah, Evans. Good man. Glad you got here so quickly.” He pointed to a chair. “Take a pew.”

  “Is something wrong, sir?” Evan couldn’t help asking.

  “Nothing. I called you down here because I’ve got a little assignment for you, strictly hush-hush at the moment.” He leaned confidentially forward, although they were alone in the room. “I’ve had a request for police assistance from the Ministry of Defense.”

  “Oh, yes, sir?” Evan’s brain was racing. IRA terrorists or Libyans might be infiltrating through the mountains at this very moment and he was being called in to help catch them … .

  “As I understand it, it’s something to do with raising a German bomber from Llyn Llydaw.”

  “A German bomber, sir?” Evan wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “A plane, you mean?”

  “Of course I mean a plane. A German bomber that crashed into the lake during the Second World War. They’re attempting to raise it, so I understand. Don’t ask me why after all this time. Another bloody waste of government money, I expect. Oh, and a crew is going to be filming the whole thing, so naturally they don’t want local people getting in the way.” He paused again. “Your job will be to keep the gawkers away and make sure everything goes smoothly for them. Got it?”