Constable Evans 02: Evan Help Us (2 page)

He lowered the binoculars and sat staring out into space. Of course he was mistaken, he told himself. Everyone in the world had a double, hadn’t they? He got up and brushed off his trousers. Dashed awkward if it really had been who he’d imagined, he told himself. Dashed awkward for both of them, he suspected.

Then something happened to drive everything else from his mind. He found himself staring at the rocks where he had just been sitting. They were covered in gorse and bracken, but there was a certain evenness and regularity about them. As he looked more closely, he could see that they formed a perfect rectangle enclosing a grassy area. Excitedly he pulled at the gorse, oblivious to scratches, and found himself staring at what was definitely an old wall. He scrambled over and started to clear away grass and weeds. Yes, here was the entrance, and just inside what looked like a smooth stone slab! The colonel dropped to his knees and began to pull away weeds, oblivious to anything and anyone around him …

Chapter 2

Constable Evan Evans of the North Wales police walked slowly up the main street of Llanfair. To be more accurate, it was the only street in Llanfair, apart from some muddy tracks that led to a couple of farmhouses. Like many Welsh villages it had been built in the heyday of the slate quarries. It was an unpretentious little place—two rows of stone cottages, a few shops, a petrol pump, and a couple of chapels lining the road that climbed the pass to the foot of Mount Snowdon. It could be bleak and windy at times, when cloud and snow blanketed the peaks above, but its spectacular setting made up for the lack of architectural wonders.

Constable Evans paused on the old stone bridge that spanned the rushing mountain stream and looked around him with satisfaction. Llanfair might not be the most beautiful nor the most exciting place on earth, but it was alright with him. He took in the clear water dancing over mossy rocks and traced it upward to the bright ribbon of water that fell from the sheer mountainside. On the breeze he caught the faint bleating of sheep. It was the only sound, apart from the splash and gurgle of the water and the sigh of wind through the alder trees along the stream.

Evan glanced up the street. There was no traffic, which was unusual for a sunny summer afternoon, although it was getting late. Most tourists would already be back at their hotels or bed-and-breakfasts, debating whether they’d be able to find Mexican food or pizza in a primitive place like Wales.

Even though it was almost six o’clock, the sun was still high in the sky. This far north it wouldn’t set until after nine. The long light evenings were one of the bonuses of living in North Wales. He stood there, breathing deeply, at peace with the world.

He heard the sound of running feet on the road behind him and turned to watch a group of village boys, dressed in football uniforms, run past.

“’Ello, Mr. Efans! Sut yrch chi?” they called out in their high, musical voices, using the mixture of Welsh and English that they usually spoke.

“Hello, boys. Off to football practice are you then?” Evan called back.

They nodded, their faces alight with anticipation. “We’re playing down in Beddgelert on Saturday—big match of the year!” one of them said.

“They beat us last year, but we’re going to show them this time,” another added.

“Are you coming to watch, Mr. Efans?” the first boy asked. “It’s going to be good. We’ve got Ivor on our team now, and he’s ever so fast. He won the hundred yards dash on sports day.”

“I’ll be there if I can,” Evan called after them as they ran on up the street toward the school playground. He smiled as he watched them go, remembering himself at their age—undersized, skinny, all legs like them.

A village constable—or a community police presence as they called it now—was the best kind of policeman to be, he thought. It was amazing to be paid for what he liked doing most, walking around and talking to people.

A few years ago there had been a national movement to modernize and streamline the police force. They had closed all the substations and covered the area with car patrols from HQ. But they’d soon realized their mistake. A police presence in the villages, a local bobby who knew everyone and their business, was the biggest deterrent to crime. So local substations and community police teams were opening again all over the country.

Evan had read about this move just over a year ago, when he was recovering from the trauma of his father’s death. They had been working the tough dockland beat in Swansea together when his father caught a bullet during a drug bust. Afterward he no longer wanted to be part of a force that threw away good lives so meaninglessly.

Now he was glad he had decided to take this job instead of quitting the police force. He had never regretted coming here. He liked the locals. They liked him. The pace was slow and the mountains were waiting to be climbed whenever he had free time.

He gazed up at the peaks. Snowdon was glowing with that pink light of early evening. Evan glanced at his watch … maybe there would be time for a quick scramble up to Bwlch y Moch after he had closed up and changed out of his uniform—if he could slip in and out of the house without his landlady hearing.

He had been lodging with Mrs. Williams ever since he came to Llanfair and mostly he was content. She was a kind, motherly woman but she had two faults: She was determined to fatten him up like a prize turkey by feeding him three enormous meals a day, and she was equally determined to get him married off to her granddaughter Sharon, who was herself built with the girth of a prize turkey.

Evan sighed and walked on up the street, past a row of shops on the right. G. Evans, butcher, was next to R. Evans, dairy products. The monopoly was spoiled by T. Harris, general store and post office. As Evan passed, the door of the first shop was flung open and a big man in a blood-spattered apron leaped out, waving a murderous-looking meat cleaver.

“Nos da, good evening, Evans-the-Law,” he called out. “Solved any juicy murders today then?” He laughed loudly at his own joke.

“Not yet, Evans-the-Meat,” Evan called back. “But there’s still time, isn’t there? Are you planning on committing one?”

“I just might,” Evans-the-Meat replied, the smile fading from his face. “I’d like to murder all those bloody tourists. Why can’t they leave us alone, that’s what I want to know.”

Evan looked up and down the deserted street. Even in the height of the summer holidays, Llanfair could hardly be described as a tourist mecca. There was little here to make them stop—a petrol pump with small snack bar, and postcards that were sold at the post office and general store. A couple of cottages took in b-and-b visitors, and four new holiday bungalows had appeared this spring on Morgan’s farm, but that was the extent of the hospitality industry in the village itself. The well-heeled drivers of BMWs and Jags stayed at the new Everest Inn, further up the pass. Evan glanced up at the overgrown Swiss chalet that had so enraged the residents when it was built. It still looked monstrously out of place—a kind of Disney mountain fantasy on a bleak Welsh hillside.

“It’s not like we’re overrun with tourists here, is it?” Evan voiced his thoughts out loud. “And Roberts-the-Pump likes the extra money he gets selling snacks.”

Evans-the-Meat sniffed in disgust. “Sell his own mother for tuppence, that man would,” he said. “And that idiot Evans-the-Milk too.” He added this loudly, glancing hopefully at the open door of the dairy. One of his main hobbies was fighting with his next-door neighbor. But nobody came out of the dairy to meet the challenge.

“Evans-the-Milk?” Evans asked. “What’s he selling then?”

Evans-the-Meat leaned closer as if he was divulging a great secret. “He’s planning to make his own ice cream, that’s what,” he hissed. “He thinks the tourists will come running. I told him I didn’t want to see another tourist anywhere near my shop!”

Evan grinned. “But the tourists don’t bother you, do they?”

He couldn’t imagine too many out-of-town visitors would find a reason to pop into a butcher’s shop.

“Those people staying at the new holiday bungalows do,” Evans-the-Meat said. He glanced up at four new wood and glass structures that stood on what used to be Taff Morgan’s farm. They had been built during the spring and the villagers complained that Taff’s son Ted hadn’t even waited until his poor father was cold in his grave before he started spoiling things with his fancy London ways. Not that he ever came near the place himself. A contractor had simply shown up one day with instructions to build, and Mr. Ted Morgan hadn’t even come to check on the result.

Evans-the-Meat came closer, still waving his cleaver. “Would you like to hear what happened today, then?” he asked confidentially. “One of those English people from the bungalows had the nerve to ask me if I had any decent English lamb! I told her the day I had to start selling foreign lamb was the day I closed my doors for good.”

Evan tried not to smile. “I don’t suppose she’s ever had the opportunity to try our local Welsh lamb,” he said easily.

“Then it’s about time she bloody learned, isn’t it?” Evans-the-Meat snapped. He headed back to his store, then turned to Evan again.

“See you at the Dragon then, will I?”

Evan nodded. “I expect so. As soon as I’ve closed up shop at the police station.”

“It must be hard, all that walking up and down and stopping for cups of tea,” Evans-the-Meat said.

Evan smiled, although he was never quite sure when Evans-the-Meat was joking.

“It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it, haven’t they?” he retorted. “See you then. Don’t go waving that thing around, will you, or I might have to cite you for carrying a deadly weapon.” He gave a friendly wave to the butcher and headed on up the street.

The boys were already in the midst of their football practice when he reached the village school. He paused to watch for a moment, his gaze straying to the gray stone school building beyond. Bronwen often stayed late to prepare the next day’s lessons. He hoped she’d glimpse him outside and come out to talk. Evan wasn’t usually shy about talking to women, but he had been deliberately taking it slowly with Bronwen Price. Sometimes he wondered if she wasn’t a little too serious and intellectual for him. He knew very well that two dates with one girl in a village like Llanfair would have everyone planning the wedding day. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to get married some day, but he wasn’t in any big hurry either.

But he certainly enjoyed Bronwen’s company and her quiet wisdom. She was the one person he could talk to when he had something on his mind. She was a great listener and didn’t make any rash judgements. The way she sat there, her head slightly on one side, her long ash blond hair falling like a curtain of golden rain, had often encouraged him to say far more than he had meant to. And he had gone away feeling strangely content.

But Bronwen didn’t appear from the school today and Evan resumed his trek to the top of the village street. The last two buildings were both chapels. On the left was Chapel Bethel, Reverend Parry Davies, Sunday school 10
A.M.
worship service 6
P.M.
(sermon in English). On the right was Chapel Beulah, Reverend Powell-Jones, worship service 6
P.M.
(sermon in Welsh and English). They framed the street, unpretentious gray stone mirror images of each other, even to the identical billboards beside their front doors. Only the biblical texts on their billboards were different.

If the outsider paused to wonder why a village the size of Llanfair needed two chapels, the messages on the billboards should have given him a clue. The two chapels were at constant war. Today the message outside Chapel Bethel read “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord,” while Beulah proclaimed, “Forgive your enemies. Turn the other cheek!”

Evan grinned. The war of the billboards was the civilized way that Reverends Parry Davies and Powell-Jones got at each other. When one came out with a new billboard quote, the other rushed straight to his Bible to contradict or better it. There was no animosity more passionate than that between rival Christians, Even thought.

He had reached the end of the village. Before him the road snaked up to the top of the pass, a gray ribbon between green hills. The only building was the Everest Inn, its wood-shingled Swiss chalet roof glowing in the evening sunlight. Evan paused and scanned the hills above. He picked out a figure moving across the high pastures and caught the glint of something bright. That would be the colonel’s silver-tipped cane, he decided. On his way down from another of his expeditions. He marvelled at the old man’s strength and determination. He must be going on eighty and yet he was up there, tramping around, wet or dry, determined to come up with King Arthur’s crown, or maybe the rotting remains of the round table.

As Evan turned to head back to the police station, his attention was caught by something lower down the mountain. There was a flash of bright red in the meadow behind Chapel Bethel. It was a little girl with red-blond curls and a bright red dress. She was skipping across the grass so lightly that she looked weightless. Evan didn’t recognize her as one of the village kids. She must be an outsider, staying at the holiday cottages, and rather young to be out alone, even in a safe place like Llanfair, he thought.

He scanned the road for signs of someone keeping an eye on her, saw no one, and decided to keep an eye on her himself. It was an awfully big mountain up there and he didn’t want her to stray too far. Then she stopped her upward trek and started to come back. Evan sighed in relief. She was almost back to the dry-stone wall when she broke into a run. Evan saw she was heading for a young lamb, standing alone not far from the wall. He heard her call to it and throw open her arms as if she expected it to come to her like a puppy. Strangely enough the lamb didn’t run away. The little girl put her arms around it and picked it up. It was heavier than she had expected and she staggered forward with it, her face red with exertion. Evan wondered what she intended to do with it and where she was trying to take it.

But he never found out because the lamb started struggling and bleating frantically. Its cries reached the ears of its mother, grazing not too far away. The old sheep raised her head and then came waddling to the defence of her offspring. The little girl looked around to see a large sheep charging toward her, uttering threatening baas. She dropped the lamb and fled back to the wall, as fast as her little legs could carry her.