Say Goodbye to the Boys (6 page)

VI

 

 

 

 

Maelgwyn Police Station was a yellow-brick building among old stone houses, off the High Street. It was there we headed after Idwal Morton had met us on the promenade. ‘MT,' he'd said, ‘It's Marshall. They've got him in the police station.'

Idwal Morton kept up with us all the way and was even able to run up the station steps ahead of us. There he stood, arms out wide, a different man now that he was out of doors, livelier, less contained.

‘I advise care and caution, MT,' he said, breathing hard. He had spent a great deal of time in the courts and was fond of legal phrases. ‘What is said, is noted down, may be used in evidence...'

‘Get out of the way, Idwal,' MT said. ‘I can handle this. We are going in for my son, and if we don't get him we'll take this building apart, brick by brick.'

Emlyn looked at me. ‘Got your sledgehammer with you, old chap?' A perfect imitation of MT's voice.

‘Don't talk like a bloody big boy scout,' Idwal said to MT, and, with a shrug of his thin shoulders, went in ahead of us.

Behind the desk was Sergeant Watts, a long serving member of the force in Maelgwyn. He got to his feet. ‘I'm very glad you've come, Mr Edmunds. We've been trying to reach you by telephone.'

‘Left off the hook all day Sunday,' MT snapped at him. ‘I demand the instant release of my son!'

‘Not up to me,' the Sergeant whispered. ‘Got higher–ups in. You know how it is.'

‘Balls is how it is!' MT roared. I couldn't help smiling. ‘I want to see my son now!'

The Sergeant held up one enormous hand, as if to stop all traffic everywhere. ‘It so happens,' he said heavily, ‘that we are not holding your son.'

‘Then release him, Watts. This minute!'

‘It so happens that we did not bring your son here.'

‘I should think not!'

‘It so happens that he came here of his own accord, without pressure of any kind.' The Sergeant was an amateur actor, only too well known in local productions. His pause was nicely timed. ‘If you'll excuse me, Mr Edmunds, your son decided he wanted to make a confession.'

MT made a sound as if all the wind had been knocked out of him. ‘Confession?' he said. Then he launched himself at the desk. ‘Confess to what? I demand as a rate-payer and parent to see him now!'

‘It's the higher-ups,' the Sergeant said. ‘If you'll sit down, Mr Edmunds, I'll make enquiries for you.' And he stood there, shoulders held back, and waited until we looked as if we were about to join Idwal Morton on the bench before he marched out of the room.

None of us spoke whilst he was out. Emlyn appeared to be reading an old Air Raid Precautions poster on the wall. MT kept on clearing his throat. Idwal Morton stared straight ahead, belching softly every so often. A waiting room tension in the air.

Sergeant Watts was soon back. ‘I've arranged it for you, Mr Edmunds,' he said. ‘If you'll be so kind as to come this way. It's Chief Inspector Marks, CID.' As he ushered MT out he said to us, ‘You are permitted to sit.'

We joined Idwal Morton on the bench under the Air Raid Precautions poster. For most of the time we were silent. Once I began to say something but Idwal said ‘Walls have ears,' which earned him a glare from the Sergeant. Idwal kept on going out to the toilet. Emlyn looked around him with interest, as if trying to memorise the place. Half an hour passed.

What happened then happened too quickly for me to remember afterwards. Emlyn nudged me suddenly and said ‘OK?' I must have nodded. He got to his feet and marched to the desk, rapped his knuckles on it and said, ‘My name is Emlyn Rhys Morton, sane and over twenty one, and I wish to make a confession.'

I saw Sergeant Watts take off his glasses; saw his mouth open. Then Emlyn said, ‘And this is Philip Roberts, lately of the army in India, who would like to do the same!'

By then I was standing next to him at the desk, and Idwal Morton was howling behind us, ‘Stupid young buggers! You stupid, young buggers.'

Sergeant Watts acted swiftly. He was out of the room in a couple of strides. He left the door wide open and came face to face with a tall man in a grey suit. He said something to the man and jerked a thumb at us.

‘Have you taken leave of your senses?' Idwal was yelling at us as the man came to the doorway.

‘Both of you?' the man said. He must have used all his clothing coupons on that suit. It was a glove fit, his shirt smooth and starched at the throat, showing at the cuffs crisp and white. But his face was crumpled and tired, pouches under his eyes.

‘Don't listen to them!' Idwal roared. ‘Playing at silly buggers, that's all!'

‘Marks,' the man said, ‘Chief Inspector...'

‘Morton, E. R., sir,' Emlyn said. ‘This is Roberts, P.' You and your pissing brain waves, I thought. ‘We also want to confess.'

‘Confess to what?' Inspector Marks said. His voice was tired too.

‘What about legal representation?' Idwal joined us at the desk. ‘What about the caution?'

Inspector Marks sighed. ‘You are a parent, obviously. Of one or the other. I am conducting a preliminary enquiry. Nothing more. No one has to say anything if they don't want to. No one has to confess. To anything.' He stared at each of us in turn. ‘Is that understood?' I nodded eagerly. ‘Then please come this way, quietly and without disturbance of any kind.'

I stepped aside to let Emlyn go first. ‘Bloody fascinating, don't you think?' he whispered as he went past. ‘I'll bloody fascinate you later,' I told him.

The room was large and bare and smelled of disinfectant. There were two worn tables placed end to end and a number of straight backed chairs. Mash sat in front of the tables. Behind him against the wall sat MT. There was a young, greasy-haired man there as well, across the table from Mash, papers in front of him, an important pencil in his hand. Next to him, his hat tilted back, his gold-rimmed glasses low on his veinous nose, sat Amos Ellyott.

The Inspector spoke, ‘I have two more probable confessors, Mr Stubbs.'

Stubbs nodded. ‘That makes four, sir.'

‘Four?' Idwal Morton cried out. ‘How is it four?'

MT stood to attention. ‘I have confessed as well,' he announced, and he came over to Emlyn and me and stood between us and clasped our shoulders. ‘One for all and all for one – eh, boys?'

Amos Ellyott spoke in a thin, frozen voice, ‘You always have the confessors at the beginning, Charles.'

‘I know, Mr Ellyott,' the Inspector replied, ‘I know!'

‘The Chief Constable attended my lectures,' the old man explained. ‘The Inspector has most kindly invited me to sit in on this case. As an advisor only, of course.'

The Inspector's face crumpled further. I heard him sigh. ‘On such a lovely morning, too,' he muttered.

Poor old Lilian's death a farce already. Mash sat there, head lowered, his huge hands on his lap.

They let me go at seven that evening. Laura said, ‘That Emlyn Morton – even when you were a little boy he was always getting you into trouble.' I had been thinking along the same lines all day. ‘Your father, if he was alive; just imagine what he'd say! Acting like boys in school. Oh, what a Sunday I've had. Been living on aspirins. And what will the neighbours say? Not that I care what they say, mind. What kind of joke do you call that?' Laura in full force, giving me all I deserved.

But Will Wilkins made a plea for tolerance. ‘These young men, Mrs Roberts, they must be given time to settle down.' He always called her Mrs Roberts in my presence. I said I had to have some fresh air and beat a retreat through the back door.

I had been taken to the cottage hospital. I had been stripped and examined, just like in the army. They had taken samples from under my nails. Sent for my demob suit, examined deposits on my shoes. I felt as if I had been rinsed out, then put through the mangle.

And the questions. Inspector Marks doing the asking, Stubbs joining in. Amos Ellyott covering foolscap sheet after foolscap sheet with a scratchy pen, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and occasionally dropping off.

‘If you want,' the Inspector said, ‘you may talk to me alone.' Amos woke up and said, ‘The young man fully understands my position here.' The Inspector gave me a look full of meaning.

They asked me where I had been that Saturday night. Which cinema? What film? Who were the actors? Who had been with me? Who was Ceri Price? (they had already checked with her it was clear). Were we going steady? What time did we leave the cinema and where had we gone? ‘The Market Hall?' The Inspector affected surprise. ‘It was a wet night,' I explained.

‘And you are in the habit of using the Market Hall – for such purpose?' An old puritan face now.

‘Sometimes,' I said. Stubbs patted his greasy hair and looked at me with interest. ‘On other occasions with Miss Price?' I said no. ‘With other young women?' And there I was, labelled town stud. Then came the noises on the top floor. ‘Who did you think might be up there?' ‘George Garston,' I said. ‘And what would he be doing there that time of night?' I couldn't imagine. They asked me a number of questions about Garston. ‘You say the shop next door to your father's was locked? Shutters up, empty, I agreed. ‘Did you try the door?' In my opinion it was locked. ‘But it might have been stuck?' the Inspector said, glancing for approval at Amos Ellyott, but the old man was asleep. It wouldn't open, anyway. ‘What exactly did you shout? Describe how you got into the Market Hall. Who else had keys?' It was a thorough going over, but not going anywhere.

That part I could handle easily, but I wasn't so happy with questions about Lilian. How long had I known her? Did I visit her at home? For what purpose? Only to play cards? Had I been intimate with her? How many times? Did she charge for her services?

‘She wasn't a pro,' I said. The questions went round a second time, and I wondered at myself because I was able to talk about her as if she had been just a good fuck, and never mind the jokes, the giggles, the deft hands dealing from all over the pack. I still couldn't believe she was dead – my only excuse.

‘Not a native of the town, I understand? She was married to a Polish airman who deserted her some five years ago?' I didn't know. ‘I see. Did she mention her past life? Most people mention their past, surely?' I had never asked. ‘Not at all?' The Inspector's face was slack with disbelief. ‘You're hiding something aren't you? And you'd been drinking when you paid your visits? Let me put it like this – was she the kind of person you'd have visited if you had been sober?'

‘Of course she was.'

‘Really? Aren't you just saying that because the woman's dead?'

‘Lilian was very nice...'

‘Really?'

‘I liked her. I wouldn't have gone to see her if I didn't like her.'

‘Really? But only after the pubs and only late at night when nobody would see you?'

Stubbs looked up at that. He looked at the Inspector. Amos Ellyott did too. He even made a note of it
.

‘That's how it was,' I said.

‘Really?'

‘Yes... Really.'

‘Someone to satisfy your lust when you were half drunk?' He sounded like the entire temperance movement in session.

‘I was totally drunk once or twice.'

‘I suppose you learnt tricks like that in the army?'

‘Certainly. Which army were you in?'

The Inspector avoided the question. ‘Tricks,' he said. A flat, condemning stare. ‘Disgusting tricks. A young man of your upbringing, using this woman.' Amos Ellyott was watching him keenly. ‘Just an object of lust, wasn't she? Nothing more?'

I had to let him win on that one.

Then we moved to the Market Hall, and I had no answers for him there either. ‘Why should she go to the hall? Can you cast any light on that? Assuming that you did talk to her, did she ever mention any connection with the hall? How did she get up there?' Only one way up there, I said. ‘So she had a key?' I didn't know who had keys. Some time during the long, waiting day, I had been asking myself these questions. ‘Why the roof of the Market Hall?' His questions echoing my thoughts. ‘Mrs Ridetski was murdered – do you realise that? Do you realise the full implications of that? Mrs Ridetski was strangled before she was thrown off the roof of the Hall. I want you to think very carefully about that.'

‘What d'you think I'm doing?'

And that put me right on the spot. ‘In which case, why did you come here today? Why did you say you wanted to make a confession?'

‘How did you answer that one, you bloody smart arse?' I asked Emlyn later. ‘What the hell were you playing at anyway – pulling a stunt like that?'

‘Diversion,' he replied smoothly. ‘I told old Marks it was a whim, a fancy, a feeling that we wanted to help old Mash. I apologised.'

‘So did I – but he still gave me the biggest bollocking this side of Wales.' We walked on. There was no-one about. No one watching the Police Station for news. Maelgwyn didn't believe in murders. They didn't happen here. And it was Sunday. ‘You and your bloody stunts. You always got me in on them, didn't you?'

‘I thought you couldn't remember when we were kids?'

I was not to be side-tracked. ‘What you did this morning was totally senseless; stupid'.

‘Illogical?' He laughed. ‘Granted, granted.' We came to the railings on the promenade. The evening mist was coming in off the estuary – a feature of the place after a hot summer's day. Sometimes it became fog that isolated the town from the world. We leaned against the railings and watched its approach.

‘You took him home? Right to the door?'

‘Right to the door, Philip.'

‘I had a feeling this morning that MT had gone up to Mash's room and found a bed that hadn't been slept in...'