was a question she had been torturing herself with. She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I told you, he didn’t talk to me any more.’
‘Was there a girlfriend?’
‘If there was a current one, I hadn’t been told about her.’
‘Current?’
‘He had quite a serious affair with a Czech girl he met in Germany when he was stationed there. Then he was posted to Cyprus. As far as I know, he hasn’t had a long-term relationship since then.’
She tried to smile to cover her distress, but her hands came up to her face, and she gave in to her tears. ‘I just hope something awful hasn’t happened to him,’ she wailed.
I went round to her and put my hands on her shoulders. It had been a long time since I had tried to comfort a woman. I felt awkward and unpractised. I kept my hands light and unthreatening, and felt her muscles relax slightly. The touch began to feel both intimate and sanctioned.
‘Please,’ I said, ‘you mustn’t worry. Let me put the word out, so that we can at least discount the worst of your fears.’
She reached a hand up to lightly cover mine. It was damp from her tears. ‘Thank you.’
She walked me to the front door. I hesitated to ask, given the state she was in, but I had to keep the momentum going for Magda’s sake. I turned to her on the threshold. ‘You mentioned, when we first met, that I shouldn’t believe them when they said that young women didn’t disappear around here.’
It took her by surprise. She nodded hesitantly. Then she surprised me by smiling. ‘How about a girl going on for eighteen who leaves for school one morning and is never seen again?’
I took my notebook out. ‘Can you give me details?’
She put two restraining fingers on the notebook. ‘I’m sorry, I’m being selfish at your expense. There is no mystery. I told you that my husband left me?’
I nodded, watching her.
‘He went out that morning too. They left together. Him and the schoolgirl.’
Okay, I could sympathize with Sally Paterson. The anxiety that her missing son was causing her, coupled with the other kicks in the teeth that life had dealt. But I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t experiencing a lift of professional elation over the gift that had just been handed to me. Now I had legitimate questions to ask the group about the disappearance of their buddy Boon.
Bryn Jones didn’t quite share my enthusiasm.
‘It’s an Army matter,’ he stated drily, when I called him in Carmarthen. ‘Let them clean up their own mess.’ In that terse sentence I realized that Bryn and the military shared a history.
‘It could be germane, sir.’
‘There is nothing for it to be germane to, Glyn. And don’t even think about mentioning a missing woman.’
‘The people on the minibus were the last people to see him, sir.’
‘The last people that we know of,’ he corrected me.
‘Don’t we have a duty to his mother, sir? To try and get close to what was on his mind that last night. In case it has some sort of bearing on why he didn’t turn up for his flight to Cyprus.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘Distraught, sir.’
‘You’re a sly bastard, Capaldi.’ I heard the contained laugh under his voice.
‘Is that a yes, sir?’
‘You know it’s not a yes. But I’m not in control of your actions until I get a chance to confer with DCS Galbraith on how we should instruct you.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ I disconnected quickly before he could remember his beef with the Army and rein me back in.
Trevor Vaughan was my obvious choice. But going to his farm would be pointless; it would just end up as a stand-off between me, him, and whoever had been appointed as minder for that day.
Even in the sad dead grip of winter an amateur like me, who was still trying out for his country-boy badge, could tell that Rhos-goch was a prosperous farm. The hedges were tidy and the drive was smooth, lined with beech trees that someone had had the unselfish foresight to plant a few generations ago.
Ken McGuire’s grey Discovery was parked in front of the house along with a red Audi A3 and a low-slung, black, two-door BMW 3 Series. All swanky machinery for these latitudes.
The house was a big architectural hybrid; a Victorian copy of a Georgian façade in stone, with a two-storey yellow-brick side extension. It was all in good shape and, I was glad to see, the dogs were kept locked up.
The woman who answered the door disappointed me though. She didn’t go with the house or the cars on the drive. A myopic woman in an apron, who peered at me as if she had forgotten that opening front doors sometimes revealed people standing there.
‘Is Mr McGuire in?’
‘No, he’s out in the cattle shed, checking the bedding.’
‘Can I wait for him?’
‘I don’t know about that.’
‘Birdie … ?’
The woman at the door cocked her head at the sound of the voice down the corridor.
‘Who is it?’ the voice asked, coming into view. She was in her mid-twenties, loosely styled brown hair, outdoor cheeks, a slight build, and the natural confidence of a woman who had learned to master horses and brothers at an early age.
‘Detective Sergeant Capaldi.’ I held up my warrant card. ‘Mrs McGuire?’
She nodded, an all-purpose smile masking her scrutiny and curiosity. Taking just a little bit longer over it than she needed, to fit me into place. ‘It’s all right, Birdie, I’ll take care of the sergeant. I’m Sheila McGuire. Please, come in.’ She used the act of opening the door wider as an excuse not to shake my hand. ‘Ken isn’t around at the moment. Assuming that it’s him you’re here to see?’
‘Would you mind me waiting?’
‘Not at all. We’re in the kitchen. I’ll put the kettle back on.’
I followed her. She was wearing a baggy sweater, and swung a good bum in a pair of tight-fitting, navy blue riding breeches that were stained at the contact points with something that I assumed was equestrian.
When I walked into the big kitchen, the other woman sitting at the long refectory table, with a cigarette and a mug of coffee, made no pretence of welcoming me into the tent. She looked at me as if I was something that had turned up on her plate that she hadn’t ordered.
‘This is Zoë McGuire, my sister-in-law.’ Sheila introduced us. Zoë raised her eyebrows in mock surprise, and then deigned to incline her head at me, still watching, as if she had been tipped off that I was about to do
