all, I can vouch for them personally: they’re good people. Not one of them has a criminal bone in his body.’
‘It’s still taking and driving away. Driving under the influence. Maybe more, if the driver decides to stay mean.’
‘He won’t,’ Emrys announced confidently. ‘And, after the rollicking I’m going to give them, none of them will be doing this again.’ He spread his hands, trying me out with a reasonable-man-to-reasonable-man smile. ‘Okay, they were wrong. But that would have been the drink, the excitement of having been in London. It would have been meant as a bit of fun, nothing malicious.’ He shook his head. ‘And they’ll stick together. Even I’ll never find out which one of them actually drove it away. You’re not in your city now. There’s a time and a place for the heavy-handed route and this isn’t one of them.’
It was a big speech for Emrys. This was obviously important to him. Credibility issues, perhaps. ‘Where are they?’
He tried out a grin. ‘In their beds I assume. Getting ready to wake up and realize how lousy they feel.’
I recognized that he was offering me an opportunity here. The chance to play Cottage Cop, ingratiate myself into the community, show them that I didn’t always have to be seen as an aloof and hard-ass outsider.
‘What about the woman?’
He frowned. ‘We don’t know for sure that there was one. That could just have been the driver trying to make it worse for them …’ He raised his hands to stop my protest. ‘Okay, I promise you this, if there was a woman on that minibus with them last night, she’ll have been treated with absolute courtesy and respect.’
‘So where will she be now?’
‘Wherever it is, she’ll be safe. I can guarantee that. I expect she’ll probably have been offered hospitality for the night. It’s not like the city, women don’t have to fear for their bodies or their lives.’ He smiled smugly. ‘We don’t lose or misplace our womenfolk around here.’
Womenfolk … He actually used the word. As if he was describing a separate species that could be displayed in pens for admiration and grading. I used a spluttered cough to cover my astonishment.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘I’ll make you a deal.’
He inclined his head to listen.
‘If you can convince me that everyone who was on that minibus last night is safe and sound and where they’re meant to be, I’ll walk away and leave you to wrap it up your own way.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll take that deal.’
‘And that includes the woman.’
He smirked. ‘If she exists.’
I left him to get on the radio, and went over to take a closer look at the minibus. There was a dent in the front offside wing that could have been historic, and a new scratch on the driver’s door that cut through the dust patina.
At the rear I had a hunch, and dropped to a crouch to study the exhaust. I moved in close; the uniforms had already corrupted this area, and I couldn’t make it worse. Using the long serrated blade of my Swiss Army knife, I probed inside the pipe. When I pulled it out a set of vehicle keys fell on to the gravel.
This fitted in with the careful way that the minibus had been parked. The keys had been left for us to find. Emrys was right. Someone was trying to signal that there was no malicious intent in this.
I dangled the keys at Emrys as I walked round to the side door, but he was occupied with the radio and didn’t see me. The two uniforms, who had been circling the minibus with me, keeping it as a shield between us, looked like they thought I was fucking Merlin when they saw the keys.
I always carry a couple of supermarket plastic bags in my coat pocket. Generally, they’re for shopping, but occasionally they come in useful in situations like this. I unlocked the minibus door, and, using my handkerchief on the handle, slid it open. I put the plastic bags over my shoes before I climbed in.
Stale cigarette smoke was the main olfactory make-up over the background of synthetic upholstery and diesel. I sniffed selectively. No vomit. No dope. No girls’ stuff either, or I just wasn’t good enough to pick it up.
I trawled the interior slowly. Some rubbish on the floor, a couple of beer-bottle caps, a crumpled potato-crisps packet. This didn’t look like a vehicle a bunch of drunks had stumbled out of.
I found it tucked under the seat in front of the back seat. I felt the tickle again. Bad news arriving. Regine Broussard had also been in possession of a plastic carrier bag.
I pulled it out carefully. This had been well used, creased and bearing the faded imprint of a butcher in Hereford. I looked inside. Paco Rabanne aftershave and Calvin Klein underpants both boxed in their original packaging.
‘Capaldi …’
Emrys was at the open door.
‘I’ll take that.’ He held his hand out.
I passed him the bag. For a moment I mistook his expression for fury. Then I realized that the torsion in his face went with anxiety.
‘None of them are there … None of them got home last night …’
‘Have you any idea what conditions are like up here?’ I asked the duty officer at headquarters in Carmarthen over the radio.
‘I can’t authorize a helicopter search.’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘I need senior officer clearance.’
‘Call DCS Galbraith.’
‘It’s a Sunday,’ a note of panic rising in his voice at that prospect.
‘And this is an emergency. I have seven people missing up here in conditions of extreme exposure. One of them is a young woman. You take the fall if any of them die or suffer serious injury.’ I let that doom note resonate for a moment before pressing down on the exaggeration pedal. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. I’m talking mountain conditions here, an enormous wind-chill factor, snow, a warren of forestry trails to be covered.’ The last bit, at least, was true.
‘Is a helicopter any use if it’s snowing?’ he asked.
‘It’s passing over,’ I said quickly, ‘but the wind’s getting colder.’
‘Okay,’ he came to a decision, ‘I’ll set it up, but it’s your responsibility. I am only acting on information received.’
It’s only accounting, I told myself, the budget must have an allocation for such emergencies. I raised a thumb of acknowledgement to Emrys, who was down at his own car, on the radio to his boss, trying to get more people in for the search.
But where to start? I traced the course of the minor road with my eyes until it disappeared into the forest that rolled outwards and onwards for hectare after hectare. New growth, old growth, clearances, logging trails, abandoned trails, and the bastard, shape-shifting magic trails that I always ended up
