‘That supreme fucking tosser Inspector Unctuous Morgan has witnessed my ritual humiliation. And you called out a fucking helicopter.’
‘No disrespect, sir, but we are in a church here,’ Bryn said quietly, out of the corner of his mouth.
‘No we’re not,’ Jack Galbraith corrected him. ‘We’re in a church fucking hall – there’s a difference. In here, I’m allowed a few transgressions.’ He paused to dump his cigarette into the residue of a mug of tea before fixing his gaze back on me. ‘What have you got to say for yourself, Capaldi?’
‘I thought we had a situation, sir. I had seven people missing, one of them a woman, in extreme weather conditions. I made a decision that seemed to be appropriate for the circumstances as I saw them at the time.
‘I was especially worried about the woman – a hitchhiker, picked up by the men. She didn’t know them. And the men were drunk. In my opinion she was vulnerable. And I’m still concerned for her. Do you remember the Broussard case, sir? In Cardiff? About six years ago? A Haitian illegal immigrant?’
‘There’s no parallel.’ Jack Galbraith shook his head and smirked. ‘Tell him, Bryn,’ he instructed. ‘Give him the low-down on the little flower he’s so concerned about.’
‘She was a hooker, Sergeant.’
‘A Cardiff tart,’ Jack Galbraith amplified. ‘Called herself Miss Danielle.’
I tried to absorb my surprise. ‘They picked her up in a rural petrol station. The minibus driver said she was hitching.’
‘That was the cover story,’ Bryn explained.
‘It was organized, Capaldi.’
‘It was meant to be a stag event,’ Bryn clarified. ‘They were setting up a surprise for the two bachelors in the group. They were meant to believe that the girl was just an innocent hitchhiker.’
‘Then, surprise, surprise, the girl drops the Young Rambler guise’ – Jack Galbraith clapped his hands together – ‘and at least one of our two virgins gets his rocks off, courtesy of his buddies.’
I tried to get my head round it. They waited me out. ‘But they took her up to a hut in a forest. That’s where I’ve come from.’
Jack Galbraith nodded. ‘We gathered that. And we also notice that you haven’t returned clutching a dripping axe in the evidence bag.’
‘Did you see anything up there that we should be concerned about?’ Bryn asked.
I thought about the crumpled tissue, the log rounds, the bracken bed. ‘No, sir.’ I shook my head and frowned. ‘But I don’t get it.’
‘Where have we lost you, Capaldi?’ Jack Galbraith asked.
‘Why did they stay up there for the night? The men, I mean. It was cold and damp. Uncomfortable doesn’t even begin to describe it. And they must have realized the furore it would cause.’
‘That’s where it went wrong for them,’ Jack Galbraith said. ‘According to the master plan they were supposed to have their party, get the virgins’ cherries popped, and be back in their beds, tucked up with their loved ones, before they were missed.’ He eyed me carefully. ‘Tell Capaldi the story we were told, Bryn.’
I picked up on his use of the word ‘story’. Jack Galbraith was very precise with his words. And instead of the savaging I’d been expecting, he was being relatively gentle with me. Was I about to discover the reason?
‘They claim that they were very drunk. That, despite the conditions up there, they slept through until the morning.’
I remembered the sight of them coming down the hill. ‘They did look pretty rough,’ I conceded. ‘One of them, the big one, was totally out of it.’
Jack Galbraith grinned. ‘Paul Evans, one of the virgin bachelors. That must have been some kind of a fuck, eh?’
‘It didn’t look like rapture to me, sir,’ I observed.
‘But it wasn’t just the demon drink that was their undoing.’
‘No?’ I answered cautiously. He looked amused. I wondered if he had found some way to fold me into the blame for this.
He grinned. ‘No, it was the Big Bad Pimp.’
‘Sir?’
Jack Galbraith gestured, and Bryn took over. ‘They’re claiming that it was the girl’s pimp who drove the minibus away.’
‘A pimp … ?’ I didn’t try to hide my astonishment.
He nodded. ‘According to the men, he had never been part of the arrangement. They had assumed that they could persuade the minibus driver to take them up to the hut, then just give him a good bung for his waiting-around time.’
‘The driver never mentioned that.’
‘They never got round to negotiating it. When the girl was picked up at the service station she announced that the deal had changed. She wanted her pimp with her. Told them that she felt vulnerable out here in the boondocks without protection.’
I pondered it, seeing how the fit started to work for them. ‘So the girl has it arranged that this Cardiff pimp is waiting in a lay-by in the middle of nowhere, all set to cut the minibus driver adrift, jump into the driving seat and carry them away?’
‘That’s more or less how the authorized version goes,’ Jack Galbraith confirmed.
‘Which means that there’s no drinking and driving involved?’
He nodded. ‘Correct. Our heroes remain unblemished.’
‘And then they’re abandoned by the pimp and his girl.’
‘Like some kind of fairy story, isn’t it? Our bunch of poor foundlings left to their cruel fate in a woodsman’s hut in the middle of the dark fucking forest.’
I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t work, sir.’
‘Explain.’
‘The place where we found the empty minibus this morning – if that was the rendezvous, the place where the pimp and the girl had arranged to be picked up and taken back to Cardiff – they would never have found it. Not in the dark, not in that warren of forestry tracks. Chances are, this guy’s never driven in a night situation that didn’t involve street lights.’
Jack Galbraith and Bryn exchanged a glance. ‘It does work, Sergeant,’ Bryn said.
‘Why?’
Jack Galbraith pulled a face. ‘Because we have five solid, upright and honest citizens who all say that that was the way it happened. And we’re all so dreadfully sorry to have inconvenienced everyone.’
‘They even had a whip-round while they were here to pay for the damage to the minibus,’ Bryn added.
‘Damage caused by the pimp, mind you. These guys are nothing if not magnanimous,’
