Ewart Hutton - Good People

‘Yes.’

So Jack Galbraith and Bryn had diverted here on their way home. Taking this seriously. But they hadn’t called me. If there had been anything on the tapes to justify action, they would surely have contacted me.

I persuaded the manager to run the tape for me, and settled down in front of the dirty monitor in the cleaner’s cupboard that he called an office.

I felt a small flutter of anxiety below my sternum. Crazy. I didn’t know this woman. She hadn’t existed for me thirty-six hours ago. And she was probably some junkie hag, back in Cardiff now, just where the story placed her. But we had made the same sort of mistake with Regine Broussard. I wasn’t going to let it happen twice.

There was no denying I was nervous. I was about to get my first sighting of her, and I couldn’t shake off a sense of something that shifted between romance and doom.

I fast-forwarded through the tapes to get to the point where the minibus arrived at the service station. Business was slow. The forecourt was empty when it pulled in, the CCTV image grainy and stuttering. The driver got out and proceeded to fill the tank. No one else got out of the minibus. No other cars there either, so no witnesses to trace through the DVLA computer.

It happened too quickly. She was there just after the driver screwed the fuel cap back on and walked out of shot to go and pay. I rewound and watched again. I hadn’t missed anything. She just appeared, no approach. It was as if the tape had jumped or stalled, editing that segment out.

I peered at the screen. It didn’t help. The picture quality was terrible. A baseball cap. Blonde hair bunched through the gap at the back. I moved in as close as I could, but couldn’t tell if it was the cap that I had found. Her facial features were a blurred soup of pinkish pixels over a knotted scarf tucked into a puffy, red, down-filled jacket. About a hundred and sixty-two centimetres, I gauged from the relation of her shoulders to the roof of the minibus. A large rucksack sagging one shoulder.

She was on the far side of the minibus from the camera. Head bent, as if she was in conversation with someone through the sliding door on the side. She tossed her head back, her face turning into the camera, the smile pronounced enough to register as a big, happy smudge. Then she slid her rucksack off, handed it into the minibus and climbed in after it.

I knew the rest of the story. She didn’t escape.

I had just witnessed a transaction. Something had been negotiated between the woman and some of the men in the minibus. But what? A lift or a fuck?

I went back to the counter. The young cashier glanced up from a magazine. She seemed tired, dark circles under her eyes, bad complexion, the mix of colours in her hair making it look like she had fallen into a chemistry set.

‘Were you working Saturday night?’

‘Some of it,’ she said, an edge of suspicion in her tone and eyes.

‘Can you have a look at this?’ I moved to the side to create enough room for her to get into the room and see the image that I had paused on the screen.

She stared at it blankly.

‘This is at half past nine. Did you see this woman getting into that minibus?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I was clocked off by then.’

‘Who was on duty?’

‘Him.’ She cocked her head towards the manager, who was stacking shelves.

I pulled a face in frustration. The manager had already told me that he hadn’t seen her.

‘Helly Hansen …’

‘You know her?’

‘No. Her jacket – it was a Helly Hansen.’ The covetousness in her voice surprised me.

‘I thought you hadn’t seen her?’

‘I saw her earlier, when she arrived. I’ve always fancied a jacket like that.’

I kept my excitement down. ‘You saw her arrive?’

‘It was busy. Something like half past seven, seven o’clock. People going into town for Saturday night, people coming home from a day out shopping. It got dead quiet after that.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Positive. If that’s the one you’re looking for, that’s when I saw her.’

At least two hours. What was she doing there two hours before the minibus picked her up? It was a blow. It tied in with the group’s story. That it had all been pre-arranged, that the girl had been there waiting for them.

Or did it?

If a pimp had brought her up from Cardiff, why had he arrived so early? Even a deep-city hustler would have to realize that a service station whack in the middle of Baptist nowhere was no place to drop one of his girls off to trawl for casual trade.

‘You should ask Tony Griffiths.’

‘What?’ I did an auditory double take.

‘You want to know about her, you should ask Tony. He was the one what brought her in.’

‘Bryn, she was carrying a rucksack …’ I could hear the plea in my own voice. Sanction this. Please make it so I can take this forward with an official blessing.

There was no response at the other end of the line. I was used to it. Where Bryn Jones was concerned, silence was a communications tool. He was a born moderator, always giving you the chance to reconsider what you had just said to him.

‘A rucksack, Bryn.’

‘I know. We watched the footage.’

‘Hookers don’t carry rucksacks.’

‘DCS Galbraith and I discussed that.’

‘She was hitchhiking.’

‘That’s an assumption. You’ve no evidence to support it.’

‘What would a tart be doing with a backpack?’ I asked, and immediately sensed the flaw in the question.

‘Sex toys, fantasy outfits, sleazy underwear, unguents, cosmetics, spermicidal jelly, Mace, condoms,’ Bryn enumerated, ‘and a big woolly jumper and nice warm tights, because she’s coming out into the cold night air.’

‘Bryn, she looked like a hitchhiker.’

‘That’s an emotive reaction, and you should know better. Face it, on that screen she just looks fuzzy.’

‘Those bastards are lying.’

‘Probably,’ he admitted calmly.

‘You can say that and just walk away from it?’

‘Yes, because we have no evidence of a crime having been committed. And yes, they probably are lying, because it’s normal behaviour when white middle-class males get discovered in flagrante delicto with a prostitute. It’s a function of the squirm reaction.’

‘Did Emrys Hughes hand in a bag?’

‘What kind of a bag?’

‘A carrier bag. I found it in the minibus. It had some aftershave and designer underpants in it.’

‘I expect he gave it back to whichever of the men had left it behind.’

‘Bryn, the bag was from Hereford.’

‘So? People travel to Hereford to shop.’

‘None of those bastards that I saw walking down that hill would have bought those things. They don’t fit.’

‘You’re speculating again.’

I paused, bringing myself back under control. ‘What if I could find the person who gave her the lift to the service station?’

He was silent for a moment. ‘Are we talking about a pimp?’

‘No.’

‘We would be interested in that.’ He paused. ‘DCS Galbraith has asked me to pass a message on to you.’

Which meant that Jack Galbraith knew that I would be calling Bryn. ‘And what would that be, sir?’ I asked, switching to formal.

‘Don’t blow this up into something it isn’t in an attempt to climb back on board the big ship.’

‘No, sir.’ I had a sudden flash of my fingertips clutching the gunnels with Jack Galbraith’s polished brown brogues poised over them. ‘I have to go, sir,’ I said, catching sight of the truck in my rear-view mirror. I cut the connection and got out of the car as it approached, weaving to avoid the worst of the potholes in the lay-by. A small truck with a standard cab, but an unusually high-sided, open-topped rear.