Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

‘Help yourself.’ I pushed my plate across the table.

‘Then we’re going to see a woman called Muffin Thomas,’ Joesbury went on, in between mouthfuls. ‘She lived next door to the girls for a while, a couple of years before the rape. Lives somewhere called Splatt or Splott or some such.’

‘Muffin being a very common Welsh name,’ I said.

Joesbury reached into his pocket and pulled out a notebook. He opened it and turned it to face me.

‘Myfanwy,’ I said, deciphering his scrawl.

‘Say again?’

‘Muff-an-wee,’ I repeated.

‘Do you actually speak Welsh?’

‘No. Why would I?’

‘Just wondered. Fancy driving from here? I’m wrecked.’

Joesbury’s car was effortlessly fast, so much smoother and easier to handle than my Golf. In a little pocket by the gear stick I found a Black Eyed Peas album and put it on. In very different circumstances, I might actually have enjoyed the journey.

As we drove into South Wales, an autumn mist started to creep closer to the edges of the motorway. Sleeping Beauty woke up just before Newport and spent the next twenty minutes on the phone to Tulloch.

‘Definitely Karen Curtis’s head, no forensic evidence in your shed or garden that will help us, and Jacqui Groves is still very much alive and under close guard,’ he said, after ending the call. ‘Tully wishes us a good trip and told me to behave myself.’

‘She’d be proud of you so far,’ I muttered, without taking my eyes off the road.

Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Joesbury smiling to himself.

The traffic was heavy going into Cardiff centre and it wasn’t far off noon when I pulled up in the Sophia Gardens car park. Joesbury jumped out and went to the ticket machine. There was drizzle in the air and a thick mist was coming off the River Taff.

‘Police station?’ I asked when Joesbury got back.

He shook his head and pulled the collar of his jacket up. ‘Nope,’ he said, nodding towards the footbridge. ‘We’re going for a stroll.’

Bute Park is long and narrow, stretching several miles out from the city centre towards the surrounding countryside. Once over the footbridge, we started walking directly across it. After a few minutes the outline of modern buildings on a nearby main road began to take shape. A watercourse, that could have been a backwater of the Taff, or even a drainage ditch, marked the furthest boundary of the park. When we reached it, Joesbury turned right and we headed back towards the city. He hadn’t explained why we were here and I wasn’t going to ask. It wasn’t like I couldn’t guess.

‘What do you reckon, Flint? Look like a copper to you?’

I raised my eyes from the path to see a tallish, plumpish man in his early sixties standing on a narrow, red-brick bridge that crossed the backwater. As we drew closer, the shortness of his hair, the stubbornness of his jaw and just something in his bearing marked him out as one of us.

Sergeant Ron Williams greeted Joesbury first and I waited quietly for my turn. I was wearing my best suit, with a stiff white blouse and tights. My hair was scraped back into my neatest librarian bun and I was wearing glasses. No make-up, of course.

When they’d exchanged a few pleasantries, Sergeant Williams turned to me. Conscious of Joesbury watching the two of us, I gave them both a few seconds.

‘You should see the other guy,’ I said, when I figured they’d had long enough. Forcing a smile, I held out my hand for Williams to shake. ‘I’m DC Lacey Flint.’

‘Nice to meet you, DC Flint,’ replied Williams, his accent marking him immediately as a man from the Valleys. ‘Now, you’re stretching the old grey matter a bit. It was all a long time ago. Shall we start with where it happened?’

Joesbury agreed and Williams led us further along the path in the direction of the city. We were close enough now to see the tall Norman keep and, beyond it, the Gothic-fairytale elegance of Cardiff castle. As we drew level with the castle wall, Williams left the path and set off across the grass. Joesbury followed and, a little way behind, so did I.

‘This is the magnolia lawn we’re crossing now,’ said Williams. ‘It’s quite something in spring.’

The twisted branches of the old trees looked like tendrils reaching out for us. A little way ahead, tall stones began to emerge through the mist.

‘So, you think what’s been going on in London is something to do with the Llewellyn girls?’ asked Williams, taking out a large white handkerchief and pressing it to his face as we drew nearer to the stones. I’d already noticed his eyes were bloodshot and his nose reddened. Williams was fighting a losing battle with a heavy cold.

‘Just covering all angles,’ said Joesbury.

‘I can’t see it myself,’ said Williams. ‘They were nice girls.’

Joesbury’s walk slowed a fraction. ‘That’s not the way the boys’ families tell it,’ he said.

Williams stopped when we were metres away from the stone circle. ‘Aye well, I’m not saying they were angels,’ he replied. ‘Cardiff lasses rarely are and the older one did run a bit wild. The younger one, though, good as gold she was. Didn’t deserve what happened. She died, I heard.’

In front of us, eleven rough-cut stones made a circle of about thirty metres in diameter. The two largest seemed to form a natural entrance. Williams and Joesbury walked through. I trailed along behind.

‘You were on duty the night of the alleged rape?’ asked Joesbury.

‘I was. And then I came down here with the older girl as soon as it was light,’ answered Williams. When we were almost in the centre of the circle he stopped.

Joesbury turned on the spot, taking in the upright stones, and the huge flat central one like a sacrificial altar. ‘Is this an ancient monument?’ he asked.

Williams blew his nose and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It was put up in the late seventies. Although the central stone was supposedly part of something Neolithic found in the park. So, do you want me to talk you through it?’

‘Please,’ said Joesbury.

‘Victoria and Cathy met up with the boys in the Owain Glyndwr on St John Street,’ said Williams. ‘The girls left about twenty past eleven and headed towards the bus stop. When they got to the main road just outside the park, they heard the boys running up after them.’

‘The boys followed them from the pub?’ asked Joesbury.

‘Probably, but what they told the girls was a gang of local lads had started some trouble back in the pub and were hot on their heels. They asked how they could get away quickly.’

‘They came in here?’ said Joesbury.

Williams nodded. ‘Victoria said she wasn’t worried about the boys at that point. In the pub they’d been polite, well behaved. She knew that once they were in the park, they could make for the pedestrian bridge across the river and get into the Sophia Gardens car park. They climbed that gate over there, the one in the wall, the boys helping the girls over.’

Joesbury and I both turned to where Williams was pointing. We could just about see a darker line in the mist where we knew the huge stone perimeter wall of the park would be.

‘And then it all went wrong,’ said Joesbury.

‘Victoria said she and Cathy set off through the park and the boys followed behind. Before long, though, she knew something wasn’t right. The boys fell back, out of sight, but they could hear them, cat-calling, whispering to each other. Victoria told me she realized she’d made a big mistake so she grabbed hold of Cathy and scarpered.’

‘She tried to outrun them?’ asked Joesbury, his eyes flicking from the park entrance to where he judged the bridge would be.

‘They hadn’t got a hope,’ said Williams. ‘Girls in high heels, half-cut on cheap booze. Cathy fell over, they got separated and that was that.’