Good People - Ewart Hutton

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‘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 getting lost on. The imminent prospect of moving into that forest held no appeal.

      The imminent prospect of a call from Detective Chief Superintendent Galbraith was even less appealing.

      I had a lot to blame Jack Galbraith for.

      For a start, he had rescued me. After my career in Cardiff had effectively gone down the tubes, he had stepped in and offered to have me in the Carmarthen Division. The Wild and Woolly West, as we used to say in Cardiff. I had thought about it when I had gone in to clean out my desk in that strangely empty squad room. After they had told me that it was safe to surface from my “emotional” leave. Why was he taking in a burned-out and redundant “hero”? Jack Galbraith did not have a reputation as a philanthropist. Had someone in high places called in a big favour? Or was he setting up an even bigger one, to be redeemed at some future date?

      ‘I’ve been informed that you used to be a good cop, Capaldi,’ he had told me on that first day of my official reincarnation in Carmarthen. When I had been born again as one of his men. ‘That’s why you’re here with me instead of wearing a rinky-dink security uniform and patrolling the booze aisle in some shanty-town supermarket. I’m giving you another chance. See if you can get back some of that good judgement that you occasionally used to demonstrate.’

      ‘Thank you, sir,’ I had replied humbly.

      ‘Look at this.’ He walked across his office to the map of Wales that hung on the wall.

      I looked. He tapped the map, a drummer’s rhythm. I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to be looking at. He was tapping the bit in the middle, the empty bit, the bit God gave to the sheep.

      ‘Do you know how much it’s costing … to send men out from here …’ he rapped the pen on each of the divisional headquarters, then came back into the middle again ‘. . . to here? Every time a case comes up?’

      ‘I can imagine.’ I nodded sympathetically.

      ‘Overtime, petrol, hotel bills if they have to stay over.’

      ‘And you’re paying out for unproductive time with all that driving,’ I added helpfully. I would have kept my mouth shut if I had known what was coming.

      ‘Exactly. You’ve hit it right on the head there, son. Unproductive bloody time.’ He sat down on the edge of the desk. A power move. Looking down at me, nodding at the question before he had even framed it. ‘So what are we going to do about it?’

      I didn’t even pretend to think that I was being invited to advise on strategy here. ‘I don’t know the answer to that, sir.’

      ‘I’m going to try an experiment, Capaldi.’

      I gave him my best fresh, interested look.

      ‘I’m going to put a man in there. A resident detective, someone who can cover the routine crap, so back-up only gets called in when it’s absolutely necessary.’

      Something plummeted. I felt like a specimen butterfly watching the mounting pin descend. ‘You’re surely not thinking of me for this, sir, are you?’

      He grinned. It wasn’t meant to be friendly. ‘I’d have thought you would be grateful for any chance.’

      ‘I’m straight out of the city, sir.’

      ‘And you fucked up good there, didn’t you?’ He didn’t embellish. Didn’t remind me that I was responsible for the messy death of a man. He didn’t have

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