Love Story, With Murders Read Free Page B

I’m right. There
probably
isn’t. Trouble is, there
possibly
is, and if so the problem is of a magnitude
that’s off-the-scale bad. So, even though I told myself I would never do this, I find myself picking up a phone and calling home.
    I get Mam. Sleepy-voiced, worried.
    ‘Mam, it’s me. Everything’s okay, so don’t worry. But is Dad there?’

    He is. The phone is passed over.
    ‘Hello, Fi, love.’
    ‘Dad, something’s come up, it’s probably fine, but can you give me a call back from a private number?’
    A moment’s hesitation, or not even. Half a moment. A nanosecond. Then, ‘Course I can, love, just give me a moment.’
    Two minutes later my mobile bleats. Caller details withheld.
    ‘Dad.’
    ‘Fi, love?’
    ‘Look, I expectthis doesn’t matter, but I don’t know if you’ve heard the news about the discovery of human remains up by Llanishen.’
    ‘Up by the reservoir, love? No. Sounds horrible, though. You never really think of Cyncoed as being that sort of place.’
    I digest that a moment, then say, ‘The dead girl was Mary Langton.’ I leave a pause in case Dad wants to say anything, then, before he can fill it withhis usual white noise,
continue. ‘Disappeared August 2005. She was a pole dancer. Well, a student really, but did some pole dancing to make a little extra cash. Mary Langton.’
    Dad listens without interrupting, then says, ‘Poor girl. Awful, that sort of thing, isn’t it? At that age, I mean, her whole life in front of her. And then – bang, gone. Just
think of her poor parents. Lord, if anythingever happened to you or the other girls, your mam and I –’
    ‘Dad, was she a–? Did she dance at one of your clubs?’
    ‘Gosh, love, you do ask questions. You know how it is, though. Middle of the night. Some poor lass that vanished five years ago now. And, you know, we’ve had so many dancers over the
years. I couldn’t possibly remember each one. Course, there’ll be records, we could lookat them. If it’s helpful, I could get Emrys to take a look. Me, I’m not really the
man for paper. But Emrys, he’ll find anything. Do you want me to call him? I mean, if it’s important, I can get him out of bed, no problem at all. And after all, if it’s a police
matter, he can afford to lose a little sleep. We’re both up, aren’t we, love?’
    He’s all set to go wittering on, but I interrupt.I tell him it’s fine. I just wanted to check. I tell him to go back to bed, sorry for waking him, sorry for worrying Mam. He tells
me to look after myself, tells me to come over tomorrow for dinner, ‘and bring your young man, we’d love to see more of him’.
    We ring off.
    Back to the silence. Desks stretching out into the darkness. Small rectangular fireflies. The hum of dormant electronics.Four twenty-five.
    He’s good, Dad is. Very good. That’s something I’ve only recently started to understand and the knowledge frightens me. Things you thought you know changing shape the more you
look at them.
    Part of his trick is that torrent of patter. His readiness to talk, that total unstrategised openness. Anyone listening to the call would have sworn that my dad was the ultimateWYSIWYG man:
what you see is what you get. Friendly, concerned, open, helpful.
    Except then you start to look at the whole thing differently. Picking up on tiny clues. I said we’d discovered human remains up by Llanishen. That doesn’t necessarily mean the
reservoir, but even if that’s how you understand it, the reservoir has two sides. The Cyncoed side and the side which is Llanishen proper.

    Dad changed my word ‘Llanishen’ to ‘Cyncoed’. That could just be an assumption. A middle-of-the-night thing, said by someone thinking blurrily. Or it could be a signal
that he knew everything already, that things were under control. And if he was signalling like that, is that because he had nothing to hide? Or because everything was already sufficiently hidden?
Or because, although