Undermined

  Undermined

  Ripley Hayes

  Copyright © Ripley Hayes 2020

  The right of Author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Wales

  The Daniel Owen books are set in Wales. The towns and landscapes are typical of Wales, but these are novels, not guidebooks.

  You can visit stunning forests, mountains, beaches, towns and villages that may remind you of the ones in these books. If you do, you will find that they are almost totally crime free, and full of friendly people, independent shops and cafes serving good food.

  There are pictures of some of my favourite bits of Wales on my website. It’s a small country with a lot to offer. If you’ve never been, well, it’s great, and we look forward to your visit.

  Clwyd is an area of north east Wales, and Glamorgan covers much of south Wales. But their police forces, like their towns and villages, are completely imaginary. Both Cardiff and the Valleys are real. The River Taff runs through the middle of Cardiff and herons do fish in it.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  If you enjoyed reading Undermined…

  Chapter 1

  The police is a hierarchy. If your superior officer tells you to do something, you do it. So when Daniel was told to go to the other end of the country to “help with the investigation” into Suzanne Price’s death, he packed a bag and went, even though it was Glamorgan Police’s case, and he knew that he would be about as welcome as a Catholic drag queen in a Chapel Sunday school.

  It took him the best part of four hours to drive the length of the country, arriving just in time to see the pathologist remove the tape binding Suzanne Price’s hands and covering her mouth.

  The autopsy suite in the unfamiliar hospital hadn’t been easy to find, but wandering the corridors gave him time to straighten his tie, shake the wrinkles out of his trousers, and to try to tidy his hair. He opened the door and three heads swivelled toward him - the pathologist and her assistant, and a dark, handsome, muscular man in a well fitting suit, who Daniel assumed was the detective he was there to meet.

  “Hi,” said Daniel, “Daniel Owen, Clwyd Police, I’m here to meet DCI Kent?”

  “Ah yes,” said the dark man, “you’re the person who’s come to show us all how it’s done.”

  “Sir,” Daniel said. And blushed. He felt skinny and insubstantial next to the other man, despite being an inch or two taller. He wanted to say that being there wasn’t his choice, but he thought that Kent already knew that and was still being a dick.

  Suzanne Price had been someone who watched what she ate, and went regularly to the gym. Who had been blessed with a good figure and a pretty face and who had worked hard to keep them. Who was almost 70, but never admitted to more than 59, and was often taken for younger. The reason Daniel was at her post mortem was that she had also been the cousin of the Chief Constable of Clwyd Police.

  Her death had been cruel, but not bloody. She hadn’t been beaten, or disfigured, or tortured, though she did have broken bones. But it must have been painful, cold and lonely, the kind of murder to give the most hardened detectives nightmares. Daniel was as soft as warm butter and as he looked down at the body he hoped that she hadn’t known what was happening, that she hadn’t tried to call for help that never came.

  Daniel was relieved when the pathologist concluded that the woman was probably unconscious when her body had been tipped into the collapsed mine shaft.

  “There’s hardly any sign of struggle - look.”

  They looked, and saw the wrists had been abraded by the tape, but there weren’t any serious cuts or bruises.

  “So what killed her?” Kent’s question was abrupt.

  “Almost certainly hypothermia. There’s also a head injury, probably from the fall. She’d been drinking wine if my nose is any guide, and best guess is she was drugged too. I’m going to check for sleeping tablets mixed with wine.”

  “When did she die?”

  “Early yesterday evening.”

  The pathologist seemed certain of her conclusions, but unwilling to explain how she reached them. Daniel glanced at the mortuary assistant, who rolled her eyes as if to say that’s just how it is here.

  Kent looked at Daniel and turned to leave. Daniel got the message and followed the dark figure out of the mortuary, through miles of hospital corridors, and finally out into the cold grey November day.

  “Do you want to see where they found her?”

  Daniel bit back a snarky response and nodded instead.

  “Bring your own car and follow me.” When Kent saw Daniel’s battered Land Rover his lip curled and Daniel cracked. The old Defender was a classic, a workhorse, and he loved it. It had history, and it didn’t deserve sneers.

  “I was sent here because my bosses thought I might have something to offer,” he said, “If I’m not welcome, you need to contact them, not take it out on me. Sir.”

  “Fair enough. That’s my car.” He pointed to a sleek black Mercedes, parked with absolute precision, equidistant from the white lines on each side. There was no thaw in Kent’s voice, but Daniel thought the emotional temperature might have warmed from permafrost to freezing.

  Kent didn’t try to lose Daniel in the maze of roads leading out of the hospital and onto the motorway, and then up into the Valleys along a concrete lined dual carriageway. It seemed to Daniel that everyone apart from him knew where they were going, and were determined to get there as fast as possible, like balls racing round a pinball machine.

  Off the dual carriageway everything slowed. It was the end of the school day, and the road was one continuous line of stopping and starting, parents picking up children, school buses, traffic lights and people crossing the road. Small houses crowded onto the pavement, windows coated in dust, next to closed shops, boarded up chapels, doorways full of litter. The settlements all ran into each other, rows of terraced houses parallel to the valley bottoms, with unexpected diversions up and down steep and narrow streets, until Daniel lost any sense of rational geography.

  His claustrophobia was eased by the landscape above the villages - bare brown hills among patches of dense woodland. He’d expected some physical signs of the industries that had gone, but the only remnants appeared to be the endless terraces of workers’ housing and the obvious poverty.

  Kent led them through steeper and narrower roads finally stopping by an open gate at the end of a street of terraced stone houses facing each other in the cradle of a valley. There were no parallel streets here, just trees pressing onto the track on the other side of the gate, and the sound of a river from behind the houses to their left. Two schoolgirls let themselves into one of the houses, but otherwise the place was deserted and silent except for the sound of the water.

  Kent got out of his car and came over to Daniel.

  “Bute Street Cwmcoed,” Kent indicated the terraces, “it’s where she lived. Number 10. We’re going up into the woods,”and got back into his car.

  Daniel followed Kent through the gate and up through the forestry until Kent stopped next to a police van. A passage between the trees was outlined with blue and white crime scene tape
, and Daniel followed Kent through the undergrowth, clambering over tree roots until they reached an open space dominated by a scaffolding tripod. A winch cable hung from the tripod over a sinkhole maybe twenty or twenty five feet across. Grasses and ferns tumbled over the sides of the hole, and there were the scars of recent collapses - raw earth and stones bound loosely with white tree roots.

  “I hope she was unconscious,” Daniel said, “because this is horrible. How deep is it?”

  “This bit, not very, but they think it might collapse further. Hence the winch. No one goes down there without being attached. This whole area is undermined.”

  Daniel shuddered. The woods were damp and he felt chilled under his suit and coat. He felt drawn to the hole and simultaneously repelled by it. Images of deep and unmapped shafts opening up beneath his feet ran through his mind until he made himself focus.

  “Who found the body?”

  “Dog walker. They could see something had been dragged through the trees and the dog stood at the top of the shaft barking its head off until the bloke looked in. Or so he says.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  Kent shrugged, “Maybe. No obvious connection with the victim, and he did have a dog, so it could be true.”

  Daniel didn’t understand why Kent was so offhand about a horrible murder in a place that would give anyone the creeps. He tried to put some enthusiasm into his voice.

  “So, the victim, Suzanne Price, what do we know about her, apart from that she’s related to my Chief Constable?”

  “Her boyfriend is from your neck of the woods too,” Kent answered, “Melin Tywyll. Lives somewhere up there and comes to visit on the weekend. So obviously he isn’t here now.”

  This is like pulling teeth.

  “Has he been located?”

  In answer, Kent pulled out his phone and tapped a contact. When someone answered he snapped, “Roy Edwards. Have we found him?” There was a voice and Kent said, “he’s on his way from Melin Tywyll.”

  “Would that be Roy Edwards the builder?”

  “You can come and ask him when he arrives.”

  “In Cardiff?”

  “Of course in bloody Cardiff. The sooner I get away from this shithole, the better.”

  Daniel was spared from answering by a call from over by the winch. A figure in a paper suit was rising from the ground and being pulled to safety at the side of the hole. The figure held out an evidence bag.

  “Keys. Must have fallen out of her pocket.”

  Kent said, “Anything else?”

  “Blood where the body was that’s all.”

  Kent didn’t bother to acknowledge the comment. He took possession of the keys and turned back to leave the clearing. Daniel had no choice but to follow.

  What’s wrong with this picture?

  Daniel was used to a level of informality amongst colleagues who worked together, but this wasn’t informal, this was hostile. Not just from Kent, but from the men by the winch.

  He asked, “Anything from the house-to-house sir?”

  “Jesus, Owen, are you always this bloody perky?”

  “Just trying to do my job sir.”

  “It may be hard for you to believe, but we can manage a bit of simple police work, so let’s have a bit less fucking attitude.”

  “Sir.” Hang on - I’m being respectful, those guys were rude. So how come you’re shouting at me?

  Anger came off Kent in waves. Daniel was hungry, cold, tired, and freaked out by the sinkhole. He’d only been here a couple of hours and he’d already had enough.

  They walked back to the cars in silence. A few yellow and brown leaves drifted down around them, and spikes of dark fungi poked out of the damp earth. Kent’s phone rang and he listened then said,”the boyfriend is waiting at the nick. Cardiff Central. I’ll see you there. Ask at the desk.” Then he got into his car and drove off.

  Daniel’s phone rang as he was climbing into the Land Rover. His sister’s name flashed up. He accepted the call and said, “That bastard can fuck right off.”

  “What bastard? And where the hell are you?”

  “Some village in the Valleys.”

  He told her why he was there, about Kent’s hostility and his horror at the idea of the woman being left to die of cold in the sinkhole.

  “I don’t want to mess this up, Meg, but this guy is pushing all my buttons.”

  “Think about earning the undying gratitude of the Chief Constable,” she said, “and getting the DCI’s job when Jack Connor finally goes.”

  “I’m doing Connor’s job anyway. The case is interesting. It’s the police who are weird.”

  “I diagnose hunger. Get yourself something to eat, set the satnav for the police station and ignore the dickhead.” There was a pause. “Roy Edwards the builder then. You know he’s married to the awful Marian? The one who writes to the paper about how equal marriage is bad for society? His first wife died. They had a bar somewhere - Spain I think, and she died there. Bethan will know all about it, if it is him. Get something to eat before you kill someone.”

  Megan was his twin. She’d rung him because she’d known he needed help. It worked the other way too. He didn’t question it, because that’s just how it had always been.

  Daniel called his sergeant, Bethan Davies, to get all the information she could find about Roy Edwards. Then he set the satnav and followed it back to Cardiff, stopping only for supermarket sandwiches.

  Kent met him at the front desk, and Daniel was struck again by just how good looking the man was. He seemed fractionally more welcoming, but, Daniel thought, that bar is low.

  “So, Owen, you know this Roy Edwards?”

  “If it’s Roy Edwards the builder, then I know of him, sir”

  “It’s him.”

  The interview room could have been in any police station anywhere. A blue carpet with not quite matching walls. Four institutional chairs, two on each side of the table, and a tape recorder. In one of the chairs, a middle aged man in working clothes was waiting for them. His sweatshirt was well washed and bore the logo “Edwards Builders” on the left breast. Roy Edwards had sparse curly hair, a red drinker’s face and a beer belly spilling over the top of his jeans. Daniel recognised him as a familiar face around Melin Tywyll, and greeted him in Welsh without thinking.

  “English please, DI Owen.”

  Great. Yet another way I’ve pissed him off.

  “Thank you for coming Mr Edwards,” said Kent, “we’re looking into the death of Suzanne Price, who I think you knew.”

  Edwards nodded.

  “Could you explain the nature of your relationship with Ms Price?”

  Somehow Kent managed to ask the question without judgement in his voice, as if the relationship could have been entirely innocent. Edwards smoothed his hair away from his forehead.

  “I think you know,” he said.

  “That you were lovers?” Again there was no judgement in Kent’s voice.

  I need to learn how to do that.

  “Suzanne is a very attractive woman. I’m only human.”

  Kent was nodding as if he agreed. He asked whether Edwards’ wife knew of the affair, and about the practicalities, and finally where Edwards had been when they thought Suzanne had been killed. All the time Kent appeared sympathetic to Edwards’ difficulties in juggling a wife and family in north Wales and a mistress at least three hours drive away in the south. The builder’s answers appeared truthful, though Daniel thought he must have learned to be an excellent liar if he spent most weekends in Cwmcoed, leaving his wife in Melin Tywydd.

  Kent turned to Daniel, “have you any questions Inspector?”

  Daniel didn’t know whether he was supposed to say no, but he thought ignore the dickhead, and asked, “Did you have any plans to leave your wife for Ms Price, Mr Edwards?”

  Edwards didn’t answer. Instead he asked his own questions. “Aren’t you Dan and Beti’s boy? Do a lot of running? Did your folks go to Spain in the end?”


  Daniel’s heart sank. Kent was going to love this.

  “Yes, and yes. But could you answer my question please?”

  “It’s a great life out there. I bet they’re loving it aren’t they? I had a bar near Fuengirola. Loved it. Didn’t you win the Melin Tywyll 10k last year?”

  Yes, and I was hoping to win it again this weekend, but I’m here trying to get you to answer a simple question.

  Kent stepped in with the tiniest hint of steel in his voice.

  “My colleague asked whether you had any plans to leave your wife for Suzanne Price.”

  For the first time, Roy Edwards looked embarrassed. “Things were fine as they were. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?”

  “But,”said Kent, “is it possible that Ms Price thought that you might be considering leaving your wife for her?”

  Edwards’ answer of “who knows what women think?” told them the way Edwards’ mind worked.

  Kent looked at Daniel again, and Daniel asked, “One last question Mr Edwards, how did you meet Suzanne Price?”

  “She was there when I was doing some work in Melin Tywyll - for the Chief Constable as it happens. We got talking and, long story short, she asked me to visit and the rest is history, as they say.”

  Daniel was glad of his poker face as Edwards smoothed his hair again, with a smirk on his lips, I’m just a babe magnet boys.

  Kent told Roy Edwards that they’d need to talk to him again, and then beckoned Daniel out of the room.

  “What a fucking creep. And what was all that crap about Spain? And running?”

  “Sir. Edwards and his first wife ran a bar in Spain like he said. He came back when Barbara - his first wife - died. My parents moved to Spain when they retired. Running is just my way of keeping fit.”

  “I hate small towns. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. Sneeze and the whole place catches a cold.”

  The non-judgemental charm was obviously reserved for interviews.