Wild People. Ewart Hutton

She lived with her mother at the Home Farm of a big estate called Plas Coch up the hill above the car park. They run it as some kind of religious retreat.’

      ‘It’s strictly secular, from what I heard,’ Bryn corrected.

      ‘Whatever.’ Jack Galbraith shrugged loosely. ‘She had finished school and was intending to go to university in the autumn.’

      I looked at Bryn. ‘Could they have charged her with anything?’

      ‘I’ve talked to some of the people who were there that night. They started mouthing off about an attempted B & E, but when I got them calmed down, all it appears she did was touch the door handle on the camper van. She may have been trying to open it, or she may have been totally innocent. We’ll never know now because the stupid bastards over-reacted.’

      ‘What a fucking waste,’ Jack Galbraith exclaimed. He fluttered the file folder at me. ‘Nothing’s official yet, so don’t celebrate too prematurely, but it’s looking like you’re going to be exonerated. There’s still the coroner’s inquest to get through, and we’re setting up an internal enquiry, but everything I’ve looked at is saying it was an unavoidable accident.’

      ‘Your offside front tyre blew on the bend, which was the worst possible place for it to happen,’ Bryn took over the story. ‘You lost your steering, it would have been impossible to correct it once it started to go. The car took off, cleared a brook beside the road, hit the ground and turned over a couple of times. It looks like Jessie was thrown clear on the first impact.’

      ‘Do they know what caused the puncture?’ I needed the answer to this question for my alternative line of enquiry.

      He shook his head. ‘The tyre shredded. There was no way of piecing it back together to find out. Whatever it was, it caused it to blow big time. The theories are either a sharp stone on the carriageway, or a latent fault in the tyre.’

      Jack Galbraith came back in. ‘You’re fucking lucky, Capaldi, your seat belt saved you.’

      ‘I know, Sir.’

      ‘What’s the long face for then?’

      ‘She was wearing her seat belt, Sir. I saw her put it on. And the rear door was locked.’

      He exchanged a look with Bryn. ‘And we believe you, but something must have happened to change that. Something that was out of your hands.’

      ‘All you can tell the coroner is what you know,’ Bryn said gently.

      ‘How much longer have you got in here?’ Jack Galbraith changed the subject.

      ‘A few more days of observation, unless I have some kind of a relapse.’

      ‘We’re putting you on sick leave,’ Bryn announced.

      ‘You can come back to the bright lights of Carmarthen and lick your wounds. We’ll find you some sort of accommodation,’ Jack Galbraith offered magnanimously.

      I thought about my alternative line of enquiry. ‘Thank you, Sir. Would it be okay to go to Cardiff? I’ve got family there.’

      He shook his head slowly. ‘Cardiff is still out of bounds.’

      ‘Even though I’ll be off active duty, Sir?’

      ‘That makes you even more vulnerable. It’s for your own good. There are a lot of people there who are still clutching sore balls because of you, and would just love to truly fuck you up.’

      I nodded, accepting his protective wisdom. ‘Then, if it’s all right with you, I’ll stay in Dinas, Sir.’

      He frowned in surprise. ‘Jesus, they didn’t say anything about it affecting your brain.’

      ‘I thought you were desperate to get out of there?’ Bryn asked, also surprised.

      I didn’t want to tell them the real reason. That I didn’t want Jack Galbraith being close enough to make me nervous while I considered the alternatives to the official line. ‘I think I want to stay where it’s quiet for a while,’ I explained meekly instead.

      They exchanged another look, managing to hide most of their shared incredulity. They both got up. ‘Just don’t talk to any reporters, Capaldi. Not until this thing has been cleared away.’

      ‘I won’t, Sir.’

      I waited until they had got to the door. ‘Sir …’

      They both turned.

      ‘I’ve been doing some thinking. Do you think that there’s any possibility that it could have been a deliberate set-up? That it wasn’t an accident?’

      I kept it casual, but I needed to know if there was anyone else pursuing this line.

       2

      The coincidences seemed to be just too loaded.

      I had been lying there for days wallowing in guilt and anguish until something in the kick-ass side of my brain took over and said, Wait a minute, stop playing the helpless victim and look at this in another light. A tyre bursts on you, bad news, but it happens. Invariably you pull over to the side of the road, fix the bastard and get your hands dirty. But when the one crucial tyre explodes on a wet surface, at the very worst point on a killer bend and you go flying off the road, you have to start questioning the likelihood of all those factors coming into conjunction without perhaps a little assistance.

      Jack Galbraith turned back to face me. ‘We thought about that.’

      ‘We checked it out. It was definitely an accident,’ Bryn amplified.

      ‘No disrespect, Capaldi, but who would go to all that fucking effort to waste you?’

      Who indeed?

      I racked my brains for people with grudges. Sadly there were plenty of takers. I then factored in the possession of enough intelligence and resources to have come up with a scheme like this that had left no trace, and that narrowed the field down quite considerably. To zero in fact. I could think of no fiendish Professor Moriarty type who I had crossed badly enough in my past.

      But it was occupying me. Keeping my brain engaged. And, more importantly, deflecting my sense of guilt. If someone else had caused this, I could concentrate on retribution rather than morbidity. I could act rather than mope. I was a cop after all. I could use my métier to find out who had been behind it.

      I started by putting a call in to Kevin Fletcher in Cardiff. I had been his mentor when he had first joined the force. We had worked together when we had both been detective sergeants, although he had since risen to the rank of detective chief inspector, while I remained a DS, with the added distinction of now being a disgraced emissary in the boondocks. We didn’t like each other these days, but I reckoned that he owed me one for unintentionally giving his career another upward shunt recently.

      ‘Glyn!’ His tone was ebullient.

      ‘Hi, Kevin, can you talk, or is this a bad time?’

      ‘Absolutely no problemo.’ His voice was raised over a background of clinking glasses and conversations. I could picture him in his element, networking with the movers and the sharks in a swanky boozer. His tone dropped to sympathetic. ‘Are you okay? We heard about the accident. Fucking shame.’

      ‘It’s a terrible thing. And thanks, I’m getting better, but I need a favour, Kevin.’

      The brief silence was like a security grille crashing into place. ‘And I’d love to have you back here working for me, don’t get me wrong. Like a shot, if the decision was mine to make. But it’s a political thing.’ In the background I heard a couple of his cronies laugh, and I wondered what gesture he’d just flashed them. ‘You’re still a raw wound down here. The head honchos wouldn’t consider it.’

      I