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It wouldn’t help with the smell, he knew that. Nothing did.
It was after two o’clock when Charlie got the nod to ring the Pepperdines in Los Angeles. The body, almost certainly Rico, had been removed, and Hector Powell had followed, narrowly missing the gate posts to the car park. He had told Charlie that the body had been moved after death, which he could tell by the settlement of the blood … or something, Charlie didn’t want to look too closely. The pathologist had no theories as to the cause of death, promising only to complete the post-mortem as quickly as possible.
Charlie walked out of the reeking workshop with Hector.
“You know Mal has been sent home?” Hector asked.
Charlie nodded.
“None of my business, of course. I’m only a humble pathologist, but God, Charlie, this whole business stinks, and I don’t just mean our friend back there.”
Charlie didn’t know Hector well, but he was a familiar face. “Have you worked with DCI Ravensbourne before?” he asked. What he wanted to know was can I trust her? Thankfully, Hector got the sub-text.
“I have, and she’s great. The case is in good hands.” He smiled and gave Charlie a pat on the arm, which Charlie found oddly reassuring. “You don’t need to hang around for the next bit,” he said. “Moving this poor chap is not going to be fun. You should ask your scenes of crime bods to look for a tarpaulin, or similar, because they would have needed it to get him here.”
Charlie told Ravensbourne, and soon the forensics teams were crawling over the workshop. When they’d done, Violet would be invited back to see if anything appeared out of place.
Charlie went back to the police station to call Kaylan’s parents, His father had already left for work, but Mrs Sully was at home, and more than willing to talk to a Welsh policeman. Charlie had the feeling that she would have talked to anyone, especially about her son.
“He’s an only, yanno, and that makes them different, don’t you think? No sibs to rub off the corners, my mom used to say, rest her soul. Cancer. Wouldn’t see the doctor. She left him all that money, too much for someone like Kaylan. Defiance. It’s a disorder. He can’t help it. Though I don’t care what he’s done. He’s my child, and I’ll always stand by him.”
Every now and then, Charlie squeezed a question in, but in truth he didn’t need to. The upset caused by Kaylan’s decision to spend his grandmother’s money on studying with Vitruvious was close to the surface. Charlie did manage to establish that there had been contact between Vitruvious and Kaylan before he left Chicago, but in general, Kaylan’s mother seemed to Charlie like a caricature. “Refugees,” she said. “He kept talking about refugees. I told him, we need to keep American jobs for Americans. That’s why President Trump built the wall, you know. You should have a wall. Keep them out.” She blamed “the gays” for something, possibly Covid, and gave him a brief rehearsal of the “great replacement theory” which was apparently a conspiracy to replace white people with people of colour. Charlie wanted to argue but he recognised that it would be a waste of breath. No one who could espouse such nonsense was going to be receptive to a dose of reality. The racist theories were interspersed with Mrs Sully extolling the virtues of the many excellent art colleges in the greater Chicago area. Individually, by name, and in detail. “Except I never knew he was all that good at art, which just goes to show. I thought he’d go into computers, like his poppa. Biggest cyber-security consultants in the mid-west. His teachers said he was good at computers. But he gets an idea in his head, and there’s no shifting it. Last year it was some history person, this year it’s this Vitruvious. Who knows what it will be next year? But that’s kids for you. At least it’s not dressing up in girls’ clothes like my friend Ellie’s boy. Six and wants to go to school in dresses.” After half an hour, it was either end the call or poke a pencil through his own eye.
“Thank you so much for your help, Mrs Sully. I’m afraid I need to go now.”
She was still talking as he hit the red button. He could tick one thing off his list. Kaylan had told him the truth about coming to Llanfair. Charlie doubted the veracity of anything else Kaylan had said.
Charlie made himself a drink before re-dialling the United States. In the bigger office, he could hear Eddy talking on the phone and pecking at his keyboard. He was tempted to see how Eddy was getting on with the fire bomber, then recognised it was another way to put off the inevitable. To his relief, both the Pepperdines were at home, though he realised after dialling that it was very early in the morning.
“Do you have news? Is Rico OK?” Mrs Pepperdine cried as he identified himself.
Charlie took a breath before answering and his hesitation was enough to set all the alarm bells ringing on the other side of the world.
“Is your husband with you, Mrs Pepperdine?” Charlie asked.
A deeper, male voice answered. “Michael Pepperdine here. You’re on loudspeaker. Tell us what’s happening.”
As Charlie said the necessary words, he heard cries and sobs from Mrs Pepperdine, and Michael Pepperdine’s carefully enunciated questions: "Are you sure that it’s Rico? Can we see him? How did he die?" And again, "Are you sure?"
“We have a recent photograph of Rico, and the person”—Charlie was careful not to say body--“we found had a tattoo of a pine tree on his upper arm. We belive that it is Rico, but to be completely certain, we’d be grateful if you could access your son’s dental records.”
He heard “It’s not him, see they aren’t certain,” in a high pitched, despairing voice that cut him like a knife.
Then the deeper voice. “That’s not what he said, Brianna. Can we see our son, detective?” Michael Pepperdine asked.
“Of course, though you may prefer to remember him as he was.” Charlie said, hoping that they would change their minds. The body he had seen was not a fit sight for grieving parents. “You’ll need to make arrangements to get to Wrexham in north Wales. We can help with that.” Charlie paused for a swallow of coffee and another deep breath before the next question from Michael Pepperdine.
“Why is a detective calling? What happened to Rico?”
“We don’t know,” Charlie said, honestly. “There are suspicious circumstances, and as you know, your son had been missing for a week. There will be a post-mortem examination which should tell us more.”
“I knew we should never have let him go! I want my baby …”
Charlie heard the voice of Rico’s mother in the background, and the sound of something smashing, probably crockery. He didn’t have long, and there were things he needed to know.
“I do have a couple of questions, Mr Pepperdine. I know this isn’t a good time, but it would be extremely helpful.”
“Ask.”
