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Prologue
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Slamming the sizzling pizza onto the worktop Sion Edwards made a lunge for the ringing house phone, grabbing it just before it clicked to the answer machine.
“Hey, Jac! How ya doin’?”
He felt with his fingers for the wheeled cutter in the drawer as he held the phone to his ear. It was hard to hear his housemate above the noise of the bar.
“Sorry, mate. I’m not sure I’m gonna make it for the pool game. I’ve not long got back. I need a shower and I haven’t eaten yet… I can’t hear ya, pal? What did you say? Claire’s working tonight?… Oh, okay, I’ll see how I feel. I might come out later on… See ya.”
He placed the receiver back into the cradle, thinking about Claire and how he was going to get her to go out with him. Wondering how many people still used landlines except in these rural parts. Not that he was grumbling. This remote corner of Wales with its green mountains sweeping into the Irish Sea, it wasn’t a bad place to be holed up.
The pizza’s doughy base steamed as he rolled through the molten cheese and the delicious grease-laden pepperoni rounds. Not the healthiest of choices but after six hours of climbing his body was craving carbs.
Today, he’d finally ticked off the big one. The Dervish Slab was every climber’s ultimate challenge. And Sion had picked his route carefully, moving fluidly up the sheer quarry wall, keeping momentum. Except for once. And in that once, his heart had lurched in sheer terror as the slate crumbled away in his fingertips. Grip gone, his toes slipped. A millisecond. It was all it had taken for the ground to come up dizzyingly close as he plunged towards his death.
The area around his ribs was still sore from where he’d jolted to a stop. Thankfully, the iron piton had held firm and he’d found himself dangling in mid-air. Light-headed. Blood and adrenaline pumping furiously, hanging onto life at the end of a rope.
It had been a close one.
Sion took another burning bite.
What was that?
He bristled.
Straining his ears he listened again.
The noise was faint but unexpected all the same.
A little louder now.
The unmistakable hum of a car engine. And a crunching sound too. Tyres on gravel as it neared the cottage.
Had something happened?
His special forces training kicked in like muscle memory. The pizza lay forgotten as Sion automatically plunged himself into darkness.
A split-second later car headlights began pooling onto the window of the kitchen door.
Was it the Scousers? Had they found out?
He willed that from his mind. None of those mad mongrels would ever find him out here.
Who was it, then? Jac’s remote cottage never had social callers.
Keeping low, he stalked up the stairs and into the bedroom for his kit bag and the semi-automatic rifle.
Armed, he crept back down to the kitchen window. Staying in the shadows by the wall he clicked the safety catch and lifted the gun ready to fire.
Using the tip of the barrel he widened the gap in the blinds, then lined up the stationary SUV in the sight. Tracking the shadow of the driver’s head as the door opened, his finger lay poised on the trigger ready to squeeze as they stepped out.
Maureen.
His shoulders slumped, and blowing out a deep breath he dropped the gun and clicked the safety back on.
What was she doing here at this time?
Bounding up the stairs he stashed the gun and returned, flicking the lights on and opening the kitchen door just as her finger pressed the bell.
He tried to look calm even though he didn’t feel it.
His neighbour stood before him; shrunken, grey-haired and dishevelled in the headlights of the truck. The engine was still running.
“Are you alright?”
Pale and hollow-eyed, it was obvious she wasn’t.
“What’s happened?”
“I… I killed him.”
What? Had he heard her right?
It seemed he had.
She looked like she was in shock.
Sion cleared his throat.
“Show me.”
Sion drove her the half-mile back to the farmhouse. Her jaw set firm. Her mouth clamped shut. He hoped it wouldn’t be too gruesome. There was no blood on her.
Everyone knew that Maureen’s husband was an alcoholic. It was how Jac had got to rent the land and the farm cottage when he came out of the army. Glyn wasn’t coping. And from what Sion had witnessed, he was a mean bastard too.
And now Glyn Evans was lying before him, rolled into the recovery position on the kitchen floor.
Holding up his wrist, Sion prayed for a pulse. But the old farmer was gone.
Maureen, a retired nurse knew that already.
Picking the syringe up off the floor, Sion automatically rinsed and pocketed it, together with the empty vials lying discarded on the worktop. He’d dispose of those another time, somewhere far from here.
What was he playing at?
This was a crime scene. And from what he could see, Maureen had killed her husband with a lethal dose of insulin. Even with a defence of diminished responsibility, she was still facing time in jail. Time they both knew Maureen didn’t have.
“He was gonna use the kettle on me.”
Maureen’s words punctured the silence.
“He’s done it to me once before, you know?”
Her eyes met Sion’s.
“Scalded me all down my shoulder.”
“Where did you inject him?”
“Over there.”
She pointed towards the kettle still sitting on its base on the worktop.
She was in shock. It wasn’t what he meant but he let her carry on.
“He came raging into the kitchen when I was making a cuppa. And he’d got that mad look on him. When he gets like that, it usually terrifies me. This time though, I’m not sure why, but something inside me flipped. He made me so bloody angry. I was damned if he was gonna hurt me again. So, I started looking for something to grab, to defend myself with. And then I remembered my insulin in the fridge. I pretended to get the milk out. He was so pissed he never noticed me filling the syringe.
“Maureen? Are you hurt?”
She shook her head.
“When I turned to put the milk down I saw him coming for me, and I held on tight to the needle in my cardigan pocket. He flung me to the floor, and the next thing I remember was him pulling me up by my hair, dragging me towards the kettle. Well, there was no way I was gonna let the old bugger burn me again. God help me. He expected me to pull away, but instead, I rose up and stuck him in the neck with the syringe.”
Sion inspected Glyn’s body. He could see the tiny puncture wound in his neck. A small amount of capillary bleeding had trickled from it but hadn’t marked his clothes.
Sion straightened up and went over to her.
“You need to call the police. Tell them what happened. Everything.”
A sob escaped, and he held her to him feeling her frail frame as she wept silently against his chest.
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
Gently pulling himself free, he held her bony shoulder lightly.
“Things are different these days.”
She stared up at him.
“Sion, don’t pretend I'm not dying. I’m a nurse. I’ve got three months, six tops. What’ll Annie say when she finds out her mam’s a murderer?”
She glanced away.
“I want to spend what time I’ve got left with her. I want her home, Sion. Here with me. Will you help me?”
He considered the situation. What choice did he have?
Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he wet it under the tap. Then, he carefully wiped the blood from Glyn’s neck.
“Alright,” he found himself answering. “You go to bed and I’ll sort it. I’ll hang him up in the shed. First thing tomorrow morning, call the police.”
“Yes…The police.”
He wasn’t sure what was registering.
“What are you going to say to them?”
He raised his voice.
“Maureen? This is important.”
Glyn stared back at them glassy-eyed like a dead fish on the quarry-tiled floor.
“I’ll tell ‘em that I thought he’d gone to The Cross Keys. It’s what he does most nights. And I’ll say how I woke up alone and when he wasn’t asleep on the couch, I checked the sheds.”
“Good. That’ll be fine.”
She sniffed.
“And Annie? Can you get Jac to call her, Sion? Tell her to come home.”
“We’ll sort all that out tomorrow. When the police are here.”
Sion’s piercing blue eyes met hers.
“This, tonight... it’s a very bad thing, there’s no denying that. But I promise to do my best for you.”
“I know you will, love.”
Sion choked back the lump in his throat. It was a mess alright, but he owed it to Maureen. Or was it to his own mother and all the hurt he’d seen as a child and had never been able to stop?
Whatever had made him agree to help, it was past midnight by the time Sion finally got to bed.
And in the lambing shed, hanging from a beam by the same rope that had earlier kept him alive on the rock-face, the corpse of Glyn Evans was dangling in the icy January air.
Chapter 1
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Five Months Later
Sion Edwards fixed his eyes on the bare wall behind the detective’s head. The video camera in the interview room was on but there was nothing to record. He hadn’t said a word. It was how he’d been trained in the special forces. During interrogation, never show even a flicker of a response.
Detective Ellis Roberts began again.
“What I’m interested in is this climbing rope of yours. How did the farmer, your next-door neighbour Glyn Evans get a hold of that rope to kill himself?”
Sion didn’t answer.
“Could he have helped himself to your climbing gear? At the cottage perhaps?”
No answer.
“Did you lend him the rope?”
Nothing.
“Come on, Sion. Let’s get this over with, yeah? What really happened?”
Silence.
“Look, tell us everything that happened that evening in January. We’ll understand. Things happen. Was it an accident?”
The detective sighed.
“For the recording, Sion Edwards refuses to answer the question.”
Sion continued to stare straight ahead.
“Okay. Let’s try again,”
The detective leaned over the desk towards Sion, his voice rising.
“How did you do it, Sion? How did Glyn Evans die? Did you kill him? Kill him, then hang him up on the beam? Or was he alive when you hanged him?”
A war of silence. No eye contact. One minute, three, five.
“For the recording, Sion Edwards refuses to answer the question.”
Fifteen more minutes ticked by. Then Twenty. Now thirty. And still, Sion Edwards stared at the wall, his face fixed in a meditative trance.
The detective slammed his fist onto the desk. “Interview terminated at seven-fifteen pm. Take him back to the cells.”
The detective motioned to the uniformed officer at the door then turned back towards Edwards.
“Let’s see how a night in the cells improves your communication skills.”
Sion stood up without looking at the detective and walked away with the uniformed officer. Hands cuffed behind his back, face impassive.
Draining his coffee Ellis hurled the styrofoam cup at the wall, then rubbed his face. There had to be something more than the rope? All his instinct told him that Sion was involved. But there was nothing in the pathology reports to point to anything other than Glyn Evans committing suicide. The body had been cremated.
Ellis stood up.
And today? How was that connected?
When he’d been called to the hostage situation at The Cross Keys pub earlier that morning. The bar manager had been holding a co-worker, one Claire Williams at knifepoint and he’d slashed her neck badly.
When he got there, the bar manager was already captured, professionally bound up by one Sion Edwards, who’d apparently gone to Claire Williams’ rescue.
He’d gone along with the story at first. But then, Ellis had spotted the gun in Edwards’ possession. And his heart was in his mouth when he then recognised the rope that the bar manager was tied up with. He couldn’t believe it.
Sion Edwards, the knight in shining armour, couldn’t believe it either when he suddenly found himself arrested for murder.
???
The detective inspector stood waiting for Roberts as he returned to his workstation. Things weren’t going well.
“Got a minute?”
Ellis shrugged and sloped down the corridor after him.
“Shut the door.”
The balding inspector sat at his desk, leaning back in his leather chair as Ellis moved a stack of files off the hard plastic seat opposite.
“How long’ve you been out of uniform? Five years?”
“Thereabouts.”
It was seven and this was the first time he’d been called in for ‘a chat’.
Stretching his arms behind his head the D.I. revealed two large stained sweat patches as he wound himself up to give the youngster ‘the talk.’
“Look, Roberts. Real life’s not neat like some detective film. On occasion, we’re forced to work in the grey. The long and short of it Ellis is...”
He tapped his pen on the desk.
“We’re letting Sion Edwards go.”
Ellis cleared his throat. He’d just been told the news. Upstairs had decided it. The case was dropped. Closed.
“‘Course, your instincts were bang on. The farmer, using climbing rope to hang himself, it’s bloody odd, alright.
“So why’re we letting Edwards go, then?”
His boss carried on, oblivious.
“The wife? She died?”
“Yes. Cancer. A few weeks after him.”
“Tragic.”
The D.I. began the tappin
g again.
“Well, it’s best left to powers higher than us.”
He shuffled in his chair, leaning intently across the desk at Ellis.
“You heard of Kingfisher?”
“The National Crime Agency gig? Who hasn’t?”
It had been all over the news and internal memos. In a coordinated dawn raid, hundreds of people affiliated to the Scouser gang had received a wake-up call. Police forces across the country had rammed-in front doors, arrested dealers in their beds, tossed houses in the search for drugs and cash.
“Good result,” Ellis agreed.
“Better than that. You know that the Scousers use kids as mules. Turning drug deals into takeaway deliveries. Tap the bleedin’ app. Snow to go.”
“Sir? But, what are the Scousers doing here?”
“They’re national players these days. And Sion Edwards was a National Crime Agency field operative, our man deep undercover.”
The inspector passed a one-page document to Ellis.
“And his intel triggered all those arrests?”
The inspector looked him in the eye.
“Edwards’ cover’s blown and there’s a big price tag on his head. Which is why every scumbag connected to the Scousers, like that dodgy barman today, are trying to take a pop at him. They want him bad.”
Ellis frowned as he processed the information.
“So, why isn’t he already in witness protection? What’s he doin’ here?”
“He came to get his girl. This… ”
The inspector read the name off his notepad.
“Claire Williams.”
“What? Are they together?”
The inspector grinned.
“Not from what the NCA boys were telling me. Sion was trying his luck.”
Ellis rubbed the back of his neck.
“And now she’s sitting downstairs with stitches down her neck thinking Sion Edwards is a murderer.”
“Something like that,” the detective inspector agreed grimly. “Like I said, it’s a lot messier in real life.”
???
“What d’ya mean you couldn’t collect him?”
Connor O’Dwyer, or Irish as he was known on the street, felt the cold chill of his anger icing up inside him as he listened to their excuses. Sion Edwards should be winging his way to him right now. He wasn’t interested in their pathetic snivelling about him being arrested.
