Dead People by Ewart Hutton

shot, but if I’d managed to open a communication window I might as well try to take advantage of it. ‘From Pentre Fawr Farm.’ I gestured off in the vague direction of where I thought Evans’s place lay.
    He just stared at me expectantly, as if he was still waiting for the question. I decided to bring it closer to home. ‘Do people still trespass on your land?’
    This one got through. ‘Not since I put the fence up,’ he answered. ‘That stopped them talking about taking my land back from me.’ He chuckled.
    ‘Who was that?’
    ‘The son and the daughter and the other one. When the girl was still alive.’
    I assumed that the son and the daughter were the Cogfryn children: Owen and Rose, the dead daughter. ‘The other one?’ I asked.
    ‘The one who was meant to marry her.’
    ‘But she died?’ I prompted.
    He nodded.
    ‘When?’
    He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, I wasn’t there.’ The subject didn’t interest him. He stared at me. Even in the gloom I could see that his expression had turned hopeful. ‘Do you think they’ll come back?’
    ‘Who is that, Mr Gilbert?’
    ‘The lights.’
    I patted him gently on the shoulder. ‘I’m sure they will.’
    I didn’t bother to walk backwards over the bridge after I left him. Perhaps, in hindsight, that was a mistake. It would have saved a lot of grief if I could have seen who was trying to follow me then, before it all went shitty.
    The ballroom at The Fleece had been built in the twenties, and had since functioned as a cinema, a bingo parlour and, once, to the local population’s total mystification, as a Hatha Yoga centre. It had a high, water-stained ceiling, clerestory windows that let in a drab dusty light, and pine floorboards, the lacquered surface brittle and peeling like old nail polish. It felt like the sort of place that could have been commandeered to act as a temporary mortuary for train-wreck victims.
    The circus had got into town early. When I arrived everyone was busy eating the breakfast that David and Sandra had provided. Proper filter coffee, croissants and fruit. I wondered how long this would last.
    Alison Weir, a DC from headquarters, who was to act as collator, waved at me from behind her computer terminal. There were two other male DCs from Carmarthen who were on wary, sideways-nodding terms with me. Emrys Hughes shot me a glance that would have burst a child’s balloon. Beside him three uniformed PCs hovered in their own territorial space, new to this, not yet knowing what was expected of them.
    ‘Have I got a title?’ I asked Alison quietly.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, without having to check the roster. ‘Local Liaison Officer. Impressive, eh?’
    ‘It just means I know how to tell the different ends of a sheep apart.’
    Luckily we had a front lobby door that creaked. So that when Jack Galbraith made his entrance we were all on our feet. I was glad that I was the only one in the room not having to brush crumbs off themselves. I wasn’t glad to see the man standing beside him. Kevin Fletcher. I caught Alison’s sidelong glance at me. She was gauging my reaction. She obviously knew that Kevin and I had a History.
    Jack Galbraith stood by the door and took in the room. His smile was meant to be easy, but we all knew we were under inspection. He nodded towards the table with the breakfast trays. ‘I’m glad to see they’re treating you well.’ We all chuckled dutifully, and felt immediately guilty.
    He moved into the room and took up his stand in front of the display board. Fletcher followed him. ‘Right, as you all know, I am the senior investigating officer. This is Detective Chief Inspector Kevin Fletcher, who has been seconded to us from Metro, and is going to act as my field officer. DCI Fletcher will be in charge of the incident room, and the day-to-day running of the operation.’
    I winced inwardly. The bastard had had yet another promotion. The last I had heard, Fletcher had been a detective inspector. And it was