around the collar as he visualized Mrs. Williams lecturing the D.C.I. He could imagine the old man’s remarks only too clearly. “It’s all part of the job, you know. If something comes up, then I have to be on duty.”
“I suppose you’re still looking into that poor man burned in the fire. Do they know who he was yet?”
“Not yet,” Evan said.
“But I heard that Barry-the-Bucket found his car for you. A rental car, they say it was, not a local at all. Diolch am hynny for that. I mean, you expect foreigners to go around killing people, don’t you?”
“Not usually,” Evan muttered as he followed her into the kitchen. An appetizing smell of roast lamb and onions was coming from the oven. A less appetizing smell of overcooked cabbage wafted from the stovetop.
Evan sat and let Mrs. Williams put a heaped plate in front of him, but for once he didn’t have much appetite. The D.I.’s interview with Madame Yvette had left him upset and confused. He knew that everything pointed to her guilt, or at least to her involvement, but he didn’t want to believe that she was capable of a crime. Would a woman who was contemplating a major crime actually invite intimacy with a policeman, he wondered. What if he’d taken her up on her offer and they’d become romantically involved?
Then another, more chilling, thought came into his head. It was possible that the entire seduction was deliberate. Maybe she was just testing the local police presence to see what she was up against and what chance she had of getting away with murder.
Mrs. Williams tut-tutted a lot as she took away his half-eaten meal. “I know it was overdone tonight, Mr. Evans, but I tried my best. Is there something else I could get you instead?”
“No, nothing, thank you, Mrs. Williams. It wasn’t your food, I promise you. I’ve just got too much on my mind.”
“Is there nothing else you fancy, then? A boiled egg or two? Some welsh rarebit? A slice of my bara brith?”
Evan smiled at her. “I’m not about to starve to death, Mrs. Williams.”
But she was still shaking her head. “That’s what comes of working you too hard. Look at you, so exhausted you can’t even lift good food to your mouth. It’s not right, that it isn’t.”
At that moment the phone rang.
“Dear me now, there it goes again. Not a moment’s peace.” She bustled down the hall to the telephone.
“Yes, he’s here, but he’s already had a long day and he needs his rest,” Evan heard her saying before he managed to politely wrest the phone away from her.
“Evans here.”
He heard a familiar chuckle on the other end of the line. “I’m glad to see you’re being well taken care of, boyo,” Watkins said. “Got you tucked up with a hot water bottle and a nice cup of cocoa, has she?”
“Give over, Sarge,” Evan began but Watkins went on. “You wait until you’re married, boyo. I pity the poor girl that gets you. Spoiled rotten, that’s what you are.”
“Did you call just to tell me that, or have you got something important to say?”
“First I wanted to hear how the D.I.’s interview went. Did he manage to make her break down and confess, then?”
“He didn’t manage to get anywhere with her,” Evan said. “She stuck to the same story. She swears that she was alone in the place and she woke to smell smoke. She’s no idea who the man could have been. She also swears she never saw him before that night.”
“It could all be true, of course,” Watkins said. “If this is in some way connected to the importation of drugs, then she could have been instructed to open a restaurant and the bloke who got himself cremated could have been a contact whom she’d never seen before.”
“And he could have run afoul of a rival gang,” Evan suggested, he realized he was still trying to create scenarios in which Yvette was innocent of murder.
“You’ve got her prints and all her particulars now, haven’t you? Well, that’s a start. Bring them down first thing in the morning, will you? Our little computer whiz is going to scan them and send them across to the French police. They’ll do a match-up on their computer and by the end of tomorrow, we’ll know if she has a record.”
“You’ll probably find tomorrow is a public holiday in France,” Evan commented dryly. “They seem to have at least one a week.”
Watkins chuckled.