Free Simeon's Bride by Alison G. Taylor Page A

cathedral yard. Had Tatham been a man or a woman? McKenna wondered idly, picturing a goodly Puritan fellow, pounding the pulpit in chapels across the land, intent on saving the lawless Welsh from themselves. And where had it got Tatham? Same place as everyone else in the end: mouldering bones, flesh gone to the worms and grubs. Nothing mattered, McKenna decided. His own little tragedy was nothing, a speck of dust on the winds of time, having no memorial, except in his own heart while he still lived. No one would come this way in a hundred years time and say, ‘Oh, yes, Michael McKenna sat under this tree the day after he told his wife he was leaving her.’ Neither pleasure nor pain would he leave behind him, no green shoots to delight the eye as Tatham had.
    A fat tabby cat crossed the path, stood eyeing McKenna, its pupils tiny slits in the sunshine. He smiled. The cat stared a while longer, then moved on about its mysterious business.
    Pleased with himself for his professional touches at the Pressconference, Jack could not suppress a smile at the memory of television cameras almost constantly focusing on his own face.
    ‘Stop preening,’ Eifion Roberts said. ‘Where’s Michael? He should’ve been there.’
    ‘Gone off somewhere.’
    ‘Stop hedging. What’s happened?’
    ‘Only what you predicted,’ Jack said, relief mingling with the reluctance to talk. ‘He’s told Denise he’s leaving her.’
    ‘Doesn’t let any grass grow under his feet, does he?’ Dr Roberts said admiringly. ‘How d’you know?’
    ‘Denise rang Emma first thing this morning.’
    The pathologist fiddled with the paper clips on Jack’s desk, shoving aside papers and reports to find enough to make a chain.
    ‘Stop that, will you? You’re getting on my nerves,’ Jack said.
    ‘Sorry, SIR!’ Eifion Roberts saluted. ‘Can’t have you upset as well, can we? Where’s McKenna gone off to?’
    ‘I don’t know. He spoke to the superintendent, then disappeared.’
    ‘Oh, well, he’ll turn up. Don’t expect we’ll have any call to go fishing his body out of the Straits,’ the pathologist observed. ‘He’s made of sterner stuff.’
    ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘Suicide. I’m saying Michael’s not likely to do himself in. Won’t throw himself off Menai Bridge, even if things are a bit lousy at the moment.’
    ‘I never for one moment imagined he would!’
    ‘Exactly. I’m agreeing with you,’ Dr Roberts smiled. ‘When you see him, tell him I found a mummified little foetus in poor Rebekah’s tum, will you? Obviously didn’t have any qualms about hanging expectant mums in those days.’
    Unlike the elusive Ms Cheney, McKenna paid six months’ rent by cheque, on a narrow three-storey house set in a terrace on a mountainous street overlooking the city, and bought himself a hiding place, a respite wrapped around with old-fashioned comfort. From his windows, he could look to Puffin Island in the east, to the lego blocks of the new hospital far over to the west. Menai Straits glittered in noonday sunshine, a huge dredger unloading its cargo of sand far away at the old port. Immediately beyond a tiny back garden, the land fell sharply to the back yards of High Street shops, small patchworks where nature ran amok over ancient outbuildings. Ash and rowan trees grew on the slope, their branches dipping and swaying in the wind. A scruffy cat crouched on the slate wall dividing the house from next door, its black and white coat dusty and unkempt.
    Jack wandered back and forth from his office to the general office,badgering Dewi for information the computer could not yield. No one named Allsopp had disappeared anywhere, at any time; nothing was forthcoming about the clothing and belt taken from the dead woman; no one called to claim her as their missing wife or daughter or sister or niece. He fidgeted with files and pieces of paper, and breathed a sigh of relief when McKenna walked through the door.
    ‘You OK, sir?’ Jack