Read In Guilty Night for Free Online

extra artillery to help undermine the foundations?’
    ‘We’ve fired warning shots across their bows already. Didn’t do much good.’
    ‘Don’t mix metaphors.’
    ‘Why don’t you go and annoy somebody else?’
    ‘In pain, are you? Well, I did warn you. Did Jack Tuttle say I called? I’ve been thinking about that unusual muscular development, and searching the anatomical tomes …’
    ‘And?’
    ‘… but it was thinking about your arm gave me the clue. Horses and so forth. I’d wager young Arwel did a deal of horse-riding.’
    ‘Funny no one said.’ McKenna tried to light a cigarette without dropping the telephone. ‘It’s the sort of thing people comment about.’
    ‘Do they? I suppose you’d know.’
    ‘Is that the extent of your ordnance?’
    ‘You’ve a nasty tongue, McKenna, even when you’re not in pain,’ Dr Roberts commented. ‘I’ve had a call from the locum who treated Arwel when he was poorly. He complained aboutthe bellyache, about pain when he went to the loo, about this and that and the other, but there was nothing specific except a bit of tenderness in the gut and symptoms of summer ’flu.’
    ‘So what use is that?’
    ‘This guy’s worked with abused kids in a Liverpool hospital, and he thought Arwel showed all the signs. He said it’s to do with general responses and these unspecific physical factors, so he contacted Blodwel with his suspicions, and recommended a full paediatric examination.’
    ‘Who did he tell?’
    ‘Doris Hogg. And before you go off half-cocked, you weren’t told because this kind of thing is a bloody great minefield for the medical profession since the Cleveland fiasco. Arwel was Social Services’ responsibility anyway, and the world and his wife assume a child in care is safe as houses. If the state decides the parents aren’t good enough, then by definition, the state must be better than good.’
     
    Blodwel at night, studded with dim lights, resembled a tall ship run aground in the lee of the hill. Admitted by a young woman clad in pale green overalls, Dewi and McKenna, like thieves come under cover of darkness, were shunted to a long narrow room at the side of the building. She disappeared, offering neither information nor a hot drink to take the chill from their bones.
    Dewi inched back the net curtain and stared at frost-rimed grass and bright sharp stars in an indigo sky. ‘You wouldn’t credit the fog earlier, would you, sir? Gone like it’d never been.’ He scratched the glass with his fingernail. ‘Jack Frost’s out with the graffiti, and it’s so bloody cold in here we’ll be able to see the lies coming out of people’s mouths.’ Letting the curtain fall into place, he wandered around the room, reading newspaper clippings tacked to a large cork wallboard. ‘Mr Hogg receiving the gift of a snooker table from a grateful community,’ he intoned. ‘Mr Hogg similarly receiving the gift of a colour telly. Mr Hogg behind his desk, looking like a smug bastard. Mr Hogg with a bunch of kids, still looking like a smug bastard. I thought children in care weren’t supposed to be identified in the press?’ He moved a little further along. ‘Mr and Mrs Hogg standing by a minibus with “Blodwel” daubed on its side. Mr Hogg outside the front door in a bloody big chair, looking even more like a smug bastard. D’you think he fancies himself King of Wales, like poor Charlie Pierce who keeps getting shut up inDenbigh? I’m surprised there isn’t a picture of Mr Hogg with the sun shining out of his arse.’
    ‘Stop being so bloody negative, and shut up! Someone’s coming.’
    The door opened, and a tiny Yorkshire terrier trotted into the room, shadowed by a stout woman, her body grimly corseted beneath a long pleated skirt and a jumper gaudy with metallic threads, her mouth gaudier still with bright red lipstick. ‘How can I help you?’ She stared at the men, then picked up the dog, fiddling with the red ribbon tied between its