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Wednesday lunchtime

The garage was about ten miles from Llanfair, sharing a site with the local farmers’ co-op. It also doubled as the village shop, offering the same range of goods as a much bigger supermarket, though not at supermarket prices. Charlie looked appreciatively at the display of iced doughnuts as he hopped his way to the counter to introduce them and their errand.

“Yeah, we did have someone with a petrol can a few days ago,” the balding middle-aged man behind the counter told them. His name badge read brIAN. “Said her mate had run out about a mile up the road. I told her to go ahead and get a can from the display and fill it up. She had one of those plastic ones.” He waved his arm, and Charlie saw a small display of car necessities: wiper blades, air fresheners, stick-on cup-holders, and fuel cans in both green and black plastic, alongside a much bigger metal jerrycan. “They don’t hold much, but there would be enough to get her mate this far. But they never came. Probably headed for the nearest supermarket petrol station. Silly really, we’re the cheapest round here.”

Eddy asked whether the man could describe the woman with the petrol can. Brian shrugged.

“Lots of make-up is all I can remember. Like one of those Kardashians off the telly. Sorta puffy, painted-on lips and big eyebrows. It was red hot and she said she’d walked a mile, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her. She had a hat on, too. I remember that.”

Faced with this unhelpful description, Charlie asked if there was any CCTV.

“Sure,” Brian said. “Do you want to see it? She’s most probably on there.”

“That would be very helpful, seeing as we’ve come all this way in the pouring rain,” Charlie said, hoping the passive aggressive tone wasn’t coming across. But the man only nodded.

“You’ll have to come round the counter,” he said.

The CCTV screen was smaller than most laptops and divided into six segments. As Charlie watched, the cameras showed a car pulling up by one of the pumps, a figure getting out and opening the petrol cap. It was impossible to tell — on the screen — whether the figure was male or female. Charlie sighed.

“When did the woman come in to buy the petrol?” he asked. “I mean roughly what day and time?”

“I’ll have to have a look through, and I ought to discuss it with the boss,” Brian said. “Excuse me while I serve this gentleman.” The blurred figure on the tiny screen was now standing in front of the counter, credit card in hand. Charlie pulled Eddy aside and spoke quietly.

“This is useless,” he said.

Eddy nodded. “Even if he finds it, it’s probably not going to help. But I suppose we should get it anyway. Just in case.”

“Just in case,” Charlie repeated. He and Eddy waited until the customer left, then made arrangements to talk to the area manager, and for Brian to call them when he’d found the right bit of footage. It could be the same young woman who had bought the hammers. Equally, it could be someone completely different.

Brian’s garage was close to the pub where Huw Jones had claimed to be the night of Unwin’s murder, so Charlie said they’d go there next. The Pelican had a reputation, at least according to Eddy, of being a pick-up joint. “For straights,” he added. “If Huw Jones is hoping to do the dirty on his missus, then the Pelican is exactly where he’d go.”

“A kind of real-life dating site,” Charlie suggested.

“That’s the one,” Eddy said.

From the outside the pub looked pleasant enough, though the gloom and the rain didn’t do much to enhance its charms. Inside, it was all beams, dark panelling, a few semi-private nooks with sofas and low tables, and lots of room at the long bar. A couple were chatting in one of the nooks, and there was another couple at the bar buying drinks. Apart from that, the place was empty. Charlie waited for the couple at the bar to take their drinks to a table and showed the barman his warrant card. He asked if the barman had been working the nights of the two murders. The man nodded.

“We’re trying to check the movements of this man,” Charlie said, showing him a picture of Huw Jones.

The barman nodded again. “Huw, dunno his last name. Comes in a coupla times a week. Chats to whoever’s here. Makes out that he’s up for it with the women, but I don’t think he’s serious.”

“Could you be certain he was here on those two nights?” Charlie asked, but the barman shrugged.

“If he says he was, then probably.”

Eddy asked if the boss was around, or any of the other bar staff who had been working on those nights. The barman grinned and pointed to himself.

“I am the boss, temporary boss anyway. I can look up the rota, see who else was on, but most of them are new. Place has just changed hands. Lots of the old staff don’t like the new owners.”

They left with the names and phone numbers for three other bartenders, but little hope of getting a definitive alibi for Huw Jones. It was still raining--not hard, but persistently enough that Charlie was glad to get back into the car.

“Let me ring Will,” he said, “Maybe he’s getting somewhere, because we surely aren’t.”

Will had been busy. “Jones and company files all its accounts on time, which dodgy businesses almost never do,” he said on the phone. “They make modest profits, don’t make excessive payments to the directors, and invest heavily in property. The directors are Huw Jones, his father and mother, and his wife. Their accountant is local, which could mean they are best mates, and I can’t trust anything they say, or could equally mean that Huw Jones has nothing to hide. My gut feeling, for what it’s worth, is that he’s legit. I looked at the Land Registry as well.”

Charlie and Eddy heard that Huw Jones owned a lot of the town’s real estate, if not as much as the art college, and almost none of it was mortgaged. Jones and his family lived in an enormous house set in an equally enormous garden, with again, no mortgage. “Either I’m missing something, or this guy is both wealthy and prudent,” Will said. “The company could leverage all that property and buy a whole lot more. This doesn’t look like someone in financial trouble.”

It was true. “And there’s no obvious Josh connection,” Charlie said. “He’s too old to have been at school with them. I suppose they might share a hobby — golf or something. His alibi might even be true. On paper, this just doesn’t feel like our guy.”

Eddy nodded in agreement.

“We’ll talk to him again,” Charlie said.

“Mags has already set it up for tomorrow,” Will said. “Huw Jones, Corrine Bailey, and Megan to ask about buying the hammers.”

“Who did she talk to?” Charlie asked.

“Corrine Bailey, I think. She’s the manager.”

And suddenly, it all made sense.

Charlie turned to Eddy. “Get us back to Llanfair as fast as you like. Blues and twos.” He reached for his seatbelt and managed to fasten it before Eddy screeched out of the car park.