Evan and Elle - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,1

evening. Snowdon and her sister peaks were already black silhouettes against a clear pink sky. The last swallows swooped overhead, ready to fly south. Below him the village of Llanfair lay nestled in an autumnal haze. Evan paused and sniffed the smell of wood smoke with satisfaction—so different from the smell of the coal fires he remembered from the cottage of his early childhood. That had been an acrid smell that clung to the nostrils and sent him to bed with bronchitis every winter. Now most of the cottages had radiators and it had become a status symbol to have a wood-burning fireplace.

It had been another glorious day—the latest of a prolonged Indian summer that people were already calling a drought. Of course one week without rain counted as a drought in North Wales. Evan could feel the windburn on his face, the result of a long day’s climbing on Glyder Fawr, the peak across the valley from Snowdon. His sore muscles were beginning to remind him that he was no longer in climbing condition. There never seemed to be time for weekend climbs these days. His job as community police officer in Llanfair couldn’t exactly be described as strenuous, but he found it hard to say no to the constant stream of volunteer projects.

And then, of course, there was Bronwen. The young village schoolteacher shared his love of the outdoors and expected to share his weekends. Not that he objected to spending his free time with Bronwen, but it meant that he hadn’t done any serious climbing in a while and he missed it.

His corduroy trouser legs swished through dying bracken as he continued down the mountain. To his right the dark square of a Norwegian Spruce plantation broke the smooth sweep of the pastures. Evan looked at it with distaste. Another ugly blot on the landscape, like the Everest Inn, Evan thought. Nobody asked the locals before they came in and planted their Christmas trees!

Lights were coming on in Llanfair. He’d better hurry if he wanted to get back before dark. Discreet floodlights already outlined the monstrous shape of the Everest Inn, perched, like an overgrown Swiss chalet, at the top of the pass. Like the rest of the villagers he felt that it looked completely out of place on a Welsh mountainside.

The village itself was a poorly lit straggle of cottages except for the Red Dragon pub. Harry-the-Pub had invested in a floodlight this summer, now that more tourists were coming to Llanfair. Not everybody was in favor of a floodlit pub sign. The two ministers of Chapel Bethel and Chapel Beulah, usually deadly enemies, had teamed up for once to denounce this brazen advertisement of the demon alcohol—especially when lit on the Sabbath. Evans-the-Meat had gone one step further and lodged an official complaint, saying that the light was a public nuisance and shone directly into his bedroom. The joke around Llanfair was that Evansthe-Meat’s system couldn’t take the shock of seeing Mrs. Evans-the-Meat in her face cream and curlers. But nobody else had complained. In fact some people felt that the extra light had long been needed on the dark village street.

Sheep scattered at Evan’s approach and the sound of their bleating echoed across the valley. Now that the sun had gone down, a cold wind was blowing from the Atlantic. It sighed through the grass, rattled the dry bracken and moaned through the crags. Suddenly Evan felt a tension invading the tranquil scene. With his fine-tuned senses, he was almost certain that he was being watched. He stopped and looked around.

He heard the splashing of the young stream close by and the distant drone of a car as it climbed the pass. The dark shape of a ruined sheep byre loomed to his right. He peered in that direction, imagining he saw a fleeting movement. His torch was in his pack but he didn’t want to stop and retrieve it now—not when a pint of beer in the Red Dragon was calling. If anyone was sheltering up on the mountain, it was probably nothing more than a passing tramp or a courting couple from the village, which would explain the tension and watchfulness he sensed.

He had only gone a few more paces when he heard the tread of boots on the path close behind him. He spun around.

“Noswaith dda. Evening, Constable Evans,” a deep voice called.

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Owens,” Evan breathed a sigh of relief as the farmer caught up with him. “You’re