by Conrad Jones
‘Is there a way around the mountain?’ I asked tiredly.
‘Not without crossing the falls and you can’t do that on a quad,’ he shook his head thoughtfully, ‘you could go down the mountain to the coast road.’
‘No, they’ll have roadblocks everywhere within an hour.’
‘The only other trail leads back to the campsite’
‘I guess I’ll just have to take my chances at the top then,’ I moved towards the quad. ‘Where’s the keys?’
‘The keys are in it.’
‘How much fuel is there?’
‘Not much,’ he shook his head. ‘I normally fill it up at night when I’ve done my log runs. It’ll get you ten miles or so, but you won’t make it that far going up.’
‘Bollocks.’ I sighed beneath my breath.
‘Listen,’ he stepped closer as if not to let the trees hear us. ‘My nan’s place is only a few miles away down the firebreak She’s been dead for a while, but my dad uses it for feeding the sheep in the winter, so he won’t get rid of the place. I could take you there and you could hide out for a while.’
‘Sounds too good to be true.’
‘Her car is still in the barn too.’
‘Hallelujah,’ I said. Maybe someone upstairs was on my side after all. ‘If they find me, tell them that I forced you at gunpoint.’
‘I will,’ he said. ‘Get on; we need to move.’
Bryn fired up the quad and with a throaty growl, the machine moved off quickly down the firebreak.
CHAPTER 24
As we reached the lower slopes, the trees gave way to rolling green fields, criss-crossed by grey stone walls which seemed to go on forever. In the distance, I could see Barmouth, the buildings like miniatures against the startling blue of the sea. A darker blue line on the horizon told me where the sea met the sky. The sun was falling towards the sea and as the breeze blew in my face, it was hard to think that I was the subject of a manhunt. My thoughts ran away with me as the quad made easy going of the tracks and trails.
‘This is it,’ Bryn shouted over the engine noise.
A slate-built farmhouse was nestled into a grassy knoll; two barns and a tall silo to the right of the ivy-covered building. The firebreak ran onto a dirt track which scythed a crescent shaped path from the track to the farm. Although it was an idyllic setting, the dark windows filled me with a sense of foreboding. I’d been living on my instincts for years and had my situation not been so dire, I would never have gone near the abandoned farmhouse. If I was surrounded there, it was a dead end with no way out. That aside, there was something about the farm that worried me. The breeze, which had been refreshing, now chilled me to the bone.
‘Does your dad still use this place regularly?’ I shouted.
‘We use the silo for sheep food in the winter if it snows and he uses one of the barns to slaughter the odd sheep. Most of the animals go to market but he kills some for meat in the camp shop.’
‘What about the house?’
‘Still the same as when my nan was alive, although it’s a bit dusty inside now,’ he pointed to a barn. ‘Her car is in there. My dad started it up a few weeks ago. There’s a generator in the cellar for electric. It’s not too noisy so you should be able to use it.’
‘When is he next due here?’ I asked over the engine noise.
‘I can’t see him coming down here with all that shit going on at the site,’ he shouted as he steered the quad towards the farmhouse. ‘You could take your chances riding across the fields towards Barmouth. No police roadblocks up here.’
The idea appealed to me much more than holing up in the farm, but I would be out in the open and easy to spot from the helicopter. It would take at least an hour to cross the patchwork of fields. If the helicopter climbed to a decent altitude, they would be able to see for miles. I wouldn’t get far before they spotted me. At least in the house they wouldn’t know which direction I’d taken. After forty-eight hours they would have to widen the net so far that I might be able to slip through it. ‘They’d see me before I crossed the first field,’ I looked towards the sea and longed to be there. ‘I’ll hole up here for a while. Tomorrow at least and then I’ll slip away.’
‘I’ll bring you some food later,’ Bryn said. He slowed the quad down and guided it to the rear of the farmhouse. The barns were wooden structures with curved tin roofs. Nettles, thistles, and tall grasses formed a waist high, green border around them.
‘No don’t,’ I replied as we came to a stop near the back door. It had a wooden porch with a sloping slate roof on it. The dark blue gloss was cracked and curled away from the timber revealing the grey undercoat which had been applied decades before. Discoloured net curtains hung in the windows behind grimy glass panes and the gossamer of spiders’ webs glinted from every corner. I didn’t want to look through the glass let alone enter the place. ‘You might be seen, and I need to know that if anyone comes near, they’re looking for me. Best if you just go home and forget that you’ve seen me.’
‘I just wanted to help you,’ he complained. He turned off the engine and waited for me to dismount the quad.
‘You have,’ I said, scanning the mountain behind us for signs of pursuit. Nothing moved, which struck me as strange and there were no birds tweeting. I remembered reading about a new housing estate in Southport where the homeowners noticed that no birds flew into their gardens. The developers had demolished a chicken factory to build the houses and for whatever reason no birds came to the site where millions of their feathered cousins had been slaughtered. Maybe the slaughter of sheep in the barn had the same effect. Whatever it was, it made me shiver inside. ‘You don’t want to be arrested for aiding and abetting a known criminal. That won’t look good on your website.’
‘I suppose.’ He grinned. ‘The keys are under that plant pot. I’ll put the quad in the barn and show you where everything is.’
‘Okay,’ I agreed somewhat reluctantly. I’d been travelling alone for so long that I was uncomfortable having company. On the flipside, I really didn’t want to enter the farmhouse alone. I couldn’t put any rationality behind my concerns; it was just a feeling. I stepped into the porch and moved the terracotta pot which Bryn had pointed to. A filthy swathe of a spider’s webs stretched from the pot to the wall, its maker long since dead. A single mortice lock key lay in the dust. I took one last look around before picking it up. The cold metal felt almost frozen against my skin. A tingle ran through my fingers. I felt that my mind was playing tricks on me, fear and panic conspiring to muddle my thought process. A breeze blew and tugged at my jeans, further adding to the chill which I felt inside.
‘I’ve put the quad out of sight,’ Bryn’s voice made me jump, ‘are you okay?’
‘Yes.’ I nodded and looked for the keyhole. The paint on the door was the same shade of blue as the porch; it was blistered and peeling above the brass footplate. I put the key into the lock and twisted it; it clicked easily without a sound and I pushed the door open and let Bryn go in first. ‘All those police and guns have made me jumpy, that’s all.’ I half joked.
‘You’ll be fine here,’ he said from inside. ‘Proper little home from home. Like I said, it’s not changed a bit since Nan died. I’ll go and switch the generator on.’
Bryn opened a door which I assumed led down to the cellar. I stepped into a long kitchen which had dusty red tiles on the floor, a pine table with four chairs and a wood-burning stove fixed into a brick fireplace. The porcelain sink was yellowed with age and dust particles drifted through the beams of light which managed to penetrate the grimy window. The smell of damp and decay drifted up from the cellar. A new kettle stood next to a box of PG teabags and a jar of nondescript coffee. Their newness looked out of place in the museum like setting. I heard the generator kick into action and then footsteps rising from the blackness. I don’t know why, but I pointed the Mossberg at the cellar doorway. I wasn’t sure what was climbing the stairs and the muscles in my chest constricted trapping the breath in
my body.
‘Let there be light.’ Bryn joked. He saw me pointing the gun and the blood drained from his face. He held up his hands, frightened and startled at the same time. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing,’ I lowered the weapon. ‘I’m sorry. Like I said, I’m just jumpy.’
‘I think I’ve shit my pants,’ he swallowed hard but managed a smile.
‘Sorry.’
‘No worries,’ he pointed to a small white fridge beneath a beige Formica worktop. ‘There’s some long-life milk in there if you want a brew. Cups are in there.’ He nodded towards a Welsh dresser which was fixed to the far wall. Decorative china plates lined the top shelf. ‘You’ll find the keys to her car in the top drawer.’
‘Thanks,’ I said walking over to the dresser. I opened the top drawer and took a key fob which was marked with the VW logo. ‘Best if I keep these on me.’ I glanced at the contents of the drawer. There was a rainbow of cotton bobbins, a card wrapped with fuse wire and an assortment of buttons, pins and needles and strangely, a shotgun cartridge. I picked it up and studied it before closing the drawer.
‘Farmer’s wife,’ Bryn said brightly.
‘What?’
‘Farmer’s wife,’ he gestured to the cartridge. ‘They could shoot the tail off a rabbit if they needed to, but they don’t like loaded guns in the house. Nan always used to unload Granddad’s gun when he came back from shooting and she’d put the shells in the bobbin drawer. It used to drive him demented but she wouldn’t have a loaded gun around.’
I felt embarrassed by his disclosure of life in his grandparents’ home. There was fondness in his voice when he spoke about them. The daylight was fading, and I switched on a light. A low-wattage bulb fizzled into life. Worried by the thought of attracting my pursuers with the light, I walked to the window and pulled a pair of soiled pink curtains closed. I thought about how the day had unfolded and tried to take stock of what I needed to do if I was to maintain my liberty long enough to kill Fabienne Wilder. I had to stay free until Friday. As my pulse rate settled down, I was becoming painfully aware that running blindly into Fabienne’s trap, and I knew that’s what it was, would result in my slow and painful death and nothing more. I had to make a plan. I had to think about my options and then make a rock solid, foolproof, inventive plan, a plan that would end this nightmare and rid the world of Fabienne Wilder.
‘Come on, I’ll show you around.’ Bryn disturbed my thoughts. ‘There’s a spare room still made up at the back of the house. Dad lets the shearers stay here when it’s shearing time. He stays here himself sometimes, misses my nan I think, and it gives him a break from my mum too.’
Bryn walked out of the kitchen into a short hallway. There were two doors on the left, both glossed white which had aged yellow with time. I figured that they were the living room and dining room, a pattern of architecture from yesteryear. I stopped next to each door momentarily, listening and sensing what was on the other side. I could imagine highly patterned floral carpets, velvet curtains, velour suite, and a mishmash of rugs. The mantelpiece above the open coal fires would be cluttered with knick-knacks and memorabilia, brass ornaments and china plates; images taken from the memory of my own grandparents’ homes. I wanted to look at them, but Bryn was already halfway up the stairs. There would be time to explore once he had gone home. I glanced at the pictures, which lined the staircase and hallway, pastel drawings of Conwy, Beaumaris, Chester, York, and various other castles. The carpet was faded and threadbare at the middle of each stair, the fibres at the edges thicker and brighter in colour. A thick layer of dust and grey hair clung to the gaps where the carpet met the skirting boards.
‘Bathroom is there, toilet in there and this is the spare room,’ Bryn gave the guided tour. The spare bedroom had two single beds; both covered in brown satin quilts. Lace trimming decorated the pillow seams, another throwback to a lost generation. The room smelled used and slightly damp, but it was better than the alternatives. It had a claustrophobic feel to it, almost coffin like. I didn’t envisage sleeping like a baby in there, although I appreciated his good intentions.
‘Use anything you need. If you do take her car, leave the keys in it when you’ve finished with it—’ he shrugged ‘—at least I can get it back when they find it. Oh, and will you lock the back door when you leave?’
‘Of course,’ I replied gratefully, ‘we wouldn’t want any criminal types getting in, would we?’
‘You don’t know who is hiding in the woods these days.’
‘Could be murderers on the run,’ I added ironically. ‘Don’t want anyone like that wandering in the back door.’
‘Definitely not.’ He laughed. ‘Nan would go mad if she knew.’
‘I’m very grateful to you,’ I said.
‘I was good mates with Gwillam,’ he lowered his eyes. ‘I don’t care how many of the bastards you shoot.’
‘They’ll get me in the end.’
‘Probably.’
‘No doubt about it.’ I was getting impatient with the chitchat. ‘I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but can you get a mobile phone signal here?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘I’m going to find their leader and I need to do a bit of research on the net before I set off. I need to connect my phone to the net.’ I guessed that at least one of the mobile phones I had would have a browser.
‘I can do better than that,’ he frowned, ‘Nan used to keep in touch with my uncle in Australia on the net. She had a computer in the dining room. Granddad didn’t know how to switch it on, but Nan was all over Facebook to keep tabs on the family.’
‘How come it’s still connected?’
‘You know what it’s like up here when it snows,’ Bryn looked out of the window as he spoke as if imagining the fields covered in a blanket of white powder. ‘If it gets really deep, it’s easier to stay here than risk crossing the mountain. Dad has left it on for convenience’s sake. I know the code.’
‘That’s perfect.’ I smiled. My trepidation about the farm seemed to be melting away slightly. I tried to summon every positive cell in my body to lift me. I had everything that I needed to plan my next move so what could go wrong?
CHAPTER 25
‘The password has been changed.’ He frowned as he tried to enter the login details for the sixth time. He looked confused and a little embarrassed. ‘God knows why he would have changed it.’
‘I’m assuming your dad would be the only one who would change it?’ I looked around the dining room as if the password would jump out at me from somewhere. A drop-leaf table dominated the room, its walnut veneer scarred in places by cup rings. I imagined the argument that the first cup burn would have caused. As predicted, every flat surface was covered in cheap souvenirs. Mementos of a handful of days away from the farm, mixed with tacky presents bought by family and friends returning from their holidays. Holidays for hill farmers of Bryn’s grandparents’ generation were pipe dreams, which only non-farming folk achieved. Still, I suppose receiving a conch seashell from Benidorm was almost as good as being there. A walnut display cabinet held yet more precious tat. ‘Maybe he changed provider or something.’
‘He didn’t mention anything,’ Bryn tried again in vain.
‘Does he make a note of anything?’ I asked, opening a drawer in the roll-top desk that the computer was set up on. The teak desk was a throwback to another time. In contrast, the Dell was a cutting-edge home computer; old and new working in harmony but appearing abhorrent to the eye. I rummaged through pastel coloured pads of post-it notes and pencils but didn’t see anything of use. ‘Check the other drawer.’
‘Sorry about this.’ He sighed as he opened the drawer on the other side.
‘What was it before?’
‘What?’
‘The password.’
‘Password.’
‘That figures.’ I nodded. ‘Easy for your nan to remember.’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s on that pad?’
Bryn pu
lled an A5 pad from the drawer. The front page was covered in a scrawl that made no obvious sense. He flicked through a couple of pages, which contained various dates written in black pen but nothing that looked like a password. I scanned the dates which meant nothing to me and turned another page; the rest of the pad was blank all the way through.
‘Does he have a password for the campsite computer?’
‘Cantona-2468.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘He’s a United fan.’
‘You sure?’ I asked sarcastically.
‘He’s always used that password.’ Bryn smiled.
‘Try it.’
‘He’s always been a big United fan, but I don’t ever recall him going to see a game live, armchair fan,’ Bryn said typing. ‘No, it doesn’t work.’
‘Try Oli with the same numbers.’ I took a stab in the dark with the new Manchester United manager.
‘Nope.’ He shook his head.
‘What about Pogba?’
‘Nope.’
‘Marcus Rashford?’
‘Nope.’
‘RVP?’
‘Nope.’
‘Rooney?’
‘Nope.’
‘I give up.’ I was becoming impatient. ‘Unless you can think of something else, I’ll use one of the phones.’
Bryn typed in three or four names in succession, his mother’s name, his sister’s name, his granddad’s name and then his grandmother’s. ‘We’re in.’ He held out his hand to high five. I reluctantly slapped it. ‘Now then, what do you need to look at?’
‘It’s really best if you don’t know that, Bryn,’ I grimaced. ‘If the police do realise that I’ve been here, then I can guarantee that the Niners will find out and they’ll both want to know where I’m heading. If you don’t know, then you can’t tell them.’
‘I wouldn’t tell them.’ He sounded offended.
‘When you’ve been on the run as long as I have, you learn not to trust anything to other people or fate.’ I tried to soften the blow. ‘Trust me, it’s for the best.’
‘I understand.’