‘I’m going to my gran’s.’
‘Maybe next time,’ he said, stabbing a worm onto the hook and casting the line out as fluidly as he’d brought it in moments ago.
‘What will you do with that?’ I pointed at the fish.
‘Take it home and cook it for my cat.’
‘Don’t you eat them yourself?’
He screwed up his face. ‘Carp, no.’
A moorhen divebombed the surface of the pond and sprayed water into the air. It fell in a perfect arc.
‘This pond appeared by accident, you know.’
I blinked and turned my attention back to the old man. ‘Really?’
‘Quarrymen from Aberthaw hit an underground stream near the railway line, over there, while excavating,’ he said, pointing to the tracks. ‘The water burst through the limestone to create this pond.’
The sunlight reflected on his digital Casio watch-face. ‘I’ve got to go.’
He wrapped the fish in a carrier bag and dumped it in a holdall filled with tackle that was parked on the grass beside his rod and a small fold-out chair. ‘Don’t forget what I said. Ask your mum if you can join me for a bit of fishing sometime. Maybe after school? I’m here every day until six. That’s when my wife expects me home.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘Good manners,’ he said. ‘You were obviously brought up well. Unlike those yobs back there.’ He titled his head towards the trees where between the branches, in the distance, I could see the boys stumbling up the hill in the heat.
I had to cross the field the boys had taken to get to my gran’s. When I reached the withered common crouch, I turned right and passed the school, the newsagent’s, and the pub. I crossed the roundabout and turned left to follow the houses to the stream, careful not to slip off the embankment.
My gran was hanging the washing on the line to dry, stopping to mumble something, her leg twitching as if she was preparing to kick an invisible ball, when she heard the creaking gate. She looked down the steps to where I stood assessing her mood by the clothes she wore and the time it took her to fold the tablecloth over the thin piece of rope and click three pegs onto it from the ones she had attached to her apron. There weren’t any in her hair today.
She waved me forward and squinted at me as she turned my head from side to side, her fingers digging into my jaw. She narrowed her eyes when they fell on mine. ‘You’ve got the devil in you, girl.’
‘Can I have a drink?’
She appraised me, relenting when she gazed up at the fiercely bright sun and sneezed.
I sat cross-legged on the prickly dry lawn that itched my legs while I waited for the beaker of orange squash. She appeared carrying a plate of cheese spread sandwiches, and a bowl of pink wafers. ‘The tap water’s been poisoned again.’
‘How do you know?’
‘There are bubbles in it.’
‘I can drink it without.’
‘Go on then. You can get it yourself. You know where everything is, don’t you?’
‘Yeah.’ I jumped up and headed inside the house. The hallway was cool and dim. I had to step over piles of dirty laundry, stacks of books with their covers ripped off, and food wrappers, to enter the kitchen.
I climbed onto the greasy counter and opened the cupboard door to peer inside. It was where she usually kept the bottle of Kia Ora. The door sprung off its hinges and fell onto a stack of leaflets my mother would have pushed back out through the letterbox. I grabbed the bottle, opened the lid and took several large gulps of the strongly concentrated sugary drink. It stung the back of my throat. I spluttered and spat and after replacing the lid went to put it back into the cupboard, stalling when I found Gran’s medicine – the pills she was supposed to be taking twice a day.
I emptied the last two 5mg tablets of Haloperidol from a blister pack and did the same for the unopened packet of Olanzapine. The last lot she’d collected from the chemist were still in the paper bag at the back of the cupboard, jammed between an old cereal box and some outdated tins of chicken in white wine sauce.
The capsules were easy to crush with a teaspoon on a plate but not so easy to disguise. Unable to find a clean glass I emptied most of the juice from the plastic bottle into the sink, then brushed the powder into it and shook it hard until my arm hurt.
When I returned to the garden Gran was explaining to her neighbour with exaggerated hand gestures how the CIA had her under surveillance.
‘They fly over the house in a silent helicopter. They’ve got brick-penetrating radar that tracks my whereabouts. The lasers send computer signals back to HQ to tell them I’m home.’ She put her hand to her face and snickered. ‘I trick them by leaving the lights on during the day, so they waste fuel looking for me.’ Her face grew solemn. ‘But then they influence my dreams or start stealing my thoughts and implanting them back in wrong when I’m asleep, so I have to stay up all night.’
I held the bottle out to her. ‘Drink this.’
‘I’m not thirsty,’ she said.
‘It’s very hot,’ said the woman, who was snipping away at an overgrown shrub.
‘Yeah, Gran. You don’t want to get dehydrated.’ I pointed at the blue sky.
‘You’re right,’ she squealed. ‘I need to stay fit to fend them off.’ She clapped her hands and ran towards me, grabbed the bottle from my hand, flung the lid onto the grass and glugged it down. Then she spun and hopped into the house.
Her neighbour’s gaze followed.
‘Mum’s picking me up later.’
She nodded and smiled.
BETHAN
Now
I stand inside the porch and stare at Humphrey holding the edge of the car door, waiting for me to leave the house and follow him to the E-Class.
‘We’re not going in that.’
‘The Sprinter’s due its first MOT.’
I scan the grounds. ‘Where is it?’
‘I had the garage collect it this morning.’
‘We’re driving a vehicle with low suspension through steep, winding, single lane roads across a mountain range?’
‘It’s Snowdonia, not Everest. And we’re not off-roading it.’ He senses my fury and lowers his voice. ‘Come on, darling. I want to leave before rush-hour.’
I slam the door behind me, raise my nose to the air and totter along in my heels. The moment I sit he leans into the car and lays a hand on my thigh.
I shove him off me. ‘You’re a fucking liability.’
He straightens, sighs and closes the door. He walks around the car and hesitates before hopping onto the driver’s seat, clipping on his seatbelt and turning the key. The engine starts with a roar, though his foot is barely touching the pedal.
This vehicle is too bottom heavy to tip over, but it might roll down a ravine and into dense woodland. If he’s not wearing a seatbelt, shatters the windscreen with his head or his ribs get crushed into the steering wheel and pierce a lung, he’ll die.
I’m no longer bothered how he’s killed so long as I return home from the holiday cottage alone.
I Google how to deactivate an airbag on an E220 and await my Galaxy S10’s instructions.
*
I stare, silently, through the windscreen at the glacial mountains, most of which are clouded at their tips by thick mist. The ones that aren’t look as though they’re dripping icing from their peaks.
Aside from the sound of the tyres on the asphalt, only the tooting and chugging of a steam train in the distance can be heard. A plume of smoke draws my attention from the tall, blue-grey summits that separate the land from the sky, to the railway. A piece of track poking out of the moorland where nature and industrialisation collide, distracts me long enough that I involuntarily unstiffen my crossed legs and unfurl my hands from the cashmere scarf around my neck that I feel like ripping off to choke Humphrey with.
The sun drops too quickly, leaving streaks of violet and a haze of russet to paint the horizon. We zip past the entrance of a waterfall, leading to a fre
shwater lake, replete with an arched transporter bridge and a set of viaducts. We drive in awe alongside slate villages, between tangled treetops, and past the craggy hillside of a derelict stone-age settlement that is somehow still standing. Humphrey turns off the A-road in Talsarnau, Gwynedd at a coach-house, slows the car to a crawl up a scraggy hillside lane and eventually stops the car outside a barn conversion set several miles off-road, thirty minutes later.
Under an indigo sky dappled with twinkling stars, it looks like a witch’s hut – something from a grim fairy-tale.
My arse has gone numb, my lower spine aches and I’m salivating at the thought of a crisp white wine to slurp while dipping the toasted olive bread into the melted extra-mature Cambrian cheddar we bought in a farm shop during our one and only stop to refuel the tank.
‘Welcome to Bwthyn Glowyr Lan y Dŵr. Waterfront miner’s cottage to you, my Welsh Rose.’
I suck in both cheeks and nibble the spongy tissue there until I almost chew through my own face.
There’s a large ominous structure shadowing a massive hole carved into the earth beneath us. The ripples on the water sparkle from the thin half-circle moon, disguised by heavy black clouds that light their northern edges. ‘I wasn’t expecting it to be so—’
‘Quiet?’
‘Dead.’
As he treads towards the wooden door of the foreboding unlit entrance, his phone pings. Mine vibrates as I exit the car to walk off the pins and needles in my legs, and while I pull it out of the glovebox to read the latest quote of positivity from one of the motivational speakers I follow on Instagram, Humphrey presses his phone to his ear.
At least the place has Wi-Fi.
‘Yes? Ah, great.’ He frowns, then directs his gaze to me. ‘Just a parking light, marvellous. The key’s with Muriel. Park it in the three-way when you’re done, won’t you? Oh? Right. Thank you.’
I guess the van has been delivered home. And by the look in his eyes he’s just been told the rear shelf was full of ready-to-mix cement. It’s a good job I hid the blown fuse between the tongue and lace of my white Rock-stud trainers, packed snugly inside my suitcase, or he might guess who replaced the one inside the Sprinter with a dud.
I wait beside the car boot for Humphrey to collect our cases. The stony path looks too treacherous for my heeled Valentino’s, so I’m not going to risk damaging the wheels of my baby-pink, snake-print Globetrotter by dragging it across the uneven tumble-stone walkway.
I’m expecting him to ask me what I was planning to build with all those bags of cement I’d stacked inside the Sprinter, but I suppose he’s so used to my peculiar interests and artistic indulgences he doesn’t bother.
Inside, the Llanberis cottage set deep in the heart of the Caernarfon valley is as yuppyish as I imagined it would be. The charred wood effect beams that shrink and darken the living room meet at a gold chandelier. The floors throughout are polished oak, and the kitchen is a smart rustic version of a pre-war pantry and diner. My eyes skate over a marble shelved larder, a reclaimed wooden table with copper pans hung above it, and land on an open copy of The Times dated June 21st 2018.
‘When were you last here?’
He leaves both suitcases in front of the door that leads to the utility room. ‘Last summer, before we met.’ His voice sounds strained from the exertion of hauling the heavy items the thirty yards from the car.
‘Who manages the place?’
‘A friend.’
I walk over to the window. There’s a stone-built wall separating a chunk of rock at the end of the half-acre field fronting the cottage. Whatever’s down there, glints silver. ‘What’s that?’
‘The pool.’
‘How deep is it?’
He shrugs. ‘Twenty or thirty feet in the middle.’
At least three people know we’re staying here: the housekeeper, whoever Humphrey tasked with collecting from and delivering the Sprinter to the garage, and the MOT tester at Sinclair’s in Cardiff. The first person that police will suspect if Humphrey decides to try walking on water while drunk late at night is his wife.
Perhaps drowning him isn’t such a good idea.
The bedrooms are either gloomy-looking or too pale. Whoever designed the décor couldn’t decide whether they wanted Edwardian or post-war features. The fireplaces are the main focal points to a mismatch of rooms containing elaborately detailed plaster cornices, stained glass, leaded bay windows, velvet upholstery, dado rails, herringbone designed tiles in glaring red, green, yellow and blue, geometric wallpaper, parquet flooring, art deco ornaments, monochrome cupboard door handles and Clarice Cliff vases.
‘Ours is down the hall.’
The master bedroom has a vaulted ceiling with a central skylight directly above the Georgian bed. A steep set of steps in one corner lead to a mezzanine where there is a Windsor chair and telescope.
‘I didn’t have you down as a star-gazer.’
‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me,’ he winks.
I turn away from his penetrative gaze to avoid witnessing him mentally undress me.
The original furnishings, outdated as they are, seem to fit the old-fashioned property. Yet the contemporary additions give it a complex, bleak vibe.
‘There’s something I’d like to show you,’ he says, steering me to the stairs. We descend along the hallway to the back of the cottage, walk past the utility room, and through a set of French doors to a patio. There is a veranda above us I hadn’t noticed as my eyes flitted towards the windows while opening and hastily closing the doors to peer into the upstairs rooms. Along a passageway there is a raised hot tub with a view of the glade I imagine is impressive in daylight. The acres of undisturbed land, only part of which can be seen from what little light the house projects onto the rich grass makes the existence of the formal gardens redundant.
He points east and puts an arm over my shoulders, leaving a slobbery kiss on my temple as he squeezes me. ‘The sunrise here is one of the best.’
‘I don’t intend to get up early enough to see it.’
‘I’ve planned a little excursion tomorrow. A visit to Dolbadarn Castle followed by a romantic meal at The Heights riverside hotel.’
I paste on a superficial smile and remove his arm from my neck. ‘That sounds lovely.’
He wraps his arm round my waist. ‘Tuesday we’re going to trek through Dinorwic slate quarry. I thought we could check out the museum and miner’s hospital.’
He’s got to go. I can’t feign interest in a trip to a fucking museum long enough to avoid stabbing him with a piece of flint.
He senses my reluctance and holds me tighter. ‘Wednesday, we’re heading for the Caernarfon coastline. We’ll follow the footpath, hike the wildlife trail, see the castle lit up at night.’
‘You’ve written an itinerary without my input.’
‘Anglesey Sea Zoo Thursday. And—’
‘Let’s play it by ear, huh?’ I drag his hand off my hip and recoil as his fingers brush against my thigh.
We eat, watch a film, and as the big hand on the face of the enamelled brass carriage clock aligned centrally to the opulent candlestick holders on either side of the mantle nears 11 p.m., I pour us both a Pinot Noir. I drop one capsule’s worth of Rohypnol into Humphrey’s glass, stir it with a cocktail stick to incubate the clinking, and hand it to him with indifference.
I lay beside him on the sofa, my head on his stomach, feeling the beat of his heart against my arm and his breath on my head. Once his muscles have relaxed, his pulse has slowed, and he begins to snore I switch off the Zanetti Murano parrot lamp and the TV, and head outside, closing the door quietly behind me.
I unlock the car, gritting my teeth from the echoic click of the central locking that sounds louder in the obsidian dusk, and close the driver’s door gently to ensure the parking lights go out in case the glare they cast wakes Humphrey. I flick through the dials on the steering wheel to disable the Tracking Control System on the Electronic Stability Program, to validate
the impression something is amiss with the vehicle in the unfortunate event he survives the fatalistic crash.
DI LOCKE
Then
The Newport Butcher’s method of mutilation was similar to the way in which Jane Doe had been cut up.
His victims had all been between the ages of twenty-five to thirty. He selected them off the streets on impulse. Drove them to a quiet location. Raped them. Hacked them into pieces. Wrapped each body part in a bin liner. And buried them in different locations along the Marches Line that runs south from Manchester to Newport then west to Fishguard harbour.
Each of the women had been stripped of their clothes and possessions before they’d been butchered. Each wrapped segment had been deposited along the disused banks of the south western railway that covers nine miles from Pontypool, through Carleon to Newport East. The only differences were that after decapitating them the Newport Butcher had separated their heads from the rest of their bodies by burying each body part a few feet away from the last so that it was still possible to identify the women. And none so far had been discovered inside a suitcase.
We thought he’d been operating for about a year by then, and believed he’d committed his first murder in 2016. Although we knew it was likely he’d killed before and had honed his craft through practice but until Dr Ward had confirmed our suspicions regarding the weapon used to mutilate the women, we had nothing to prove our theory. But now we suspected the same individual was responsible for Jane Doe’s murder. And when Jones saw that Rick Kiernan’s vehicle had been flagged up on ANPR cameras, close to the crime scenes of two other body dumps, we thought we’d found their killer.
MELANIE
Then
Rough hands scooped me up off the comfy chair where I’d been curled like a foetus into its sunken womb of ripped fabric.
‘Come on, sleepyhead. Time to wake up. Your mother’s here with a car.’ My gran’s sloppy voice roused me, but my numb limbs refused to cooperate with my fuggy head as I was lowered to my feet.
Kiss Me, Kill Me Page 6