by Howard Marks
‘Isn’t that that singer who jumped off the Severn Bridge?’
Huw was standing behind the man now, leaning an elbow on the bar.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Has someone else been looking for him?’
The man’s eyes were slightly glazed, feverish. His breath smelt stale.
‘If there had been I’m sure I’d have heard about it,’ he said. ‘This is a small place, word would have got around.’
Huw was running his eyes over the man’s well-cut coat.
‘You don’t exactly look like a local.’ The man glanced at the characters in waterproofs and heavy jerseys.
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ he said drily.
‘What brings you down here then?’ Huw asked.
‘The clinic. I’m the new psychiatrist there.’
‘It’s a psychiatric unit?’
‘Just a rehab unit. Part private, part National Health funded.’
‘So you’d know if any celebrities like Face had stayed?’
‘I’d be the first to know,’ he said, smiling. ‘But we tend just to get routine referrals from the local NHS trusts.’
Huw indicated the men at the other end of the bar.
‘When my friend showed the photographs around, the others here weren’t exactly helpful.’
The man motioned Catrin and Huw away from the bar, the sheen of sweat over his face glistening in the half-light. He took out a silver cigarette case, tamping the tip of a cigarette briefly on the case before lighting it. His fingers were trembling slightly.
‘You have to understand,’ he said. ‘The clinic up in the woods is just about the only employer here. Many of the patients stay on after their treatment, living in the community. They’re given work at the clinic. They enjoy the peace and quiet and keep out of anything that smells like trouble.’
He signalled to the barman, who pulled a pint of Felinfoel and slid it along to him. A quick ripple of laughter passed between the men at the bar. Catrin put the photographs away in her bag. She waited for the young doctor to come back with his drink, then pushed the ashtray over to his side of the table.
‘We heard there was some hippie cult here in the Seventies. They were led by a character who looked a bit like Charlie Manson. Anyone like that still around?’
The man smiled thinly, shook his head, tapped a worm of ash into the ashtray.
‘No one like that.’
‘Anyone still here from those times?
‘Not that I know of. But Old Tudor might know.’
‘Old Tudor?’
‘He works part-time as a nurse at the clinic. He’s got one of those New Age shops on the road to the woods. It used to attract the hippie types in the summers. He came back here a couple of years ago. It’s on my way to the clinic, I’ll take you,’ he said.
Outside the wind stung their faces. The man pulled a scarf over his face, eyes narrowed against the frozen grit being blown across the drive. He held out one gloved hand to Huw, then to Catrin, his back turned to the wind.
‘Name’s Doctor Smith by the way, Jonty Smith.’ He laughed briefly, nervously, began to cough. He got into a large pickup, and they followed him past the gift shop with its dusty displays, past the cottages and ruined church. He took a fork left, out along a straight road under an arching tunnel of birches and black alders.
Where the trees thinned there were brief views over the entire island. The place was much larger than it had looked from the shore. Through the fog loomed a long escarpment, an inland cliff face, that seemed almost to cut the island in half on the diagonal, running from south-west to north-east. They were driving along the lower half of the island and there was no obvious way to climb to the higher ground. There might be goat tracks, but it looked inaccessible by car.
Catrin took a pair of binoculars from the glovebox. There was no evidence of any paths up the sheer face. Above she could see only more dense forest and some further rising of the ground hidden by the steep, mist-shrouded cliffs.
About two miles along they came to a lay-by. On either side were thickets of hawthorn and piles of moss-covered logs. Set back from the clearing, a few yards down a frozen track, stood a prefabricated shed. It had been painted black, the twelve signs of the zodiac added in silver and glinting at them through the gloom.
Catrin pulled the car up a few feet short of the shop, which looked deserted. No lights were visible, the door was closed and there was no sign to indicate whether the place was open for business.
‘It looks closed,’ she said.
Smith coughed again, opening his door.
‘To the general public maybe, but Tudor’ll be here. He kips on a folding bed in the stockroom summer and winter. He’ll open up for me.’
The glass in the door was covered with faded papers advertising tarot card, palm and crystal readings. Huw pushed on the door. It was locked, but the movement was enough to cause wind chimes to jangle inside. Catrin peered through the gaps between the posters, saw several candles in tall holders giving out a weak, flickering light.
Smith banged his fist against the door. ‘Open up, Tudor! It’s the fraud squad!’
The man who opened the door to them was perhaps more than six and a half feet tall. He had a mane of long white hair, an extravagant beard, and was wearing the local uniform of waterproofs under a long black cloak. They trooped in, Tudor holding the door open, Huw ushering Catrin in ahead of him into a dark room filled with the scent of the candles.
Smith gave another of his dismissive snorts.
‘Dear, dear. Forgot to pay our electricity bill again?’
Tudor led them back towards some seats by the till.
‘What’s all this about the fraud squad?’ His deep voice betrayed no obvious anxiety.
Smith gestured at the arrays of tarot cards, crystals, bottles of homeopathic oils, dream-catchers, amulets, then at the shelves filled with black magic guides and histories of Celtic mysticism.
‘Everything in this shop is a load of old bollocks, Tudor. We both know it. You’re a bloody fraud, man.’
He barked another laugh, coughed, took out his cigarette case, ignoring the ‘no smoking’ sign that hung behind the till, and busied himself with lighting up. Catrin reached out to shake Tudor’s hand, smiling apologetically.
‘Get many visitors through in the summer?’ she asked.
The old man pulled out the chairs around the low table so they could sit down. ‘A few twitchers, ramblers from Cadw.’ He spoke in a slow, wheezing drawl.
She glanced round the shop, there was a track through the dust from the counter to the table and chairs. Nothing else had been touched for some time. Tudor said nothing more, looking from Huw to the doctor as if checking everyone was comfortable in their seats, then slowly he turned to Catrin again.
‘You remember how it was here in the early Seventies?’ she asked, holding the old man’s gaze. The man was looking to the back of the shed, a faraway look in his eyes. ‘Do you remember a hippie group, a commune that lived in a big house at that time?’
The old man sat down beside the counter. Behind it were pictures of a young teenage girl, tanned with brown cloudy eyes, pretty, his daughter perhaps. The pictures were ringed with fairy-lights and more flickering candles. Draped over the frames was a garland of feathers, shells and small bones, a fetish, like one of the amulets on the shelves, but more elaborate. The girl reminded Catrin a little of the fan she’d seen in a picture in Pryce’s room, but as she looked closer she saw that was all it was: a resemblance, an echo, no more than that. The combination of the girl’s pale skin and thick coal-black hair was common enough in the area.
‘Your daughter?’ she asked. ‘She’s very pretty.’ The old man made a noise that sounded pained. From the counter he had picked up a briar pipe. He had a slight tremor in both his hands.
‘You asked if I remembered a group in a big house,’ he said at last. ‘There were a lot of hippie groups coming through at the time.’
‘But
this one was different, they had money. They didn’t mix much. It was rumoured their leader had relations with all the women in his group.’
Tudor looked down at the floor, gave what seemed a wry smile. ‘Their children dressed alike, the leader was the one with long hair?’ he asked.
Huw nodded. The man pushed his hands under his weatherproofs. ‘Like you said, they kept themselves to themselves,’ he said.
Huw looked across at Catrin, then back to the old man.
‘But they must have come down to the village?’
‘Occasionally a couple of the older ones would come to buy provisions. But they never spoke to the locals or mixed.’
‘You remember what they looked like?’
‘Not really. It’s a long time ago.’
Catrin pulled her chair closer to the old man.
‘You said the children dressed alike, so you must have seen them?’
‘Only from a distance.’
‘But you saw them?’
‘A few times I saw them playing in the wood above the hall, near the place where the villagers used to go to collect firewood.’
‘How did they appear?’
There was a silence. Smith looked as if he was about to say something but Huw held up his hand. It was at least half a minute before the old man spoke again.
‘Well-fed, well-dressed. Not like the other kids that I used to see hanging round with the hippie groups.’
‘And what were they doing when you saw them?’
Catrin watched the man closely as he paused again. She had the sense, as she’d had with Gwen in Bancyfelin, that what he was remembering had unsettled him in some way that he didn’t wish to share.
‘I’d gone to collect hazel in the copses on the ridge,’ he said at last. ‘There’s a view from there down through the ashes into a small glade. The edges are heavily wooded, it’s not easy to see.’
‘But could you see what they were doing?’ Huw asked.
‘They’d always be playing a game, like hunt the thimble, but with a straw doll. That’s all I ever saw them doing there.’
‘So you saw nothing that seemed unusual then?’
The man hesitated for a moment, and Catrin saw his hands were held tight between his thighs. ‘Not really, no.’
‘Either you did or you didn’t,’ said Huw quietly.
‘It was rough, wooded terrain up there, with a ground cover of bracken. Like I said, it was difficult to see.’
‘Could you hear anything?’
‘No, just the occasional shrieking noise.’ The old man was sucking his bottom lip in under his top teeth. ‘The one looking wore some kind of costume. It looked like something home-made, with feathers on the arms.’
Catrin held his gaze. ‘Any adults around?’
‘The leader was there in the background, watching. No one else.’
Tudor had taken the pipe from his pocket, begun to fill it from a beaded pouch of tobacco. Huw took a lighter from his pocket, passed it over to him.
‘We heard they used to live in a large house. Do you know where that was?’
‘That was the hall up in the woods, where the clinic is now.’
The old man pointed up at something in a frame next to the pictures of the young girl. It was an old map which showed the club-like shape of the headland. To the north, some stylised stones marked the site of a cromlech. It hadn’t been visible in the aerial map, so Catrin thought it must now be covered by the trees. Back then the northern part of the island, high above the escarpment, was unpopulated and there was no sign of any track leading from low to high. She wondered if the mapmaker had even visited the high ground. Certainly there was no sign on the map of any habitation there.
Tudor now indicated with his pipe a Celtic cross that marked the site of a large building. It was somewhat isolated, in a thickly wooded area just below the escarpment.
‘But this group were only living on the island for a few years – in the early Seventies. Do you know who owned the hall then?’ Huw asked.
‘The place was derelict for years before the group moved in there.’
‘Someone must have owned it?’
‘The villagers say the same family owned it ever since there’d been an abbey there in medieval times. The Abbey was built beneath the cromlech – they built the religious houses then on the sites sacred to the old religion. After the old family died out it fell into ruin, until the group you’re asking about began to renovate it.’
‘Anyone else left in the area from that time?’
Yet again the old man took his time with his reply.
‘There are one or two I recognise occasionally. They work at the clinic part-time. It’s the only employer here. But I don’t see them out and about much.’
He passed the lighter back to Huw who was standing up now, fastening his jacket. ‘Do they live in the village, these old-timers?’ Huw asked.
Tudor shrugged his broad shoulders, and got up to show them out. Smith had also risen; he seemed in a hurry to be gone now. ‘There’s a café a few hundred yards further up the road,’ he said. ‘That’s where all the workers from the clinic meet after their shifts.’
Smith walked out to his pickup. Shale crunched under his tyres as he revved the engine then moved off fast down the lane.
The grey sky had darkened, the earlier snow had turned to a thin icy rain spotting the window. As the sound of the engine faded everything was silent. Over the windows Catrin noticed heavy reinforced metal blinds. Huw was helping the old man to edge them down. She glanced out past them. For a moment she thought she saw something glowing among the trees. But when she looked again it had vanished among the thick branches.
She went out and stood looking into the trees. The wind had dropped. It was still now. Further along she saw what looked like lights at the bottom of the escarpment, just a narrow glow between the branches. All around it the trees spread in a thick smudge more black than green, without clearings or paths.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Seems like there’s another hut down there.’
Huw was standing at her shoulder. ‘Well, some lights anyway. Could be anything.’
She peered closer but there was nothing more to see, just a thin strip of light. Behind her, old Tudor stood following her gaze out into the trees. Immediately he backed away inside.
She heard the heavy door closing behind them, the rasping of several large locks.
‘Not very friendly is he, all of a sudden,’ Huw said. The rain skated down the windscreen in fat droplets as Catrin turned the car down the lane. In silence she watched the outline of the headland slowly appearing through the sheets of rain as they made their way down again to the village. A shiver passed through her body.
Catrin told the barman she wanted to see all the rooms in the inn before making her choice. They were the only guests, so he had to show them almost a dozen rooms on each floor. She wanted to see the exact layout of the place.
All the ground-floor windows had been fitted with thick burglar bars and a recent alarm system. The only access to the ground floor was through the bar. She decided on two adjoining rooms on the first floor. They were dual-aspect, with windows overlooking both an inner yard, and the front. There were clear sightlines down over the building’s access points.
Catrin then went out and parked by the old-fashioned pump, an area visible from the windows. She chose this particular place, as it was the only area with a light, presumably placed there to deter locals from helping themselves to petrol in the middle of the night.
She told Huw she needed a couple of hours alone in her room. Once she’d closed the door she tried her mobile but there was no reception. Looking around she noticed in the corner one of the earliest generation ADSL points. It was covered with a layer of dust-coated cellophane, which made her wonder if it had ever been in use. She rummaged in her case for a cable, then plugged her Mac in. It was slow, but it worked.
Formal police applications for call listings from telecom ser
vice providers could take several days, sometimes weeks to process. They cost the force several hundred pounds each, more for fast-tracks. She knew she’d be unable to request them without making a formal SPOC application via operations at Cathays Park, and as she was on leave and no longer had pull there this was a non-starter. If she needed them later in any form as admissible evidence she’d jump through the hoops, but for now she knew more direct ways of acquiring the same data.
Within forty minutes she had saved several pages on her screen. The first showed all the in-calls on the phone in the bar during the last nine weeks, the second all the out-calls. A third listing, from the national PAYE database, showed all the employees at the clinic. The only names she recognised were those of the young doctor Smith and the old man from the shop. Tudor Mower he was listed as; the only Tudor, so she presumed it had to be him. He was doing three shifts a week as an assistant nurse in one of the private wards; no more details were given. She saw he’d started there eighteen months previously: this fitted with what the doctor had said about his returning to the area at that time.
On the line in the bar, there had been about sixty calls made during the last nine weeks. She noted the in-call from the photographic shop in Abergwaun made nine days before the photographs had arrived at Huw’s address. Of the remaining calls about twenty-five were to or from the clinic’s switchboard, another thirty-two to or from landlines in outlying villages.
Catrin could see that all but three of the calls had been to or from account holders with the same ten surnames as minor employees at the clinic who worked as cooks, cleaners and junior nurses. This suggested the calls were simply confirming arrival times back home and similar routine domestic matters.
To be sure she called each of the numbers in turn. As the phone was picked up she spoke in a heavy Cardiff accent. ‘I’m a friend of the skinny bloke from Cardiff, you know who I mean.’ In every case she was met with blank incomprehension. It was a fair, but not conclusive, assumption that Rhys had not made or received any of these calls.
This left only the three unaccounted for. All had been in-calls at various hours of the evening in the third of the eight weeks Rhys had been working the case. All three were from the same number. It was a public box in central Cardiff, and when she tried the number the line was out of order.