Cold Remains

by Spedding, Sally;

  “Quick! Something’s wrong!” she yelled again, and during those next few seconds, while finally running in her direction, he knew that getting his best seller off the blocks would be a near-impossible task. That Monty Flynn who’d already plotted his route to fame, would soon be shifting his allegiance elsewhere.

  ***

  He’d never seen a dead human being before. So waxen. So far away and so different from what he’d read in Evil Eyes. Unreal was how he’d describe it. The clean corpse, for a start. The peaceful pose. Betsan Griffiths sat propped up by cushions in a polished, wooden Captain’s chair, as if she’d merely dozed off. The kitchen, too, seemed normal. Full of cookery books of all sizes and ages, with a table set for two and a simmering pan of lamb stew which, according to that Wonderful Wales brochure, the Welsh called ‘cawl.’

  The smell of it made his stomach lurch, so, using the nearby tea towel to cover his fingers, he switched off the cooker. His hands were trembling. Perhaps the early morning Citalopram was to blame. Perhaps not, but he’d already taken two more than prescribed.

  Meanwhile, Helen was leaning over the dead woman, repeatedly and pointlessly checking the pulse in her neck. In her wrist. Smoothing her soft grey curls and, finally, tenderly closing her eyelids. Helen then turned to him, her own eyes shining with tears. “Poor old girl. She must have gone in her sleep. At least it seems she didn’t suffer.”

  “You said the back door was unlocked?” Jason asked as if he’d not heard her.

  “So?” She returned her attention to the dead woman, fiddling with her beige twin-set and the well-pressed rayon slacks, telling her how much she’d be missed, and to rest in peace.

  “Best not to touch anything,” he warned as gently as he could, careful not to let her see his less than manly lips quivering, “just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “Either she opened this back door to someone she knew. Someone coming for lunch, or...”

  “Rubbish! She was out in her garden. There’s not a mark on her. Look.”

  “Wearing slippers? In this weather?”

  Helen stood up as if defeated. He slipped a hand over her heaving shoulders, feeling her bones under her coat. “We should call the cops now,” he said, pulling out his mobile, and was about to go for 999 when she stopped him. “Waste of time. Too many hills and trees. Let’s check the landline phone.”

  “Where is it?”

  Most people he knew kept theirs in the kitchen. But here, there was nothing.

  “Try the lounge,”said Helen, but as soon as she’d clicked open another Suffolk latch, she gasped, gripping on to the door frame. “Oh my God, Jason. Look at this mess! Why would anyone do something so wicked? So destructive?”

  “And vengeful, it seems.” He stood right behind her, smelling her damp hair, taking in the chaos that had turned a once orderly room into a Council Tip. Thinking that maybe more than one perp had been involved. After all, Betsan Griffiths was hardly a lightweight if she’d been moved.

  “She’s done me too much harm. Her and her mouth,” Helen repeated, picking up one smashed ornament after another. Elegant ladies posing, dancing; angels with outspread wings, children and dogs, you name it, but all with their heads broken off.

  “Who said that?” Jason resisted the temptation to open the curtains. Evil Eyes had shown him a few tricks. Leave no trace, for a start.

  “Betsan referring to The Rat. And I believe her. It’s been bugging me ever since, especially how that crone stared after me when I set out for here on Wednesday afternoon.” She examined the long, curly ears of a spaniel’s severed head, taking care not to let its sharp, glazed edges cut her. “She also tried spreading rumours about Betsan, but I made it quite clear I wasn’t interested.”

  “Rumours?”

  “That her mam had bunked off, leaving her so suspicious that any stranger who’d eaten here or taken away something she’d made, came to no good. I don’t know what her mam did, but that next bit’s got to be a foul lie. Betsan liked people.”

  Helen picked up another decapitated head, this time belonging to a golden-haired boy. “These Ladro pieces were her pride and joy, but she’d no idea who’d inherit them after she was gone. Don’t you think that’s a peculiar thing to say? And something else,” she repeated the dead woman’s remark about Gwenno in full, but Jason was more concerned about a different kind of contamination.

  “I’ve already said don’t touch anything,” he snapped. “Sorry, but there may be prints, and you don’t want to be fingered, do you?”

  “Course not. I’m scared.”

  Meanwhile, he was checking out the skirting board behind the newish-looking TV where only an empty hole remained. “No phone line,” he said. “It’s been pulled out. Might have guessed.” He got to his feet, and extracted his mobile. “Worth another shot with 999. At least she’ll be taken care of and the bungalow secured. Dammit,” he snapped again, seeing that same rubbish message flash up. He was about to go outside and try a less sheltered spot, when he suddenly saw a yellowed corner of card poking out from under a carriage clock in the centre of the polished stone mantel- piece. This time, with his jacket cuff covering his thumb and forefinger, pulled it free.

  NANTYBAI PRIMARY SCHOOL

  MONDAY OCTOBER 7TH 1946

  FIRST PRIZE IN THE GENERAL KNOWLEDGE TEST

  is awarded to BETSAN ANWEN GRIFFITHS of Golwg y Mwyn.

  Signed: Lionel A. Hargreaves BA Hons. Headmaster.

  For a moment, he tried imagining the keen, young schoolgirl; what she might have looked like then, and how it had all come to such a sad end. He also wondered about that kitchen table set for two. For herself and another, or... Just then, he spotted fresh damage to the mantelpiece’s edge. He called to Helen still staring at those two photographs. “This is what the figurines must have been bashed against. I just hope she wasn’t made to watch.” He turned to her. “We didn’t see anyone arriving or leaving here, did we?”

  “No. And don’t tell me that ghost made his way over or I’ll freak out.”

  It was then that Jason was aware of solid rain now hitting the roof. He felt hot. Short of air. He stumbled over the porcelain wreckage, back through the kitchen and the dead woman still tidily in place, out into the deluge where that same hill with its ragged top seemed to have swollen to twice its actual size and, if he wasn’t quick, would implode under its own weight, engulfing everything.

  He then realised he wasn’t alone.

  Helen...

  “Get out!” he yelled back at her. “Hurry!”

  But a mighty shotgun blast, like thunder above the rain, drove away his words and a rush of blackbirds from the nearby trees.

  ***

  What lunatic was out shooting in this weather? Jason pulled out his phone again, protecting it with a free hand, remembering what Helen had said about lead smelting. How it had driven some local people mad. While water coursed down his neck, soaking his skin and his clothes under the expensive and useless leather jacket, he dialled 999. Surely, from where he stood by the car at the front of the cottage, he’d get a signal. But no.

  He was just about to chuck the useless thing down on to the slippery grass when his wet ear picked up an all too familiar sound coming through its discreet perforations. A deep sigh like before, then that same haunting plea.

  “Remember me... Please... I beg you... No-one else does and I’m so alone…”

  Helen was standing at the gate, drenched and bewildered. He couldn’t add to her woes. Not now. He shouted into his phone, “Who the Hell is this? Why pick on me?”

  “Hell was my home... You will know. You will know...”

  “Have you got through?” Helen shouted at him. “Please say yes.”

  However, as he shook his head, stuffing the phone back in his inside pocket, he heard a new noise. The heavy stomp of boots on loose stones behind him. He twisted round to see a short, well-built guy he guessed to be in his early seventies, dressed completely in black from h
is bushman’s hat to his knee-high boots. A rifle lay strapped to his right shoulder, while his left supported a long pole to which the legs of some twenty fledglings – rooks, crows or ravens, he couldn’t tell – had been attached by twists of wire. Each small, feathered body bore a clod of dark blood, and from the beak of the most recent target, hung a glistening red strand soon thinned by the rain. Each victim bore the same bare, whitish patch at the base of the beak as the one in his room last night.

  Jason shivered. For the second time that day, his near-empty stomach turned over. As for the guy himself, there was something vaguely familiar about his unshaven face and pinprick eyes that made Jason stare too long. Could this be one of his unborn characters suddenly come to life, toothless and all? Or someone else entirely? Even an older version of that spook on the hill? Whatever. The grizzled stranger was lifting his rifle free of his body. “What you doin’ up here?” he challenged in a thick local accent. “This is my patch, boyo. Understood?”

  Jason’s instinct was to say he’d got lost trying to find the campsite, but the rifle was way too handy for his liking. If he bunked off, Helen would be left in the cottage. In a kitchen still full of knives.

  Sod it.

  “We need help,” he said.

  “We?”

  “My friend. She’s up in that bungalow. Betsan Griffiths has been...”

  The stranger’s eyes switched away from him.

  “Golwg y Mwyn?”

  “Yes. I’m trying to get the police but can’t get a signal.”

  At this, the bird-slayer began to run up the slope; his macabre cargo swaying from side to side as he went, while all Jason could think of was Helen catching sight of him first. “Wait!” he shouted after him, realising he didn’t know the guy’s name. “Wait!”

  No joy.

  Despite his own running skills, he was too slow and, as he neared the dead woman’s little home, even the stinging rain couldn’t disguise the frightened scream that filled his ears.

  ***

  The slain birds lay in a line on the wet stone flags outside the back door. No way was Jason going to let any of them touch his boots.

  From inside, came voices. His and hers.

  “Sorry to give you a fright,” the man was saying to Helen. “I do understand. But I don’t understand this. What’s happened to her?”

  Helen looked more than relieved as Jason pushed his way in. The man, squatting in a pool of his own rainwater, was checking the old woman’s pulse in her wrist.

  “Too late for that, I’m afraid,” Jason ventured, feeling that four people in that small space were definitely a crowd.“We’ve tried.”

  “Betsan’s been my nearest neighbour for years. I can’t just stand by.” The farmer glanced up. Offered his hand in greeting. “Gwilym Price, Cysgod y Deri it is, just below here. Buried my wife two years ago. Why I’m dressed like this. Mustn’t forget, must we?”

  Jason took it, noticing dried blood under the fingernails.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Cancer from the rain it was, see. Nuclear testing in the fifties, then Sellafield. Gets everyone in the end. ‘Cept Betsan.” The farmer straightened up. Used the soles of his boots to spread out the water on the stone floor, and in doing so, rubbed away any intruders’ possible footprints. Jason didn’t dare intervene. Not with that rifle in such close attendance. Nor did he quite believe him.

  “Did you reach the police?” Helen asked, still on edge.

  “Nope.” Tempted for a moment to tell her about that same begging voice. A voice he now realised belonged to a young woman.

  “I’ll go,” said Price. “They know me, see. I’ve caught ’em napping more times than Betsan here made hot dinners. “And what have they done about my best dog that got run over on Wednesday? Give you one guess.” He lowered his head. “Bob and me won all the trials, we did. Local and national. He could round up a herd of bloody monkeys.”

  “So it was him I saw,” said Helen. “What a horrible accident.”

  “That were no accident. Someone round here’s got a grudge. A big grudge. Didn’t run him over proper like. Oh no. Just his back end. He tried dragging himself back home…” His glistening eyes fixed on them both. “Can I trust you to stop here with my rooks?”

  Jason nodded, his mind racing. Never mind the spooky stuff, was the man right? Was something pretty sick going on?

  “Funny thing, I never saw her without her Jesus.” Her neighbour rubbed his wet eyes with his dirty cuff. “So where is it?”

  “Did she go to church?”

  “Off and on. She wasn’t that keen on non-conformism, but she was a good woman. A real good woman. Come the winter, if I’d not had the time to cook, she’d bring down a nice bowl of cawl and a home-made roll for me.” Those small, moist eyes now fixed on the stove. “Looks like there’s cawl here now. And,” glancing at the formica table, where two lots of cutlery, glasses and side plates had been set out, “someone to share it with her.”

  Helen gasped.

  “We never noticed that, did we? And it’s a really obvious clue.”

  “The police,” Jason reminded Gwilym Price, rather than acknowledge he’d been slack. Aware that the man just getting into his stride, had forgotten his offer to call them.

  “No-one had a bad word to say about you,” the rook-killer addressed his dead neighbour, stroking her hair. “Mind you, she wasn’t short of a penny, what with all the cooking she done. Even the pub used her when their generator played up. And as for that campsite...” He turned his gaze on Betsan’s dead body again, while Jason saw the second hand on his watch moving round too fast, and Helen tensing up. “I’ve seen enough death round here in my time, but not one so... so unmarked. There’s no bruise, nothing.”

  “Poison?” Jason suggested, wondering if there might have been cash stored away somewhere. Making amends for his earlier slip-up.

  The farmer shook his head. His hat still darkly in place. “Ever seen what that does to a body? She’d be soiled. Top and bottom. No, seems to me she was suffocated. Gently, mind, like they are in them hospices where my wife ended up. Can see it now. Grabbed from behind. Caught by surprise, and then perhaps a cushion. ‘Cept there don’t appear to be none. Only what she’s sitting on.”

  “Maybe chloroform?” said Jason, recalling the vilest film he’d ever watched. “Ever seen The Vanishing where those young Dutch tourists…?”

  “Don’t!” Helen cried out. “That’s enough!”

  “And my guess is,” Price continued, making for the door, “judging by the number of pigs I’ve dispatched in my time – and pigs is close to humans as you know – Betsan’s only been gone an hour or so.” He eyed the stove. “State of the cawl suggests the same. Cooker was switched on about then too.”

  “Maybe the table’s set like this to be a red herring,” said Helen, and Jason had to acknowledge she wasn’t just a pretty face. A clever but fearful, pretty face.

  “Hurry with that phone call, Mr Price,” he said. “Whoever’s responsible, may still be around. May want us out of the way, too.”

  ***

  On his way out, the farmer turned towards Helen. “By the way, Miss Jenkins, how long is it you’ve been at the asylum?”

  Her mouth fell open. “What?”

  “Heron House.”

  “Why call it that?”

  A short but loaded laugh followed.

  Jason, aware of the stew’s lingering smell, now something quite different, saw Helen’s hand cover her nose as a sly brown stain spread down each leg of the deceased’s rayon slacks and dribbled to the floor.

  “Surely you don’t need me to say. What with you, Miss Jenkins, working there and all. Those were Betsan’s very own words.”

  12.

  Monday 7th October 1946 – 8 a.m.

  Although the too-large black suit he’d worn for young Walter’s funeral now hung in his wardrobe, Lionel decided to continue wearing its matching tie for the remainder of the week. Not only as a mark of respe
ct, but also to remind himself of his mission. He’d spent too many sleepless hours imagining how blame would bring him an empty schoolroom, and now, having shaved and dressed, he glanced at his grandfather’s old pocket watch.

  Eight o’clock.

  News on the wireless of the communist takeover of Bulgaria would have to wait. He was already late.

  ***

  As Lionel opened his front door, the thick morning mist curled around his shoes, obliterating the sight but not the sound of shod hooves stopping by his gate. His pulse quickened as he recalled that unnerving encounter on Saturday, and just as he was about to slam the door shut, a muffled but familiar laugh, reached his ears.

  Of course. What a fool I am. It’s Carol.

  “Only me, Mr Hargreaves,” came her welcome voice. “I know I’m not usually this early, but everything’ll take longer in this lot.”

  Carol Carr, young postwoman extraordinaire, leaned down from her saddle to hand him a substantial bundle of letters. “You’re popular.”

  Not always...

  He took the post aware of her fingers brushing against his. The combined smells of horse sweat and the damp morning assailing his nose. “You watch how you go,” he said and meant it. “This fog’ll be worse up by Nantymwyn.”

  “It’s the oddest thing,” as she patted her chestnut cob’s neck. “But Lucky here hates going to Heron House. Every time, without fail, he digs his heels in outside the gates. Fair wears me out kicking him on, and more than once, I’ve had to dismount and walk up that drive myself.”

  How could he suggest she use a post van instead? During the war, Carol had come south from Shrewsbury to work in the Women’s Timber Corps. He knew she loved being close to nature, whatever the weather, and had been sorry to leave at the end of last year. Even to lose her ‘Lumberjill’ nickname. No time now to dwell upon her strange remark or to tentatively ask her to call in some time next Sunday afternoon for a cup of tea. She had a job to do, and he likewise. Starting in half an hour’s time.

  “Don’t give up here, Mr Hargreaves,” she said out of the blue, before turning her mount round. “I’ve heard folks complain about what happened at your school last week. They’re ignorant and cruel, and should know better.”