“You’ll have a cup of tea?” suggested Gwilym Price who’d recovered his rifle and a battered copy of Farmers’ Weekly.
“Brilliant. Thanks.” Yet he walked towards that immaculate new gate as if his confession and Helen’s bombshell about Monty Flynn and his writers’ courses still weighed him down. The lying git. He’d be getting a refund the moment the Irishman stepped over Heron House’s doorstep.
Gwilym Price unlocked the farm gate’s padlock and pulled it open, but Jason held him back. “Please,” he urged. “What I’ve just told you was just between us, OK? I don’t want the ‘pervert’ word on my CV.”
The other man’s mouth stretched into a smile as he indicated the two tall chimneys poking through the distant foliage. “It’s not you who’s perverted. Remember that.”
Once inside the farmhouse, he carried a spare chair into the spotless kitchen. A space devoid of any woman’s touch, observed Jason, warming his butt against the old cream-coloured Aga. He noticed an empty dog basket and the pine Welsh dresser opposite, laden not with fancy plates and trinkets but photos, ranging from sepia to bright colour, of an attractive woman at various stages of her life. A woman whose useful years on earth had ended with Llyr Davies.
He left the Aga’s warmth to study the pictures in close up. A typical land girl posing with a rake. Next, a postmistress astride her sturdy horse, and finally her marriage to Gwilym, ten years younger. Not that he looked it, with his brooding looks. Those serious Welsh eyes.
“Who’s that?” Jason pointed at a smaller image of an equally serious young man who’d obviously moved before the camera’s shutter had come down. His dark form had blurred; and was that St. Barnabas’ Church’s delicate bell tower lurking in the background? Something about him seemed familiar.
“That’s uncle Robert,” said the widower filling Jason’s Cymru mug and its tea bag with boiling water. “A true non-conformist, like the church who paid him.” He then passed Jason an already opened packet of chocolate digestives. “I’ve had this psychical research society wanting to pick my brains about him. Do some digging. But I told them to bugger off and leave things be.” He set down his mug, picked up his and Jason’s uneaten biscuits and returned them to the packet. “Robert often comes to me, you know. Whether I’m asleep or awake, makes no difference to him. He pulls at my arms, breathes his cold breath on my neck. Begs me to find her. His Margiad. Carol thought I was going doolally. Told me to get help. But it’s not me that needs help. It’s Robert.”
A persistent tremor passed through Jason’s body. His hands seemed sealed like ice to a rock around his mug.
“He sings that same William Williams hymn over and over like some old record: ‘O’er those gloomy hills of darkness, look my soul be still, and gaze...” Gwilym Price’s singing voice was more like a death rattle.
“Why?”
“For consolation, I suppose. He’d heard she’d gone off to London to start a new life, you know the sort of thing. Like you coming all the way here. But deep in his heart he didn’t believe a word of it. I remember him coming over one Sunday after church, just after the Headmaster had disappeared. Early November it was. 1946. I was only nine at the time, but I’d never seen a grown man cry like that. Nor since. Grieving for both of them he was. Carol had been upset too but I never probed too much.”
“What did Robert do then?” Jason glanced out at the sombre sky beyond the window. At the rickety line of trees along the brow of the hill opposite. He tried recalling that Headmaster’s name as the other man shrugged.
“We never found out. The Christmas Eve carol concert was the last time anyone heard him play the organ. Not long afterwards, Beynon ‘The Shop,’ who’d been in the congregation, recognised him trudging through the snow along the road to Llandovery. Suitcase and all. Sounds of a scuffle then, he said, but no proof, mind, except for a mess of footprints. “Good riddance, conchie,” we’d heard people say, but for us – what was left of his family – him disappearing like that was nothing but a worry. My mam tried getting the police involved, but they just shrugged their shoulders.” He looked at Jason. “Nothing’s changed, has it?”
“Nope. And Helen’s already seen his ghost twice up by the old lead workings. Including yesterday when we were together. He seemed to be waiting for something or someone. Dressed all in black.”
“Margiad, like I said. Sure to be.”
“But definitely no singing.”
“Saves that for me, then.”
Gwilym Price stood up. “Sixty-two years of unrest have passed since that Christmas. Too many of the living still draw breath who know the truth of what really happened to him and Margiad.” He regarded Jason with a question clouding his old eyes. “Are you up for helping me get to the bottom of it all?”
For a panicked moment, Jason thought about Helen. The thriller he’d planned to write. ‘Thriller’ now a faint, feeble word for another time, another life.
“OK,” Jason said.
“Whatever it takes?” The widower came over, clamped a hand on his shoulder. “Getting those freaks in the asylum to talk? And their son who shot all the herons?”
“Llyr?”
“Still in short trousers he was. All hushed up and I never found out till after Carol...” He paused to pick up his rifle and check the barrel. Jason gave it a wide berth. “We only gave Llyr work to keep him out of more trouble, but he got sent away, just like Margiad’s young brother, Charles. So Betsan says. Poor sod he was. No wonder he’s just topped himself.”
“Is that what you really think?”
“What else, given his background?”
“Did you ever see him around the place?”
“Never. Nor Betsan nor Uncle Robert.”
“If it is murder and he’d been left Heron House…”
“Answer my question,” Gwilym said.
“You’re on,” Jason replied.
They shook hands on it, and once the determined rook-killer had locked up and accompanied him out into the thickening drizzle on to the track leading past Betsan’s taped-up bungalow, towards the old mine, Jason added his own lengthening list of unexplained occurrences. Beginning with Margiad Pitt-Rose’s invasive demands, and ending with those four portly men he’d glimpsed by the swimming pool.
***
The whine of saws and distant quad bikes accompanied them both up the hill via a different route Jason had taken with Helen, on to more boggy ground, bristling with fan-like reeds. Here, rough-woolled sheep scattered in fear. That dead ewe and lamb now all gone. He saw how the vast crescent of scrubby hillside darkened by pines, harboured nothing but dereliction.
Neither attempted to speak above the din of the forest’s machinery and when, for a moment it ceased, came the tinkling sound of water, so pure, so calming, Jason stopped to listen. He also had the oddest sensation they were being watched and that somehow, his life, so far like a rudderless boat, was being guided to shore.
“There’s something else I’ve not mentioned.” Jason broke the silence, needing this relative stranger’s take on things. “Helen told me Monty Flynn only advertised the writing course to get more company at Heron House. Scared of the Davieses apparently. So why hasn’t he left? Doesn’t make sense.”
Silence.
Puzzled, he followed Gwilym Price up on to the now familiar sloping track, whose wet stones had become embedded in fudge-coloured pools of mud. Hard to avoid them at such a pace, as though his companion had suddenly found his second wind. A purpose.
“This where you saw him?” Gwilym asked without looking round. Still not answering that question about Monty Flynn.
“Robert?”
“Who else do I mean?” Gwilym then paused, turned his glazed eyes towards Jason. “Look, son, I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that leprechaun. No-one has the faintest why he ever came here, or why he’s hung on. As for his fellow inmates...” he lifted his rifle from his shoulder and took a pot shot at something small and black flying over a copse of straggly willows
.
He missed.
“But with Charles Pitt-Rose gone, you wait. Heron House was his after his da died. Common knowledge, and when the shit hits the fan, that’s when I’ll act.”
Gwilym Price parked himself on one of a line of stones forming the entrance to the old workings and, lifting the front brim of his hat off his forehead, pointed towards the spoil heaps, blue-grey in the drizzle. “You take yourself over there by that adit you mentioned. If you spot anything unusual, just tilt your head to the right so I can see. Understood? They say the camera never lies.”
Gwilym pulled out a small digital job from inside his coat pocket and fiddled with the telescopic lens while, for the second time that day, Jason walked on, the same way he’d come with Helen, until the different levels of spoil and scree now faced him, littered with disconnected walls and random blocks of crumbling buildings. The adit’s mean, black mouth still all too visible, but this time was jammed open with a length of timber. Someone else had been here and done that. But who? Why? For a moment, fear whispered to him as he repositioned himself to face the farmer.
Click.
“Stay there,” shouted Gwilym. “Don’t move!”
One minute, then two, three, four, seemed more like a week in the perpetual soft soak of drizzle. And then, just as Jason was about to desert his post, he noticed a movement alongside the derelict engine house’s nearest corner. A moving shadow solidifying inch by inch into what he realised was the young man in black. This time however, he carried an oar dripping dark weeds. Not only that, but he was proceeding towards Jason over the ravaged ground with that oar now raised to attack.
No time to obey Gwilym’s instructions. He must move. Quick.
“What’s up?” barked his companion.
“I’m not staying to find out. Come on,” Jason said.
But the farmer with his own agenda, held the digital camera steady as the oncoming figure came closer, closer. Two mouldy sockets instead of eyes. The mouth a bleached, puckered wound.
“Hurry!” yelled Jason. “For Chrissake!” Yet what was his problem? How could a mere mirage present any danger? But mirages didn’t speak. Or did they?
Yes.
“This is my place. Lle fi,” came a surprisingly strong, young man’s voice. “You and Gwilym, are you listening?” he said. “Leave it be.”
By now, the farmer had shifted from his perch, camera gone, rifle cocked, to face his accuser. “You’re guarding Margiad, is it?” Gwilym began in a non-threatening tone. “You can tell me, Robert. We were always close, weren’t we? You and your little nephew, Gwilym. Remember?”
However, the spectre remained motionless and silent; that loaded oar ready to strike. Jason’s heart seemed to stop because water – brown, muddy water – was leaking from that now gaping mouth. Next came the gurgle of bubbles that were nothing to do with the nearby stream. Then a shot. And another, coming from a different direction, further away. The forestry, Jason assumed. Rooks, pigeons, whatever.
“C’mon!” Jason yelled again, then began to run, faster than he’d done in months, stumbling, slithering away from the eerie past. The farmer could take care of himself, he reasoned. At least he was armed. He’d given him every chance to leave, and then, just as Jason finally reached Heron House’s open iron gates, saw a mud-lined, beaten-up dark blue Ford Escort parked on the drive.
Immediately, something about it felt wrong and with an ever-increasing sense of danger, he quickened his pace.
32.
Sunday 5th April 2009 – 4.15 p.m.
As soon as they’d left Hurst Crescent, Helen’s latest enemy made a short phone call to someone she couldn’t quite hear, then led her by the arm back to the car.
“You humiliated me back there,” Mr Flynn snarled. “Any more of that and you’ll regret it. Understood? That Jew must be laughing all the way to the bank. I’m still three hundred quid worse off and Llyr Pitt-Rose could be ruling the fucking roost.”
So that’s what it’s all about?
Helen forgot to close her mouth as they swung into Parkway heading east for Islington, going way too fast. She’d never heard him swear so much. Her driver had been left a derisory amount while Llyr Pitt-Rose could legally lay claim to a fortune. Could this cuckoo, with prior knowledge of this will and his status as a Pitt-Rose, have killed the chief beneficiary rather than wait his turn?
“Surely it’s more than a coincidence Aunty Betsan being dead too,” she ventured. “’Specially as Foundation Face had just glossed over it and why she’d benefited.”
“You’ve poked your nose in enough. Just leave it to the cops.”
And then, with another lurch of her aching stomach, Helen realised that hadn’t he too, been hoping for the big windfall? Why else set off for London pretty sharpish yesterday morning before she and Jason had found the poor woman? Why so gutted in Dee Salomon’s office?
More traffic lights, office blocks and the revamped King’s Cross giving way to residential streets and chestnut trees too severely pruned. Perhaps like those at Heron House, they’d also been diseased.
And then, like a sly, cold breeze, came the thought that if the angry man next to her had killed Charles Pitt-Rose, the thug might be next. Even herself...
“To be honest, Mr Flynn, I’m more bothered about what you’re still not telling me.”
His pale eyes swivelled her way. “What?”
“Surely you don’t need me to spell it out. For a start, why did you behave so oddly when I mentioned Marky, then Judge Markham?”
***
After that, another silence grew like a solid mountain between them.
Every few seconds, she glanced in both the nearest wing mirror and her vanity mirror to check her injured assailant wasn’t around. Disguises were easy. He could be anybody out there, she thought, until she recalled his bloodstained legs. The noticeable limp.
“And you were quite out of order to announce the theft from my study in front of the woman,” the Irishman snapped, as he found an empty parking space at the end of Thornhill Avenue and hauled up the handbrake. “I was trying to stick to the will issue, which God knows is bad enough news.”
“Had there been important material stored there that you couldn’t tell anyone about?” She scrutinised his every move. The snatching down of his visor. Screwing up his eyes then closing them. “Did you have a computer?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And Internet access?”
“That’s my business. More to the point, how about the courtesy of telling me when the theft occurred.”
“Last night some time,” Helen said.
“You might have said. That was Sergeant Rees’ first question when I phoned him back there.”
How did he know? Neither she nor Jason had mentioned it.
She added, “I’d noticed from outside that your sash window was broken. Perhaps, if Gwenno Davies locked your study door after you’d gone, that’s how her son got in. Or she gave him a key.”
“Shut up about him, will you? And no-one can climb that ivy any more than the Matterhorn. I’d been in too much of a rush to get away to lock everything up properly.” He sighed like someone auditioning for Hamlet. “What a gift. What a fucking gift. Now, I just want out.”
She tried to ignore the noticeable drop in temperature that seemed to be surrounding them; the solid menstrual gush leaving her body. The kind that might have bled into that old carpet in Jason’s top bedroom where God only knew what had happened. “So why bother with Sandhurst Mansion when we could both be getting back and on our way?”
Now he was gripping her thigh. Too tight, pinning her to the seat.
“I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”
***
As arranged, Mrs Pachela was waiting inside the porch of Sandhurst Mansion, obviously keen to get away. Her anxious eyes roamed up and down Thornhill Road as she extracted not only the required set of keys, but two pairs of surgical gloves from her handbag. “You don’t want to leave prints he
re, do you?” she said to Mr Flynn. “The police can’t keep away from here at the moment.”
“Clever idea.” Mr Flynn took the items and handed over the bundle of notes.
“I meant to tell you I had a message on my phone at home, warning me not to get involved with you. He mentioned you by name. I was quite frightened,” said Mrs Pachela.
“He?”
A panicky shrug. “I don’t know. No number either.”
“Look, London’s full of oddballs. Is there a concierge around?”
“Used to be till Mr Pitt-Rose complained about his radio being too loud. A new one’s starting tomorrow.”
Now the chameleon was checking for evidence of CCTV cameras and whatever else might spoil his plan, and Helen noticed small red veins turning the whites of his eyes pink.
“Good. Now is there anything else I need to know about Charles before you go. Confidential, of course. Any boyfriend, girlfriend? Other cars in his garage’s visitor slot?” Mr Flynn asked.
“Not that I can think of. But you ought to know the police and men in white space suits took away much things. His computer, books, notebooks, old, brown photographs... I hated dusting them. They made me shiver,” said Mrs Pachela.
“What photographs?” Flynn said.
She paused, biting her lip. “Of somewhere he called Hades. This big house it was. Dark, covered in ivy, with people in fancy dress by the front door, and a strange iron bird stuck next to one of the chimneys. Oh, and there was a picture of a swimming pool, but you wouldn’t want to swim in that.”
“Why Hades?” asked Helen, scanning her surroundings for her stalker’s bald head and black duffle coat.
“Missy, if only the dead could speak,” said Mrs Pachela.
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