Hard, dark eyes.
And then that same rain was hitting him as if the protecting door had been ripped away. Now ropes. Thick and rough. One for each of his hands. As a youngster in Solihull, he’d been taught to fight by Uncle Ernest, an amateur welterweight champion whose one coup de grâce to the head, could send you to hospital. But Lionel had seen him off every time; even kept his old boxing gloves behind the school’s storeroom door. Just in case.
But this was different. Instead of some youthful adversary were four mature men who’d tightened his bonds so fast he could only kick out until, with two agonising cracks of bone, his knees gave way.
“Hold him Jimmy. For Chrissake.” The one called Prydderch was losing control. “And you, Marky.”
“Bloody help me, man.”
Lionel could smell them. Drink and another childhood memory – this time of dentists – delivered up his nose, in his mouth, blurring the crash of his head against metal, but not the spreading redness before his splintered eyes.
Red then black.
“Transport ready?”
“Where to?”
“Nothing but the best, of course. As befits his station.”
37.
Monday 6th April 2009 – 10.30 a.m.
Gwilym Price had snored all night once Jason had installed him in the attic room next door to his, separated by a thin partition wall. The farmer, who’d fallen heavily on the forestry track, in his haste to escape his suddenly violent dead uncle, had refused to sleep alone in Cysgod y Deri. He’d also turned down Jason’s offer to drive him for a check-up at Llandovery’s Cottage Hospital.
“Let’s open that bugger instead,” his fellow lodger had pointed to one of three untouched Glennfiddichs in the kitchen scullery. “If you don’t mind.”
Jason didn’t mind. As for repeating Helen’s bombshell about Llyr and Betsan, he must bide his time.
***
Parts of him still smelt dodgy after his dip in the pool and he had to assume, after his sixth attempt to get a response from Helen via the landline phone, that she wasn’t interested in him any more. Had probably scrubbed his supportive messages. More than anything, he wanted her to get in touch.
If he thought about it, this was just another shite page in the book of his life, so why not get legless? The Davies pair had gone off somewhere or other and taken all the house keys. So, nothing to lose. With a makeshift deterrent of garden twine, wound round and round the front door’s inner handle and lock, both lodgers had got stuck in.
Now he was paying for it.
While the farmer was brewing up downstairs, Jason, half-blind from sleep and the malt still swilling around his head, checked Helen’s door.
Unlocked.
He started. Could have sworn it was secure yesterday, but one bleary-eyed scan of the cleared-out room told him all he needed to know. Even that weird crucifixion print had gone. It was as if she’d never been there. He opened the large, empty wardrobe then went over to the bed to sniff the topmost pillow.
Nothing.
He felt desolate.
***
Neither he nor his unlikely friend spoke as they downed two mugs of the treacly brew apiece and chewed on toasted crusts – all that had been left in the bread bin. The morning’s biting chill that Gwilym swore would bring snow by nightfall, made him grip his warm mug all the tighter. The same mug Helen had given him that Friday evening. As for his body, it still felt embalmed by that freezing sludge.
“Her mobile phone may be kaput as well,” he said, having swallowed the last piece of crust and pushed back his chair. “And I don’t trust this landline any more. I’m going down the pub to call the Fuzz from there.”
“They probably saw to her room,” said the farmer. “Scare her off, see? And you’ll be next if you’re not wary. Best to deal with the Metropolitan police, like I’ve done. DCI Jobiah at Islington police station. Black, I could tell, and very helpful he was. Used my initiative, see.” The old man looked at him with a certain knowledge in his eyes. The worst ink-blot bruise on his forehead leaking a little blood.
This was clearly no country bumpkin.
“You mean this lot are bent?”
“I couldn’t tell you earlier. Have to be careful, you understand. Yes, Prydderch especially. His da too, and his da before him. It’s known. D’you understand? Used to come up here regular for fun and games. God help anyone who asked questions or rocked the boat. Why I could barely be civil to him up at Betsan’s on Saturday. Why my Carol confided in the school’s headmaster what she’d seen while delivering the post. Used to be four of them including Edmund Pitt-Rose himself, Glyn Prydderch and two others she’d never seen before, doing things with the daughter. Depraved she called it.”
Jason frowned. “His son made out he didn’t know who Gwenno was when he showed up here on Saturday afternoon.”
“There you go. All lies. As for the headmaster, after Carol told him about it all, he just vanished. The search went on for months, and till the day she died, she fretted it had all been her fault.”
“Seems she was lucky to escape for so long. When did he disappear?”
“18th October 1946. A Saturday. Pelting down, so she said. The day she’d found the last of the village’s Home Guard shot dead by her house. Peris Morgan. Salt of the earth he was. He’d disappeared into thin air as well.”
“What did she do, then?”
“Tried to get people involved. But, except for Mr Hargreaves, they was scared. Me and my mam too, to be honest. And Carol, specially after her cob was poisoned. She was about to move away up north when we met at a barn dance at Ystrad Ffin. I wish we’d left while we’d had the chance.”
“Then I’d never have met you.”
Gwilym turned away, embarrassed.
“Thing is, she’d found this little notebook in the wood store behind the Headmaster’s cottage. Seems he’d begun it after Peris had come calling. Doesn’t take a genius to see they’d both been at risk. Young Betsan too; although Carol wouldn’t say no more, only that the last entry before he vanished said Heron House was home to The Order, whatever that means.” Gwilym licked his forefinger to gather up stray biscuit crumbs then licked it. “Betsan certainly never mentioned nothing to me.”
Scared, like you, no doubt.
“Where’s this notebook now?”
“Stolen from Carol’s kitchen if you please. Someone keen to get hold of it, obviously. Mind you, looked as if Mr Hargreaves’ place had been picked over, too.”
Jason tried to concentrate on the rest of the story. Heron House had been the magnet for evil by top brass over a long period of time, but he hadn’t finished yet. Helen was out there somewhere, and too many questions needed answers. Like where was Monty Flynn in all this? Where had the Davieses got to? And what might be next on the agenda?
It was then he spotted Gwenno’s strange riding crop lying across an adjacent chair, half hidden by the waxed tablecloth’s edge. He picked it up and for some reason, sniffed it. Definitely not leather.
“Look at this,” he said. “What’s it made of?”
Gwilym took one look then laughed. “Too early for smut, son.”
Jason stared at him with exaggerated disappointment until his companion relented.
***
“Par for the course, I suppose,” said Jason, once he knew. “No wonder she was always stroking it in that suggestive way.” He returned the thing to the chair while the rook killer licked his knife and gathered up the crockery like the tidy widower he was.
“And as for her and the brother,” Gwilym said, “I’ll give you a clue. I knew they wouldn’t last long once you and Miss Jenkins turned up. Risk of them singing, see? Spoiling the next party.”
Next party?
The farmer ran water deliberately fast into the kitchen sink. The sound of it made Jason reach his room in ten seconds flat and cram his foul clothes from yesterday into his dad’s suitcase. He then added Evil Eyes and his empty refill pad but, as he was abo
ut to bring down the lid and press the clasps into place, his strength seemed to melt and another’s take over. He smelt the overpowering whiff of roses. That tinged sweetness Helen swore she’d experienced.
Margiad Pitt-Rose was back. Her voice like velvet while that full-lipped mouth slipped involuntarily into his mind. “I need you now, my Jason,” she pleaded. “More than ever. You promised to write my story. You promised, but you seem to be forgetting me. I’m ready to start at the beginning when my sweetest little brother was sent away to school. When I was all alone…”
“I will. OK?” Jason stumbled. “Later, when I’ve got a few things sorted.”
“I said now.”
He swore under his breath, trying again to close his case, but all at once felt an invisible hand creeping round his side and on to the zip of his jeans. At the same time, that stain on the carpet by his feet seemed to brighten, to move and spread. The liverish odour rising up from it reminded him of when his mum had her monthlies and would accidentally leave her used sanitary towels in the bathroom.
“You loved what I did the last time, didn’t you?” cooed his predator. “We could do it again, and again. Even daddy said I was the best in the whole wide world at giving pleasure to a man. The best! Me. Think of it. Coming from him, the most famous wonderful judge in the whole of Wales.”
Daddy?
Jason grabbed the still-open suitcase under his arm and fled from the room, slamming its door as he went.
“Seen a ghost, bach?” enquired the farmer in the reception hall, cramming his black hat on his head. His rifle leaning on the fire screen.
“Helen’s mum lives in Borth. I must get her number.”
No tone.
A quick inspection outside under the purpling sky showed someone had been busy severing the telephone line. Just like at Golwg y Mwyn.
“Shift!” he yelled at Gwilym through the front door, before something else caught his eye. Something dark blue on the move, nudging towards him. The bumper rock hard against his calves, pushing, pushing…
The only way was up. On to the bonnet and over the side, the sudden blast of Gwilym’s rifle making him blind, deaf save for his friend’s warning roar at whoever was driving. “Stop or next time I blow your brains out!”
Jason rolled clear. Gravel in his hair, on his skin and down his neck. And there was the farmer poised for a second shot. The Escort’s near-side rear tyre went down, but still it dragged itself in reverse before grinding away through the gates.
***
“That was Sergeant Rees,” said the farmer afterwards, eyeing Jason with concern. “One of our local law enforcement officers. Shitting a brick he was. You alright?”
“Thanks to you, yes.”
Jason straightened up. Still in one piece. Christ, the old man was brave. Archie’d have been proud of him.
“We could try catching up with the scumbag,” said his saviour. “Really finish his morning off nicely.”
But all Jason could think of was Margiad.
“Look,” Jason said. “I’ve got to explore the Angred shaft. Trust me.”
Gwilym hesitated. Not surprising considering his recent experience there. “We might meet my uncle again,” he said. “I’m not sure…”
“Please come. If we find what I’m expecting, everything could fall into place. And you did ask me to help get to the bottom of things, didn’t you?”
“You’re right, bach, but in my case the spirit is often willing but the flesh too weak.”
“Not any more,” said Jason.
And on the way, shifting the weight of his battered suitcase from hand to hand as he went, Jason relayed to his astonished friend his adventure in the pool, ending with that strange, rigid object he’d felt lurking under his feet by its steps.
***
“What did you mean by ‘the next party?’” Jason quizzed him once they’d paused for breath alongside a pile of rusted pipes on the forestry track. “That everything’s going to start up again at Heron House?”
Gwilym nodded.
“Come on, boyo. Those pious old Devils, those judges, may still be alive. Their deeds like nuts that daren’t be cracked. To what lengths did they go, or will their descendants go to keep it that way? Ask yourself. Specially if Heron House falls into their hands.”
“You mentioned Mr Hargreaves the Headmaster,” Jason blew warm air on to his blue fingers before he and Gwilym resumed walking. “He’s really caught my imagination.”
“A fine man, even though he spoke not a word of Welsh. I started attending school once he’d gone. Felt I owed him that much. That one day he’d come back and see how I’d made a go of my life after my mam died. Now look…”
Old, bitter tears glazed his eyes. Jason stopped, rested a hand on his arm.
“Do you have proof of him coming to harm?”
“No, but Carol did,” Gwilym sniffed then wiped his nose with his coat cuff. “Something Idris Davies said to her when he was sweeping leaves into the pool, the way he did. Why I’d like to take my little coracle in there tomorrow. Do some serious fishing.”
“And I need to tell you something,” Jason began. “I’ve kept it back till now, but I know it’ll be safe with you.”
“Go on, then.”
The faint sound of gunshot peppered the chilling stillness as Jason finally relayed Helen’s news of Charles Pitt-Rose’s will. When he’d finished, the farmer grew unsteady as if he was about to fall. Jason held him just in time, and together, without speaking, they moved as one up the ravaged hill.
***
Cold enough to break your bones. Break your heart. Jason, burdened not only by Gwilym’s reaction to the inheritance story, but his own heavy suitcase, led the way up past Betsan’s sad little place where the police cordon had slackened and tattered in the wind. Up towards the scree-strewn ridges and spoil tips of Nantymwyn’s former lead mine.
With the other man’s wheezy breath accompanying his own, it occurred to Jason how strange it had been to come here of all places to find a real mate. Albeit one old enough to be his granddad. Gwilym Price was solid. Rock solid. One day he’d pay him back. He then found himself wondering how the Sergeant would extricate himself from trying to maim him, if not worse. After all, it was only Gwilym’s word that the driver of that dented Escort had been him. And how about that other man Idris Davies had been talking to by the pool? To his English ears, one Welsh voice was like another. He looked round to see the farmer stopped in his tracks.
“Can’t go on no more,” he panted. “Thinking about what you’ve just said about that scumbag Llyr. What if he killed Betsan? And why didn’t she tell me about the will? She must have known about it before Saturday.”
“Fear, I expect.”
“DCI Jobiah never said nothing an’ all.”
“Perhaps he hadn’t heard.”
Gwilym glanced at Jason and then other pre-occupations resurfaced, together with dry, old tears. It was clear he was drowning in grief.
“I keep thinking about my Carol,” he said, “after she’d seen that Lionel Hargreaves for the last time. He’d taken Margiad in apparently. Taken pity on her…”
His words seemed to float like ice flakes in that otherwise dense silence. Jason shivered under his ruined jacket. “Carol was convinced Margiad betrayed him and my uncle to her da and his cronies. Look how Robert was with me yesterday. He’s still very angry, and he’s right to be. He’s stopping his lover and her unborn baby having a proper burial, that’s what it is. Her and her da’s baby.” His whole body seemed to slump as if exhausted.
“You’re having me on?”
“Am I? She loved her da over and above anything or anyone. No-one’s going to tell me different. She loved him. Better get used to it, son. She’d do anything to protect him from the law. Betsan said the same. How she’d give herself bruises for effect. But who was Betsan? Just a kid at the time.”
Jason glanced back at Golwg y Mwyn’s little chimney.
“So what happened to
Margiad and her baby?”
“No-one knows, but she must be round here somewhere, sure to be, as Robert’s never been sighted nowhere else.” Gwilym began to move again as Jason crept towards the Angred shaft’s black opening, got down on his hands and knees to remove the various wooden planks and bricks that littered its access. Immediately, he smelt death. A rank, sour-sweetness eking up his nose, making his recent breakfast shift in his stomach. He could also hear water. Deep and dangerous. But to give up now wasn’t on his agenda. As a kid he’d been glued to a TV series about a rural vet in Yorkshire. One episode where he helped a cow give birth had stayed in his mind; where his gloved hands had explored her innards until her calf’s glistening back legs slipped safely into view. So here he was, his own expectations goading him on, because also within his grasp could lie a matter of life or death.
***
No matter that sharp stones and barbed wire remnants dug into Jason’s knees. He must keep focussed. Keep going. As his numb fingers gradually cleared the entrance, he realised that beyond this opening – from where Monty Flynn boasted he’d once explored the cave beneath – lay no helpful ledge, no gradual easing into the shaft like any normal access for workers, but a sudden, vertiginous drop.
“Careful, man,” shouted the farmer. “I’ll fetch the car and a decent torch. Hang on.”
“I’m OK. You just keep a lookout.”
Jason meant for malevolent beings from this and another more distant world, all with their own agendas. And if Llyr Pitt-Rose was responsible for nicking the Irishman’s gear and hiding it here, he must have used ropes. He might also be checking up on it.
Damn.
His once cosseted jacket had become a thick, icy skin as he slithered forwards on his front into the gaping darkness, willing his eyes to adjust to it before venturing any further. He felt the void below caress his chin, sending a thicker, more fetid stink into his nostrils. He blinked and blinked again, before his right hand landed on what he guessed might be some small animal’s dried turd. But no. It was firmer than that. More solid.
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