Cold Remains

by Spedding, Sally;

  He pulled out the enclosed invitation to Geoffrey Powell QC’s address in Dinas Powys this coming Friday at 7 p.m. for a new members’ meeting and investiture.

  Investiture?

  60 m.p.h was too fast but right now, not fast enough. If that flat tyre fragmented, they’d be toast. And then, to add to the chill, she relayed yesterday’s frightening encounter with her enemy in the play park. The new threat; how he was now ‘my Jason.’

  ***

  “Where’s my car?” Helen again, shivering, and this time, trying to sit up. “Sergeant Rees said you’d taken it to Heron House for me.”

  Toe rag.

  “Look, you’re priority at the moment, OK? We’ll get it returned for you.”

  She lay back as if reassured, but her normally expressive face bore the colour and rigidity of chalk. Her eyes blankly staring his way. “Hurry,” she urged him. “Can’t you see what she’s doing?”

  Meanwhile, his hands had lost all feeling. Likewise his nose and lips. That ice now thicker than ever, harder to scrape away. His nails left angry, dark loops on the glass that too quickly reverted to white. Archie Tait hadn’t come to him. But someone had. With a different purpose. To destroy.

  “She won’t. She can’t,” he said. “I love you, Helen Myfanwy Jenkins. From the moment I first saw you in your little black suit on the platform at Swansea Station.”

  “That’s why she hates me.”

  “Not true.” But he wished he could believe it.

  “Tell my mam and Heffy, won’t you? She’s pregnant. Something I’ll never be…”

  “And your dad?” he interrupted, unable to hear the rest.

  “Never mind him. Just start writing that story the way she wants it…”

  “You mean now? How the Hell do I do that?”

  “Just try.”

  Her voice faded as more sleety spray hit the suddenly malfunctioning wipers slowing down to match his pulse. The stench of early decay closing in as they entered a dripping holloway of still-bare trees where it took too long for him to find the headlights’ switch.

  He soon wished he hadn’t, for the beam picked up something green and chrome butting out from the undergrowth way above the Towy Valley. A Nissan Patrol’s back end. The driver’s door hanging open over the abyss.

  Don’t look. Keep going. Maybe it’s not him after all and this is all just a dream…

  ***

  Once through this eerie tunnel, the frozen road opened out to a world of frosted brown fields and hills as though photographed from a long-ago time. Jason’s right heel met the floor, but in his frightened heart, knew everything was too late. The stricken tyre flapped away into the verge as Paper Planes eked from his jacket pocket. In his haste, he let the phone slip between his knees.

  “Yo, bro,” Colin was shouting against a heavy traffic background, the din of a chopper hovering overhead and the grating wheel hub. “How you doing?”

  “Fine. Bit on the nippy side, that’s all.” Nevertheless, Jason’s teeth juddered together as he retrieved the phone. His tongue too stiff for his mouth. His tears freezing against his cheek. But would Colin notice? No way. The one thing that hadn’t changed.

  “Me and Lisa fancied a change of scene for a few days,” said the financial adviser. “We’ll even have a crack at some writing. You never know. Might be me who pens the best seller. So, any spare beds up there? Double or single, no worries. We’ll make do.”

  Jason glanced at his rear view mirror, but its crusty whiteness was keeping Helen invisible. “Sorry mate,” he managed to say as the Passat began its own heaving dance from side to side of the narrow strip of tarmac to the other. Out of control now, and on to the far verge, tipping, tipping, beginning to fall.

  “Why?”

  “I wouldn’t want to lose you as well.”

  41.

  Friday 10th April 2009 – 12.15 p.m.

  Bad Friday because Helen was sore and starving, with just the faintest whiff of hospital food making her nauseous. Good Friday because Jason whose farewell kiss was still hot on her cheek, had not only managed to keep the big VW from skidding off the icy road last Monday, but also, during three-night time vigils at the Cottage Hospital in company with her mam, he had written the first twelve pages of Margiad’s story.

  No title yet, but what mattered most was that as the snow outside had thickened, he’d recorded faithfully each word that sing-song voice had delivered. How when her loving mother Joy had died, her depraved father Edmund, and the other crazed incumbents of Heron House, made life for their two children a misery. Especially dear little Charles who’d been so much younger. How all she’d wanted was his happiness…

  “Thank God,” Helen had hugged him. “She’ll leave us alone now, won’t she?”

  “Course.” Then he’d repeated how he’d loved her and promised that while she was convalescing at home, would drop everything to keep the memoir going. How her close shave with death had been because he’d pushed Margiad aside.

  ‘Look,’ she’d said. ‘We were in a no-win situation. I didn’t co-operate either, remember?’

  ***

  As if compensating for Jason’s departure, Heffy Morris was on her second visit to Aberystwyth’s Bronglais Hospital with two ripe mangoes, the latest copy of Hello! and hair whitened by snow. However, it didn’t take long for Helen to realise something was seriously wrong with her best, very pregnant friend. There’d been none of her usual ‘Hi Hellraiser’ greeting followed by the mad clinch. No ‘Poison’ overdose either, and why were those normally lustrous eyes welling up? Her typical smile barely a flicker?

  “What’s the matter, Hef?” she asked, reaching out as her latest visitor perched herself on the edge of the hospital bed.

  “I’m OK.”

  “And I may be stuck here like a turnip, but I’m not blind.”

  A pause in which Helen’s nurse gave her a wave as she passed into the intensive care suite. A busy den of wires and tubes that had saved her life.

  “Look, you can always have this when it pops out,” Heffy patted her considerable bump. “I mean it. Neither my folks nor the father wants to know, and you and Jason would make brilliant parents. Better than just me. Specially since…”

  “Since what?” Helen hadn’t really taken in what she’d just heard. But saw mascara trickling down those flawless cheeks.

  “You know…”

  “I don’t.”

  “God. Haven’t they told you or your mam what that evil ghost has done?”

  Helen turned to see Eluned Jenkins waiting by the door to the recovery ward. She held a fluffy toy dog in one hand and a bag containing clean nightdresses and other necessities in another. Something normal. Decent.

  “Only that I’ve still got my ovaries. That I’m in with a chance of someday having a baby using my eggs.”

  Heffy leaned as far forwards as her tummy would allow, her familiar perfume bringing back memories of life before all the crap. Her zebra-striped coat looming large. “That’s not true. They’re stringing you along. I’ve just seen your notes. Jason, too.”

  Helen shook her head. Yet in retrospect, hadn’t his reassurances about her partial hysterectomy seemed too quick? His smile not shifted that haunted look from his eyes?

  ‘You’re not worth it. I had a child, remember? Unborn, but still something you’ll never, ever have…’

  Suddenly the snowflakes beyond her third-floor window were too huge, merging too fast, imprisoning her all over again. Was nothing ever going to change? Even with him?

  She tried to sit up. Big mistake.

  “I told you, he’s begun writing her story,” Helen said, breathlessly.

  “Not soon enough, it seems.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Just then, her mam called out, in her extra loud primary school voice. “Hello, cariad. I’ve some good news to cheer you up.”

  Heffy glanced her way then back at Helen. Eased herself off the bed and stood up. “I’ll text you, OK? Remember, a
sk to see your file.”

  Helen watched Heffy walk away past beds of much older people than both of them. People who’d perhaps got nowhere else to go. Heffy exchanged a quick greeting with her mam who was now on her way. A wide grin stuck on her face.

  “I’ve just seen Dr. Fisher and he says you’ll be home in a week. Isn’t that great?” She stroked Helen’s hair and handed over the toy whose small beaded eyes were Gwenno Davies all over again. “Let’s hope the snow’s gone by then.”

  “What are you staring at?”

  “You don’t seem very pleased.”

  “I’d like to see the Doctor. Now. And my notes.”

  “He’s very busy.”

  But Helen took a deep breath, tore her saline drip from the back of her hand and, summoning all her depleted strength, pushed her way out of bed. Dizzy yet determined, she evaded her mam and, as if back on that wet track leading away from Heron House, followed the grey linoleum towards the Ward Sister’s desk.

  42.

  Friday 10th April 2009 – 10.10 p.m.

  “Just get yourself inside, mate,” Colin grinned with relief when Jason sheepishly showed up late on his snowed-up doorstep with their dad’s battered suitcase between them, “and if I see another press pass, or have to pick up the phone to some twittering media prat, I’ll turn violent.”

  The hug that followed lasted long enough for passers-by to stare and snigger. “You’ve lost weight,” his bro said afterwards, leading him indoors. “Been worried about you, specially after what you said last Monday afternoon. Mum has too. Is what we’ve been hearing and reading all true?”

  Jason nodded, keen to change the subject and not look at the various newspapers Colin had kept. “Where’s Lisa?”

  The bitter laugh that followed, caught him by surprise.

  “I got her Dear John yesterday, didn’t I? But more important, tell me all about your Helen. How’s she coping?”

  Now wasn’t the time to share her latest devastating news. So Jason simply said, “fine so far.”

  “Great.”

  However, over beers and pizza in the now less-than-tidy kitchen, he relived the past five days of knife-edged vigils at two quite different Welsh hospitals and how, with Helen’s release date confirmed, he’d finally navigated the slushy roads back to Hounslow. No, Eluned Jenkins wouldn’t be suing the hospitals for sparing her daughter the worst news after her op. They’d not felt her to be strong enough either mentally or physically to take it. And hadn’t he, too, been complicit?

  “So what now, Jaz?” Colin had polished off the last of the Kronenbourgs and cleared away the plates. You’re not still interested in writing, are you?”

  This time the tone was encouraging. “Got you a new lamp and swivel chair, just in case. I also kept your Woolies souvenirs. You happy with that?”

  ***

  A week later, at eight-thirty in the morning, with pen and pad again at the ready, Jason watched Colin wade through the drifted snow towards the gate, stopping halfway to wave up at him. One of the few conscientious commuters opting for what public transport there was. But guilt at this heroic effort didn’t last long. He too had an important job to do and, with a fresh mug of coffee plus a hot-cross bun to hand, began reorganising his material. However, since Helen’s radical hysterectomy, everything had changed. Gone were Margiad Pitt-Rose’s mellifluous lies; the sense of his skin suddenly cooling and those summer roses’ scent snaking up his nose. He was on quite a different path now.

  Damn.

  His phone’s ringtone filled the room.

  “Yes?”

  “George Cooke here. Senior Commissioning Editor at Gemini Books. Am I speaking to Jason Robbins?”

  “You are.”

  “Please spare me a moment, Jason. I’ve a certain proposition to make…”

  ***

  He and Helen, now minor celebs, had this global publisher wanting a part historical, part contemporary supernatural thriller loosely based on his and Helen’s experiences. £25,000 could be theirs, with one proviso. All names and locations must be changed.

  Bollocks.

  Anger made him screw up that first anodyne chapter from its moorings and toss it in his waste bin. Made him choose a thick black felt-tipped pen and scrub out his working title on the refill pad’s pink cover. Having decided on Cold Remains instead of To Love and Lose, he wrote that instead and underlined it with his red Woolies’ ballpoint. Red for blood.

  This daring thriller for afterlife sceptics and suckers for the Establishment with himself, not Dan Carver, relentless digger after the truth, would be even more powerful than Evil Eyes. Unputdownable in fact, because his and Helen’s ‘evil eyes’ had been real, and this was their revenge. In black and white.

  Margiad Pitt-Rose’s threats had materialised. Helen would never be able to bear their child as her uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries and oviducts had all been excised. She’d been punished in the worst possible way.

  And wasn’t this where it had all begun?

  WANT TO WRITE A BEST SELLER?

  Spend Easter at Heron House in Carmarthenshire’s beautiful Upper Towy Valley, and be inspired by top fiction writer Monty Flynn. All modern comforts. Cordon bleu cooking and internet access. Young writers particularly welcome. Reasonable rates. Regret no wheelchair access.

  He flattened the badly-stained advert discovered, together with Gwilym’s faded business card, while binning his ruined jeans. He glued it inside the cover. Next, he laid Heron House’s two Yale keys on his diary. Important reminders to be handed in at some point.

  The freak blizzard’s muffled onslaught against the spare bedroom window, suddenly made him look up and worry how Colin was getting on. But neither this nor the fact he’d not slept properly for a fortnight would hold him back.

  Cuttings.

  Be ruthless, he told himself. Those from the Times, Guardian and Big Issue, Colin had saved were the best. However, their sombre reporting was at odds with the weirdly vivid photos of that hidden crucifixion in the forest. The foul swimming pool and its grim harvest – Lionel Hargreaves, Peris Morgan and two young, innocent boys who’d never made it back to Maghull.

  After a scalding sip of his drink, Jason moved the various biographies and comments on the three dead judges, the cop, and their deluded sons, to the top of the pile. Also a grainy image of Monty Flynn as a kid in Crosskelly. Next, Llyr Pitt-Rose gripping a rugby ball while at his special school. Beneath this, two lines from his retired headmistress referred to her former pupil as seriously disturbed, but she believed that somewhere deep down, there’d been a conscience and a need to be loved.

  Right.

  Posthumously convicted of rape, and of abducting Helen, Llyr’s prints had lingered on Flynn’s stash in the Angred shaft and on various items at Sandhurst Mansion.

  Jason then placed the wartime images of Gwenno and Idris Davies near the edge of his mother’s old dressing table near his new Anglepoise lamp. Still no news of the old siblings or the blue Escort, and Gwenno’s bunch of keys to every room in the house, left in Margiad’s bedroom door, had also mysteriously disappeared. Unlike the two-tone Hillman Hunter.

  Despite intense questioning, Sergeant Rees, like DC Prydderch – both under police guard at an undisclosed location – had clung to their Human Rights and stayed silent.

  Rees, however, had been found in possession of Michael Markham’s Glock, used by Flynn for target practice on Llyr’s eyes. A cold, savage killing that kept Membury Services closed for a week. The ex-Sergeant denied any involvement.

  Post-mortems, inquests, verdicts...

  So-far unidentified fingerprints on the iron ceiling beam next to Charles Pitt-Rose’s rope, had confused the police pathologist and delayed any inquest and funeral. As for Betsan, her chloroform overdose had brought a quick end. Her murderer not so. Flynn’s heart only fading as paramedics had cut him down from the cross. The narrative verdict on Gwilym Price’s death, had meant nothing. He’d been found crushed against his steering wheel on
the Towy’s frosted shore. His Nissan, like Helen’s Ignis, complete with a Panther GPS tracker expertly placed by Llyr. These had been traced back to Royal & Select Master Michael Markham, still missing from his cleaned-out home since midday on Monday 6th April. Other inquests were due to be held next week, although a coroner for the pool’s victims had yet to be appointed. Angred shaft had again yielded no more human remains, but Robert Price’s well-preserved skeleton had been unearthed from beneath Judge Geoffrey Powell’s extensive wine cellar. The man who twice had harassed Charles’ solicitor, Dee Salomon.

  Sketches.

  His for now. Pulled from nightmares and memories, particularly of that unique face with its livid bruise and greedy mouth. Dead birds, and haunted scenes of Nantymwyn which, like Heron House, was sealed off from the crowds of voyeurs and ghost-hunters. Perhaps another publisher would use as many of these visuals as possible and, once Helen was active again, hopefully give her art career a shove.

  Letters and other memorabilia.

  Charles Pitt-Rose’s record of misery, compounded by his schooldays and his lover Llyr’s unusual sexual demands, was key. DC Jane Harris had let Jason read enough of it to realise too, how Margiad’s once loyal friend Betsan who’d periodically kept in touch with him, had grown fearful of the traitorous heart, hidden beneath those beguiling looks. How whilst still a schoolgirl, the Davieses and Edmund Pitt-Rose, with Margiad and her governess watching, had raped Betsan to stop the girl telling Mrs Griffiths what was going on.

  But it was the St. Peter’s crucifixion that scared Betsan the most. A torture Margiad wanted used on anyone threatening the staus quo at Heron House. However, her father, being a keen fisherman, had preferred water. Charles had also learnt from Betsan how his jealous sister had engineered his early exit from home so she could have daddy all to herself. In later phone conversations, Betsan had confided how her crucifix had kept that destructive spirit at bay, urging Charles to wear one too. But as a staunch atheist, he’d refused. Had he regretted it? Who could say? Because once Edmund Pitt-Rose and his associates had killed his heavily pregnant daughter, Margiad, on Christmas Eve in 1946 for being a risk to his career, she’d remorselessly targeted her brother’s wavering guilt.