Four British Mysteries

by Thomas Brown

  Jason got up, checked his watch. That cold feeling still there, but excitement too.

  He stepped outside into the hostile morning and passed the boarded-up Woolworth’s without pausing on his way to Tesco Express to top up his phone, then on to the Tube. Suddenly, like a wraith, his brother’s Merc glided by. Both Colin and The Girlfriend just shadows behind its tinted glass. Nevertheless, Jason waved, but to them he was invisible. A nobody. A failure. But not, he told himself, for long.

  5.

  Friday 3rd April 2009 – 2 p.m.

  Having heard the hall phone ring early, Helen had stopped in the middle of brushing her teeth to open her bedroom door and listen. That same Jason guy had been trying to cadge an extra week at Heron House. Bloody cheek, she’d thought, having herself been told in no uncertain terms that if any of her arty mates wanted to freeload here, then tough. They’d have to stay at the Fox and Feathers. Heffy, however, was the exception. Mr Flynn had liked the sound of her.

  But why had The Rat still hung around, even though he’d ordered her into the laundry room? One day, when the pest had gone or died, she’d snitch on her big time. But right now, until a better job came along, she must cling to this one like a bluebottle to a fly strip.

  “Mr Robbins will be arriving at 5.20 p.m. at Swansea station,” Mr Flynn informed her later as he was getting ready for another stint at the pub. “I told him there’d be a car waiting, and afterwards, a nice three-course meal. Can we do that?” His eyes with their well-worn twinkle, weakened her defences as he pressed a crumpled twenty-pound note in her hand.

  “We?”

  “Come on, Helen. It’s just a figure of speech. You know you’re my main man round here. It’s crucial we get things off to a good start. Our Londoner sounds like the kind of punter who’ll spread the word. And right now, the word’s what we need...”

  ***

  For a start, her hair out of its pony tail scrunchie, for the first time in yonks, stuck out in all directions, refusing to lie flat against the nape of her neck. Secondly, her car, an aged Ignis with a dodgy tyre and even dodgier clutch, hadn’t seen a vacuum cleaner since the day of her interview in February. Soil and dead leaves covered its once jolly mats, while a layer of stubborn green slime lined each of the windows.

  At least it was a car, she told herself, still ratty at having to drive a round trip of eighty miles to include shopping en route. If Mr Robbins so much as mentioned the state of it, he could damned well leg it up-country on his own.

  So preoccupied was she with overtaking those caravans and camper vans, that seemed to have sprouted on the roads overnight, she forgot altogether how two events had freaked her out recently. The first, on Wednesday’s walk to Aunty Betsan’s bungalow up on Pen Cerrigmwyn, when she’d spotted what must have been the remains of that poor Collie dog Mr Flynn had mentioned. Bits of black and white fur lying in rain-thinned blood.

  Next, a dark, motionless figure standing in front of the silent lead mine workings. She’d stayed there holding her breath for a few minutes until, as if she’d been dreaming, it faded away.

  As for this strange experience, her boss didn’t need to know everything, but Betsan Griffiths did. The neatly turned out spinster who’d claimed she’d once catered for local weddings and hotels in Llandovery and Llanddewi Brefi, had neither seen nor heard of any mysterious watcher. “Rain and wind, mind, can cause some right old tricks,” she’d said, handing Helen four of her easiest recipes for main meals. “Mind you, some say that since that village was drowned under Llynn Brianne, there’s been a few dead folk wandering about, looking for their homes. So she says.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “The cleaner over at your place.”

  “Gwenno?”

  Instead of a nod, the woman had frowned. Something clearly bugging her. “I never call her that. She’s done me too much harm. Her and her mouth. And she’s not the only one.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You watch yourself.”

  “I will.”

  And then the back door had closed behind her, for the rods of rain to hit her skin and deliver, not for the first time, a gnawing sense of unease. What had Aunty Betsan meant by those strange remarks? What harm exactly? And who else had she meant?

  ***

  “Can I help you, madam?” asked a large guy trapped inside a navy blue tabard at a Fforestfach store. “You seem lost.”

  “Parmesan,” she said, suddenly realising why she was here. “And bay leaves. For a spag bol.”

  Once outside in the busy car park, she checked her watch. Ten minutes left for a rush-hour trip of six miles. She’d miscalculated the volume of traffic. So little passed by Heron House, that even the post van or forestry lorry was an event.

  Her resentment at feeling used, mounted with every lurch and stop of her car. OK, so Mr Flynn had soon come clean about the writing courses. But had he seriously been expecting her to rustle up the promised fare with no notice? Of course. That’s how he operated. Impulse his middle name, with others – meaning her – picking up the pieces. Idris Davies the groundsman said the same on the rare occasions he’d communicated with her, but like his wife, he’d been at Heron House for years. So long in fact, that the oaks and dead chestnuts, the banks of rhododendrons and the bluebell trail, had become closer to him than any close relative. And, in his eyes, no-one, not even Mrs Davies, it seemed, matched up to them.

  The wind was different here. Sharper, more gusty, coming off the sea. The rain too with no mountain barrier between these outskirts and the Bay. Helen switched on Radio 4, only to turn it off again. She’d given up listening to the news, but not so her mam up in Borth. An energetic primary school teacher, full of suggestions for what her only child with – in her eyes – a useless degree, should really be doing to ‘ride the recession’ as she’d put it. Undertaking had been top of her list of suggestions. ‘Everyone has to die sometime. The one sure thing.’

  So it was. But not just yet.

  ***

  Once in Swansea, near the station, Helen parked her Ignis up on the kerb outside a greasy spoon café and switched off its grunting wipers. Her curiosity about the emergency arrival now outweighed her resentment at his nerve. Perhaps he was as old as Mr Flynn. Or older. Perhaps he had a shady past best kept hidden. As she tried opening her knackered umbrella against the wind, she realised with a churning pulse, she was soon about to find out.

  Commuters. Swarms of them, striding, clack-clacking along the platform towards her like a dark, rough sea. Who was she looking for? There’d been no description asked for, or given. Just that Jason Robbins would be wearing a black leather jacket plus jeans, and carrying a battered suitcase.

  And then she spotted it. Attached to a guy in yes, black leather and stone-washed denim who seemed paler than his travelling companions, with a more wary look in his eye. His gelled brown hair bristled from his head, and from the lobe of his left ear, glistened a small stud.

  Not her sort at all.

  However, she’d been trained to observe, to look hard at her subject, and saw that although that suitcase with its rusted steel corners, seemed medieval, the shoes weren’t cheap. Nor the jacket that hung from a pair of broad shoulders. As he handed his ticket to the waiting inspector, she noticed there was no wedding ring. She also wondered what job he did to be able to take an extra week off. Why it was so important to come to Wales now, and whether or not he had a return ticket tucked away somewhere.

  He glanced up, caught her eye, then walked past her, probably thinking that a representative of the grandly-named Heron House would at least look the part.

  “Hi.” She ran after him, pushing her wet hair off her face. Aware how naff she looked in the black suit not worn since her uncle’s funeral three years ago. “Are you by any chance Jason Robbins?”

  He stopped, turned to face her, that same wary expression giving way to a smile. “Are you Patsy Palmer?”

  “Funny, not. I’m Helen Jenkins from Heron House.” She hel
d out her right hand like Mr Flynn had told her to do. “Welcome to wet and windy Wales. Or, as they say here, Croeso i Gymru.”

  6.

  Friday 3rd April 2009 – 6.25 p.m.

  The motorway’s commuter cars and delivery vans were soon replaced by muddy 4X4s and horse boxes, reminding Jason of rural Essex until he saw hills that almost appeared to be moving as rain clouds shifted overhead to reveal promising scraps of blue. He wound down his window to let cool air bathe his face. “Why Heron House?” he asked his less than talkative driver. “Do they breed herons there, or what?”

  “They did,” she replied, taking the road signed for Ammanford and Llandeilo off a big roundabout. “Some time in the seventies. Long after the lead mines had closed.”

  “Lead mines?” Monty Flynn hadn’t mentioned anything about these when describing the surrounding landscape as being a second Garden of Eden. A wild, unspoilt refuge. Balm for the soul. However, it was easier to ask questions about their destination than having to explain to someone he didn’t yet know why he was arriving a week early. As it was none of her business, he assumed Monty Flynn had kept his confidentiality.

  Every time she hit a drain cover or pothole, his knees butted the glove box, his seatbelt tightened across his chest, and it was while stop-starting through Llandeilo’s busy main street, that a rush of panic quickened his pulse. He shut his eyes and opened them in shock. For a split second, yet as if in slow motion, all the colours of shop fronts, traffic and passers-by seemed to morph into a uniformly dull brown colour; the pavements empty save for a few people moving around, dressed in clothes from what he guessed was the World War II era. This busy street had been replaced by a weird stillness, with just a few ancient Austin and Morris cars and a solitary pony and trap labouring up the hill in the opposite direction.

  The Ignis was travelling on dirt, not tarmac, where scattered piles of droppings lay uncollected. The smell of wood smoke and manure met his nose.

  “You OK?” asked Helen Jenkins, throwing him a glance.

  “I’m not sure. Can you see something odd going on?”

  “Where?”

  “Outside. It’s like… really strange. As if we’re part of some old photograph.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  He produced his mobile and turned its screen to face the now open window. “What are you doing?” Helen asked.

  “Taking a video. You never know. For posterity.”

  Passers-by, wearing long black coats, noticed it and immediately shielded their faces.

  Damn.

  The screen remained blank. “It’s not working. Look.” He angled the phone towards her.

  “I need to concentrate, OK?’

  Just then, as he fiddled with Options and Film menus, the whole street scene reverted to its former bustle. “Bloody gizmos,” he muttered. “They never work when you want them to.”

  “Just take a photo, then.”

  “Can’t. It’s too late. Everything’s changed back.”

  He replaced his crap phone with Evil Eyes, still feeling unnerved. Could he really have imagined all that, or was it the pills? At least a book was reliable. Tangible. He found the page he’d been reading before sneaking another look at the grim last page.

  “That looks like fun,” she observed drily, before overtaking an open truck full of white goats.

  “It is.”

  “Afraid we can’t compete with that here. The worst we get is sheep rustling or some old codger in the backwoods doing it with his dogs.”

  Normally, he’d have laughed, but not now, despite the town’s sudden return to its normal bustle. “Tell me more about these lead mines near Heron House,” he said, to take his mind off it.

  She sighed. “There were two. Nantybai near the church and the river Towy, and Nantymwyn higher up. They’d been around since Roman times. Apparently, both were closed in the late-1930s, putting hundreds of folk out of work. Why when war came many of the local men, including farmers, signed up.”

  “My best mate Archie did that. Jobless for a year, so he went for it. Kabul, if you please.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Don’t really want to talk about it, if that’s OK.”

  She shrugged. Put her foot down as the A40 opened out, and they continued in silence past large farms whose cattle slurry trailed across the road, splattering her windscreen. To the right, he saw beyond the grazed hills lay darker, sharper escarpments of what he guessed were part of the Brecon Beacons. He sat transfixed, comparing this naturally unfolding panorama with Hounslow. Yes, the Thames wasn’t so far from its clogged-up streets, but here, between fields, the Towy flowed by without a single rowing fanatic or noisy cruise boat to break its reflection of passing clouds. Smooth, grassy banks lay on either side instead of overused pathways full of litter, dog shit and used syringes. Yet this was the very world that must feed the book he was about to start writing. A polluted, corrupt world, forever on the move.

  “So why come to Heron House?” she quizzed, while they passed over an elaborate iron bridge into a town called Llandovery. That same River Towy now beneath them. He turned to her, but how to explain that his heart, which only yesterday had filled to bursting with ideas, was deflating like some kid’s balloon. His main characters, Carl Spooner, a vicious pusher from Kennington and his sidekick, whose speciality was dousing his victims with petrol and watching them fry, were fading with every mile that passed.

  He closed Evil Eyes and placed it on the floor between his feet. “To start a gangland thriller. Mr Flynn thought it was a cool idea and was keen to see a first chapter this weekend. Even checked I took a good pic for inside the back cover.”

  Suddenly, the Ignis lurched towards the nearside hedge. She quickly righted it, but not before he’d seen her expression.

  “What’s wrong with that?” he challenged. “What’s wrong with him rooting for me? Best seller, he said, if you can see it through. And I bloody am.”

  Silence.

  ***

  The road that apparently led towards Heron House, took her full attention, not only because of its narrowness, but also what else happened to be sharing it. A fox hunt in full swing, complete with huge, pale hounds veering from verge to verge, noses down. Small made-up girls on half-clipped ponies; horseboxes parked up nose to tail, plus a posse of quad bikes taking up what little space was left. Welcome to the countryside, he thought.

  Half an hour later, with the commotion vanished up wet, stony tracks leading from the road, and a sign for Rhandirmwyn with its enticing-looking pub just a memory, gentle bends became the hairpin variety. Soft fields were now giant fir-clad peaks where small settlements nestled between their folds. More Alpine than anything thought Jason, aware of being sucked into a world as different as could be from the Essex marshes on which he’d grown up. Here a trickle of white smoke rising, there a black swarm of birds cruising low over the land.

  Rooks?

  He glanced at Helen Jenkins’ freckled face fixed on the way ahead. Her long pale eyelashes and her small nose weathered red on its bridge.

  “So tell me about your rook pies,” he said. “Mr Flynn was raving about them.”

  “Ha. He’s a liar. I should have snatched the phone off him when you first called Heron House. He’s also a lush. Big time. And as for the cordon bleu crap, forget it.” She slowed down; her left indicator light flashing on and off while a bright blush burned on each cheek. “Look, I can easily turn round and take you back to Swansea. Trains to Paddington run till late. He’d understand. Whatever else, he’s no fool.”

  Jason flicked off the switch, his stomach spinning like it had when he’d woken up in his brother’s flat on his last morning there. “Just keep going.”

  “But you’ll be paying good money. For what?” Indignation had lit up her blue-green eyes. Her chin stuck out. “You must be desperate. That’s all I can say.”

  “Too right I am.”

  ***

  They didn’t speak again until the
unnamed turning became a cinder track pitted by water-filled holes and the uphill gradient levelled for half a mile to reveal a large, moss-covered roof and two tall, but unmatched chimneys.

  “Here we are,” she said, dropping into first gear despite the grumbling clutch. “Not exactly in the hub of things.”

  You could say that again.

  Heron House, ten times the size of his mother’s cottage, and clearly from a much earlier era, lay in its own leafy grounds beneath a dark swathe of a forestry plantation. Beyond this, the land rearing up against the sky, seemed shorn of grass, dotted with the odd windblown tree. Survivors, like he must be. He took in the house’s three gabled upper windows jutting out like mean little eyes, then the heron-shaped weather vane, spinning on its perch. Next, his eye travelled down over the dense, dark ivy smothering most of the front wall, to the recessed front door whose steps lay strewn with dead leaves and other debris.

  He’d missed the unusual gateposts.

  “Who made those?” he finally pointed at the two stone pillars each supporting identical wrought-iron sculptures. Herons again. Beaks open, wings outspread as if for battle. Quite different from the weather vane. Their message seemed to be ‘Keep out.’

  “From melted-down canons, so I heard.”

  Tentative connections began to form in his mind. Canons and lead, rocks and caves. And when he glanced again at that same front door, almost hidden beyond its gloomy archway, he suddenly glimpsed three figures, again in sepia tones, who’d materialised from nowhere, standing below the steps. A family perhaps, made up of a woman who seemed to be pregnant, a stout man of indeterminate age, and in between them, a young, black-haired girl carrying a basket of cut roses. The two females wore what Jason recognised as traditional Welsh costume, while the man balanced a long fishing rod on his shoulder whose dangling hook bore what appeared to be a dead mouse.

  Then, as quickly as the strange picture had appeared, it vanished.

  What is it about this place? He asked himself as Helen Jenkins followed the curved driveway around an under-planted central island, where just one rose bush swayed back and forth in the wind. Perhaps he’d give his next dose of Citalopram a miss.