by Thomas Brown
“I’d consider it if you’d not been flirting.”
“Hello?”
“With The Rat. I don’t like you even smiling at her, if that’s OK. Gives her the wrong impression, and makes things harder for me.”
“She’s old enough to be my Grannie.”
Helen eyed the door. “I don’t care.”
“Fair enough.”
They then sat on opposite sides of the bed while he unscrewed the bottle top, poured out her share and handed it over. “To the fibbing Mr Flynn, that he soon gets back here.” And when his glass was also full, “To Betsan. That we find her killer.”
“We?” The wine was cool on her tongue. This bottle wasn’t going to last long, she thought.
“You don’t think that uniformed porker’s going to deliver, do you?”
Helen shook her head. He was right again. Even though this room hadn’t been the yob’s scene of crime, DC Prydderch’s evidence-gathering technique had been risible. For a start, he’d neither been able to bend down to check for footprints, nor ask any meaningful questions. And as for mentioning a proper forensic examination... But did she really want that? No. Her lie could get her into trouble, and in a recession, a good reference was like gold dust.
“Hey, who’s this?” Jason stretched out a free hand towards the bedside table to pick up the photo of her mam – a singleton all over again – then one of Heffy. Her usual stunning self, making everyone else at the BA Degree ceremony seem ten years older. And poorer. He read the names on the back of each before replacing it “You look just like her.” he said, and Helen blushed, flattered.
“Who? Heffy?”
“Your mum.”
Great.
Then she remembered something from Mr Flynn’s office. Took another gulp of wine. “Apparently, The Rat collars the post the moment it arrives. Mr Flynn wrote a memo to himself to tackle her about it, but he won’t. Even though he suspects her of keeping stuff back. Seems he has to put up with her agenda. But why?”
“Their agenda, you mean. The delightful brother, don’t forget. It was like pulling teeth getting him to meet the Fuzz.”
“You did seem pretty pissed off,” she said.
“I was. Like you say, makes you wonder why they’re so special. I mean, look at them.” He got to his feet to peer at a small framed print of St. Peter’s crucifixion that had pride of place on the wall behind her single bed.
“The original fresco’s by Michaelangelo,” she said. “Sixteenth century.”
He seemed impressed. She watched him crane towards each sorrowful detail, waiting for him to ask why, out of all the art available, she’d picked this for such an important position.
He did.
“It was already here when I moved in. Hidden away in that wardrobe.” She indicated a large walnut affair dominating the opposite wall. “And I couldn’t be bothered banging in a new nail when one was already in place.”
“Why not put something up of yours?”
“Maybe soon.”
Jason returned to the print. A grimace spoiling his otherwise OK mouth. “This is hideous. What a way to go.”
“Apparently St. Peter didn’t feel worthy of being crucified in the same way as Jesus. Besides, to crucify someone upside down was actually more compassionate. The victims suffocated instead.”
He touched St. Peter’s eyes. “Well, he doesn’t seem to be appreciating it much.” He turned to her. “Dare I bring this kind of punishment into my book? Hey, think of it. Gross.”
“Up to you.”
Silence, as the former breeze now a vigorous wind, batted the nearest chestnut trees’ bare branches against the window’s glass, and a low moaning sound entered the room through an unrepaired crack above the sill. Jason tilted up the picture frame’s lower edge as if looking for something.
“What are you doing?” She was aware of her mother’s eyes following her every move.
“Just playing detective. I’ve got mine sorted now, by the way. Dan Carver. Ex-DI from Sunderland. A misfit and poker addict but straight as a die. What do you think?”
Helen stared at him. How could he be so unfocussed when so much had happened? “Please can we leave it?” she said.
“You mean my hero?”
“The picture.” She wished she had the courage to phone or text Mr Flynn to update him and find out more of his deal with his landlord. “All I can think of is what’ll happen if Charles Pitt-Rose really is dead. If you want to play detective, why not find out why the Davieses are so important they must be kept on here? Did he leave a will? And why did Betsan refer to Heron House as the asylum?”
“There’s a name on the back here,” he announced, still fixed on his own agenda. “Margiad, would you believe? And a date. October 1st 1946. Was it a present, or had she bought it herself I wonder? And could she have once lived here?”
But Helen’s train of thought had already taken her way beyond this room; this house of too many shadows and the choking hills. Like a runner fleeing some evil force whose breath was burning her heels, she must make the break. But where to go? Not back to her mam – that wouldn’t last a week. They were just too different. To Cardiff and some dump in Bute Town, or even a hostel in Penge? She shivered just to think of it and then, like a sly ray of sunshine, recalled what her Final Year tutor had said about her work at the Degree ceremony where she’d picked up one of only three Distinctions. “Never mind the Brit Art pack, Helen. With your Gothic take on landscape – especially the Welsh landscape, you could be the next Edward Hopper.”
As if.
She finished her wine and glanced over to that old lightweight picnic table, home to a bag of dried rabbit size, an array of paintbrushes including squirrel hair, pony hair and the more robust synthetics best for laying in big areas of paint. Then to a roll of cotton duck canvas tied with sparkly pink ribbon, which Heffy had bought her as a leaving present, defying her to use it. As did a folded-up easel and two already stretched blanks, primed and waiting. Tomorrow she’d dust off her best mahogany palette, assemble the easel and set out her oils and acrylics from hot to cool to zinc white. In readiness.
“The writing on the back of this matches that plaque on my room door.” Jason carried the framed print closer to the paper-shaded light bulb. “It’s a pretty weird picture to have in a bedroom.”
“This may not always have been a bedroom,” said Helen, testing that the cap on a tube of Hooker’s Green wasn’t too tight. It was one of her favourite colours, and should she start painting again, ideal for forestry and those shadowed, lower slopes.
“That’s a point. Was there anything about her in Monty Flynn’s den?”
“Nothing I could see. I’m sorry but I was more interested in The Rat and its brother.”
Her voice sounded thin, bloodless. She suddenly wanted her space to herself again. To sort out her head. Make some decisions.
***
An hour later, with Jason back in his room to read some more and catch an early night, Helen slung her pink suede rucksack over her blue, hooded fleece and slipped outside into the windy darkness. Her right hand lay clamped over her mobile inside her pocket, as if it was her lifeline, even though she only had nine pounds left in credit and there’d be no reception for a few miles at least. No way was she going that far. Not after that bald pervert had pressed his sweaty body against hers.
With loose strands of hair whipping her left cheek, she made her way past the three lock-ups to a clearing which in daylight gave a view of the Doethie Valley and its pretty, tumbling stream far below. Too late to worry that the house’s main security light at the front hadn’t come on, or that suddenly she felt a different fear slow her heart and her feet. Just as she was about to access Mr Flynn’s number, another came up on screen. Heffy.
Dammit.
Two rings of Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ and a voice not heard since Christmas, filled her ear. “That you, Hellraiser?” said her best friend. “I don’t believe it. You still gotta pulse?”
<
br /> Normally, Helen would have laughed. “Just about. Where are you? Still in the lap of luxury at Bates’ Motel?”
A pause. Helen knew something was up, but seconds and money were ticking away.
“Not for long. The crusts are splitting just like yours did. It’s pants, to be honest.”
Heffy’s parents owned and ran one of the biggest and priciest hotels in Aberystwyth’s town centre. Boutique, she called it. All glass and chrome, plasma screens and Egyptian cotton sheets with a thread count in treble figures.
“I’m sorry, Hef. Try and hang on in there. Perhaps it’s just a blip.” Yet in her heart she knew that staying together for life was the hardest thing. People change just like the landscape through different seasons. Besides, as her da had argued with her mam before she’d kicked him out, humans aren’t biologically programmed to last the course. They needed variety. Different experiences. In short, monogamy was an unnatural state of affairs.
“You too,” Heffy broke in, now sounding much further away. “Why not come up tomorrow for a few days? You could have a king-size all to yourself. I’m sure Mr Sex-on-Legs can spare you.”
Not funny, and the faintest whiff of fag smoke made her turn round. “I’ll see what I can do. Trouble is...”
“Yes?”
“Some pretty funny stuff’s happening here. I’ve got to be careful.”
“All the more reason to chill out. Oh, come on. Catch-up time, eh?”
Helen peered at the invisible wildness around her. It seemed as if the whole place was at war with the wind. Perhaps a trip up to Ceredigion would do her good. After all, the other writers weren’t due here for a while. She might even start that painting for her mam.
“Are you sure?”
“You know me.”
She did, but there was Mr Flynn as well as Jason to consider. Annoying though he was, the newcomer was different from the needy, self-regarding guys she’d known at Uni. He’d paid his deposit, even though money was tight. He had a book to write, and he needed to get off those happy pills.
“You’ve pulled, haven’t you?” her friend probed. “Come on, you can tell Aunty Heffy.”
The trouble was, she couldn’t, and way overhead as the biggest, blackest cloud parted to reveal a single, throbbing star, it was time to be straight.
“I’ll call you back tomorrow. Promise.”
“You said that last Boxing Day.”
“There’s been a murder. I’ve been groped. I’m trying to cope. OK?”
The line went dead. The force of air slapped her hood up against the back of her head. That earlier fear had solidified. Supposing that ghostly figure from up Pen Cerrigmwyn should reappear, or that skinhead whose erection had jutted against her buttocks. “Come on, Mr Flynn, come on...” she pleaded to the phone, having seen his number up.
“Yes?”
It was him, but not him.
“Helen Jenkins here. I don’t mean to distur...”
“I said only phone in case of an emergency.”
She flinched inwardly. “This comes pretty close. Have the Llandovery police been in touch with you yet? Jason and me found Betsan Griffiths dead in her bungalow this morning. All her ornaments smashed up…”
Silence, save for the creak of nearby branches. The rush of more debris by the lock-ups. She wondered where exactly her boss might be. Whether inside or out was hard to tell. “Mr Flynn. Are you OK?
“I used to be.”
Was he in tears? This man who could charm grease from the bottom of a chip pan? Who’d charmed her and Jason into being here? It sounded like it. But why, and what could she do? “Look, I don’t want my credits to run out,” she said then heard him swear under his breath. “Thing is,” she went on, “you left Heron House in a hurry this morning, and I had to warn you, that’s all.”
“Thank you, and I’m truly sorry to hear about the dear woman, and your own frightening experience. But warn me about what?”
“DC Prydderch wanted your mobile number, and I gave it. Do you mind?”
Pause.
“So I’m a suspect? Good God.”
“Of course not.”
“Ever my reliable Helen.”
Was this irony or something else entirely? She heard him sniff, blow his nose. “Now I need you more than ever,” he said.
“Are you upset as well because Charles Pitt-Rose is dead? I’m only guessing.”
A strange, short laugh. “You’re not stupid, are you?”
She gulped. “I put two and two together. That’s all.”
£8.20 left in credits.
It was now or never, she told herself as a sudden sliver of moon lit up the top of The Giant’s Shoulder. “You rent off him, don’t you? And the Davies couple have to be kept on here or else. Why?”
In the longer silence that followed, she sensed her meagre job slipping away.
“Who told you those downright lies?”
Quick, think...
“Someone I met by chance in Somerfields, the minute I mentioned where I worked. They also said Idris Davies and Gwenno were mad.”
A deep sigh insinuated itself into her ear. Come on, give us more blarney, she said to herself as he began to speak.
“Helen, my treasure. My right-hand person. If I’d listened to such gossip three years ago when I bought – yes bought – the place from Mr Pitt-Rose, I’d never have crossed the Irish Sea.”
Liar...
“So why are they there, despite everything?”
“Both are utterly benign, believe me. I know Gwenno’s tongue can be as sharp as a fish knife, and she’s sometimes upset you...”
Sometimes?
“But they keep out of my way. What a writer and a thinker needs. Peace and quiet, as our visitors on Friday will discover.”
“Are they brother and sister, or married?”
“Labels, labels… To me, they’ve always been close. Looking out for each other. What an odd question.”
“Nothing’s as odd as they are. I don’t think you’ve told me the full story.”
“I will. I swear on St. Patrick’s heart.”
“So why dash off to London? Why say you need me more than ever? What for? And which guy was it who managed to get into your house to scare me? Who knew his way around?”
“Hang on, hang on, you don’t unders...”
“And why,” she interrupted, seeing her phone credits shrink even further, “didn’t you tell the beloved Gwenno where you were going?”
Her questions were caught by the wind and blown away high into the brooding sky, and while she hung on for an answer, was suddenly aware she wasn’t alone. A trace of cheap perfume reached her nose. A hard hand in the small of her back was pushing her, forcing her forwards on the slippery, rough grass towards the boundary’s unfenced edge, below which, she knew the Doethie Valley waited like an open throat.
17.
Saturday 4th April 2009 – 9 p.m.
Jason knew he wouldn’t sleep that night, not just because the mighty blast hitting his room window threatened to break the glass, or that Dan Carver and the gangland perps who’d begun to sprout in his mind, like that cress he’d once grown in a margarine tub as a kid, were being shoved aside by stuff he couldn’t ignore. No, it was dreading that body-shaped stain on the carpet reappearing fibre by fibre, or another stray rook behaving as if his room was its territory. Worse, Evil Eyes again being torn from his very hands.
He sat himself down at the dressing table with that same book now weirdly intact, safely to one side, and a so far unused refill pad in front of him. Its lined bulk had felt immediately inviting when he’d added it to his shopping basket an aeon ago. However, instead of plotting his main character’s life history up north until setting up as a flatfoot in Hoxton, he wrote OPERATION ROOK on the pad’s cover. Fact, not fiction. Truth, not guesswork about everything he’d so far discovered about this strange place. His thriller could wait until Tuesday, giving him a few clear days before the other writers arrived.
> Having finished his ACTION PLAN list, he began searching for a suitable hiding place. Having his own key to the door meant nothing. Heron House was a snake pit. Even Helen, it seemed, wasn’t safe.
On impulse, having stuffed the writing pad under the mean arched space beneath his wardrobe, he locked his door, crept along the unlit corridor and down the faintly creaking stairs to the next floor. Helen’s door was locked. No reply to his knocking either.
Something was wrong and he wasn’t hanging about to find out what.
***
The sudden rush of air hit him first as the heavy front door swung open, rattling the trinkets on the reception hall’s mantelpiece, scattering ash from the dead fire. Then Gwenno Davies, her white hair wild around her head, her once neat dress torn, smeared by grass stains, burst into the room.
“Out of my way,” she pushed past him. Her earlier chat and obsequious attention long gone. “You, and that little witch shouldn’t be here. And d’you know what?” She jabbed his shoulder. “There’ll be no writers coming. You’ll see.”
Jason gulped. “What d’you mean, no writers?”
“Like I said.”
Mad bird…
“So where’s Helen?”
“Pushed me over, she did. Out there. I was only looking for her. How’s that for gratitude? Vicious little Madam, I’m telling you.” She pointed at a torn flap of fabric hanging by her hip. “Anyway, this is evidence that she’s not right in the head. Drugs it is, see. I know her sort.”
And before Jason could turn round and follow her, she’d reached the kitchen and slammed its door shut behind her.
Shit.
Should he track the woman down and squeeze that skinny throat for an answer, or focus on finding Helen?
A no-brainer, but then he realised he’d left his boots in his room. Too late to go back. He’d have to try the cloakroom for a replacement pair.
***
“There’ll be no writers coming. You’ll see.”
Was this no more than a spiteful wish on her part or the truth? Whatever, it stayed in his mind as once outside in the teeth of the wind, he ran first towards the stinking pool, shouting out Helen’s name. Then to the left. The stiff, borrowed boots proving way too big; their laces trapped underfoot with every step. He wondered whose they were.