by Thomas Brown
£3.50 left.
“Why would she be worried?” the man persisted. “I don’t get it.”
His tone had sharpened. But right now, she needed him more than he needed her. “I always say that to her. Whatever.”
“My kids don’t.”
“Perhaps you give them more space.”
Just then, her Nokia juddered in her hand. Jason’s number came up, beating her to it. She held her breath as he came through. Too loud, on the move as well, it seemed. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you…”
“I’m OK. But my car’s not. It’s in Llandovery station car park. The driver’s door unlocked. Can you please try and make it secure?”
“Sorted, no worries. Just been to the Fuzz there. Mr Price gave me a lift. Look, you can’t just take off in the middle of the night. Was it because of Gwenno?”
The Fuzz word had been too loud. She lowered her own voice to barely above a whisper. “No. Though she did her best to push me down into that valley. It was something Mr Flynn said that made me leave. Tell you later.”
“Tell me now.”
“I can’t. Look, Jason,” she was whispering now, “you shouldn’t have done that. I mean go to the police. This is my business.”
Now Ethan Woods was leaning towards her, his beanie clear of his bright red ears, while that same mix of sweat and stale aftershave, she’d smelt that morning at Heron House, hit her nose.
“So where the Hell are you?” Jason wasn’t giving up.
“Got a lift to London.”
“Anyone you know?”
“Erm... No.”
“Helen, you’re crazy. I’m coming to find you…”
“You can’t.”
And that was it.
The driver suddenly switched on his radio. Amy Winehouse plus strings. Helen reached out to turn down the volume, but that black leather hand pushed hers away.
“He let you have it,” the guy observed as if he’d not done anything. “Not cricket to speak to the fairer sex like that.”
So he’d heard that much...
“Jason, eh?”
“No. James, actually.”
“Could’ve sworn you’d said Jason, which just so happens to be my youngest’s name.
It was then, despite the van’s warm, cosy cab, she felt her skin ice up. Jason had called her crazy. It had hurt, but he was right. This guy had sniffed a lie like an owl sniffs meat. “What’s with the Fuzz?” He eyed her in a way that made her grip her phone even harder. “That didn’t sound very helpful.”
“Look, Mr Woods, my period’s come on. I need to sort it. I really don’t want to spoil your seat.”
“Next stop, eh? Like I said. Anyway,” he shot her another glance, a slight smile on his chapped lips, “I’m used to blood.”
One of her failings, she knew, was her inability to suss out character. Hadn’t it taken her a full month to realise Mr Flynn was a fully paid up member of the Chameleon Club? Gwenno Davies too? Nice as pie at first, yes. Just like with Jason, until the dark stuff seeped through. Why, to her painting tutor’s disappointment, she’d never tackled the portrait. Hers would have been too superficial to show any truth. Not that there was much to read in Ethan Woods’ face. Just his round, blue eyes, chapped lips and fox-coloured stubble.
SERVICES 28 MILES.
Don’t panic, she told herself. He’s just a bloke. The ones she’d known, including her da, rarely said the right thing, especially to do with female stuff. But Jason was different, and she wished now she’d not been so arsy with him.
Over the Severn Bridge with the last of Wales and Saturday slipping by to the throb of Bob Marley’s ‘Exodus’ and that sudden surge of blood down below that meant the next Services would probably come too late.
***
“I’m on my way to Islington. Wait for me.” Helen whispered in reply to Mr Flynn’s standard voicemail instructions, having checked neither adjacent cubicle in the Ladies loos at Leigh Delamere Services was occupied. She stuffed her own phone into her rucksack, willing him to soon pick up her message. But perhaps he too was asleep, exhausted.
With a night-time sanitary pad that felt more like a small house between her legs, she opened the heavy fire door bit by bit on to the too-bright BP Shop. She blinked, then spotted her driver’s sturdy back as he stood by the till paying cash for his diesel and a giant Mars bar.
So far, she’d only seen him up close and seated. Now, while a sudden rush of blood left her body, those broad, slightly stooped shoulders, the thick neck and the way he moved towards the exit, brought everything back. So he’d added a donkey jacket and covered his shaved head. But he’d missed one important detail. Her eyes followed his thick-soled, white trainers as they unexpectedly turned from the exit and began walking towards the door she was holding.
No...
She let it close without a sound and shut herself in the furthest of the six cubicles. Voices now. His and someone else’s. A woman.
Bastard.
“It’s a ginger,” he explained. “Pony tail, blue fleece with hood, jeans, pink rucksack. May be in trouble. Mentioned her period starting, and looked pretty pale. Reckon you should take a look.”
Helen held her breath while shivering with too much fear to bother about him calling her a ginger. Her rucksack felt too heavy on her back. Her blood, inside and out, way too hot. She thought of her room back at Heron House with all her painting gear waiting to be used. Her mam, Jason whom she was missing already, and Mr Flynn for whom she’d taken such a stupid risk.
“No joy so far,” said the woman clicking open next door’s cubicle. “But I’ll keep looking.”
No you won’t.
Helen charged from her hiding place, causing the woman in the navy trouser suit to lose her balance while she yanked open the door into the shop and, head down, pushed through the queue who temporarily barred her way, and headed for the door. Someone stuck out a leg and she almost fell, but was upright again, weaving her way between the newspaper and magazine displays.
“C’mere bitch!” yelled Mr Beanie behind her. “Before it’s too late.”
The glass automatic doors parted then closed behind her. She’d just a few seconds to hide again. To recoup. Around the back of the shop, illuminated by the glare from a small, barred window, stood four giant wheelie bins. She snatched up the first three mucky lids in turn, only to recoil from the stench of rotting waste piled high inside. Number four seemed different. Drier, and not so full. She plunged in a hand and felt paper and more paper.
Thank you, God...
She threw in her rucksack and, gripping the bin’s front edge with both hands. Up she went and dropped down onto an unstable bed of mainly cardboard. She then closed the lid over her as quietly as she could.
Only her breathing was audible now, and the sudden, unexpected rip of parcel tape against her boots. Her pursuer’s threats seemed to be drifting away in another direction, but she couldn’t be sure if he was now on his own or not. Even changing his mind. She was taking no chances. The luminous hands on her watch showed half past midnight, and she was just about to check her phone’s credits to call 999, when, like a bolt of electricity in that dark, airless box, it began to ring from inside her rucksack.
No...
Would he hear it? Even someone else putting rubbish out?
Her rucksack lay below her in the farthest corner, and only by stretching out a foot to reach its straps, could she reel it in. But as the ringing continued, she had the strongest feeling that if she answered, she’d be toast. The tosser calling himself Ethan Woods had stared at her little screen, hadn’t he? Number highlighted and remembered. Perhaps he had a special memory gift. Mild autism. Unless her driver had been in her room before visiting Mr Flynn’s study.
That stray thought, and another of him foraging in her knicker drawer, made her blood turn to ice.
“NEW CALL... NEW CALL... NUMBER WITHHELD.”
Wait...
And then the invitation to leave a me
ssage after the tone. When it came, the debris under her boots seemed to collapse, taking her deeper into the polyurethane coffin’s dead, musty air.
19.
Sunday 5th April 2009 – 12.30 a.m.
That bruising wind, that had accompanied Jason and Gwilym to Llandovery, was now an unearthly stillness where nothing stirred. During the journey back, instead of quizzing his driver more about Heron House and its history, Jason fought sleep by staring out at the familiar landmarks and the dead badger now little more than a sorry heap. Its entrails straggled glistening into the road.
***
“I should have asked the Fuzz about Llyr Davies,” Jason said, as Gwilym Price hauled up the handbrake outside Heron House.
“Don’t you worry, son,” said the farmer. “It’ll all come out in the wash. To me, that Sergeant seemed more clued up than Prydderch. And as for Miss Jenkins, she’s got an old head on young shoulders. She’ll be alright. And her car.”
“Glad you think so. Wish I could believe it,” said Jason.
Gwilym Price then handed over a battered business card. “I’m only a stone’s throw away, remember?”
“Cheers.” And with a lungful of thick, oily diesel, Jason ran half-blind with tiredness over the gravel past the circular flower bed and its solitary rose, towards the front porch. Encouraged by a light from indoors glowing through the door’s two frosted glass panels, he rang the bell.
After five long minutes, Idris and Gwenno Davies appeared with besom and crop at the ready. She, swamped by a camel-coloured dressing gown, with hair a mess and lipstick smudged up her cheeks, looked like some red light district’s favourite granny. He, equally dishevelled, wore pyjamas that seemed to belong to another age and to someone else. Why did sex come to mind? And the gruesome thought of them at it, made Jason miss her first question.
“I said, what time of night is this?” her pink mouth jerked as she spoke. “We’ll be telling Mr Flynn when he’s back. That’s for sure.” She eyed his feet. “And the fact you’ve stolen his boots.”
“Thief,” added the gardener as if she’d suddenly empowered him. “And the sooner you go back to where you come from, the better.”
“Hounslow,” she spat out the word. “Coon country.”
“Excuse me,” Jason kept a lid on his anger, “I’d like to get to my room. The room I’ve paid for.”
The pyjamas stood aside to let him pass. “You’re not welcome here. Nor that slapper either.”
“You’ve already made that quite clear,” Jason crossed the gloomy reception hall, full of strange, penumbral shadows, cobwebs and dust strands hanging low enough to brush his forehead. “So put another record on, eh?”
“Where is the little Madam?” the sister called out, looking out over his shoulder.
“You tell me. You tried to kill her.”
“Slander, Mr Robbins, is a serious offence. And we’ve friends who’d help get you in trouble, haven’t we, Idris?”
“Indeed we have.”
Jason wasn’t going to waste his breath at this stage. He ditched the stinking boots and, despite his legs feeling like two lead weights, took the stairs three at a time to check Helen’s room was still locked. It was. He then made for his own. All he could think of was her out there, with some stranger – or more than one. Christ, he shouldn’t have let her go. Easy to say that now, when he’d not even noticed she’d left Heron House.
Once inside his fusty, over-decorated room, he pulled down the sash window’s upper portion and felt the dying wind on his face. Reception for his phone was sure to be better up here than at ground level or in the Nissan where he’d last tried to contact her. No such luck. He was just about to chuck the useless piece of junk across the room, when that other voice he recognised immediately, swirled into his ear. He faced the black, still night with its hidden hills and impenetrable forests; the secrets and lies of the dead and the living. His heart churning.
“For God’s sake, who are you? What do you want?”
“I have come and I have gone. Suffered and been punished, but no more. It is time... It is time...”
And was that some bird he could hear calling out in the background, or something else? A kitten, perhaps? Some other young animal?
“Time? What for? I don’t understand...” That cold, damp air from outside filled Jason’s mouth, stroked his skin. His hand shook on the phone that suddenly seemed heavier, like a lead weight.
“You saw them by our swimming pool, didn’t you?” That same young woman’s voice continued after taking a deep, grating breath. “Those foul, arrogant men who used me for too long. I was there with you. Couldn’t you feel it, deep in your soul?”
“Yes,” he lied, just to get rid of her.
“So, Mr Robbins, please open your writing book and pick up your red pen. That way, you’ll remember me and what I had to do to survive.”
***
Mr Robbins...
How weird was that? And about his red pen. But what stuck in his knackered brain like a maggot, wasn’t only her tortured message but ‘our’ swimming pool. Not ‘the’ or ‘their’ – Jason rubbed his eyes, trying to revisit that tiled terrace with its black-suited men and their blood-red wine. Had whoever had just spoken to him, in that faintly threatening way, belonged here at some point? But how? When?
Dammit. All Jason wanted to do was sleep, so that in a few hours’ time, he’d have the energy to check again on Helen and get the Fuzz properly involved. So far, Sergeant Rees had arranged for her car to be secured, but seen no need to dust it for prints. “Probably met up with a friend,” he’d opined. “Someone she knew.” But something in Helen’s voice had told Jason otherwise and, as he crept downstairs to use the landline phone in the reception hall, realised that her finding a handy lift at that time of night in that small, snoring town, had been like snow in July.
999.
“Police,” he said to the automaton who answered. “My friend Helen Jenkins who’s a cook at Heron House in Rhandirmwyn is on her way to London by road and could be in danger.”
“Which road?“
He only knew of the M4 and said so.
“What vehicle?”
“God knows.”
“We need far more precise information than this. Where in London exactly?”
“Some mansion block or other in Islington.” Neither the Metro newspaper nor Helen herself had given any more detail than that. “I believe a Charles Pitt-Rose was living there.”
“Was?”
“He’s been found hanged.”
“And your friend’s age?”
“Say twenty-three.”
After what seemed like a lifetime and a million questions later, Jason was connected to Dyfed Powys Police in Carmarthen where a DC Jane Harris took down what details he had. Also both his and Helen’s mobile numbers. “If she’s on pay-as-you-go, there may not be a trace. But we’ll try. I was told Islington…”
“That’s right, and I’ve a hunch she may be seeing her boss, Monty Flynn there. Charles Pitt-Rose was his landlord. He did once live at Heron House. Has any news of his death reached you here?”
“Not so far. And I’m very sorry to hear it. Do you have this Mr Flynn’s mobile number?”
“No.”
So the deal was that Helen must reply to him first.
Here goes...
Her ring tone was alive alright, but for some reason, she wasn’t picking up.
“C’mon... c’mon…” he urged her, but whenever had life ever gone to plan? He stared at his receiver, wondering if texting Helen would suffice, when he was suddenly aware of a shadowy movement by the door to the stairs.
“What’s going on?” he called out, only to see a naked Idris Davies and his besom advancing with the speed of someone half his age. All old muscle and menace, his crinkled cock and purple balls swinging as he moved. Jason slapped the phone down and bent to pick up a pair of brass fire tongs. “Where’s Llyr, your son?” he shouted. “And don’t tell me you haven�
��t got one. He’s been here, hasn’t he? Attacked Miss Jenkins, and the rest. And don’t think I’m not onto it. The police as well.”
Jason’s pulse was high jumping in his wrists and his neck, as he slapped down the receiver and waited for the kill. Instead, to his surprise, the besom slipped from the man’s grasp and without making any effort to retrieve it, Idris turned on his heels and ran back the way he’d come. His shrivelled buttocks wobbling with each stride, his strange, fearful cry diminishing as he ran off into the house’s dark, mysterious heart.
***
Back in his claustrophobic room, Jason locked his door, took a few deep breaths before closing his window and lying down by the wardrobe to access his refill pad. His hands probed the shallow, wooden arch from left to right, back and fore, until with a sick ache in his gut, he knew he was wasting his time. OPERATION ROOK had vanished.
Shit.
Ignoring the faintly cloying smell of roses that suddenly seemed to reach his nose and swill around his boiling head, he was soon hurtling down to the next floor, groping his way along the papered walls and their tilting pictures, until he reached his destination.
The cohabiting brother and sister. A sliver of light showed beneath their door. The faint hum of voices. Time for action.
Bang, bang, bang and a kick for good measure. He felt good.
“Open up!”
Almost immediately, three bolts were drawn back. Three turns of a key, then a gap wide enough to allow the thick smell of sex to eke out and for two crazed eyes to meet his. The gardener again, still starkers.
“No, Idris!” Came a shriek from behind him. “Leave it.” There’s enough trouble as it is.”
“I’m no coward. I’ll sort the runt out,” Idris said.
But Jason pushed the door further open to see something he’d rather forget. Gwenno Davies in the huge bed, holding its silky, brown duvet up to her chin. But it was the bright blonde wig perched on her head that made him start. Then the fluffy handcuffs and the riding crop…