Disturbing Ground (15 page)

She hardly even glanced at the fourth box, still unopened, on the kitchen floor. She had less than half an hour to shower and change before Alun arrived. And now she was nervous. She had a favour to ask him. She wanted to see the claw, to hold it in her own hand. Maybe she would divine something from the object. More likely it was just silliness. At the same time she already knew that Alun mistrusted her interest in Bianca’s death. He interpreted her obsession as a sign of her own mental instability. And she didn’t know how best to handle this. She didn’t know what he expected of her - or what she expected or asked of him. She almost retraced his number on her mobile phone and cancelled the entire evening.

But she didn’t.

She’d deliberately dressed down in black jeans and a white fleece, brushed her hair and applied very little make-up, mascara, a tiny amount of blusher, lipstick. She drew back her front curtains and waited for the headlights.

Half eight, he’d said.

At nine o’clock she saw the lights sweeping up the road, and she jumped up, locked the door behind her and walked towards them. He threw the door open. Even in the dimmest of car lights she could sense he felt awkward. He was not naturally a dishonest type.

“Just one drink, Alun,” she said. “Then we’d better call it a day.”

And as he pulled out of the road she knew he was relieved. That this was setting the parameters for the evening, a quick drink, no awkwardness, no involvement. Simply friendship. An old friendship. Comfortable and warm as a pair of slippers.

He drove silently to the pub at the head of the valley. Little used, old fashioned, quiet except for three men sitting in the corner, playing dominoes. The swingers of Llancloudy did not visit here. No music, little company, a scruffy, old fashioned bar. But it was quiet. The domino players hardly looked up as they entered. They were far too engrossed in their game. And even the landlord kept his eyes on his paper while he poured a pint for Alun and some lager for her. He took the five pound note and handed over the change, still saying little, except one word of explanation. “Crossword.”

Megan smiled. They took the drinks and settled in the corner, Megan opening the conversation.

“How’s your wife?”

“Gettin’ bigger,” Alun said sheepishly.

“How long does she have to go?”

“Six weeks, four days. One hour.” He grinned.

“I expect you’d like …”

He knew what she was about to say. “Yes - another little boy,” he said. “Then I can coach them both in the Minis.”

She laughed, terribly at her ease with a man who saw everything through the perspective of a rugby ball. Alun reminded her of her father. He laughed too, knowing what would strike her as funny.

“But girls can play rugby too,” she teased lightly.

He almost choked on his beer.

Heartened by the detante between them, she leaned forward. “I had to visit Triagwn today.”

“Oh? The old people’s home?”

“The old people’s home where Bianca used to work. I think I know where the piece of stone came from.” She sensed she needed to remind him. “The claw that you found in her pocket.”

His eyes scanned her over the cream froth.

“I was wandering through the grounds of Triagwn. Near the back boundary I found a statue of a gryphon. It must have fallen from the wall. It was missing a claw. And it looked as though it had been broken recently.”

He put his beer down. “Well - there’s an explanation then. I did wonder where it had come from.”

“She must have been wandering through the garden some time before she died. I’m surprised she wandered up there. She was a woman who stuck to regular routines.”

She took a deep breath and plunged in. “Alun - is there any chance I can I see the claw? I’d love to know if it did match.”

He ran his fingers round the top of his beer glass. “Still on about that then, are we?”

“Aren’t you interested?”

“Now, Megan.”

“I don’t think you’ve reached a satisfactory answer, have you?”

Alun pushed his finger round his shirt collar as though he was having trouble breathing.

She leaned forward. “I know you think my interest is strange - unhealthy even.”

He said nothing.

“Did you know she collected newspapers about people who have vanished from this town?”

“Yes - you already said.”

“What if there is something in it? I mean - people did disappear.”

“What are you suggesting, Megan?” He sounded bored.

“I’m not really suggesting anything, Alun.” She tried a tentative smile. “But what if she had stumbled on the fact that there was a connection between the people who had vanished. Wouldn’t that give someone a motive for wanting her out of the way? She was beginning to talk about it, you know.”

“Well as it happens I do know. She was in the habit of ringing the station practically every week. Sometimes four or five times a day.”

“But you weren’t listening to her.”

“You can bet your bottom dollar we weren’t listening.”

“You weren’t. What if someone else was? Someone who did take her allegations seriously?”

“Like who?”

“Geraint Smithson?”

Alun started laughing. “Another lunatic. An old man confused, senile, living in a nursing home. Anybody sane, Megan?”

He was mocking her. There was a clatter of collapsing dominoes in the corner.

“Meggie,” Alun’s hand was on her arm. “This has gone far enough. The inquest has come to its conclusion. Everyone’s happy. The coroner, the police. Even Carole Symmonds. Everyone except you. For some unknown reason you’re still harping on about Bianca’s death as though it was the unsolved murder case of the millennium. You’re making some of the wildest allegations. Now then. Just between you and me your theory about Joel Parker was more likely than any other notion. But he was away. And that, I believe, is the truth. Nobody killed Bianca because she was collecting newspapers or because she was always ringing us up making various allegations.” He was remaining assertive and calm. He needed to be. Megan was boiling over, her interest refusing to sleep.

“What exactly were her allegations? Against whom?”

“I can’t say. It wouldn’t be … There was no truth in any of it.”

“What if there was?”

“There wasn’t,” Alun said firmly. “Believe you me. There - was - not. I can’t discuss all the cases that she got so obsessed with, but I do know about the two boys who disappeared at the same time.”

“The fourth box.”

“George Prees and Neil Jones.” Alun smiled. “Must be eight or nine years ago that those two vanished from Llancloudy. Neil was one of the ugliest little tykes I’ve
ever seen. Red hair, great big front teeth, ears that stuck out like Dumbo the elephant’s. Father worked up North somewhere - on the oil rigs. Mother - goodness knows. Bit of a bicycle she was. George Prees had a dad who never sobered up. And his mam had vanished a year or two before her son. We never found her to tell her he’d gone missing.”

“You never found the boys either?”

“Mavis Prees had gone off with one of the itinerant workers who tarmac the roads. Irish chap he was. We alerted the Guarda but we didn’t have much detail on ‘im. She’d been seen various places in Ireland.” His face turned a sudden fiery red. “The newspapers were full of the story of the missing boys. She must have seen something or someone must have told her. But she never contacted us. Some mother.”

He sucked his lips in almost piously. “The boys - neither of them - they didn’t have much of a life.”

“So what happened to them?”

“We don’t know,” Alun said. “All I can tell you is this. It was a Monday morning in June. They were due to sit their end of term exams. Boilin’ hot day it was. And they were spotted near the bottom of the valley, hitch hikin’, school bags on their backs. We wasted months of police time lookin’ for the runaways. But who knows. They could easily have taken a ride off to Coney Beach.”

Faint tinkles of fairground music reminded her of how such places tempted children.

“There’s lots of itinerant workers hangin’ around that place. They could have gone off with them, joined the travelling people. Nothin’ was found, Meggie. Not ever. The two little buggers weren’t seen again. And there’s many that would have said ‘good’. Like I said to you. Every case in Bianca’s little boxes was different. You can’t
lump them all together because they vanished from one village. They are not the same. It isn’t one unsolved case but four. Every one’s got a different explanation.”

Megan nodded, for the first time seeing the disappearances through a more balanced viewpoint.

This was the voice of reason. She drained her glass and stood up. “Thank you,” she said. “I see now why the police did not connect the cases. There was more than simply a time span. There was no pattern.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “You should get back to your wife now, Alun,” she said gently.

They were both quiet in the returning car. As they sped down the valley, Megan felt disorientated by the passing lights. Rain was falling in heavy sheets so she confused pavement with road, walls with sky, shops with houses. She closed her eyes to blot it all out.

Alun pulled up at the end of the road and again she leaned over and kissed his cheek. It was soft. He must have shaved just before he had come out. And splashed some aftershave on. In the darkness she smiled at her private knowledge, knowing he would take her comment the wrong way.

“You are a simple fellow,” she said and felt him stiffen. “I don’t mean that you are stupid but you are uncomplicated.” She stared ahead, through the windscreen constantly being washed with rain. “This is something I love about you. When I was younger I didn’t value this quality enough. I do now.” She drew in a deep breath. “I wanted you to know that.”

Without waiting for an answer she slipped out of the car and hurried along her street.

She had reached her front door before she saw his lights pull away.

She had realised months before what a luxury it could be to live alone. She poured herself a glass of wine, switched the heating up and pulled her book of poetry from the shelf. She wanted to read Hood’s poem right through. The rhythmic phrases soothed her, the picture as clear as ever it had been of a desperate woman, unhappy, hopeless, driven to suicide and the sympathy of the poet who had translated her plight into such beautiful words. Lulled, she stared into the fire. Gas and fake coal but the heat was real enough. She half closed her eyes and recalled one of the many curious consultations she had had with Bianca.

“I wonder about those UFOs, doctor. I don’t think they’re flying objects at all.”

One could be fooled by Bianca’s face when she made these statements. It never held the crazy emotion of Gericault’s woman but looked serious and considering, intelligent even. Had it not been for the diagnosis of schizophrenia and the pink hair which made her look different Megan might have thought the statement an invitation to discuss science. There had been a subtle but elusive intelligence about Bianca, something fly-by-night that vanished as quickly as it had appeared, to be replaced by something unmistakably weird.

So when Megan had asked her, out of curiosity, one day, what she meant by not being sure about the UFOs Bianca’s reply had been. “They come down. They land. But they are with us all the time. They stay.”

Doctor-like, she had been trying to gauge Bianca’s understanding. “You mean they’re in the car park?”

“Not so as you’d see them.”

“How do you know they are there?”

“They take people. And the people are never seen again.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think lots of people here, in Llancloudy, don’t understand,” Bianca had said. “And that’s because they are shuttin’ their eyes and their ears. They don’t believe me because they think I’m crazy. Instead they believe what the police tell them to believe.”

“And why would the police want them to believe something which wasn’t true?”

Bianca had stared at her with a look of soft pity. “Because it saves work. That’s why. And money. Once they’ve got an explanation they can wind down the investigation. See?”

It was true. Megan could not argue this indisputable point. So instead she had veered off at a tangent. “Who disappears?”

Bianca’s look of scorn had shocked her.

“Read your papers.”

And Bianca had swept out of the surgery leaving Megan staring at the Gericault.

The encounter had intrigued her because Megan had come off worst.

When learning about psychosis, as a medical student, the entire concept of detachment from reality had frightened her. To be blissfully unaware would be one thing. But to have any insight into the condition must be to sit on the steps of Hell. And in the last seconds of the consultation she could have sworn Bianca Rhys knew exactly what was happening to her. She had been lucid, logical, perceptive. And had rejected her doctor because she had not listened.

Two weeks later, as though continuing the conversation Bianca had again broached the subject.

“UFOs might not be real at all.”

“Some people would agree …”

“They could be a clever device.”

“Ye-es.”

“Made up to explain the inexplicable. Understand?”

“I - think - so.”

Bianca had picked up on her hesitation.

“You don’t believe me either, do you?”

To
confront
a
psychotic
with
doubt
can
be
a
mistake.
So
she
gave
a
non-committal
answer.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

Bianca had picked her handbag up from the floor. “I don’t believe him,” she’d said. “It’s him, see. And he doesn’t like me asking questions. At least, not the wrong questions. He doesn’t mind if they’re the right ones.”

“Who?”

“Never you mind.”

“And another thing.”

Megan had already begun filling the consultation in on the Lloyd George notes, struggling to select the appropriate Reed Code.

“They can’t be saucers. They wouldn’t be big enough, see. Flying plates. That’s more like it.” And she had gone.

So tonight Megan smiled into the fake fire. She could have pursued the line of questioning but Bianca had been
twp
. A
Welsh word not quite parallelled by its English equivalent of simple. The word
twp
held affection while simple did not.

Something struck her. One would have expected a schizophrenic to believe in UFOs rather than question their existence. Their nightmares consisted of being overlooked and overheard, frequently by extra terrestrials.

She loosened the zip on her fleece, suddenly uncomfortably hot. Because, riding on the wings of these revelations, was the unwelcome thought that however high her ideals of returning to the Valley to help its inhabitants, she
had failed one of her most needy patients. In failing to follow through Bianca’s precious flashes of clarity she had not recognised that - like glimpses through a keyhole - these confidences were part of a bigger story. And now the light was permanently switched off. Bianca was dead. The picture had gone. The room was dark.