Disturbing Ground (16 page)

What if, she thought, Bianca had pieced together a story which no one else had fully understood, because a rational mind searches for rational explanations? But what if she had been the one to hit on the truth? That five people in this small town had been murdered. And only she and the killer knew it. Was it a such a giant step then to assume that she had herself been abducted and later murdered. Smothered maybe, and her body dumped in the Slaggy Pool?

Was it a flight of fancy, a stretch of the imagination? Or could it possibly be - the truth?

There was one huge difference between Bianca’s story and the fate of the other five.

Her body had been found.

She pulled the last box towards her.

This box looked newer than the others, the cardboard less bleached and brittle. And Bianca had sellotaped the top down. Megan pulled at it fruitlessly before resorting to a pair of scissors.

Inside were the papers, neatly folded, with the dragon rampant of the
Western
Mail
showing on top. Megan lifted the top one and read through the lead article. She already knew the details - Alun had given her a graphic description of the background to the disappearance of the two boys. And he had described them. But she wanted to see their photographs.

Faces of two eleven-year-olds, in school tie, V-necked sweaters, scrubbed faces and combed hair peered back at her from the piles of newsprint. She could guess which one was Neil Jones: “the ugliest little tyke” Alun had ever seen. Crooked teeth, hair that stuck up like Dennis the Menace’s, a pair of defiant, cynical eyes. The other one, George Prees, looked quieter, a little afraid of something.

She spent a while searching their faces. They didn’t look “little buggers” even though their addresses were some of the worst roads on the estate and it was tempting to tar all inhabitants with the same brush. But in the police quotes on pages two and three she could read between the lines. They were
known
to them. There had been
suspi
cion
of
truancy.
They had been
cautioned
on previous occasions. And like the sniff of neglect present in the Marie Walker case their parents had not reported them missing until very late at night. These were not children closely watched, as Rhiann Lewis had been, but kids who had
roamed the streets with their friends in gangs, finding and creating trouble. Just like Joel and Stefan Parker. Megan felt a sense of inevitability about this most recent disappearance.

As though to agree with her observation she turned the pages and found, on page four of the
Western
Mail,
a brief interview with Samuel Parker, Joel’s older cousin, about his missing “mates”.

Megan read through curiously.

“I did wonder when they didn’t turn up for the exam. See, the teacher had told us anyone missing the maths end of terms would automatically fail - whatever the excuse. But I thought that Neil and Georgey probably had such brilliant excuses they’d get away with it, see. That’s what I thought. So I didn’t say nothin’.”

Megan smiled. Samuel Parker had invented the Parker stamp for his two younger cousins. Currently in prison for supplying marijuana to almost the entire valley he would soon be free to set up his business again. Megan knew him quite well. She had signed his doctor’s note to avoid Community Service more than once. There was no real harm in Sam. Buying and selling marijuana had seemed, to him, a perfectly reasonable way to supplement his income from a variety of poorly paid careers in Llancloudy.

She pulled a sheaf of papers from the box and settled down to absorb the detail. The facts were now familiar. The two boys had last been seen walking towards Llancloudy Comp., school bags on their backs, uniform on - as though they had been intending to attend. One report said that two boys, answering the description of Neil and George had been seen at the side of the road, hitching a lift out of the valleys. But it only appeared in one article. The witness had not known the boys personally so identification was uncertain.

That
meant
there
was
a
chance
that
George
and
Neil
had
never
left
the
valley.

Which would mean another vanishing.

Which would mean, in turn, that in the last thirty years five people had disappeared from the small village of Llancloudy.
None
had ever been seen again and there was no explanation.

Bianca had saved the newspapers, Esther Magellan had been charged with their custody and she, Megan Banesto, had ended up with them.

Make
no
deep
scrutiny.

The Hood poem again, wrong context but apt words.

Make no deep scrutiny. That was exactly what she was doing.
Too
deep a scrutiny. Megan gathered the papers back together, put them carefully back into the box and folded the lid down.

It was late.

She lay in bed still chewing over the possibilities. Fact: People had disappeared.
Something
must have happened to them. Megan pulled the blanket right up to her chin.

She patted the pillow and closed her eyes, ten minutes later flicking them open. She could not sleep with these shadowy visions of a killer who liquidated people every few years. She padded downstairs and made a cup of tea. Then she took a paperback to bed with her and distracted herself with Denise Mina’s
Garnethill
until she fell asleep.

The weekend passed quietly, cleaning the house and necessary shopping on the Saturday, a visit to her parents for Sunday with the tradition of her and her father wrapping themselves up against the elements and taking the dog for a brisk walk across the beach and her mother curling up in front of the fire with a book. When they returned,
the scent of roasting Welsh lamb made her salivate. And the mint sauce was freshly made from mint grown in the greenhouse. Megan hugged her mother and ignored the lurid cover of a thriller which peeped out from behind a cushion on the back of the sofa.

After tea, she and her father settled down to watch the rugby on television, her father making sound and critical comment on the performance of the teams. They both stood up and cheered as Rupert Moon belted up the pitch and hurled himself - and the ball - right over the try line giving the Scarlets yet another victory. “Good lad there,” her father said.

She could have asked them about the disappearances over the years from Llancloudy but she didn’t want to blight the weekend. Problems simply didn’t belong in this peaceful retirement bungalow.

She left late.

For a few years, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month had been marked by a two minute silence. Megan kept an eye on her watch. She always observed it. Not because she had any experience of war but because she did have experience of suffering. And to her the terrible slaughter of the two World Wars was something she felt never should be forgotten.

Morning surgery presented the usual plethora of minor complaints, the medicine easy to dispense but the lifestyle problems, as usual, insoluble. At ten to eleven her last patient arrived.

It didn’t take a brilliant process of deduction to see that something had upset Gwen Owen.

And for once she seemed at a loss for words. She sat and fiddled with the strap of her handbag, a cheap, plastic thing she always housed on her lap, her eyes flickering
around the room like a nervous wren, her forehead deeply furrowed.

“I don’t quite know how to say this, doctor. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m …” There was despair in the heavily powdered face.

“My doctor gave me some tablets for it.” She hesitated. “They seemed to help.”

Megan
had
an
inkling
of
what
was
the
problem.

It
was
five
minutes
to
eleven.

“You probably don’t remember. Years ago my little granddaughter let herself out of the garden. We never saw her again.”

“Rhiann?”

“You remember that?”

“No - not really. I was too young.” Megan felt agitated. “The name - that’s all.”

“It was awful. We thought she was safe. We never imagined … But it must have been her who unbolted the gate.”

“Why would she …?”

“It must have been someone she knew - someone she trusted. You see - we were always telling her not to open the door to strangers. And I can’t think she would have done so. And that’s the worst of it, doctor.”

It
was
eleven
o’clock.
Gwen Owen had not noticed.

Megan was puzzled. “So why are you particularly thinking about Rhiann now, Mrs Owen?”

Gwen Owen dabbed her nose with a dainty cambric handkerchief which she then crumpled up. “Well - Bianca used to … I mean lots of people used to say they knew what had happened to Rhiann. But they couldn’t have. Nobody knew. Not the police nor anybody else.” She was wringing her hands as though applying a softening skin lotion. But the sound was rasping and dry.

“And Bianca?” Megan prompted.

“She used to upset me. Made me quite cross once or twice. Gave me awful dreams.”

“What did she say?”

“That Rhiann was with other people. That they were all together.”

“What do you think she meant?”

“I used to wonder if she was tryin’ to comfort me, that she was sayin’ she was with other people in Heaven. But the trouble was she might just as well have said aliens had taken her along with other people from Llancloudy.”

“What other people?”

The
question
was
unnecessary.

“Oh - she set great store over some teacher who went back to London to avoid facing some angry parents. And years later, after we lost Rhiann another little girl - quite a bit older - was abducted on her way to buy some chips. One of those paedophiles took her I wouldn’t be surprised. I hope…” She was screwing her handkerchief up into a tight ball. “I can’t bear to think that anything like that happened to Rhiann. But if she’d just wandered off and got lost we would have found her, wouldn’t we? Everyone was looking for her. But they never did find her, doctor. They never found anything. Not a sign of her. And then Bianca starting making out she had some knowledge what had happened to her. At one point I did wonder whether to call the police in again - to talk to her. After all - if she knew something it’s only right she should tell them. But I came to the conclusion she never knew anything really. Like us she didn’t have a clue. On another planet she was. Sometimes,” Gwen stared towards the window, “sometimes I’d wonder and I’d ask her. I’d threaten her even.
If
you
know.
Then
tell
me.
For
God’s
sake
tell
me
where
my
little
girl
is.
Got quite vicious I did with her one day. I
could have hurt her. But I stopped myself, doctor. She couldn’t help how she was. But now.” Her eyes were drifting towards the vertical blinds which carved the outside into narrow slivers of pictures.

“Bianca’s been dead for nearly three months, Mrs Owen. Why are you thinking about what she said now?”

“I didn’t think of it at first. But what if Bianca did know what happened to my little granddaughter? She’ll never be able to tell me now, will she? And then the other night I thought of something else. Bianca wasn’t right in the head. What if she knew what had happened to my little girl because - whatever it was - she’d done it?”

Ten
past
eleven.
The
room
was
silent
now.

“I can’t stop thinkin’ about it.” To illustrate what she meant she held out both her hands. They were shaking, pink-painted fingernails vibrating.

Megan reached for her prescription pad.

She met up with Andy and Phil for coffee. “So - did you observe the two minute silence?”

“No, Andy. Sometimes it seems that talking to the living is more important than remembering the dead.”

Phil Walsh glanced up from the pile of prescriptions he was signing. “You’re a bit profound for a Monday morning, aren’t you?”

She gave him a playful punch. “Kind of goes with the job, doesn’t it? Now then. When can I have a couple of weeks to soak up some sunshine on a long-haul holiday.”

They chatted for almost half an hour before leaving the surgery to do their separate visits.

A sudden cloudburst forced her inside the car. Rain spattered her windscreen and she felt a dreadful sense of boredom, of a lack of colour in her life and in the valley. People walked quickly, wearing dark, dull clothes, hoods hiding their faces, hands deep in pockets. She felt a desperate yearning for colour, for warmth, sunshine, flowers. Italy.

On impulse she decided to call on Esther Magellan, now presumably settled in her new home; she had received no pleas for help from Catherine Howells. She took the road south out of the valley, diverted across the old stone bridge and drove up the side of a low hill towards the flats. These more modern homes were prettier than the Parker’s estate, built of red brick with pleasing design and good views back down the valley. The Social Services had looked after Esther well. The small block of maisonettes looked clean and civilised. The grass was clipped, there
was no graffiti and it was quiet apart from the distant bark of a dog and faraway traffic. Peace was a rare commodity in the valleys where one family in two had a man’s best friend employed to bark at strangers and protect the family home.

Megan let herself in to the entrance through an unlocked wired glass partition and climbed the steps to the yellow front door. From inside she heard shuffling, slippered footsteps. She started planning her interrogation. It would be tricky. Direct questioning was unlikely to bring any results. Esther would simply clam up or cry. They were her defence mechanisms. On the other hand if she was too circumspect she would learn nothing. Esther was quite capable of rambling on for hours in her flat, monotonous voice without giving away much of substance.

Behind the door the shuffling footsteps had stopped. Megan could hear adenoidal breathing and she knew Esther was waiting, listening. She knocked again, impatiently, wondering not for the first time exactly how much Esther did know or retain in her suet-pudding mind. The truth was obscure. Still. However confused Esther Magellan was, she was the best chance Megan had of learning the truth about Bianca. For while Carole Symmonds had been close to her mother it would have been in her flatmate, her “one true friend”, that Bianca would have confided.

She called out. “Esther?”

The door was pulled open half an inch and a voice spoke, “I don’t want any milk today, thank you. Not today.”

“Esther?”

The door was flung open and Esther was tugging at her arm. “Oh it’s you, doctor. I am sorry.” She gave a self-conscious giggle. “I thought it was the milkman. Even though he already came today. I didn’t want more milk,
see.” Her face fell. “But I’m not ill, doctor. I don’t know what you’re doin’ here.”

“I just came to see how you’re getting on in your new flat,” Megan said brightly, following Esther inside and closing the door behind her. She didn’t want anyone hearing her questions about Bianca.

Esther flopped, ungainly, onto the sofa, legs wide apart, pink knickers showing. Megan eyed them and wondered where on earth you bought knickers like them from.

She trained her eyes back on Esther’s face. “How are you Esther?”

“I’m very lonely,” Esther answered happily. “I miss her, you know. Bianca was my friend. My good friend. I wish she was here now. Today.”

“I’m sure you do.” Megan glanced around her. “It’s very nice here though. It’s a lovely flat.”

Esther pulled herself to her feet. “Would you like to have a look around?”

It was as good a method of breaking the ice as anything else so Megan enthusiastically inspected the area. It was clean and tidy, though small. And freshly decorated in contemporary colours, bright blue walls and a white breakfast bar which divided the kitchen from the living/dining space.

Proudly Esther marched her into a small bedroom with cream walls and an orange duvet and a bathroom with a white suite and walls painted the same shade of blue as the living room. When flats were built for single people that was exactly what they meant. Comfortable but tiny as an egg box with four little pockets. Megan felt a suffocating sense of claustrophobia. She would have found it hard to live in such a tiny place. Esther led her back into the sitting room and she stood and admired a
couple of Constable prints screwed to the walls. What the Social Services had provided was not removable.

Central to the living area was a gas fire, turned full on, making the room uncomfortably hot and stuffy. Maybe it was the claustrophobic atmosphere that added to the impression that this was a place too little even for one. Perhaps even Esther thought so. She’d opened the steel framed window as far as it would go, exchanging some of the dank, November air for the fusty interior. Megan crossed the room in three steps and leaned out of the window to take in a couple of lungfuls of damp air, winter grass, mountain streams and the plaintive bleating of sheep. Her eyes trailed along the valley as she wondered how best to broach the subject of the newspapers.

Esther did it for her. “So what did you come for?” she asked innocently.

Megan took the plunge.

“If Bianca was still alive you wouldn’t be living here in this nice place, would you, Esther?”

Sometimes folk we label as simple are not. Esther focused a pair of dark green eyes on her. And for that split second Megan was convinced she read intelligence. The next moment it was gone. Esther’s eyes now appeared black and empty. “I might,” she said flatly. “I might still be living here. They might have put me here and Bianca too.”

“No,” Megan corrected her. “These apartments are for only one person, you know. If the two of you were still together you’d still be in your house in Merthyr Crescent.”

“I could live here and she could live next door to me.”

As usual Esther’s blunt logic was impossible to argue with. So Megan agreed.

Esther was still fixing her with a stare. “Why did you come? I’m not ill. I don’t need a doctor.” Esther’s abrupt
question might have thrown Megan had she not had her answer ready waiting in the wings.

“I’ve come as a friend.”

“Like Bianca was?” The eyes were marginally less trusting. She was not taken in by Megan’s mild deceit.

And now Megan knew she must get to the point quickly or lose this chance. “Sort of. I’d been thinking about Bianca quite a lot lately. I was wondering about those newspapers. Why she kept them.”

“Because the people disappeared.”

“What did Bianca think had happened to them?”

“Lots of ideas she had,” Esther said. “Lots and lots.”

“And what were they?”

“Flying saucers.”

“Do you believe in flying saucers?”

Child like Esther’s hand flew up to her mouth to suppress a giggle. “Of course I don’t. You’d have to be very stupid to think they’d gone into a flying saucer. It wouldn’t be big enough for a start. They’d have to be Flyin’ Plates. And big ones at that.”

Megan had a sneaking feeling that Esther’s comprehension of a flying saucer was more literal than scientific but she didn’t want to sidetrack so she let the idea hang in the air and tried again. “Did she have any other ideas?”

Esther frowned. “That they’d been taken by the - ”

Megan leaned forward eagerly. She was on the edge of discovery. “By the …?”

“By the trolls.”

Megan exhaled with disappointment at Esther’s dumb lack of understanding.

“What did she mean?”

“She said that there were people living underground. Trolls she called them. She said they kept bodies down there.”

“Why - why would they do that?” She was still desperately searching for some logical, rational clue.

“To eat them,” Esther said cheerfully. “Bianca said the children had been taken by the trolls because they wanted to eat them. Only no one knew - except us. And it was a secret.”

Megan could well imagine Alun’s guffaw to this explanation. And the headlines in the
Western
Mail.

In her unfettered mind Bianca had connected trolls with caves and subterranean passages, with bodies stored and hidden, never again to see the light of day. An explanation indeed of what might have happened. If trolls had existed.

Megan felt disheartened.

She left Esther sitting in front of the television, munching chocolate biscuits, hardly looking up when Megan closed the door behind her. The impression she carried with her was of a large cow, contentedly chewing the cud.