Sympathy for the Devil (30 page)

Huw looked across at Catrin, then back to the old man.

‘But they must have come down to the village?’

‘Occasionally a couple of the older ones would come to buy provisions. But they never spoke to the locals or mixed.’

‘You remember what they looked like?’

‘Not really. It’s a long time ago.’

Catrin pulled her chair closer to the old man.

‘You said the children dressed alike, so you must have seen them?’

‘Only from a distance.’

‘But you saw them?’

‘A few times I saw them playing in the wood above the hall, near the place where the villagers used to go to collect firewood.’

‘How did they appear?’

There was a silence. Smith looked as if he was about to say something but Huw held up his hand. It was at least half a minute before the old man spoke again.

‘Well-fed, well-dressed. Not like the other kids that I used to see hanging round with the hippie groups.’

‘And what were they doing when you saw them?’

Catrin watched the man closely as he paused again. She had the sense, as she’d had with Gwen in Bancyfelin, that what he was remembering had unsettled him in some way that he didn’t wish to share.

‘I’d gone to collect hazel in the copses on the ridge,’ he said at last. ‘There’s a view from there down through the ashes into a small glade. The edges are heavily wooded, it’s not easy to see.’

‘But could you see what they were doing?’ Huw asked.

‘They’d always be playing a game, like hunt the thimble, but with a straw doll. That’s all I ever saw them doing there.’

‘So you saw nothing that seemed unusual then?’

The man hesitated for a moment, and Catrin saw his hands were held tight between his thighs. ‘Not really, no.’

‘Either you did or you didn’t,’ said Huw quietly.

‘It was rough, wooded terrain up there, with a ground cover of bracken. Like I said, it was difficult to see.’

‘Could you hear anything?’

‘No, just the occasional shrieking noise.’ The old man was sucking his bottom lip in under his top teeth. ‘The one looking wore some kind of costume. It looked like something home-made, with feathers on the arms.’

Catrin held his gaze. ‘Any adults around?’

‘The leader was there in the background, watching. No one else.’

Tudor had taken the pipe from his pocket, begun to fill it from a beaded pouch of tobacco. Huw took a lighter from his pocket, passed it over to him.

‘We heard they used to live in a large house. Do you know where that was?’

‘That was the hall up in the woods, where the clinic is now.’

The old man pointed up at something in a frame next to the pictures of the young girl. It was an old map which showed the club-like shape of the headland. To the north, some stylised stones marked the site of a cromlech. It hadn’t been visible in the aerial map, so Catrin thought it must now be covered by the trees. Back then the northern part of the island, high above the escarpment, was unpopulated and there was no sign of any track leading from low to high. She wondered if the mapmaker had even visited the high ground. Certainly there was no sign on the map of any habitation there.

Tudor now indicated with his pipe a Celtic cross that marked the site of a large building. It was somewhat isolated, in a thickly wooded area just below the escarpment.

‘But this group were only living on the island for a few years – in the early Seventies. Do you know who owned the hall then?’ Huw asked.

‘The place was derelict for years before the group moved in there.’

‘Someone must have owned it?’

‘The villagers say the same family owned it ever since there’d been an abbey there in medieval times. The Abbey was built beneath the cromlech – they built the religious houses then on the sites sacred to the old religion. After the old family died out it fell into ruin, until the group you’re asking about began to renovate it.’

‘Anyone else left in the area from that time?’

Yet again the old man took his time with his reply.

‘There are one or two I recognise occasionally. They work at the clinic part-time. It’s the only employer here. But I don’t see them out and about much.’

He passed the lighter back to Huw who was standing up now, fastening his jacket. ‘Do they live in the village, these old-timers?’ Huw asked.

Tudor shrugged his broad shoulders, and got up to show them out. Smith had also risen; he seemed in a hurry to be gone now. ‘There’s a café a few hundred yards further up the road,’ he said. ‘That’s where all the workers from the clinic meet after their shifts.’

Smith walked out to his pickup. Shale crunched under his tyres as he revved the engine then moved off fast down the lane.

The grey sky had darkened, the earlier snow had turned to a thin icy rain spotting the window. As the sound of the engine faded everything was silent. Over the windows Catrin noticed heavy reinforced metal blinds. Huw was helping the old man to edge them down. She glanced out past them. For a moment she thought she saw something glowing among the trees. But when she looked again it had vanished among the thick branches.

She went out and stood looking into the trees. The wind had dropped. It was still now. Further along she saw what looked like lights at the bottom of the escarpment, just a narrow glow between the branches. All around it the trees spread in a thick smudge more black than green, without clearings or paths.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘Seems like there’s another hut down there.’

Huw was standing at her shoulder. ‘Well, some lights anyway. Could be anything.’

She peered closer but there was nothing more to see, just a thin strip of light. Behind her, old Tudor stood following her gaze out into the trees. Immediately he backed away inside.

She heard the heavy door closing behind them, the rasping of several large locks.

‘Not very friendly is he, all of a sudden,’ Huw said. The rain skated down the windscreen in fat droplets as Catrin turned the car down the lane. In silence she watched the outline of the headland slowly appearing through the sheets of rain as they made their way down again to the village. A shiver passed through her body.

Catrin told the barman she wanted to see all the rooms in the inn before making her choice. They were the only guests, so he had to show them almost a dozen rooms on each floor. She wanted to see the exact layout of the place.

All the ground-floor windows had been fitted with thick burglar bars and a recent alarm system. The only access to the ground floor was through the bar. She decided on two adjoining rooms on the first floor. They were dual-aspect, with windows overlooking both an inner yard, and the front. There were clear sightlines down over the building’s access points.

Catrin then went out and parked by the old-fashioned pump, an area visible from the windows. She chose this particular place, as it was the only area with a light, presumably placed there to deter locals from helping themselves to petrol in the middle of the night.

She told Huw she needed a couple of hours alone in her room. Once she’d closed the door she tried her mobile but there was no reception. Looking around she noticed in the corner one of the earliest generation ADSL points. It was covered with a layer of dust-coated cellophane, which made her wonder if it had ever been in use. She rummaged in her case for a cable, then plugged her Mac in. It was slow, but it worked.

Formal police applications for call listings from telecom service providers could take several days, sometimes weeks to process. They cost the force several hundred pounds each, more for fast-tracks. She knew she’d be unable to request them without making a formal SPOC application via operations at Cathays Park, and as she was on leave and no longer had pull there this was a non-starter. If she needed them later in any form as admissible evidence she’d jump through the hoops, but for now she knew more direct ways of acquiring the same data.

Within forty minutes she had saved several pages on her screen. The first showed all the in-calls on the phone in the bar during the last nine weeks, the second all the out-calls. A third listing, from the national PAYE database, showed all the employees at the clinic. The only names she recognised were those of the young doctor Smith and the old man from the shop. Tudor Mower he was listed as; the only Tudor, so she presumed it had to be him. He was doing three shifts a week as an assistant nurse in one of the private wards; no more details were given. She saw he’d started there eighteen months previously: this fitted with what the doctor had said about his returning to the area at that time.

On the line in the bar, there had been about sixty calls made during the last nine weeks. She noted the in-call from the photographic shop in Abergwaun made nine days before the photographs had arrived at Huw’s address. Of the remaining calls about twenty-five were to or from the clinic’s switchboard, another thirty-two to or from landlines in outlying villages.

Catrin could see that all but three of the calls had been to or from account holders with the same ten surnames as minor employees at the clinic who worked as cooks, cleaners and junior nurses. This suggested the calls were simply confirming arrival times back home and similar routine domestic matters.

To be sure she called each of the numbers in turn. As the phone was picked up she spoke in a heavy Cardiff accent. ‘I’m a friend of the skinny bloke from Cardiff, you know who I mean.’ In every case she was met with blank incomprehension. It was a fair, but not conclusive, assumption that Rhys had not made or received any of these calls.

This left only the three unaccounted for. All had been in-calls at various hours of the evening in the third of the eight weeks Rhys had been working the case. All three were from the same number. It was a public box in central Cardiff, and when she tried the number the line was out of order.

Then she deleted everything, unhooked the connection. She uncoiled the webcam and placed it on the windowsill facing outwards. Then she knocked on the door of Huw’s room.

There was no answer. She opened the door. The room was heavy with smoke, she could barely see to the other side of it. In one corner the pipe with the elaborately carved bowl was smouldering, and on the bedside table, a small chillum lay upturned. Huw was lying back on the bed in a silk paisley dressing gown and a pair of salmon-pink pyjamas. Two laptops were open playing films, one a recent private Seerland concert. It was one he must have had filmed privately, she didn’t remember seeing any reference to it on the band’s site’s official product listings. The other screen showed some obscure art-house film. But Huw wasn’t watching either. His eyes were half closed as he gazed fascinated at a cobweb on the ceiling. She felt a sudden flush of anger, prodded him with her boot

‘Despite the fires and the deaths, this is just a rich man’s hobby for you, isn’t it?’

He looked deeply hurt, and he bowed his head, said nothing. Immediately Catrin regretted what she’d said. He’s as much a victim as the others in his way, she thought, he’s given his life to this and he doesn’t know where it’s taking him.

He was smiling at her, pulling something out of a bag beside the bed. It was black, part sheer, part lacy, it looked exquisite. She knew of course he must have bought it before the trip. He’d already seen her as a sure thing, a done deal. Anger shot through her again redoubled.

‘I’m not your whore,’ she said, and slammed the door.

She changed into her trackies and Nikes, went down to the yard. Earlier she’d noticed behind reception an old wooden tennis racket, warped by the sea air, and some balls. She began pounding the wall under Huw’s window.

‘Sleep through that, you rich bastard!’ she shouted. She went through the full repertoire of her strokes, forehand flat, backhand slice, then forehand topspin, her most natural shot. She knocked the ball shallow to the wall so it looped up for slams and volleys.

No one came out to complain. They were the only guests, and the bar was on the other side of the building. As the minutes passed the walls began to fade into a line of dim green shadows, resolve themselves again into the trees surrounding a court in summer. It was the park where she’d played as a girl, she was sliding over the hot shale, beating the coach. She could smell the mown grass, the syrupy scents drifting over on the light breeze from the ice-cream van. For a few moments she was back there and free again.

5

They are at the door, the two men again.

The taller is kneeling over her, he takes out her mask. She cannot move her hands. Its shadow under her, another long, pointed beak.

They’re putting on the buckles at the back of her shorn head.

Their hands moving on her gently. In the shuttered half-light, she sees the two perching shapes on either side, shifting.

Over their eyes are mirrors. She tries to close her eyes, but she cannot. They are taped open. We will show you everything, the voices had said to her. Look into the mirrors, see yourself.

She sees herself in their painted arms. Her bound, open body, painted like theirs. She sees her oiled girlish limbs twisting under the long, hooked masks, under their vague flowing forms.

Was there nothing she hadn’t seen then? Then the lights in the mirrors on their masks are blurring, blurring the edges of things like the memory of something that had long ago disappeared from the world.

Catrin woke, sweating. It was the old dream again.

She took deep breaths, letting the air out slowly through pursed lips.

She lit a cigarette, stared at the wallpaper for what seemed an age. Slowly she was becoming calmer, the sweat cooling. She looked at her watch. She’d been asleep a full seven hours.

She went over to her Mac. Before she’d gone to bed, she had placed her webcam on the windowsill, focused on the car. She’d run the feed into a certain obscure Welsh countryside webcam enthusiasts’ site. It was one of the few that stored its contributors’ feeds for up to forty-eight hours. The images would not be particularly clear, but she had to work with what she’d got.