by Jan Newton
‘Oh my God. I’ll never complain about the Mancunian Way ever again.’
A road sign announced their arrival in Abergwesyn, but after turning right through a small gaggle of buildings, they were once again out on the open road.
The road swooped and dived into Abergwesyn Common, alongside the little Irfon River. After several miles of single-track wilderness, two bridges crossed and re-crossed the river by a solitary cottage.
‘They’re unusual,’ Julie observed.
‘Ah, now those are Irish bridges. Much cheaper than building a higher bridge, but completely useless when it rains a lot. They flood really easily.’
‘You wouldn’t want to traipse all this way and have to turn back would you?’
The road bent right into trees and rose spectacularly quickly.
‘You’d have fun on a bike up this,’ Julie said. ‘I’m not sure I’ll be coming with you when you do though.’
‘It’s impressive, I’ll give you that, but you would be able to do it if you practised. It’s all a state of mind.’
Julie looked at him, but said nothing. On the right, a metal crash barrier snaked up to a left hand hairpin bend and beyond it the road rose even more steeply. Beneath them the cottage and the bridges already looked minute. A second sharp bend, this time to the right, and the road climbed on, through clumps of tiny fir trees that had obviously been recently planted. The sawn-off trunks and brash of their predecessors was still visible among the new growth.
‘You were saying?’
‘Well, it could be a bit of a challenge, but you would be able to do it, eventually. If you want something badly enough you’ll do anything to achieve it.’
‘That’s why you’re a teacher and I’m a copper. You really believe that don’t you?’
‘I do. I have to, otherwise the kids I teach won’t get the best mentoring I can manage.’
The road continued to climb, and with it Julie’s conviction that there was no way on earth she would ever ride this road on a bike. She looked at Adam as he concentrated on the tiny strip of sinuous tarmac as it turned steeply downhill. He was enjoying every minute of this. Their move to Wales had certainly done something for his resolve. Maybe it was time she started to develop the kind of self-belief which he found so easy.
CHAPTER TEN
Day Three
The little post office-and-shop in Newbridge was busy. There were more vans and 4x4s than cars parked outside, and most of the customers were dressed for the outdoors in heavy boots and work shirts. Julie looked at her watch and decided she had time to investigate the shop. It must be the nearest retail outlet to the cottage at a mere five miles away, but she still hadn’t been inside. She seemed to have lost the knack of shopping now that there wasn’t a mega Sainsbury’s on the doorstep. About now, her mum would be honing her list for the weekly shop at Booths Supermarket. It was her little extravagance in what she liked to think of as the northern version of Waitrose, way too posh for Julie’s needs. She could say for certain that Morecambe Bay salt marsh lamb and artisanal Lancashire cheese had never made it to her shopping list. It wouldn’t now either, not with himself doing the vegan thing. He wouldn’t be happy until he’d persuaded her to join him on his bean and broccoli crusade, but then she had the Tiffany Sanderson ace up her sleeve to counter that one. For now. Maybe.
The shop was buzzing. Small but perfectly formed, it had everything you could ever run out of and more besides. She picked up a Twix and waited in the queue behind an old man whose basket contained a bottle of decent red wine, a swiss roll and a turnip.
‘Do they know who it is yet?’ The woman on the till counted change into Julie’s hand. ‘The body on the Monks’ Trod,’ she added by way of clarification. ‘With you being in the police, you’d get to know before us, wouldn’t you?’
‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Julie said, stuffing the chocolate into her bag. ‘Let me know if you hear anything, won’t you?’ She left the shop and stood by her car in the sunshine, watching for Swift’s Volvo. Menna hurtled past in her Land Rover, hooting and waving. Julie waved back, and thought, not for the first time, how amazing it was that the local people greeted her like a long-lost friend after such a short space of time.
Swift was in good spirits as she climbed into the Volvo, and they set off out of the village into the vista of hills which rose ahead of them. In two hundred yards they had passed the pub, the tiny carpet shop, and the turning towards Julie’s new home, and they were already back into open countryside.
‘Busy day today, Julie, and you’ll get to take in a few more of the sights.’
‘So where are we off to exactly?’ Julie attempted to unfold her Ordnance Survey map in the limited space between herself, Swift and the dashboard. Typically, the map was two-sided and the other side was the one she needed.
‘I thought you needed the guided tour of the Elan Valley. I know you saw some of it with the Collins case, but if you’ve not already done it, it will give you a good idea of where everything is. Besides,’ he slowed to let a pheasant scuttle into the grass verge, ‘with you living over this way, it gives me an excuse. I don’t often get the chance to drive this road.’
‘Why, what’s so special about this road? And what is it about men and roads?’
‘You’ll see. It’s a glorious piece of countryside and it goes right round the reservoirs and the area we’re looking at. Why don’t you just use the map book in the back, it’s a lot easier to manage.’
‘I need to see all the points of interest,’ Julie said, finally managing to fold the map down into a manageable oblong. ‘You can learn a huge amount from large-scale maps, Sir.’
The main road followed the broad River Wye, which ran alongside, but in the opposite direction to them.
‘Where does the Wye end up, Sir?’
‘Cas-gwent.’
‘Where?’
‘Chepstow, on the Severn Estuary and right on the border with England. You should go and have a look round, it’s a lovely little town.’
‘I’ll put it on the list for if I ever get another day off, Sir.’
Swift grinned. ‘The Wye and the Severn both have their source on Pumlumon Fawr, just up the road here, up in the hills west of Llangurig. Very wild and woolly it is up there.’
Julie gazed out of the windscreen at the steep, bracken-covered hills. ‘How do you tell where the wild and woolly stops and the other bits start, Sir?’
Swift slowed into the speed limit outside Rhayader and stopped to let a gigantic logging wagon through the narrow piece of road between the buildings, then turned left into West Street.
‘I’ve just realised the street names are the actual points of the compass.’
Swift smiled. ‘Well done, Sergeant. Perfectly logical, when you think about it.’
The road wound past houses and up a small hill and suddenly the whole valley was spread out below them.
‘You should go and look at the village down there, if you get a chance. It was built by the water company for its workers originally,’ Swift said.
Above the Visitors’ Centre, a small metal fence separated the road from what, to Julie, looked like an enormous drop down into the valley. She sought solace in the words on her map.
‘So bryn means hill?’
‘It does. I told you you’d get the hang of it.’
‘What’s Bryn Mawr, then, Sir?’
‘Big Hill.’
‘Imaginative names they have for hills round here. We saw some interesting ones last night. We went for a drive over to Pontrhydfendigaid.’ She separated the five syllables into manageable chunks and smiled triumphantly.
Swift laughed. ‘Well done, Sergeant.’
‘It’s just so frustrating that I can’t even understand a map. I’d do better in France.’
‘You’ll get there. It’s nice to know you’re interested in the language.’
The road skirted reservoir after reservoir, and Swift named each one as they passed. Caban Coch, Garr
eg Ddu, Penygarreg and the last one with hills soaring ahead of it, Craig Goch.
‘I didn’t realise there were so many of them, Sir. Or that they went on for so many miles.’
‘There’s a lot more to Caban Coch than we’ve seen, and there’s another one west of that called Claerwen. It’s supposed to be almost as big as all the others put together. There’s a stunning walk along its banks with all sorts of wildlife up there, even flesh-eating plants.’
Julie grimaced. ‘No way.’
‘Sundews they’re called. They eat flies.’ Swift laughed at the queasy look on Julie’s face. There was supposed to be another reservoir, Dol y Mynach that one was, but they didn’t finish it. Then there was Nant-y-Gro, where the Dambusters tested the bouncing bomb. They do say that Barnes Wallis came out to see it. It was built originally as a water supply for the workers who built the dams and the other reservoirs.’
‘How come you know so much about it?
‘We’ve been coming up to the Elan Valley for as long as I can remember. My dad used to bring me and my brother, and then when we had the kids we’d bring them up here on a Sunday afternoon. It’s a great place to walk. We should do it more often, Gwen and me.’
Swift slowed the car and pointed to the hills on the left. ‘And that’s the Monks’ Trod, just up there.’
‘So, what are the chances of finding anyone or anything out here do you think?’
Swift considered the question. ‘It’s huge, I’ll grant you that, and fairly remote too, but the local people are quick to spot anything different – a caravan in deepest woodland, holidaymakers, even fly tippers, and they’re not afraid to share their information with us.’
‘So you think we’ll manage to work out what happened?’
‘Have faith, Sergeant. We always get there in the end.’
Julie shook her head. ‘It makes knocking on doors in Rochdale seem easy.’
‘And where’s the fun in that?’
‘Are we going to have a look round the Tregaron end today, too?’
Swift shook his head. ‘The lads assure me they’ve asked at every shop, hotel and B&B within a twenty-mile radius. Until we know more about how the poor girl found herself up on that track, we just have to cover all angles and let the locals over there know there’s a police presence.’ He glanced across at her. ‘Did you see the site of Strata Florida Abbey on your travels last night?’
Julie nodded. ‘It’s hard to believe how important it used to be. Adam said it was something to do with Benedictine monks and that the Monks’ Trod went from there to Abbey somewhere? I know you mentioned it but I’ve forgotten.’
‘Abbeycwmhir, or Abaty Cwm Hir, to be a bit more Welsh about it.’
‘So go on, I know cwm is valley, and abaty must be abbey, so Valley Abbey Something?’
‘Da iawn.’ Swift nodded his approval. ‘Abbey in the Long Valley. But, I think they were Cistercians, the monks. I have a picture in my mind that goes back to my schooldays of them trying to pick their way along that track in long white robes.’
They passed the little car park where Kay Greenhalgh had parked her car two days ago and rounded a tight bend up to the steep junction. Swift turned left and the car sped over the invisible county line between Powys and Ceredigion and the ground to the left of the road opened up as the contours on Julie’s map flattened. Rough tracks to left and right led to isolated farmhouses and a small bridge crossed a wide stream. Julie turned the map. ‘Afon is river, is it?’
Swift nodded. ‘Well done.’ He nodded towards the bridge. ‘It’s the Elan, and now we’re just up from Pont ar Elan, where we were the other day.’
‘But this track over the river, Sir, it runs almost parallel to the Monks’ Trod. Someone could have driven the victim out along here.’
‘They could, but they would still have had to get the body from the track up to where we found it.’
‘Or made them walk up there.’
‘Good point, but from what I remember, it’s even muddier on this side and the victim was relatively mud-free. But it’s a fair point, Sergeant, and well-observed. I’ll make sure we get someone out there in a Land Rover to see if there’s anything worth looking at, but I won’t hold my breath.’
The Volvo passed the point on the Monks’ Trod where the river bent round towards the road and Swift paused, so they could both take a long look.
‘Needle in a haystack then, Sir?’
‘I’d say the odds are rather worse than that, wouldn’t you?’ Swift turned the Volvo round and headed back towards Pont ar Elan.
‘House to house could take some time.’ Julie scanned the map. ‘Are we going to start knocking on doors now?’
Swift shook his head. ‘I’ll get the local lads in Rhayader to ask around. They know everyone up here and it will give them a chance to tell the farmers to keep an eye open for anything or anyone that isn’t usually here.’
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘Well, after we’ve been to talk to Mal’s neighbours, I want another word with that teacher this afternoon. What’s his name?’
‘Mark Robinson, Sir, but what do you think he can add?’
‘I want to make absolutely sure that he didn’t see young Owen or any of the other kids picking up anything from near the body, or that there was anything there originally which wasn’t there by the time we arrived. It doesn’t feel right that the poor girl had nothing with her.’ Swift turned the car right, through rough stone gateposts, and onto a long, straight tarmacked drive with a closely mown verge. At regular intervals, there were young saplings – oak, sycamore and hazel – which were supported by identical crossed stakes and circled by triangular cages of sheep netting.
‘Wow. This isn’t your usual hill farm, then?’
Swift smiled. ‘Rumour has it they came into rather a lot of money. I’m not sure how they came by it, but you can imagine the speculation that goes on. And not just about the money either.’
‘Go on, this is starting to sound interesting.’
‘Well, since I spoke to Mal, I’ve been doing a bit of asking around, and there’s more than a bit of concern about several men who work for them.’
‘Why? What have they done?’
‘Well, that’s just it. They don’t appear to have done anything, apart from help Mal with his fences.’
Julie raised an eyebrow. ‘And that provokes concern around here does it? You’d have to do a bit more than that to get an ear-lagging in Harpurhey.’ She shook her head. ‘So, there has to be more to it than that.’
Swift reached a fork in the drive, and steered the Volvo down the left-hand side and on towards a sheer wall of rock which rose on the far side of a bubbling stream. ‘These men don’t speak to anyone, apparently. They’ve only ever been seen in town with one or other of the people who own the place, a Mr and Mrs Wilkins or Wilkinson. Mal wasn’t entirely sure. They’ve only ever been seen in town on market day.’
‘So do they sell stuff on the market? Do they have stalls or something?’
‘It’s not that sort of market. It’s a livestock market every Tuesday. It’s mostly sheep, but there are cattle too. This place is a little more upmarket. Look.’ Swift pointed to a large group of bizarre-looking animals, which were watching the car from a pristine paddock, surrounded by white post and rail fences. As Swift drove past, about fifty pairs of eyes followed them and small heads swivelled on improbably long necks.’
‘Good God.’ Julie craned over her shoulder. ‘What are they?’
‘Alpacas. Not indigenous to these parts, it has to be said.’
‘Aren’t they more at home in the Andes?’
‘Well done, Julie. You’ll turn into a country girl if you’re not careful.’
‘Not me, Sir. Strictly a city lass, I am. I’ve never dealt with anything more exotic than a stray Chihuahua or an escaped parrot.’
‘Well they’d be pretty exotic in the Cambrian Mountains,’ Swift laughed. ‘It’s only what you’re used to.’
>
‘Do people eat alpacas then? Do these end up at the livestock market?’
‘I’m not entirely sure, but these are mainly kept for their wool apparently. It’s a sizeable business, from the little I’ve managed to find out about it.’
The valley widened out now, and the post-and-railed meadows were lush with wild flowers and grass which was so green it looked as though it had just been painted. To the left of the drive, just in front of the stream and the bare rock face stood a substantial stone house surrounded by immaculate gardens. The lawns were as manicured as anything Julie had seen in Alderley Edge or Wilmslow, and formal flowerbeds of red, white and blue flowers lined the winding path up to the front door. To one side of the house, a small orchard was bursting with fruit trees. To the other, a regimented vegetable plot harboured every shape and colour of leaf Julie had ever seen.
‘How on earth do they manage to grow all this stuff so high up?’
‘I have absolutely no idea, Sergeant. I have trouble keeping up with the grass, let alone the garden. That’s Gwen’s department.’ He turned to Julie. ‘One of her departments. If I’m honest, she does far too much.’
