Disturbing Ground

by Priscilla Masters

  “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.

  Chapter 17

  She sat outside Esther’s house, staring down at the valley which still seemed stained with coal dust, dull black, dirty grey. She fiddled with her mobile phone, tempted. She could do with talking to a friend. Someone balanced, someone sympathetic. But it was not fair to burden Alun with her doubts. He had his own life to lead, a wife, a child, soon to be joined by another baby. For her to keep contacting him would do him harm.

  The police had dismissed the cases years ago after full investigation. Alun wasn’t interested. And why should he be? It was history.

  She began the slow, wet crawl up the valley towards home, hemmed in by cars. And yet something was still stopping her from entirely abandoning her ruminations. To distract herself she switched the car radio on, listened to the jaunty ramblings of the two presenters on Red Dragon radio and moved at fifteen miles an hour. Until she reached a grey-stone detached house halfway between the upper part of the village and the lower group of houses. A place where the slag heap had been flattened to provide a rugby pitch, a few swings, a roundabout and this one house with a pristine, pocket handkerchief front garden, windows polished like jet and perfect white paintwork. On impulse she pulled to a halt.

  She found the front door unlocked, caught no response to her call and walked in. Barbara Watkins was a woman whom many called on unannounced. She was always waiting for - expecting - someone.

  A retired headmistress who had once taught Megan, she had lived in these valleys all her life apart from a brief spell at university learning her trade and a year or two working in North Wales under the shadow of Cader Idris. Rumour had it that her one solitary love affair had ended in a fall from the heights of the mountain about which so much folklore had originated. Tales of madness and poetry, of violent death and disappearance, insubstantial legend, hints of mists and druids, bards and poets. Maybe that great
mountain was influencing her still - even from afar. She had an uncanny knack for sensing the truth, a reputation, in spite of her prosaic profession, of being fey.

  The hall was narrow and dark, fussy with bits of polished brass and a pair of ancient portraits foxed with damp. Megan announced herself as she entered. It was the custom here, to shout out and prevent Barbara from being surprised.

  She appeared in the kitchen door, a tall, angular figure with short, well cut straight grey hair and piercing blue eyes, wiping her hands on a cotton apron, her face breaking into smiles when she saw who it was. “Megan. What a surprise.” She laughed, holding out her hands. “I’m not ill, am I?”

  Megan laughed with her. “No. No you’re not ill. And I do wish people would stop making that assumption whenever they see me unexpectedly. I wanted to ask your advice. Well - your opinion, really.”

  “Well - you can have my advice and my opinion,” Barbara said tartly, “but you’ll have to come into the kitchen or my Welsh cakes’ll burn. Nothing’s free in this life, Megan.”

  Megan followed her through, already salivating at the scent of the fresh Welsh cakes and relishing the anticipation of her one time headmistress’ penetrative wit. She sat at the end of the scrubbed pine kitchen table, stuffing one of the Welsh cakes into her mouth and watching while Barbara deftly flipped fresh ones over on the griddle. When she’d finished and a pile was cooling on a wire tray she made them both a cup of tea and sat opposite Megan.

  “For the chapel,” she explained. “We have a fête on Saturday to raise enough money to extend our churchyard. So many people are dying.” She shot Megan a steely glance, poured them both a second cup of tea and cleared her throat.

  It gave Megan a starting point. “In a way,” she said, “that’s why I’m here.”

  “Oh? Not about to make a dreadful confession, are you?”

  Megan laughed. “No.”

  “Good - you haven’t been killing off your patients?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Thank goodness for that. So?”

  “Would you say that Llancloudy has a high crime rate?”

  Barbara gave a deep sigh. “Yes - juvenile crime, petty vandalism, car crime. Yes, I would.”

  “People disappearing?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “But quite a few people have vanished from here.”

  “Go on.”

  “Bleddyn Hughes?” Megan watched closely for Barbara’s reaction. “Do you remember him? As far as I know he was the first. He vanished thirty years ago. In 1971. A teacher.”

  Barbara appeared to relax. She poured another cup of tea for them both. “Oh, I do remember Bleddyn. Funny bloke. I always knew there was something different about him even when he first came to Llancloudy. A maths teacher who offers to coach the boys in rugby. Put in a lot of time after school hours if I remember rightly. I had a sneaking feeling that he wasn’t a hundred per cent bona fide. But then it wasn’t my place to point a finger. And you’ve got to remember, Megan, the climate was different then, thirty years ago. People weren’t so aware of things like child abuse. But his wasn’t a disappearance. There was nothing odd about it.”

  “He vanished, didn’t he? So what did you think had happened to him?”

  “He was hounded out of the valley. No doubt about it. He just went somewhere else.”

  “But his money, his passport, his clothes? I’ve read the newspaper articles. He took nothing. Only the clothes he was wearing when he went.”

  “I still don’t think anything happened to him. I really do think he just left. Things were gettin’ really difficult. When he started work in the school we had our suspicions but the rumours just grew and grew and a couple of the parents were starting to make complaints. Someone was bound to listen in the end. And he would have known it.”

  “So you think he really did go away somewhere, maybe to London or a place where the climate was a little more tolerant and he would be anonymous?”

  The retired teacher nodded.

  “Leaving everything behind him?”

  “He was panicked into it. There was a meeting of the Parent Teachers Association on the Friday. He left over the weekend. How much more evidence do you want?”

  Thirty years ago Barbara Watkins had made up her mind. And no finger pointing by a middle-aged schizophrenic was going to change that very certain opinion. Megan breathed in the scent of hot Welsh cakes and began again. “OK. So what about Rhiann Lewis?”

  Immediately Barbara’s expression changed to show sympathy, grief, pity. “Oh, that was different. Terrible for the family. Lovely little thing she was. Great mop of dark curls. She would have been pretty when she’d grown up.”

  “I know the story,” Megan said. “I’ve read all about it in the papers. Seen the pictures too. She was a beautiful child. So what do you think happened to her?”

  Barbara ignored the hint of irony in her voice. “Someone else thought she was beautiful too,” she said softly. “Someone took her away. I doubt even that she’s dead. Some couple who wanted a child of their own took her. She was only three. Broke the family’s heart. But I don’t believe she’s dead.”

  “And Marie Walker?”

  The retired teacher narrowed her eyes. “She was the little ten-year-old, wasn’t she? Went missing sometime in the late eighties? Buying chips. Saucy little thing. I always thought she was murdered. Assaulted and her body hidden somewhere. A couple of years after a man was arrested exposing himself right outside the same chip shop, Valley Chippie. They tried to make him confess but he said he didn’t know anything about her. Completely denied it. No one believed him, of course.” Her eyes were directly focused on her. “We knew, Megan. Knew as though we’d been there ourselves and witnessed it.”

  “And the man?”

  “Left the valleys. I heard he had a motorbike crash and was badly hurt some years after. Poetic justice.” There was more than a hint of chapel hardness in her face. “Don’t know anything more. Except he never did confess.”

  “So what about the two boys who vanished together? Not so long ago.”

  “What was it? Five or six years?”

  “Eight.”

  “George Prees and Neil Jones. I remember their names. Little monsters they were according to their teachers. I was glad, in a way, that they were never my problem because believe you me, Megan, they would have been a problem - all their lives. Perhaps it’s being a teacher all my life, having no family but watching what people make of themselves. Makes us cynical. We can recognise a rotten apple in the barrel early on.”

  It was true. Barbara had a hearty scepticism when assessing children’s characters and potential. And again she had a rational explanation for the disappearance of the two boys.

  “They hitched a lift out of the valley and disappeared - like many other truants, probably in London or Brighton or one of the other places the homeless gravitate to. Or maybe they just fell down a mine shaft.”

  “So why weren’t their bodies discovered?”

  “Haven’t you got any idea what’s down there, Megan? It’s like a city. The catacombs of Rome aren’t more intricate than the tunnels beneath these valleys. We were sitting on coal. Tons and tons of it. Like an ocean beneath our feet. And there’s still plenty there. It’s just that nobody wants to dig it up any more. Old-fashioned, coal is. Like these poor little valleys. Sold our souls to the Japanese and their light industry. Anything from badges to microchips. But that isn’t what’s at the heart of these places. Megan. Those boys could have fallen down a shaft and no one would ever be the wiser no matter however hard they looked. They could have wandered in, got lost down there. The tunnels go for miles. One day they’ll be found. Together like they always were, either in a city or under our feet. Always in trouble that pair. Tell them not to do something and it was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. They were the most rebellious kids I’ve ever known in my entire teaching career. And I’ve known some Che Guevaras and Pol Pots in my tim
e, I can tell you. I was glad they never got to the comp.”

  Megan sat still, uncomfortable with Barbara’s words as well as with her underlying attitude. She was so judgmental, so unpitying, so unsympathetic. But she had been a witness to all the disappearances - an impartial observer who had known at least one of the victims well. She was undoubtedly sane and rational - unlike Bianca Rhys.

  Her version of events must be the right one.

  Poor Bianca had looked at the cases and threaded them together with explanations so bizarre no one had taken any notice. Even ringing the police with her suggestions of “flying saucers” and trolls had been understandably treated as a very good joke.

  It was more rational for her to agree with Barbara.

  The only other person who had listened to Bianca’s strange wanderings had been Smithson.

  She looked up as Barbara poured her a second cup of tea. “So what do you think happened to Bianca?”

  “She fell in the pool.” It was the simple answer.

  A message was flashing on her phone to visit Triagwn. And so she turned right out of Barbara’s house, away from her own place and back towards the point where the roundabout crosses the M4. Turn right for Swansea, left for Cardiff, Newport and England. Megan drove went straight over then took the narrow lane, first right after the roundabout.

  She pulled up right outside the front door of Triagwn House and sat in her car for a moment, watching the cherub spout his stream into the pool below. A few drops bounced into the water, rippling its glassy surface. She climbed out of her car, slamming the door behind her and thought of the little girl who had fallen in, too terrified to save herself. It had all been so unnecessary. The pool could have been no more than a couple of feet deep. If the child had stood up her head would have been well above water. And years later the same event had happened in the Slaggy Pool.

  If Bianca had stood up … she had a brief vision of Alun’s trousers, wet to the knees and corrected herself. If Bianca had been able to stand up.

  What if she couldn’t. What if she had been already dead?