Disturbing Ground

by Priscilla Masters

  She could have flung her arms around him.

  Chapter 20

  The story of the schoolbag broke the next morning and fuelled a fever of speculation in the Western Mail and the Welsh Mirror. It was displayed by the police on Breakfast TV; a sad, scruffy item, faded red, placed on a table. A blonde WPC held the straps up and the camera zoomed in to show where the stitching had torn, while a burly DI stood in the background and explained that the bag looked as though it had been ripped off the ten-year-old’s back.

  Even though she believed it was hopeless, Megan braved a biting wind to volunteer and help the search on the following afternoon. But as what light there had been finally faded, nothing more had been found of the missing boy.

  He would not be found.

  The evening paper was full of speculation. The boy had been kidnapped. The boy had been murdered. He was walking the streets of London selling his body. Someone claimed to have seen him in Swansea, standing on the jetty, staring out to sea, like the French Lieutenant’s Woman. Megan cut out all the stories and placed them carefully inside “Stefan’s box”. The police, she noted, were hiding behind bland statements - enquiries were proceeding …

  And from Alun she heard nothing more.

  But life - and death - must go on in some muddled way or other. By Monday morning Mandy Parker was beginning to substitute her son for a supply of Temazepan. It was her way of surviving. Megan listened as she unburdened herself, racing through the entire spectrum of emotions in a few minutes - from denial to acceptance through guilt and anger with some terrible anguish thrown in. It would have been difficult for any doctor to help her through, fatuous to pretend that there was an answer; pharmacological, physical or mental. So Megan felt no responsibility as she wrote out the script and handed it over with the usual warning about not becoming too reliant on the drug. As Mandy’s eyes scanned the prescription, Megan studied them and read there a shocking vulnerability. She never had been a well nourished person. Now she looked thin, haggard, old way beyond her years. It brought home to Megan what pain there was in these sterile disappearances.

  “Do they have anything to go on?”

  Mandy was too choked to even cry. “They spoke to Mark Pritchard and Ryan Jenkins.” Her voice was flat, lifeless. “Thick as thieves the three of them were. If Stefan had plans to do anything he would have told them what they were.”

  “And?” Megan denied that she was asking through morbid curiosity. She was the woman’s doctor. It was right that she should know everything.

  “I can’t imagine what happened. I thought he was going to school. He looked as though he was going to school. But he never went near the place he didn’t.” The anger burst through. “Deceitful little swine. If he’d gone…”

  A great flood of tears welled up inside her eyes. “What’s happened to him? I can’t sleep. He could be alive - somewhere. He might be dead. He might be with people. He might be on the streets. He might be cold. He might be suffering. All I know is he isn’t with me. I don’t know he’s safe. I don’t know he’s warm. I don’t know he’s fed. I wonder sometimes, doctor, if I’ll ever know what’s happened to him.”

  Megan made soothing noises and touched Mandy Parker’s arm. A moment later she left the surgery without saying another word and Megan finished her morning’s work feeling grey, as though some of Mandy’s misery had been left behind in the consulting room.

  Even the face of Gericault’s Mad Woman seemed to soften in the presence of such grief.

  But the encounter spurred Megan into action. As soon as she had seen her last patient she drove to the “chicken coop” estate. She knew enough about Stefan’s buddies to be sure they wouldn’t be at school either. They would have some excuse ready to wave in front of any authority who challenged their presence on the streets this afternoon. As she had expected, they were loafing around the bus shelter, sitting full length along the wooden bench, efficiently blocking the seats from being used by an ancient crone holding on to a “sholley” and a woman so heavily pregnant she looked as though she was expecting triplets today. Megan greeted them both. They were well known to her. The two boys dropped their feet to the floor and eyed her silently and suspiciously when she addressed them. “Any chance of a word?”

  “We’re not at school because we’ve got time off to grieve, see.” Mark Pritchard had learned a new set of lines quickly.

  “Grieving for Stefan?”

  Both nodded.

  “But no one knows what’s happened to him.”

  The two boys exchanged glances and Megan felt a sudden jump.

  Did they know?

  Something that unnerved even this tough little pair? Because buried deep beneath the bravado Megan could read change in their faces. She sat down on the bench between them. “I think you should help find him. He is your friend - after all.”

  She wasn’t exactly surprised that they scoffed at her suggestion.

  “How?”

  “If the police can’t find him …” This was Mark Pritchard - marginally more intelligent than his mate but wearing the same uniform of huge T shirt showing skinny, cold-blued arms, nylon combat trousers bristling with pockets and trainers with soles thick enough to increase his height by a bright orange four inches.

  “Yes - but you know something the police don’t.” Megan stared at the ground as she spoke. These two were suspicious of everyone and everything. Eye contact was especially suspicious. She kicked a stone across the floor.

  So did Ryan. “We told the police what we know.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Mark again, stroppy this time. “We did, doc.”

  She decided to play her dummy Ace. “You two think you know what happened, don’t you?”

  Both lads shot to their feet. And Meggie instantly saw the reason. The police car cruising like a surf watcher, spanking white with fluorescent pink streak. The jam sandwich. The boys didn’t wait. They simply legged it.

  Alun dropped the window and she crossed the road towards him. He was not alone. Police Constable Jarvis Watkins eyed her with a faintly confused air. She smiled the same smile to both of them.

  “What are you up to, Meggie?” Alun’s voice almost soft enough to persuade her that this was a personal question. And she had her answer ready. Up her sleeve. “The boys, Stefan’s friends, are off school. They’re disturbed by what’s happened to their mate. I doubted they’d come to the surgery to see me so I thought I’d seek them out on their own home ground. Make sure they were OK.”

  “Liar.” It was said with grudging admiration. “Well, find out anything?”

  “No. I didn’t. But …” she stared along the road, frowning. “I think they know something.”

  “Well in that case they know more than us. We don’t know anything, Megan, except that he isn’t around. Anything else is pure speculation.” Alun gave a small smile half to himself. “I followed up one of your helpful leads.”

  “Oh?”

  “Bloody mistake. Thought I’d pay a call on Esther Magellan. What a nut.”

  It was then that Megan began to realise. Without prejudice and with access she could move in where no one else could. She could communicate with “nuts”.

  “She wasn’t helpful, then?”

  “Once I’d calmed her down and told her I wasn’t going to arrest her she gave me a load of tripe.” He gave Megan a hard stare. “I’ll be honest with you, Meggie. I don’t know where I am in this case. It’s weird. I’m not even quite sure what we’re investigating.”

  She gave a non-committal nod. “But you’ve looked at all the cases on the police computer?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Stefan Parker?”

  “He could have hopped it down to London - or Brighton - or any one of those places that attract kids who want drugs. A good time. Don’t mind how they get either.”

  “Except that he didn’t.”

  He looked straight up at her then, full in the face as though trying to read all that sh
e held in her mind, from her approach to Bianca’s death, to the disappearances, to how she really felt about him. She stared back. She had no secrets.

  Jarvis Watkins cleared his throat noisily. It was that that broke the spell. Otherwise she and Alun would have stared at each other until they had both confessed where they stood.

  And it would have been a mistake.

  Alun slid his hands around the wheel, depressed the clutch and slipped the car into gear. “I’ll be seeing you, Meggie.”

  She stood on the pavement and watched the pink flash disappear around the corner, then turned back to the bus shelter.

  The two boys were instantly back, jeering with a “Whoah. Fancy him, do you?”

  She shrugged.

  “He’s a rozzer. I wouldn’t have nothing to do with him.” How often it was the smaller kid who was the tougher. Megan started to walk towards her car. Before she got there she was surrounded by the two boys. “You do know something about Stefan, don’t you?”

  “No.” But there was fear in their eyes.

  Ryan began to back away.

  “Don’t you understand,” she said urgently, longing to shake the pair of them, “it’s dangerous. Stefan’s gone. You don’t want to be next. If you know something tell me. Please tell me.”

  Mark’s eyes drifted towards the spot where the police car had finally turned the corner.

  She knew he was needing reassurance. “I won’t say anything.”

  “You can’t. You’re our doctor.”

  Megan smiled to herself. “I’m only bound by the laws of confidentiality if I learn facts through the fact that I am your doctor. But I won’t tell, anyway.”

  “Look, we don’t really know anything.” Ryan was getting cold feet. This was a plea to his friend to stop speaking.

  Mark turned on him with a jutting chin and mouth furious enough to intimidate a grown man. “Stefan’s fuckin’ gone. And all you think of is chickenin’ out. You’re pathetic, Ryan. Pathetic. Whatever Stefan did at least he had guts.” He directed the conversation back at Megan. “Look, we don’t know but a couple of times he’d say he was frightened of someone.”

  “Who?”

  Mark Pritchard simply stared at her.

  As though she had mounted one of the horses on the carousel it began to spin. The ride had begun. And once spinning it would move faster and faster. There was no getting off until the ride had finished. And the music stopped.

  As she drove back towards the surgery for her evening patients her mobile phone rang. She pulled off the road and answered it.

  “Doctor Banesto?”

  She should have recognised the condescending, supercilous voice with its “posh” Cardiff accent. He introduced himself.

  “Franklin Jones-Watson here. Pathologist. Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  “No.” She was bemused.

  “Why wouldn’t you issue a death certificate on Mr Geraint Smithson?”

  She had forgotten about Smithson. “Well - I - I didn’t know what he’d died of. The sister at Triagwn wondered whether he might have had acute heart failure but I wasn’t sure.”

  “Did you have any, er, suspicions?”

  He sounded a different person from the cocksure doctor who had given evidence with such aplomb at Bianca’s inquest and she was curious.

  “He’d been difficult to handle lately, very agitated. We’d needed to sedate him fairly heavily. Why are you asking me this? What did Mr Smithson die of?”

  “I’m not sure. It could have been… Unfortunately the bedding was missing. The forensic evidence is tricky. It could have been…”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It could have been acute heart failure. But the bedding had been washed. The pillow was missing.”

  “So?”

  “Some fibres were in his nose. And there was a tiny bruise on the inside of his lower lip. As though …”

  She could work it out for herself. “Pressure had been applied. You mean?”

  “There isn’t a lot to go on or even to be sure but I think it’s possible that Mr Smithson was smothered. Only possible, mind.”

  And all she could think of was two deaths. Two cunning and clever deaths which had hoodwinked the pathologist. And Franklin Jones’ arrogance was born out of competence in his job. He was no fool.

  Someone clever was behind this. Clever enough to hide bodies where no one could find them. Ever. And the bodies he did leave to find were impossible to attribute as homicide.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’ve referred the matter to the police, explained everything. Including the fact that there isn’t any concrete evidence. Geraint Smithson was old. It’s up to them whether they investigate. I rather think not.”

  “So what will you write on his death certificate?”

  “Inconclusive.”

  As you should have done on Bianca’s death certificate. And prevented her burial.

  But she said goodbye with a touch of sympathy for the pathologist. Gleaning evidence from corpses was not always so easy.

  The search for Stefan continued but Megan sensed the hope of finding him frightened, yet alive, was fading. And there was another death. Two days after she had supplied Mandy Parker with her Temazepam she was summoned to Triagwn again. Old Mr Driver had succumbed to his broncho-pneumonia.

  Icy rain was sheeting down as she turned up the drive. Winter was beginning in earnest. The cherub spewing water contrived to look cold. And for Mr Driver life was over.

  So take him up tenderly

  Lift him with care.

  Certification of death might seem a significant event. It is, after all, the final act of life. In fact to a doctor it is one of the least dramatic chores in a day’s work. The stethoscope placed over the spot where a heart no longer beats, the token shining of a torch into fixed, dilated pupils, the feeling for a pulse you already know you won’t find, the folding of a sheet over the face and the filling in of the death certificate.

  Sandra Penarth stood over her silently, waiting for her to speak.

  “It’s going to be a long winter.”

  “Yes. Our patients are elderly. And plenty of them have got bad chests.”

  Sandra Penarth’s face held a strange expression as she stared down at the bed. “I’ve known Mr Driver for years, you know. He was friends with my grandfather. They were down the mine together. Awful place.”

  Someone stood in the doorway.

  “Mervyn.” Someone else Sandra knew well. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Do you know Mr Jones, doctor?”

  “No - but you were at Bianca’s funeral.”

  He was a short man, wiry with a pair of fierce blue eyes. She’d thought of him then as “the angry man” and named him, Rumpelstiltskin. Even today, in grief, he reminded her of the angry dwarf of the fairy story who stamped his foot when his name was guessed.

  “You were a friend of Bianca’s?”

  Mervyn Jones snorted. “Not exactly, doctor. I knew her, like most of the people in Llancloudy. She was always around.”

  Sandra interrupted. “I suppose you’ve come to fetch Mr Driver’s belongings.”

  Jones grunted. “Such as they are, Sandra.”

  She handed over a black carrier bag with a sigh. “Exactly. Such as they are. He didn’t have much in the way of personal possessions. But his watch is nice.”

  Jones fished around the carrier bag and drew out a gold watch with a black, leather strap. “It is a nice watch. Got it when he retired. From the Coal Board. But not so nice when you consider what it cost. Bloody curse of the valleys, doctor, sitting on this stuff. Glad I was when they closed the doors for the last time and stopped the wheels from winding men up and down, up and down.”

  Megan nodded. She too had watched men cough up black dust from their lungs then wait years, many dying before they received their compensation. She had watched their widows receive cheques in bitter tears and not known whether it was worth cashing
them.

  Sandra turned away briskly. “The Death Certificate Book is down in my office,” she said.

  “Mervyn, do you want to stay with your old friend a minute or two longer. Say goodbye?”

  Jones’ eyes were bright. “If you don’t mind,” he said gruffly.

  This time Megan had no hesitation what to write on the Death Certificate. “Broncho-pneumonia, secondary to penumoconiosis,” she wrote then crossed to the window and picked up the fifties black and white photograph of the smiling couple. “This is your grandfather?”

  Sandra nodded. “Lovely man, he was. Died nearly thirty years ago. Another one destroyed by coal dust.”

  As they wandered back towards the front door, Megan broached the subject. “You must miss Mr Smithson.”

  Sandra’s reply was tart and predictable. “We always miss patients when they die, especially people who’ve been with us for years.”

  “He was such a character. So full of stories.”

  “He told some mad stories.”

  “Just like Bianca.”

  The nurse looked genuinely astonished. “Bianca? What’s she got to do with it? She didn’t die here.”

  “She worked here.”

  “You’re saying Mr Smithson made up stories like she did?”

  “I just thought it was funny that they made up the same stories.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “About children disappearing.”

  “They were just stories.”

  “But Bianca -”

  “Surely, doctor, Bianca imagined things.”

  “And now Stefan has disappeared.”

  Sandra Penarth gave her a strange, frightened look and Megan felt she must say something quickly. “Nothing.” It was surely nothing. Hot air, stories, illusion. Nothing.

  Sandra tugged the front door open and Megan dived outside to the icy air.

  Arwel Smithson was leaning against her car and she knew he had been lying in wait for her. “Hello, Megan,” he called heartily. “How are you?”