Disturbing Ground

by Priscilla Masters

  It was a mistake.

  She lost her grip on the torch and it slithered down the other side. The light shone uselessly into a corner, illuminating nothing but dark rock.

  And someone was coming down the rungs.

  Hand under hand. Foot under foot with the familiarity and deliberation of someone who had done this before.

  Instinctively she clung to the rocks, tried to scrabble to the other side.

  He was coming back.

  A voice bounced along the walls towards her.

  “Hello …Hello …Hello …?”

  She knew better than to answer.

  If only she could reach the torch, switch it off, hide.

  Where?

  The footsteps stopped. She heard the sound of feet on loose stone. The voice came again. Distorted by its echo. “Hello …hello …hello.”

  And then a light. Dancing along the sides of the tunnel like a Will o’ The Wisp. Searching for her.

  She crouched behind the stones.

  “I know you’re there…. there … there … I saw your car car … car.”

  All she could see was a powerful beam. She stretched out, found her own torch, switched it off and fought to control her breathing. The worst thing was she didn’t know who it was. Like a child in a lethal game of hide and seek she convinced herself that if she didn’t answer he could not be sure she was here.

  The light came nearer. “Don’t make things difficult, there’s a good girl.”

  He was near.

  “Come on. What are you frightened of?”

  Of Gollum. And a man who makes people disappear. I am frightened of whoever killed Bianca and Geraint Smithson and took Stefan. I am frightened of death. I am frightened of never seeing daylight again.

  She backed up the tunnel.

  He must have heard her. “You can’t get out along there. It’s a blind ending. Look, I know you’re there.”

  He was near.

  She tried to peer beyond the flashlight. But she saw nothing. No one.

  “Why did you come?” It was a reasonable voice, distorted only by the confined atmosphere. She grabbed her flashlight and turned it on.

  Rumpelstilstkin blinked into the beam.

  “Mr Jones,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  He lowered his torch and blinked at her light. “More to the point, doctor, what are you doing down here?”

  “I thought … I wondered.” She could not tell him what she had thought.

  “When I saw your car I asked myself where on earth you had gone. Maybe up the mountain. But it isn’t the day for a walk. I came wandering through the gorse and then I saw you’d taken the grill off. I thought you must have taken leave of your senses to come down here. It’s not safe. Why have you come?”

  This was the voice of normality. She had been wrong. He was not the killer. It was simply Mervyn Jones, worried for her safety.

  She scrabbled back towards him. But again she dropped the flashlight. And this time its beam did not pick out bare wall but something else. A scrap of material. Pointed and striped. The end of a tie. A red and brown tie which had been knotted around a schoolboy’s neck.

  Then she screamed. And the tunnel filled with horror.

  They were here. All of them. Bleddyn Hughes with his long fingers, the children.

  And Jones was scrabbling over the rocks towards her. She turned the torch back on him. He put his arm up to shield his eyes. “What’s the matter?”

  She stared up at him in terror and suddenly his anger exploded.

  “You had to come, didn’t you? Poke your nose in to things that don’t concern you. What business is it of yours?”

  She gaped at him but her hand holding the torch was steady. His anger was calming her.

  She knew now. Behind her were the vanished. Ahead was …

  She dared not think ahead. She felt a suffocating terror. And the air was fetid. Full of death.

  She must get out.

  Otherwise … She whimpered. Otherwise…

  “I don’t understand why,” she said. “What were they to you?”

  “No, you wouldn’t understand, would you? They weren’t annoying you,” he said. “You, the doctor, you got the respect.”

  “Then tell me why,” she said. “Start with the beginning. Start with Bleddyn Hughes.”

  “Hughes.” He spat out the name. “This was a good place once. We worked hard all day. And on Sundays we attended chapel. The mines shut and slowly Llancloudy was destroyed, its people weakened by indolence. And who by? People of low moral fibre. Like Hughes. He was a no good. I caught him one day, reading poetry to my Muriel. Trying to woo her, he was. I knew what dirty little games he was playing. Showing up my ignorance. And it wasn’t my fault I wasn’t educated like him. What parents could afford education? Use big words, he would, at the table, just to impress and show off, knowing I would not be able to understand. Oh yes, I knew what sort of a person he was.”

  “You let the papers destroy his reputation. You let people think …” Her voice trailed away, its echoes no more than a whisper. “Think … think.”

  “I told them a thing or two.” It was said with smug satisfaction. “I’m not responsible for what the papers choose to print.”

  “You -?”

  “Oh, yes. Easy really when you know how.”

  She tried to block out the calm complacency in his voice. It chilled her more than his anger.

  “But Rhiann? She was only a child. What could she have done to you?”

  “Know her family, do you?”

  A swift vision of Gwen Owen’s endless voice gave her some, tiny insight.

  “All make too much noise. The child, Rhiann, she was the same. Always noisy. Never - shut - up. Chattering, singing. They lived in the street behind us. I’d been on nights makin’ sure the mines didn’t flood. Keepin’ the people of this little place safe while they slept. But was I allowed to sleep? No. All I asked for was some peace and quiet. I wanted to sleep with my windows open in the fresh, clean air. I tried. For an hour or more I tried to sleep. I put ear plugs in. But the little girl kept on and on makin’ a noise. Until I couldn’t stand it any more. So I got up and went round the back. Come ‘ere, my little darlin’, open the door now to your Uncle Merv.”

  She could picture it, the little girl, innocently pulling back the bolt. She closed her eyes then slid the beam along the floor. He was blocking the tunnel. She would have to push past him. But he was a small man, and not young. She was strong. She should be able to do it. Her torch wavered. His was shining directly on her. He must have caught some lack of concentration, a wavering of her purpose.

  “It’s no use your thinkin’ you’re getting out of here. You won’t get past me, Doctor Megan Banesto, educated pride of the valleys. Fool of Llancloudy who goes on holiday and marries a waiter who only wants to be with the boys.”

  Now she felt angry too. But she concealed it. Later she would use it. Against him.

  “Marie - ?” she began.

  “Thought herself very clever. Was fond of baiting me, throwing her filthy chip and sweet papers, coke cans, right into my garden. But I got her. Chuckin’ her rubbish away. I got her - in the end.”

  The tone was the same; smug satisfaction. Jones was pleased with himself.

  “The boys? George and Neil?” She already knew the answer. Some act of mindless vandalism, or rudeness.

  “Little bloody vandals. Always up to something. Hated the pair of them. Well, if their parents weren’t goin’ to do something about them then I was.”

  His tone had altered. Now he was the avenging angel.

  “But Bianca? She wasn’t like that.”

  “No-o.” The first sign of hesitation. “Not like that. She used to come round and ask me to cut her hair after Muriel died. I didn’t mind her too much. At first.”

  The light from his torch was wavering behind her. She dared not look for fear of what she would see..

  “But I made a mistake. I talk
ed to her one day about the people who had disappeared. I said this place was the better for some of its inhabitants being under the ground. And then she started with her mad stories of trolls. I heard her one day clacking away to Smithson. “Mr Jones knows about the trolls too”, she said, “what take people.” Mad sad woman that she was. Only even mad as she was at some point someone was going to listen to her stories about “flying plates” and people who’d disappeared. And Mr Jones who knew they were underground. I couldn’t take that risk. Not any more. I’d had enough of her. But she was so damned easy. I must say. I enjoyed tipping her in that filthy pond.”

  “Not alive?”

  “What would it matter to you?” The anger was back. “As it happens, no. I just kept giving her stuff to keep her under. I even tried to be humane. She was no more than an animal after all; not responsible for her actions like the others. But she fell over and banged her head. And I put her under the water in the bath to make sure she was dead then took her up the pool in my car, late on the Sunday night when nobody was around. I must say it was quite exciting being the one to draw everyone’s attention to the clothes floating near the surface of the pool. For the first time I could see why people actually want the bodies to be found. It is much more rewarding. Of course, it was a bit of a shame it wasn’t a murder investigation. That would have livened up Llancloudy. But all the same.”

  “Did she know you were the one?”

  “Know?” He was shouting. “Bianca know? She didn’t know anything.”

  “Then what harm …?”

  “Maybe none. Maybe some. I couldn’t take the risk.”

  “Smithson?” she asked faintly.

  Again she sensed doubt, maybe even grief. “I watched my old friend, Caspian, dying of lung disease knowing old Smithson was behind it all. And only two rooms away. Ranting and raving like he was sorry. Sorry …”

  The words bounced along the sides of the tunnel “Sorry … sorry … sorry …”

  “He wasn’t sorry. He didn’t have an ounce of regret in his dirty soul. He was an arrogant heathen, a pig. I stuffed a pillow over his face and rejoiced when he was dead.”

  She could guess now about Stefan. The broken windscreen must have finally sealed his fate.

  And now there was her fate, hanging in the delicate balance of life and death. And if she died no one would ever know what had happened. She would be another vanishing, turned eventually into a pile of stories in yellowing newspapers in a crazy person’s house.

  It was as though Mervyn Jones’ thoughts had shifted along the same plane. She could sense it, a swift turn of direction, a fumbling in his pocket, the beam of his torch wavering away from her face.

  She tasted fear like bile. Fumbled in her pocket for something. A weapon. Something from the toolkit.

  But Jones knew.

  And the tunnel was too close a space.

  He lunged and she felt something small and sharp graze her.

  He had a knife.

  “Now come here, my lovely,” he said. “Just come here, to your Uncle Merv.”

  She smelt the hatred in his voice.

  But she felt it too. She hated him. Who did he think he was? The avenging angel of Llancloudy? His the right to be judge, jury, executioner?

  It would not be.

  He was nearing, his hand outstretched.

  She could have touched him.

  She remembered a long ago talk, aimed at Health Service employees. Eyes, testicles and drop.

  She dropped her torch and jabbed outstretched fingers at his eyes. And felt them connect. He screamed. Then she jerked her knee up. Hard.

  And heard him scramble to the floor, the torch beside him, beaming against her feet.

  She used them next. Kicking him harder and harder with all the viciousness she could summon up. She kicked him and listened to his screams without pity. The tunnel filled with the sounds. Then she ran, crouching low, towards the bottom of the ladder.

  Hand over hand. Foot over foot. Back towards the small, pale light.

  Chapter 25

  An hour later and drama was screaming around her. Blue lights flashed, police everywhere, men in white suits, radios. Noise. She sat and shivered in her car feeling as though she would stay cold and frightened for the rest of her life.

  They’d roped in cavers and potholers and ex-miners with lights fixed to hard hats, bulky equipment and ropes. A pathologist had been summoned down there too, to carry out his grim examination. At some point a small figure with a blanket flung over his head was bundled into a Black Maria and she was told she would need to attend the police station and make a statement.

  Again a crowd of voyeurs had gathered. The people of Llancloudy were curious, standing round in a whispering clusters, spreading rumours, guessing. Because they did not know the truth. Yet.

  Megan sat and shivered, longing to go home, to have a hot bath, to blot this all from her memory. Pretend none of it had happened. That it was nothing but a bad dream. And she would wake soon, feeling refreshed.

  The area was ribboned off with official tape. An important looking police officer, resplendant in his uniform disappeared behind the gorse bush only to reappear some while later looking grim and cold.

  And then the bodies were brought up, zipped into dark blue vinyl bags. Six of them, some smaller than others, one very tiny. It only took one WPC to cradle this one.

  Megan watched.

  So Lift them up tenderly

  Take them with Care.

  Then Alun arrived and crossed to her and she shot out of the car and clung to him, ignoring the fact that Police Constable Nigel Jenkins was standing at his side, embarrassed and uncomfortable. Alun held her tightly, stroking her hair as though she was a child. Once he pressed his lips to her. But only for a few seconds before his grip on her arm pulled her away. “What the bloody hell do you think you were doing. He could have killed you, Meggie. And we might never have found you. You utter, stupid, absolute idiot.”

  Then her tears came. His anger had finally thawed her.

  “I’ll take you down the station,” he said finally. “You’ll have to make a statement. Do you want me to run you home first to take a bath?”

  She shook her head. “I’d never get out of it.”

  Alun sighed. “All right then. Leave us your keys and someone’ll drop the Calibra back at your place and leave the keys with a neighbour. Come on, girl.”

  She wiped her nose and Alun took a handkerchief out of his pocket. “You do look a sight,” he said reprovingly.

  All the way to the station he was reproaching her. “I don’t know what possessed you … I don’t suppose it would have occurred to you to tell us of your suspicions.”

  “But I didn’t know. I was only guessing.”

  “We’d have searched that damned tunnel even on the strength of a guess. Do you think we don’t listen when people tell us things?”

  She said nothing, but stared resentfully into the passenger mirror.

  He had to force a way through the watchers by turning both the light and the siren on. She knew most of the faces that pressed against the car, Carole Symmonds, holding the hand of a a youth half her age, Ryan and Mark, grimacing, Gwen Owen. They all saw her and she wondered what the stories flying around Llancloudy would soon be.

  That she was the killer?

  That she had found the bodies because …?

  That she had been arrested … for …

  She smiled. She didn’t care any more.

  Alun glanced across. “Now that’s my girl,” he said.

  She dabbed her face with the hankie a little more and saw his face lighten until he smiled. “You are such a damned …”

  She waited.

  “Woman.”

  And she smiled again.

  Chapter 26

  Alun called to see her a month later. On a cold day when snow had iced the tops of the mountains, the fires were lit and people were staying indoors. “I’ve had my wish,” he said proudly. “I th
ought you’d want to know. Another little boy.”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “You’ll have your rugby team soon.”

  He nodded.

  She knew she must ask the question. “Your wife?” she said.

  “She’s fine. Tired but fine.”

  That wasn’t what she had wanted him to say.

  “I’m glad,” she began but she knew Alun had more to say.

  “We’ve had all the results of the post mortems typed up and decent.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know whether you really want to know this,” he said.

  She shrugged.

  “Hughes had had his throat cut. The pathologist found knife marks on his jaw. We’ve had positive ID from dental records and the clothes he was wearing. Marie Walker and Rhiann had been strangled. Manually, we think,” he said. “No sign of a ligature. But some bone had been broken.”

  “The hyoid,” she said automatically. “And the boys?”

  “Strangled too, Stefan - ”

  “With his tie.” She finished for him.

  Alun nodded. “There’s more. We’ve just had word from Jones’ solicitor. Believe it or not he’s pleading insanity - or at least balance of mind disturbed - and all that. And we think the CPS will probably accept the plea.”

  “Which means?”

  “Hell be detained,” Alun said, “but not in a prison. In an approved institution.”

  “For life?”

  “Probably.”

  She nodded. There was an awkward silence between them.

  Alun looked across at her, for once sensing something he didn’t understand.

  “Your wife,” she said.

  He looked uncomfortable.

  “What colour car does she drive?”

  “Blue.”

  “I see.”

  The word Cariad mocked her.

  “What make,” she asked sharply.