Friday 10th April 2009 – 10.10 p.m.
“Just get yourself inside, mate,” Colin grinned with relief when Jason sheepishly showed up late on his snowed-up doorstep with their dad’s battered suitcase between them, “and if I see another press pass, or have to pick up the phone to some twittering media prat, I’ll turn violent.”
The hug that followed lasted long enough for passers-by to stare and snigger. “You’ve lost weight,” his bro said afterwards, leading him indoors. “Been worried about you, specially after what you said last Monday afternoon. Mum has too. Is what we’ve been hearing and reading all true?”
Jason nodded, keen to change the subject and not look at the various newspapers Colin had kept. “Where’s Lisa?”
The bitter laugh that followed, caught him by surprise.
“I got her Dear John yesterday, didn’t I? But more important, tell me all about your Helen. How’s she coping?”
Now wasn’t the time to share her latest devastating news. So Jason simply said, “fine so far.”
“Great.”
However, over beers and pizza in the now less-than-tidy kitchen, he relived the past five days of knife-edged vigils at two quite different Welsh hospitals and how, with Helen’s release date confirmed, he’d finally navigated the slushy roads back to Hounslow. No, Eluned Jenkins wouldn’t be suing the hospitals for sparing her daughter the worst news after her op. They’d not felt her to be strong enough either mentally or physically to take it. And hadn’t he, too, been complicit?
“So what now, Jaz?” Colin had polished off the last of the Kronenbourgs and cleared away the plates. You’re not still interested in writing, are you?”
This time the tone was encouraging. “Got you a new lamp and swivel chair, just in case. I also kept your Woolies souvenirs. You happy with that?”
***
A week later, at eight-thirty in the morning, with pen and pad again at the ready, Jason watched Colin wade through the drifted snow towards the gate, stopping halfway to wave up at him. One of the few conscientious commuters opting for what public transport there was. But guilt at this heroic effort didn’t last long. He too had an important job to do and, with a fresh mug of coffee plus a hot-cross bun to hand, began reorganising his material. However, since Helen’s radical hysterectomy, everything had changed. Gone were Margiad Pitt-Rose’s mellifluous lies; the sense of his skin suddenly cooling and those summer roses’ scent snaking up his nose. He was on quite a different path now.
Damn.
His phone’s ringtone filled the room.
“Yes?”
“George Cooke here. Senior Commissioning Editor at Gemini Books. Am I speaking to Jason Robbins?”
“You are.”
“Please spare me a moment, Jason. I’ve a certain proposition to make…”
***
He and Helen, now minor celebs, had this global publisher wanting a part historical, part contemporary supernatural thriller loosely based on his and Helen’s experiences. £25,000 could be theirs, with one proviso. All names and locations must be changed.
Bollocks.
Anger made him screw up that first anodyne chapter from its moorings and toss it in his waste bin. Made him choose a thick black felt-tipped pen and scrub out his working title on the refill pad’s pink cover. Having decided on Cold Remains instead of To Love and Lose, he wrote that instead and underlined it with his red Woolies’ ballpoint. Red for blood.
This daring thriller for afterlife sceptics and suckers for the Establishment with himself, not Dan Carver, relentless digger after the truth, would be even more powerful than Evil Eyes. Unputdownable in fact, because his and Helen’s ‘evil eyes’ had been real, and this was their revenge. In black and white.
Margiad Pitt-Rose’s threats had materialised. Helen would never be able to bear their child as her uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries and oviducts had all been excised. She’d been punished in the worst possible way.
And wasn’t this where it had all begun?
WANT TO WRITE A BEST SELLER?
Spend Easter at Heron House in Carmarthenshire’s beautiful Upper Towy Valley, and be inspired by top fiction writer Monty Flynn. All modern comforts. Cordon bleu cooking and internet access. Young writers particularly welcome. Reasonable rates. Regret no wheelchair access.
He flattened the badly-stained advert discovered, together with Gwilym’s faded business card, while binning his ruined jeans. He glued it inside the cover. Next, he laid Heron House’s two Yale keys on his diary. Important reminders to be handed in at some point.
The freak blizzard’s muffled onslaught against the spare bedroom window, suddenly made him look up and worry how Colin was getting on. But neither this nor the fact he’d not slept properly for a fortnight would hold him back.
Cuttings.
Be ruthless, he told himself. Those from the Times, Guardian and Big Issue, Colin had saved were the best. However, their sombre reporting was at odds with the weirdly vivid photos of that hidden crucifixion in the forest. The foul swimming pool and its grim harvest – Lionel Hargreaves, Peris Morgan and two young, innocent boys who’d never made it back to Maghull.
After a scalding sip of his drink, Jason moved the various biographies and comments on the three dead judges, the cop, and their deluded sons, to the top of the pile. Also a grainy image of Monty Flynn as a kid in Crosskelly. Next, Llyr Pitt-Rose gripping a rugby ball while at his special school. Beneath this, two lines from his retired headmistress referred to her former pupil as seriously disturbed, but she believed that somewhere deep down, there’d been a conscience and a need to be loved.
Right.
Posthumously convicted of rape, and of abducting Helen, Llyr’s prints had lingered on Flynn’s stash in the Angred shaft and on various items at Sandhurst Mansion.
Jason then placed the wartime images of Gwenno and Idris Davies near the edge of his mother’s old dressing table near his new Anglepoise lamp. Still no news of the old siblings or the blue Escort, and Gwenno’s bunch of keys to every room in the house, left in Margiad’s bedroom door, had also mysteriously disappeared. Unlike the two-tone Hillman Hunter.
Despite intense questioning, Sergeant Rees, like DC Prydderch – both under police guard at an undisclosed location – had clung to their Human Rights and stayed silent.
Rees, however, had been found in possession of Michael Markham’s Glock, used by Flynn for target practice on Llyr’s eyes. A cold, savage killing that kept Membury Services closed for a week. The ex-Sergeant denied any involvement.
Post-mortems, inquests, verdicts...
So-far unidentified fingerprints on the iron ceiling beam next to Charles Pitt-Rose’s rope, had confused the police pathologist and delayed any inquest and funeral. As for Betsan, her chloroform overdose had brought a quick end. Her murderer not so. Flynn’s heart only fading as paramedics had cut him down from the cross. The narrative verdict on Gwilym Price’s death, had meant nothing. He’d been found crushed against his steering wheel on the Towy’s frosted shore. His Nissan, like Helen’s Ignis, complete with a Panther GPS tracker expertly placed by Llyr. These had been traced back to Royal & Select Master Michael Markham, still missing from his cleaned-out home since midday on Monday 6th April. Other inquests were due to be held next week, although a coroner for the pool’s victims had yet to be appointed. Angred shaft had again yielded no more human remains, but Robert Price’s well-preserved skeleton had been unearthed from beneath Judge Geoffrey Powell’s extensive wine cellar. The man who twice had harassed Charles’ solicitor, Dee Salomon.
Sketches.
His for now. Pulled from nightmares and memories, particularly of that unique face with its livid bruise and greedy mouth. Dead birds, and haunted scenes of Nantymwyn which, like Heron House, was sealed off from the crowds of voyeurs and ghost-hunters. Perhaps another publisher would use as many of these visuals as possible and, once Helen was active again, hopefully give her art career a shove.
Letters and other memorabilia.
Charles Pitt-Rose’s record of misery, compounded by his schooldays and his lover Llyr’s unusual sexual demands, was key. DC Jane Harris had let Jason read enough of it to realise too, how Margiad’s once loyal friend Betsan who’d periodically kept in touch with him, had grown fearful of the traitorous heart, hidden beneath those beguiling looks. How whilst still a schoolgirl, the Davieses and Edmund Pitt-Rose, with Margiad and her governess watching, had raped Betsan to stop the girl telling Mrs Griffiths what was going on.
But it was the St. Peter’s crucifixion that scared Betsan the most. A torture Margiad wanted used on anyone threatening the staus quo at Heron House. However, her father, being a keen fisherman, had preferred water. Charles had also learnt from Betsan how his jealous sister had engineered his early exit from home so she could have daddy all to herself. In later phone conversations, Betsan had confided how her crucifix had kept that destructive spirit at bay, urging Charles to wear one too. But as a staunch atheist, he’d refused. Had he regretted it? Who could say? Because once Edmund Pitt-Rose and his associates had killed his heavily pregnant daughter, Margiad, on Christmas Eve in 1946 for being a risk to his career, she’d remorselessly targeted her brother’s wavering guilt.
As for the diary itself, Jane Harris had promised that once the four criminal trials had ended, this could be released to help Jason’s research. She too, had suggested using fictional names and places for his novel.
Why was everyone so fearful?
Another sip of coffee. A bite of bun to fortify himself as Jason opened what the intrepid postman had delivered earlier that morning. First, an impersonal notification from his former manager at Woolies that his redundancy payment would be in his bank account tomorrow. The sum a pleasant surprise. But his first question was what could he buy Helen to make up for her loss?
Next, a damp blue envelope redirected by Helen’s mother from Borth. He switched on the lamp and pulled out a postcard of Aberystwyth’s pier:
6a, Ael y Bryn, Aberystwyth.
14th April
Dear Jason, (or should I say Mr Robbins?)
The police have just called to see me and my nephew, which is how I discovered your address. I am not long for this earth and hope you all will forgive me my transgressions. As governess at Heron House, I could have changed much, but my flesh and spirit were too weak. The Devil’s magnet drew me in to The Order’s arms. Joy Pitt-Rose – a pure and devoted mother – must still be spinning in her grave. Mine will be the sea. I hope most sincerely that Miss Jenkins soon makes a full recovery.
With regrets
Nancy Mair Powell †
That sinister sign after her name made him blink, want to wrap his hands around her scheming throat. He slipped the letter inside the diary’s front cover and opened the next envelope. Less damp, prepaid, from Carmarthen, and inside a small monochrome photo of a young Charles Pitt-Rose with a strange one-liner on the back from this so-called governess. Clipped to this, a yellow stick-on note:
I felt you should have this. The Cottage Hospital found it inside Helen’s underwear and passed it to the Coroner.
Thinking of you,
Jane Harris.
Forgetting to breathe, he placed the photo in his jeans’ back pocket. Part of Helen. Part of him for the journey. He was about to bin the note when he noticed more writing on the other side:
P.S. I’ve also found a pre-war photo of Heron House exactly as you’d described it, with those three people standing at the front. They look so normal.
Why I’ve come back here…
Jason checked his watch. Sod the mid-morning counselling session and not just because of the weather. Like his binned pills, he didn’t need it. As for the Radio 2 interview from the flat later on, he was definitely up for that.
Time therefore for the fresh start and, already fired up for chapter one, his writing became faster, more flowing as the prologue was born. Margiad Pitt-Rose, about to give birth to her father’s child, was ruthlessly luring the clinging conchie to his death…
***
Just then, from the corner of his eye, he spotted something on the snowy windowsill outside and wondered if some rendering had fallen there. Or a piece of branch. He swivelled his chair round for a better view. Whatever it was, was black and imperceptibly moving.
A rook.
One he recognised by its very white throat. Unfazed by the bombarding snowflakes, this snow-topped creature stared at him with unsettling intensity. What the Hell was it doing here?
He was then distracted by a violent tearing sound and turned to see his completed prologue on the dressing table, being ripped apart by unseen hands.
No…
A ringtone broke the tense, cold silence. He hesitated until the caller’s number showed up. Eluned Jenkins was hysterical, almost incoherent. He kept the phone a few inches from his ear. Felt the nearby icy radiator.
“Jason, is that you?”
Not for long.
“How’s Helen? I meant to ring last thing...” Jason said.
“She’s having a nice, warm bath. But why I’m calling is I’ve just heard from these solicitors in Brecon, a Mr Shelley it is. He’ll be contacting you as well…”
“Me? What about?” He began to shiver.
“Look, Jason, I don’t know where to start.” She took a deep breath which didn’t slow her down at all. “But first, for Helen’s sake, I hope you’re still writing that mad woman’s story?”
“I’m on chapter three already,” he lied.
“Good. Well, you know Miss Betsan Griffiths who was killed up by Nantymwyn two weeks ago? Well, apparently, on Thursday afternoon, this Margiad’s spooky voice had got into her head, bragging how she’d helped her brother Charles hang himself down in London. Told him he was guilty of incest and should never have been born. How it was his duty to die for that and for not rescuing her when their daddy gassed her and his own unborn baby after promising to take care of them. ‘So what’s it to be, gay boy and pervert, who used his own half-brother Llyr to satisfy his lust?’” Eluned Jenkins’ voice rose to a higher register. ‘“The rope or the cross? Just don’t keep me waiting...’”
A breathy pause followed, in which Jason’s cooling skin began to crawl.
“Can you believe it? In 2009?”
Silence.
“Jason? Are you still there?”
“Just about.” But his teeth were chattering, as they’d done in that black saloon.
“Well, this Betsan couldn’t tell anyone how or why, could she?” The primary school teacher continued in full spate. “Too scared, Mr Shelley said. Except Betsan had known for some time she was the dead man’s main beneficiary. Anyway, once the solicitor had checked it out with the Met, and they confirmed Charles Pitt-Rose really had been found hanged, she drove straight over to Brecon and changed her will. In case her own heart stopped beating. I ask you… But not before she’d thrown away her crucifix and this thing stuck on her car’s bumper.”
“A GPS tracker? Like on Helen’s?”
“That’s it, but guess what? I’ve just found another one at the bottom of her rucksack before it went in the wash today. Smaller, mind. No bigger than a shirt button.”
What?
He’d checked the thing through last Monday. The day he thought she’d died in the back of the VW.
Silence, in which the ominous black shape beyond the window glass fluffed up its feathers before settling back into place. Helen was suddenly too far away, and her mother was talking again. “Not even the papers have got hold of this latest development. It’s been kept really secret.”
He eyed the strange visitor again. His circulation leaving his fingertips the colour of pale wax.
“And as for secrets, my Helen never said a thing about Miss Griffiths. Nor you, Jason. Not even when we were at the Cottage Hospital together.”
“She’d only met Betsan a few times,” he explained, trying to keep calm. “Me not at all.”
At least, not alive.
“Anyway, what I’m getting round to saying is, she’d left her own small estate and the big bequest to Helen as she’d felt sorry for her. Tidy too, she’d said. No mention of what would have happened if my girl had died, mind…” Here, Eluned Jenkins’ voice broke down, syllable by syllable, ending in a loud blowing of her nose. “So it’s all yours if you want it,” she said finally.
He noticed both Yale keys now oddly bright despite their distance from his Anglepoise lamp. “I don’t quite understand.”
“Heron House, of course. Helen won’t go near it. And we all know why.”
Why I’ve come back here. Or have you forgotten?
His body felt numb all over except for his gut in freefall. He got up unsteadily for a closer look at the window, but not until his freezing nose was almost touching the whitened glass, did his heart fully flip. For he realised that in the rook’s open beak lay a small, green-stained bone bearing brown mossy tufts at each end. Identical to the specimen Gwilym had pocketed. Had this really brought his old friend such bad luck? That shocking end? If so, he, Jason, surely was to blame.
He gripped the inner windowsill, holding his breath, repulsed yet hypnotised as that malevolence, with an even more steely expression in its eyes, began to tap her baby bone against the glass.