Last Train to Gloryhole (79 page)

The two young constables turned slowly and regarded each other.

‘Hey, there’s Dyl’s van parked-up on the verge!’ yelled the sergeant. ‘This is a bit early in the day even for him, wouldn’t you say? Stop here for a minute, Ben.’

I saw the police-car pull up just ahead of me. Sergeant Foley was in the rear, and he it was who soon wound down his window and yelled out to me.

‘What the hell are you doing up here so early, Dyl?’ he asked.

I got out of the van and walked ahead of it to speak with the man. ‘My daughter Rhiannon never came home last night,’ I told him. ‘And Chris - the boy from Gloryhole she’s seeing - still hasn’t returned either. I just went and checked with his mother. In short, I’m very worried.’

‘Are they likely to be in a car?’ asked Foley.

‘She took her yellow Fiesta,’ I told him. ‘So that’s what I’m presently out looking for.’

‘Well, we can certainly help you there,’ said Constable Llewellyn from the front. ‘It’s parked-up near the bridge just up ahead of us. We’re going round there now to check it out, as it goes.’

‘Why don’t you follow us down there, Dyl,’ said Foley, smiling.

And so I did. Within minutes of setting out in tandem we reached the little yellow car I had purchased only months before, as a reward for my daughter passing her driving-test at her first attempt. From the outside it looked quite damaged, but I was hopeful that the engine was still fully intact and in as good order as I had left it a week or so before.

‘Two of our boys stopped a couple of local lads messing about round it last night,’ Merlyn Foley told me. ‘But we didn’t have grounds to hold them, you know. They claimed they had only arrived to look at it just minutes before our officers got there.’

‘Who were these boys?’ I asked, ducking my head inside the car, and seeing how it had clearly been hot-wired and taken, praying that Rhiannon hadn’t been inside it when it happened, and that she and Chris hadn’t suffered a car-jacking.

‘Well, they gave my two London colleagues the run-around I’m afraid, Dyl,’ Foley replied, ‘with their false names and alibis, you know, that any of us local coppers would have kicked into touch within minutes.’

‘Seconds,’ added Llewellyn.

‘Then they just let the buggers go. But, if it’s any consolation, their descriptions suggest to me they were almost certainly that - that Steffan Jones from Pant and his lanky Dowlais mate.’

‘Jake Haines,’ I told him.

‘That’s the one,’ said Foley. ‘The odd chap who seems to go round wearing a different coloured planet on his t-shirts every bleeding day of the week. Last night it appears he was a Venus in blue jeans. Hang on, Dyl - I’m almost sure I bought that record once.’

‘Me, too, Merlyn,’ I told him, smiling. ‘Mark Wynter, wasn’t it? And I’m pretty sure I went out with that girl he was singing about, too. She lived in a pre-fab in Dowlais Top around that time.’

Sergeant Foley and I enjoyed a little laugh about this, but not much more than that, since I could see that this whole business was starting to look a very serious one indeed. First a kidnapped singer, then two police-officers who had come down all the way from London to aid the investigation, two missing young people, a stolen car, and now two local tearaways who seemed to be somehow mixed up in it all. Yes, I was becoming very worried indeed, and, apart from retrieving the Fiesta again, and perhaps towing it home, I didn’t really know what to do.

‘Do you know the forested land up here very well, Dyl?’ the sergeant asked me.

‘Well, about as well as anyone from Merthyr, I suppose,’ I told him. ‘Why, Merlyn? Do you want me to join the search with you then?’

‘Well, you won’t be able to get your Fiesta back yet anyway,’ he told me, ‘because it’s about to get lifted back to the station, but you could do a lot worse than follow behind us on the road through The Beacons if you like, and down towards Talybont. How about it? Just beep or flash us if you want us to stop, or think we ought to be turning off somewhere.’

I agreed to the sergeant’s proposal, and within seconds we had gone back to the junction, turned right, and, speeding up the hill, drove northwards along the narrow, winding road that led us into the heart of the mountains, where it now appeared that the two missing young people, and possibly Carla Steel herself, might well be. As I drove past the tiny church and then down the steep hill to skirt the water’s edge again, it suddenly occurred to me that all three young people might now be being held together against their will in the very same place, but, as this notion seemed to be more a product of my paternal fears rather than anything more concrete, I quickly cast it aside, and instead tried to focus my attention on the roads, and the side-lanes, and the narrow track-ways that we repeatedly came across, and which seemed to open up unexpectedly all about us in a sort of haphazard, geometric progression, very like the minor tributaries of a river, as the high, shadowy peaks of The Beacons loomed much closer in the early morning light.

Carla was beginning to fear the worst. Jake hadn’t spoken a word to her since early that morning, and, although she offered to wash his blue, Venus t-shirt for him, having helpfully pointed out to him how grubby it had become from his unexplained excursion the night before, the boy declined, and then swiftly went off and washed and dried it himself. Even Leone didn’t knock on Carla’s door for their customary morning chit-chat regarding hair-care and shower- times, instead remaining downstairs in the large farmhouse kitchen, where the boys almost always hung out, presumably catering to their daily needs. Yes, something was definitely afoot, thought Carla.

She moved across the room and pressed her temple to the door and listened. The few sounds she managed to make out on the floor below were no longer those of high-jinks and excitement, but rather those of ill-temper and dissension. Most likely, Carla told herself, Volver’s efforts to secure a large ransom for her safe return had capitulated, or, much more likely perhaps, were being frustrated by delay. Yes, she pondered, delay did seem to be the usual tactic pursued by the police in cases such as these, and Carla was certain that, by now, they must be deeply involved in a thorough search for the kidnap-location. She was hopeful that a yellow police-helicopter might soon roar like a hungry lion in the sky above her, and might even fly close by her window; or that she would catch sight of a police-car flashing its spinning, blue light as it swerved and coasted like a rally-car along the main road in the valley below.

But when would that be? Carla wondered, if happen it ever did. Or could it be that the farmhouse she was trapped in by a gun-toting megalomaniac, former boyfriend - an Afrikaner madman with a real axe to grind - lay too far from the road, and too greatly hidden by the high conifers that clothed the lower mountain slopes, that a potential rescue was out of the question.

The late morning sun - Carla’s second visitor so far that day - now began to fire its searing rays into the room, but knowing that it was unlikely to bring her anything resembling comfort or consolation, she quickly walked across and adjusted the curtain so as to shade her eyes. She raised the window’s base, however, and began peering out. She could see that the distant road was again empty of traffic, and she realised that, even if vehicles were presently passing by, there would be little point in screaming out, as, apart from the fact that everyone in the building would hear her, there was no possibility that her voice could carry that far.

It was just then that Carla caught sight of her two young friends. She blinked and stared ahead of her, fearing that her eyes might be playing tricks on her, and yet Carla felt sure that, somewhere amidst the branches of the spruce and fir trees that grew on the downward valley slope before her, she could make out the forms of Chris and Rhiannon, standing slightly apart, and peering back up in the direction of the farmhouse she was currently detained in.

After half a minute or so had passed by, Carla came to realise that it was inconceivable that the pair could make out her form anything like as clearly as she was now able to see them. She began to wrack her brain for a means by which she might be able to attract the pair’s attention. There seemed little within the actual room that she felt she could use to assist her, but the window’s curtains were a different matter. Carla quickly stood on a chair and opened up the top half of the window, then grasped one of the long, brown curtains, and, bit by bit, fed it out through the gap into the morning breeze outside.

Fully four or five minutes must have passed by before either of the two young people in Carla’s line of sight seemed to notice any discernible change. Then she suddenly saw Rhiannon attracting her lover’s attention, then pointing up the slope towards her. She watched as the pair got together, conversed, then, hand-in-hand, ducked nimbly out of sight amongst the conifers. It was done, thought Carla. She beamed out a broad smile that she hoped the pair might make out, but, whether they were able to or no, she turned round and began gambolling about the room like a Spring fawn, soon after climbing onto the bed, and, curled up in a tight ball, began deliberating on whether there might be anything she could still do that she hadn’t yet done.

It was quite a while before Carla remembered the curtain, its flapping sound suddenly attracting her attention. Carla began to fear that during that time she might have drifted off to sleep, so, leaping up, she ran to the window to pull the flapping cloth inside. But she soon saw that it was too late. Looking down, Carla noticed that all four of her kidnappers were presently standing in the yard below, gazing up, one or two shaking their heads, the others laughing loudly at her sorry efforts. Scared, she leapt away from the window and thought about Chris and Rhiannon, and especially the fact that they too were now so perilously close to being captured.

Carla began trembling with fear, and, eyes wide, stared down helplessly at her shaking hands. Feeling dreadfully alone and powerless, she sank to her knees, and began to pray to the God that her mother, her Uncle Gary, and, yes, in recent times, even her father had instilled in her. She prayed that her dad was now safe in heaven in the arms of his late wife - her mother Carys - and that the mightier Father she hoped was still available to her, might use His great power to free her from the clutches of Abram Kronfield - that serial murderer and insane instrument of Satan, who had kidnapped her just two days before, and whom she knew would happily snuff out her life as he would a candle’s flame, and as he had already done, at the slightest provocation, to the wonderful, spirited lives of her dear, departed friends Dave Cronin and Jackie Boyce.

The old, crumbling, brownstone wall behind which Chris and Rhiannon took refuge was no more than fifty yards from the farmhouse, but, having succeeded in not betraying their presence when the strange group of people they partially recognised came outside and took note of Carla’s signal, the young couple at least felt relatively safe there. The pair were also out of sight of the track-way that ran up from
Cwm Scwt
to the road-junction off to their left, and also screened off by more trees from the main road itself, which wound its way through the narrow valley some distance behind and below them.

But, now that the two young people had managed to locate Carla, more by luck than judgement it seemed, deciding what to do next was far from an easy matter. After all, without a charged mobile-phone between them, by which to contact the police, (or indeed anyone else for that matter,) and fearing that the kidnappers would discover them, they felt that venturing down the grassy slope towards the road, and attempting to stop passing traffic, would most likely place them in harm’s way.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Rhiannon, grasping Chris by the arm and staring into his big brown eyes. ‘Why don’t I stand on the down-slope side of one of these trees here and wave a flag of some kind at a car as it’s passing by?’ Or my blouse or something?’

‘And why don’t flash your rear end at them while you’re at it?’ said Chris, shaking his head about. ‘Because I guess they’ll be certain to stop then.’ At this, Rhiannon pouted, let go of his arm and looked away. ‘Don’t you see, Rhiannon, that if just one driver chooses to stop his car on the road down there, then the kidnappers at the farm would most likely see it too,’ he told her, pointing up at
Cwm Scwt,
‘and then that could put us in real danger. After all, they can clearly see the road from the farmhouse. And anyway, what if the car that stops turns out to be one of theirs? Hey? Then we’re really done for, right?’

‘Yes, but what if it’s a police-car?’ asked Rhiannon.

‘Well, wouldn’t that be fantastic,’ replied Chris. ‘But tell me, have we seen one yet? No, babe, we need to stay put behind this wall here and see what happens. If a police-car or helicopter gets here, well, then we can probably make our presence known to them somehow. But that man in the shades we saw earlier happens to be called Volver, and I know for sure he’ll stop at nothing to get his ransom demand for Carla met. And, you see, that could mean taking us out.’

‘But how do you know this Volver man?’ asked Rhiannon. ‘After all, he’s a criminal, right?’

‘Well, earlier this year I sort of got very involved with Jake and Steffan,’ Chris told her.

‘Do you mean selling drugs?’ asked Rhiannon. ‘Because everyone says that’s what
they
do.’

‘Well weed, yes,’ said Chris. ‘But I never got involved with anything else, I swear.’

‘So you sold drugs, yes?’ said Rhiannon, staring fixedly at him. ‘And not just to Carla, right? Look - you might as well be honest with me, Chris. If you really love me, as you say you do, then I know you’ll want to come clean about it.’

Chris bit into his lip, then raised his lowered head to look at her. ‘I grew cannabis in Tom’s loft, and then, when it was mature, I cut it and sold it to that man Volver,’ he told her, pointing to the farmhouse. ‘It was he who used Steffan, Jake and the Flynn boys to sell it round the town. But it’s all been cleared out now.’

‘Oh, really?’ she said. ‘And why should I believe you?’