My darling wife was cooking that evening, which was sometimes a bit of a lottery. While I love her to distraction, her culinary skills are a moveable feast. By that, I mean that there are times when she gets overambitious, and we have to move said feast from our dining room to a local pub or takeaway. One thing she does do well, though, because she was taught by experts, is a decent barbecue. There are local issues on that score, however, geographical ones related to typical precipitation patterns and being resident in North Wales.
When it rains, it rains. When it doesn’t, to paraphrase a local joke, it’s because it’s just getting ready to start. My dearest, however, has altered our tiny back garden/patio/bit of space behind the back door, with a sort of combined awning and plastic roof, so that we can actually do our meat-burning in the open even when half the Irish Sea seems to be making an effort to annex Bangor.
Wind is different, of course, which is why Alys made the thing foldable and packable. It was a calm day, no rain forecast, and so I had stuffed two small sacks of charcoal into my throwovers and a selection of chops and sausages into the top box along with some peppers, courgettes, mushrooms and aubergines. The weather being nice to us also lowered the chances of a Shout from Glan Dena, but I had let the team know that I was intending a fully marital evening. With guests.
They were early, sitting in their car a couple of doors up from ours, but they’d already started unloading. I gave them the tiny fart of a toot that was all my bike’s horn was capable of, and they both turned in their seats to wave. They were quickly out for a hug, though, as soon as they spotted my arrival. Warm hugs, smiles; not a hint of nastiness, because they didn’t know the full depth of what Alys and I had learned. Yet.
Eight weeks earlier, the weather had been dreadful, but we hadn’t cared, as we had visitors from the other side of the world, and it had been my, our, wonderful Uncle Mike and his son. Unlike his previous visit, I had actually been warned they were coming. Alys was still at work when I set off, so she would drive up. I took the bike.
He was outside the house, for some odd reason, Ish clearly having more sense than his father, so I locked the Honda up outside the bunkhouse and pulled off my sopping gloves, handing them to him.
“Hiya. Just returning the favour, but I’ll keep the lid on till I’m indoors”
He rumbled a laugh and took the wet leather from me before ushering me into the house.
“We thought Alys was a bit self-assured, love, but you, well, two of a kind!”
“Opposites don’t always attract, do they?”
“Nope. Speaking of opposites, when are we getting a visit from you?”
I laughed.
“When we win the lottery is when! I won’t ask if you know the price of tickets, because you obviously do, so take it as an unasked rhetorical question”
Another laugh.
“You’re even starting to talk like her now! Come on in; dry out and get ready for the club”
“I am ready”
“You’re going in those?”
“My cagtrousers? Er, maybe not”
He put on a mock croaky voice.
“Tell me what you’re wearing”
Before I could answer, he turned to face the other way and squeaked out “RonHills, like I always do, ah!”
I slapped his shoulder.
“I do NOT sound like that!”
“But you DO wear RonHills every day”
I couldn’t argue with that one, so I followed him to the lounge after shedding my bike jacket and boots and wriggling out of said cagtrousers. I waved to the figure on the sofa.
“Hiya Ish! Alys is on her way, so hang onto your tentacles”
The evening proceeded as abnormally as I had expected, and I took serious pleasure in describing my wife’s culinary shortcomings, largely so that she could return the favour in kind.
To be honest, a lot of it was posturing. The two of us knew exactly who we were, and how we saw the world, and each other, so the pisstaking was without malice. Anyway, she had driven my harp up, in a manner of speaking. Steph’n’Geoff had cycled down from their usual campsite to sleep in the Bunkhouse, and Old Pat’s friend Debbie brought a busload of her girls down from the same place. I had never quite worked out how she knew Steph, but they were almost a double act on their own. Never mind; beer was drunk, songs were sung and harp and fiddle played, and we got a naughty supper from Colin’s place.
I sometimes felt a little out of things living in Bangor, but each time we made the journey I would always consider as ‘going home’, it was like we’d never been away. It was, however, a bloody good thing that Alys had her little car, because one or more of our parents would always be recovering from a ‘Saw this and thought of you’ moment, where the ‘this’ in question was all too often far too bulky for the bike.
Uncle Mike, though, seemed a little off-key, as if he was trying to ignore an itch he dearly wanted to scratch but couldn’t. He also kept sneaking little glances at Alys and myself, which made we worry about him even more. When we left Colin’s, a bag of chips being ingested by each of us, he muttered to the two of us to hang back.
“Alys, I need a little chat with both of you”
She was nodding, almost as if she had expected it. Mike turned to smile at me.
“Alys and I have already spoken, Enfys. While she was staying with us in Perth”
My lover took my free hand, which slowed my chip-eating. I looked at her, wondering where this was going. Mike sat down on a garden wall, bringing him down to our level, and I recognised it as a conflict-defusing technique.
“Enfys, you might not have the funds to come over and see us, but we do get visitors. One of them’s Neil Strachan. He…”
It seemed that the conflict he wanted to defuse was with himself, for he struggled to get the words out, making several false starts. Then, voice faint, he found his way in.
“Alys knows the background, because I told her, and I shouldn’t have. I wasn’t… It would have been Maz’s birthday. It was something that tied both of us, me and her, to each other and to Neil, love. Bereavement. Maz lost her husband, Neil his wife, me, well, what’s that Oscar Wilde quote about losing both parents? Whatever.”
I looked at Alys, then back at my uncle.
“I didn’t know Neil had been married”
They both nodded, and Uncle Mike grimaced.
“Now, I really need to talk to you and Alys, but this is what we used to call really heavy shit. Ish doesn’t know, but he does know that when… When his mother disappeared, when we’d realised we were never, ever going to get any real answer, we held a sort of wake, me, him, all our friends. Neil was there for me. Did I tell you about our wedding?”
“In what way? I remember you saying something about King’s Park”
“Yup. Neil did the photos for that. He was at our wedding. Being Neil, he simply bought his tickets two or three days before travel, along with a lightweight suit off the internet. Anyway, I wasn’t in a good place, that birthday. Maz’s birthday”
I sat down with him for a hug.
“Not surprising, that. I mean, if Alys… Shit. It was bad enough when she was snatched. You’ve coped better than I would have been able to”
“Yes, well. I had Ish, and the Butts, and Neil was there for me. Same as our wedding, he just left his staff to run his business and flew straight out. There are reasons, and those reasons are what I need to discuss with you. He’s due here the day after tomorrow, so I want to make sure you know the necessary. This weather isn’t for climbing, so I’d like to go somewhere touristy, just us, or at least say we are. We need privacy”
I squeezed him again to let him know I was there.
“What about Ish?”
“Ish has some knowledge of what’s going on, Enfys, just a little. He wants to dig around that music shop in Bangor”
Alys squeezed my hand again, my chips having been dumped into a rubbish bin.
“Cob, love. That place Annie likes”
I thought quickly.
“Cuppa at home, then? Leave Ish to shop?”
Uncle Mike hugged me back, fiercely.
“Sounds like a plan, girls. This is all on the Q-T for now, okay? Shall we climb that hill, then, get some kip?”
I nodded, and made a show of helping him up, before we started the walk back up to my family home, my mind arguing with itself over where exactly my ‘home’ was. I had lived almost my entire life in the old terraced house, but the two of us now had our own, and as I tossed a mental coin, the answer was there at my side. ‘Home’ for me was wherever she was. Simple as could be.
I didn’t sleep much that night, despite her presence beside me. After breakfast, she drove the four of us to the ‘big city’, Uncle Mike riding in front due to his height, and after dropping the lad off we parked at our place. I went straight to the kitchen as Alys sorted some junk mail, and once the tea was brewed, I did Mother. I could see the tension in Mike’s posture, and after a sip of his tea, he muttered something about ripping plasters, and began his story.
“Going to make this as clinical as I can, you two. Neil was married, she died, and it was… It wasn’t an accident, and nobody else was involved”
Alys whispered “Hunanladdiad”. Suicide. Shit. Mike continued his brutally terse story.
“Neil was out of the country at the time… Go back, Rhodes. Neil’s wife was on the same bus as you, Alys, and that is one of the reasons he got so upset when you had that trouble. He feels that he failed his wife, and you were a sort of atonement. Neil is, well, he gets fixed ideas”
I reached across for my uncle’s hand, as my wife already had my other.
“He’s on the spectrum, isn’t he? Mild, but still there?”
A slow nod.
“Yup. He explained it to me years ago. Thing is, the way he describes it, he was a lot worse before he met his wife. I think he’s slipping back a bit. It’s probably easier for me to spot, and his friends down under, because of the gaps between visits. Possibly not so much, when he’s a regular. Anyway, this is the confidential stuff, and I am not going into the details, as I said. They’re pretty nasty. Maddy… Maddy was his wife. From the way Neil described her, she was a very straight woman, but a romantic”
Alys said, “Prince on a white horse stuff?”, and Mike shook his head.
“Not exactly. More of a woman with, um, healthy appetites, as Steph puts it; her dreaming was more of being normal, part of a couple. Until she met Neil, she hadn’t had the best of experiences. Not like yours, Alys: this was what they call ‘chasers’, and she’d had some really nasty ones”
I didn’t feel my fist clamping down on my wife’s hand, but she let out a grunt of pain.
“Sorry, love. Uncle Mike, are we talking about beatings?”
“Yes. And worse”
I watched his face shift through several expressions one of them deeply disturbing, and then he shook his head.
“Keep it simple, Rhodes. One of her former, um, encounters, one who was more nasty words then physical violence, he spotted her one day. Found out where she worked and started sending notes, waiting outside till she closed up. When Neil had to go abroad, cuntface--- sorry. The man ramped up his stalking, and Neil lost Maddy. He sees it as all being his fault, while still blaming the real culprit. You are his atonement, Alys”
She was weeping, and my uncle tried to apologise, but she waved it away.
“No. Don’t. I understand him a lot better now, I think. I needed to know this. What did the police say?”
His mouth twisted for a minute or two as he fought off what looked like being a real outburst of rage, then found his centre again.
“There was an inquest. The official response was ‘Well, Mr Strachan, those people are like that, all depression and suicide’, and that was it”
I couldn’t get my head around it.
“Uncle Mike, wasn’t that sort of thing just as bloody illegal back then as it is right now?”
He nodded, eyes hard, as Alys wiped her own.
“Ladies, the simplest way of saying this is that the local plod didn’t care. I don’t know if her chaser was one of their friends, or even a copper himself, but nobody gave a shit about her, apart from Neil. I mean, she had friends, but as Neil put it, they were shocked and saddened because she had died, whereas Neil was shocked, grief-stricken and angry because, in his eyes, she’d been killed”
Alys spat out “She had been!”, and yet again, my uncle gave that slow nod. I was left with one obvious question, though.
“Uncle Mike?”
“Yes?”
“Why tell us this now?”
“Ah. That’s the important question, love. Neil has dropped a few hints over the years, usually by saying something unguarded. The man in question is called Nigel something or other, and Neil’s been stalking him, sort of returning the fucking favour. I gather he had quite a pile of evidence for the police to ignore, back then, and he’s been adding to it”
“And?”
“And I came across something, not saying how, that makes me think he’s run out of patience”
“You suspect he’s going to pick a fight with this Nigel?”
“Neil’s a big lad, Enfys, but he couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding. I think it will end up with Neil getting hurt, one way or the other, and none of us wants that. If Nigel does have some connections, then it could be an absolute disaster”
I rose from the sofa and settled myself onto his lap for a hug.
“What can we do, me and Alys? For Neil?”
He shook his head.
“I have absolutely no idea, girls. I was just hoping there might be something, three heads together, sort of thing?”
Alys came over to join us.
“Micawber time, then. Something will come up. It has to
Neil was late in arrival, and we had already given up on him and headed for the pub. No music, but an awful lot of people to smile at and be lifted by a smile’s return, often with extra warmth. Debbie and her girls were still with us, and Alys and I had a quiet moment of pleasure spotting which ones we recognised, and which were still coming to terms with their new lives. I could almost read their minds: is this real? I get to be myself, in public? There’s no catch, no taking it all away again?
It meant a lot of smugness from my wife, of course.
We’d eaten, of course, when a damp Strachan appeared, a broad-brimmed obviously-Aussie hat dripping with raindrops, and found his first target, which was the bar, where Illtyd greeted him and whispered to the landlord, who nodded sharply. Neil turned around, and walked straight back out into the rain.
What was up?
Illtyd collected what should have been Neil’s pint and brought it over to our table clearly reading our expressions.
“Ah, nothing to worry about, girls. Kitchen’s done for the night, but Dil’s okay with Neil grabbing something next door and eating it here, ah?”
Five minutes later and Neil was back, with a package of battered sausage and chips, the smell of the vinegar heavy in the air.
“Sorry, all. There was a smash on the A5 and I had to wait till they cleared it. Not in a place I could bypass. Anyway, cheers all! Lovely to see you, Ish. Mike too”
I found myself searching his face for clues, which was stupid, so forced myself to grin at him as I joined Alys in a welcoming hug.
“Aussie souvenir, mate?”
“Oh!”
He reached up to doff his broad hat, setting it onto a window shelf behind the bench seat.
“Bit necessary out there, folks. Mike needs it more than I do, of course, having no hair. They sorted it for me while I was there for…”
He stopped dead, clearly at the realisation that he was about to open wounds that would probably never heal.
A deep breath.
“Got some ideas with this weather. How well do you all know the river near Pont Cyfyng?”
I held a hand up.
“The Brenin uses it for canoeing, Neil. Depending on water level, of course. There was…”
Shit. Was this evening becoming a disaster magnet, or what? Get the story over, move on.
“The Llugwy was really high once, a few years ago. Some people were coming down it, and got caught in one of the falls. Man got trapped underwater, and it was a while before they could recover the body. Not my sort of shout, that, but I do know the safe ways down, depending on those water levels. What are you thinking?”
“Um, mixture. I want to do some wet work, from in the water. Got my tanks and drysuit. That and some oblique work, long exposures through falling water into the light. Be handy to have someone to belay me from the bank for the immersion stuff”
He caught my look, and shrugged.
“Not in a cave, Enfys. Not this time”
He was mad, in a way, but we all knew that. I decided to get the real gen from Ross, as well as check for belays on the banks. Remember, Hiatt: always set them up so that you can escape them if something goes tits-up.
I really had to filter my thoughts; being in the Rescue was widening my vocabulary to the Too Much Detail end of free expression.
I woke suddenly at two in the morning, Alys and I spooned together in the Bunkhouse, as the idea hit me. I did my best not to wake her, but my twitch as realisation struck did just that.
“You okay, love?”
I turned to hold her as I whispered my answer.
“Got an idea for helping Neil. It can wait until morning, though”
“Good. I’m shattered…”
Back into sleep, seamlessly. Not for me, though, as the various ramifications and pitfalls danced through my mind, not least that of an appropriate way to broach the subject with Neil, and sell him on the idea. I was still awake at four, when it suddenly became eight o’clock and the place was smelling of bacon.
Alys was due into the Uni for work, but I had time to brief her before she drove off, and I then rode pillion with Neil to the Brenin for that info from Ross. God alone knows how Neil fitted all his kit into his hard cases, let alone kept the bike upright, but he did, despite having to take it gently on the sharper bends in the wet.
It turned out that there were already stakes in place at some of the more ‘dynamic’ falls below Capel, especially near the Cyfyng bridge itself, and the day turned out to be fascinating, as Neil used a variety of cameras along with some very peculiar caving equipment to snap in, over and under the water. Things improved tremendously when the sun finally came out, and he spent a couple of hours inside the little waterfalls shooting out.
It was at times like that when I could clearly see his place on that spectrum, such was his focus and attention to detail. I mean, he even had an exposure meter he had waterproofed in an utterly professional way, all to ensure his underwater monochrome film camera got the best image. That camera itself was in a large waterproof box with an extending monopod so that he could brace it during his long exposures.
He was almost a different person while he was doing that, but all I could think at the time was how he had been as he took those pictures of what he had thought would be my wife’s dead body. It was like my work in the Rescue, or what little Annie had told me about the nastier side of her own job.
Work head on. Secure the scene. Preserve what life you could. Save the breakdown for afterwards, when and where there would hopefully be someone to hold you through the shakes, so that you didn’t have to manage them while sitting for hours out on the water with your gaze locked on horror and your soul in agony.
I made the call later that afternoon, while ‘stretching my legs’ as Neil showered the Llugwy’s cold from his bones. The phone almost timed out before it was answered.
“Hiya, you. Bit of a surprise! Can I guess you have a problem?”
There was a pause, then she was apologising.
“Sorry, Enfys. Work stuff; tends to leave me a bit tactless. Nothing up with Alys, is there? Please tell me ‘not so’, love?”
“Ah, not Alys this time”
“Thank god”
“Aye, or rather ‘thank Neil Strachan’, if you get my point”
I could almost feel her nod, but what I heard was “Fair point”
She paused for a few seconds, then asked the obvious question.
“What’s happened to him?”
Before I could answer, she was already speaking again.
“Work meeting, Enfys. I can call you back in an hour, but, not being nasty, need to cut this short”
“Be good to chat longer, but quick summary. He’s in the shower, and I need to talk to you without him hearing. If you text me some times you’re free I can arrange to be on my own”
“Subject?”
“Um, historic, well, stalking. And a death”
“Umf… sorry, nearly swore out loud. Got to go; I’ll text”
She cut the call, and I busied myself with kettle and pot as I heard the bathroom door open. Neil was still in his own world of sharp focus and limited exposure, setting up his laptop to download the memory cards, while each roll of thirty five millimetre film went into a little canister that he hand-labelled in the neatest, tiniest script I have ever seen, using what mist have been a technical pen with a very fine point. My phone pinged as I poured, and as Neil seemed to have forgotten my existence for the moment, I set his tea down within reach, but away from any risk of soaking his cameras or laptop, and took a quick look at the text.
Two days’ time looked promising, as I had the first part of the morning free before a private client was due for a ‘trad leading’ session. Not my favourite session by any means, because I would be doing it solo, and that meant a serious bit of tech evaluation beforehand. Fortunately, the client was a regular, so I was fully up to speed with his quirks.
After almost an hour of checking his downloads and completing a paper diary entry full of odd numbers and letters I assume were camera settings, Neil was back with me. I poured his cold tea away and made some fresh for both of us.
I made the call two mornings later, fully dressed in everything but helmet and gloves, so that I could get on the road as quickly as possible afterwards. Paid work came with its responsibilities, as always.
“Hiya Enfys. You free to talk now?”
“Yes. Alys is at work, and I will be after this”
“What are you doing today?”
“Client wants a go at leading. Placing runners and that”
“Sounds risky”
“Oh, it is, but he’s a regular, and I am happy enough with his climbing. I’ll start with him on a high toprope, taking up a second rope and placing gear. Take him up to a prepared belay, then let him bring me up so I can collect and, what’s that word? Critique. So I can do that with the placements. Really easy slab, so I don’t actually need the rope”
“Riiiiight. You are mad, woman”
“So people have often told me”
“Neil, then. What’s up? Oh, and can I assume you are about to break a couple of hundred aspects of confidence?”
The Rubicon I needed to cross.
“I’m afraid so. Unfortunately, I can’t see any way around that”
“Well, I can listen. If it goes nowhere, it’s just me that knows, and it stops with me”
“Not even…?”
“No. Not even her”
“Okay… Background stuff first. You know Neil’s on the spectrum”
“Bit hard to miss, even though he compensates well. Has someone been harassing him about that?”
“No, not that, and it’s not Neil that’s the victim, even if he sort of is, really. Background, then. Starts with my Uncle Mike, the one who lives out in Australia. He’s been back here for a visit, and he told me about his worries concerning Neil”
“Sounding very formal, woman”
“Yeah, well, my way of coping with this stuff. Quick run through, and that was Mike telling Neil about Alys when she came out”
“Ah. And?”
“Neil was married”
“You’re going to tell me she’s… on the Alys bus, aren’t you?”
“Not quite. She was”
“Shit. This will be the death you hinted at, then. What happened?”
“Sorry if this sounds callous, but going to speed through this so that I can cope. Wife was called Maddy, she was a trans woman with a history of abuse. Some of it was violent, some of it sexual. One particular man had groomed her, got his… Not ‘wham, bang, thank you Ma’am’ so much as ‘wham, bang, you make me want to puke, you freak’ and out the door still zipping up”
“Bloody hell”
“Yes. Anyway, last bit before the cherry on top. Neil’s parents died out in Spain, he had to go over there for all the legal stuff, and Maddy’s friend had spotted her, where she and Neil worked. Their business”
“Stalking?”
“Yup. Lots of notes and other stuff, waiting around outside to wave hello as she left, that sort of thing. Maddy was… She was fragile, and she didn’t have the support around her that we have, Alys and me, and. She didn’t make it”
“Fuck!”
“Yes. I don’t know… I don’t want to know how, but there was an inquest, and Neil took all the evidence Maddy had stored up, and the local police weren’t interested. Usual stuff about mental illness and associated suicide rates for trans people”
“Someone should point out to them why that rate is so fucking high. This wasn’t recently, was it?”
“No; years ago. Neil’s like a pressure cooker, though, and that’s Mike’s worry. He says Neil’s been stalking the stalker, building up a sort of dossier, and Mike is terrified he’s going to confront the bastard”
“A fight?”
“Not something Neil would do. General opinion is that he’d just end up hurt. Mike’s worried Neil’s sort of coming to the boil now, and if the stalker has connections, it could be really messy”
“You thinking of funny handshake territory?”
“Possibly, or family links, business buddies, whatever”
“Where was all this? County, I mean”
“Cheshire”
“Okay… I really think this one might have legs. Before anything else, though, it would be essential to talk it through with the man himself before cutting the balls off his wife’s friend”
She paused, a few deep breaths all too audible.
“Right. Now got to explain to people why I am so bloody angry right now, and there’s only one way I can do that”
“Lie?”
“Lie. I can see no choice for you, though. If we move on this, you will have to tell Neil himself what you know. It’s mental health problem, Enfys, which is sort of your job”
“Being on the spectrum isn’t---”
“Fucking grief is. That’s what you’re treating, love: grief and resultant self-harm. Talk to him, see what he says, and we move from there”
“Thanks. I…shit, I’m running late”
“Keep me updated, then”
“Will do. Speak soon”
Click off, onto the already-loaded bike and off up the A5 to the usual place, my client just parking in the long, long space outside the farm. Make your wave a cheery one, Hiatt, carefully over the cattle grid and park next to the farmhouse wall. Debbie and her current brood were still in place, wasting a good hill day in my opinion. One of them—Emma? Yes, Emma. Emma advised me that as they had spent the previous day on the Horseshoe, and they were heading home the next day, they were having this one off..
“There’s still a load of you missing”
“Yeah, well, they’re all off that way”
She waved across the road, where I could just see a small group on the slopes above the Llyn, approaching the hole in the wall. Pen yr Ole Wen and the two brothers, then.
“Nice walk, that one. What are your plans, the rest of you?”
She grinned happily.
“Picnic and Perving Slab, of course!”
A little sting of bitterness sank into my heart, as a young woman showed me how relaxed in her identity she could ne, once given the time and space to grow.
“What are you doing?”
“Sorry, miles away. That’s my client just coming; we’re off over there too”
“See you on the Perving Slab, then! Tell you what: shall we bring some spare flasks for you? Milk? Sugar?”
“Hang on… Hiya, Ian. This is a friend of mine, Emma. She’s going up to the slab later, same place as us, and has just offered to bring some flasks of tea with her. Milk and sugar?”
“Just milk for me—that would be ace!”
I waved to the few other girls on site, thanked Emma once again, and set off ro the first ladder stile and the open land beyond.
He wasn’t too bad. Only one dropped quickdraw, but two wires he hadn’t extended and so lifted straight out as he moved upward, which was why I had him on a toprope. The girls joined us thirty minutes later, bringing the promised tea as well as a picnic seemingly intended for far more than were there, and so Ian and I had to help out.
The moves were repetitive, but the rock was as warm as the sunshine could make it, and in the end, Ian led three full-length routes properly and thanked me for a day well-spent. None of the rest of us explained what the girls called the slab, but I am certain he spotted the two pairs of little binoculars.
It was a couple of weeks before I managed to find the right moment to talk with Neil, and I could feel the nerves wrapping themselves into tangles as I did the usual brew in the bunkhouse before his arrival, turning the kettle on as I heard the burble of his big German bike. The weather was not great, so we had the place to ourselves, and I left him to get out of his voluminous waterproofs before opening a pack of back bacon and lighting the hob.
“Alys is on her way, Neil. We’re both off tomorrow, so it’s the Cow tonight, assuming you want a beer, that is”
“Popes and bears, Enfys! And their friends”
“Of the popes or the bears? These friends?”
“Of the first couple of pints, love. Eat there?”
“Indeed, but a few things to do here first—Hiya, love!”
I greeted my wife properly before returning to complete the bacon sandwiches, Neil musing as he ate.
“When I was at University, I used to eat some things over and over again. I would have months when I did cheese on toast, other times egg baps. I just got more and more extravagant. The toast ended up more like a pizza; the eggs more like a Spanish omelette sandwich. Sort of goes with my, you know. Way I think”
I looked across to my lover, and she nodded. I took the plunge.
“Neil?”
“Yes?”
“We need… Uncle Mike spoke to us. He’s worried about you”
I could see the first signs of him closing down, so took his hands in mine, fixing his gaze.
“Before you say anything, Alys knows, but she loves you just as much as the rest of us, possibly more, but you know that. That’s all this is: concern. We’re looking to see if we can help, nothing more”
“You’re talking about… This is about Maddy, isn’t it?”
“More about how we deal with that man, Neil. Mike’s really, really worried about you, worried you’ll get hurt”
He started to say something about who would end up hurt, but Alys set a hand to his arm, saying so, so gently, “And you know, we all know, that you could never hurt anyone. Mike spoke to us both, Neil”
She looked across to me and smiled.
“We talk, Neil and I. I knew his wife was like me, and that she’s gone. I know there was some nastiness, but that’s about all I knew until Mike filled in some of the blanks. Neil?”
“Yes?”
“Mike said that the local police weren’t interested”
His shakes started slowly, worsened quickly and turned into gulping sobs, so we simply held his hands and gave him the human contact he needed so much. As his breathing came back from the edge of his clear need to scream, Alys spoke again.
“Enfys has had a very good idea, love. It’s a way of sorting this out, but doing it properly, using some friends we have. Enfys would just apologise, so I’ll say it straight: because we love you, and ONLY because we love you, my darling has spoken to one of these friends. She would like to speak with you, and she won’t speak to anyone else unless you are happy. We want you to be safe, love, but we don’t think you can be with this hanging round your neck, so…”
She sat up straighter, and picked up her cooling sandwich.
“Plan for this evening: you say ‘yes’, we collect the oldies, we hit the pub, and then probably Colin’s, and then Enfys and I put in ear plugs”
“Ear plugs?”
“You. Plus beer. Snoring. And… and we arrange a meeting between you and our friend”
We left him to clean his face in the little private room and then called in at our family houses in succession, collecting the geriatric forebears, and had a standard Cow evening of mild silliness and slight inebriation among friends. Looking around the place, I found myself yet again feeling blessed by my mother’s strength. I could have been forced to grow up in That Place, as she still called it, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine what sort of person it would have produced. She would never have been me, despite my parents; I knew that, as much as I knew I would never have met the woman I sat beside, the one who gave me so many extra reasons to wake each day.
That thought made me look at Neil again, wondering how it had been for him. The alcohol seemed to be making me a little maudlin, and that saying went through my soul like a razor cut, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. That awful moment when the police had knocked at the door would never leave me, so I had some insight into the question, but in the end my own loss had been a nightmare from which we had all woken, while Neil’s was there every time the sun rose.
We did indeed pay Colin a visit, but that was entirely for the purpose of confirming the details of the upcoming christening of his and Sali’s new daughter, and how did those bags of chips end up in our hands?
We ate them on the way up the hill, before washing the grease off our faces and fingers and settling into our bags, which in our own case were simply two duvets with proper pillows. I was out like a light almost as soon as I lay down, but my bladder spoke to me at about three in the morning. As I walked to the loo, I caught a sound from Neil’s room. It wasn’t a snore, though: it was weeping.
I didn’t know the name of his Maddy’s ‘friend’, but I knew it would end up on the same mental list as Ifor Watkins.
I wasn’t as quick falling asleep that second time.
Calendars worked out well for all of us, after a few to and fro calls and a little bit of horse trading with colleagues and friends, especially friends who were colleagues. The day came, along with sunshine, and my beloved was off in a world of recipes and tips, many of them e-mailed from friends on the other side of the planet.
I settled our first two guests into the second bedroom as Alys did the ‘hot drinks’ part of the greeting ritual, and Lisa surprised me, which was another surprise in itself, as I should have expected nothing less from that crew.
“We’ve brought a load of stuff for the barbie, Enfys, so, well… This one’s told me you have some work to discuss, so if it’s okay with you, I’ll get the cooking started while you talk”
I gave her another hug before leading the way downstairs, where she repeated her offer to Alys. I left the two of them to get the charcoal lit and the posher electric flat thing to heat up, and as I was sitting down in the living room, I heard our door bell.
Neil, a hard case in either hand. Not getting a lot of lead time, then.
“Come in, mate! Alys is out the back with one of our guests getting the barbie lit. Is that more food?”
“Er, yes. And drink. I’ve… Can you put these down in the kitchen? I need to get the top box. That’s got…”
He was starting to shake again, so I pushed him back towards his bike.
“Grab that box, and we’ll take it all in together, okay?”
He nodded, still uncertain, but I think he felt the Voice of Command, or something, and when I shut the front door, it was behind both of us and three large rigid boxes. We picked up a box each for the kitchen, the other remaining in the hallway.
Alys was in for a hug, as fervent as ever, and a quick introduction to Lisa, before we returned for the third box. Neil was breathing heavily as he gathered it, but it wasn’t the panting of exertion, but the slow and deep breaths of someone trying to control severe nervousness. I squeezed his shoulder.
“This is the right way, Neil, the proper way to deal with things. We can’t let this fester any longer, and that is ‘we’. Me, Alys, Uncle Mike, we are all with you. It has to be your call, though, but not alone. Never that, okay?”
He took a few more huge, slow breaths before nodding.
“Got to be done. Yes”
“Come on, then”
I opened the door.
“Neil, meet Lexie. She’s a friend of Debbie’s, and she’s with the police”
The woman laughed.
“That’s Enfys for you, sorting her priorities clearly, and that is exactly how things should be. Friendship first”
She rose and put out her hand.
“Formally, I’m Detective Constable Doyle. The lady out the back—Enfys? Something funny?”
“Sorry?”
“That expression on your face when I called Lisa a lady? Not nice!”
I knew full well that my expression hadn’t changed, but her purpose was plain. Pick it up and run with it, woman.
“Well, what I remember of evenings in a pub, it wasn’t a word I’d have chosen!”
I heard a snort from Neil: job done, She waved at the sofa.
“Shall we settle ourselves for a chat? Lisa is staying out the back to start the cooking, just to give us some privacy. You choose who hears this, Neil. Enfys will join Lisa if you would prefer, because everything we do is your choice. I won’t tell you which way to jump; I will simply listen to you and explain what is possible. What we then do is, as I keep saying, entirely in your hands. Understood?”
This was Lexie as I had never seen her, utterly professional. Neil was staring a little too obviously, though, for she gave him a little smile and waved at the side of her head.
“I got shot, that’s all. Hell of a headache, and an interesting scar, but wounds, bodily ones, they can heal. Wounds to the soul, they can be far worse. I have friends, some of them are friends of Enfys, who have been badly hurt that way. What we do, as a team, my job team, is try and do our best to help them heal, or just cope better. Enfys here, she did that for my team”
Neil flicked a glance my way, but Lexie had his attention.
“We had a particularly heavy year, Neil, including my shooting. A lot of wounded souls. We came up here, and Enfys was one of those who picked us up. I’m not the only one of us that likes to repay what they owe”
I couldn’t let that one lie.
“Friends don’t count debts, Lexie”
“We weren’t friends back then, love. You were helping strangers, purely out of humanity”
“Well, I knew what you’d been through! How could I not? Good place to start a friendship, though”
“Yup. So that’s where I sit, Neil. Do you feel up to talking me through things?”
He thought for a few seconds, then sighed and clicked open the latches on his top box, drawing out several cardboard folders, some boxes and a framed photograph.
“This was on our wedding day. My wife was called Maddy”
We joined the other pair after two hours, Alys having stepped in halfway through with fresh cups of tea and a plate of non-greasy nibbles, plus a hug and cheek kiss for two of us. The story was even worse than the bare bones Mike had given us. Lexie was calm, gentle in fact, throughout, but I was picking so many cues from her face and hands it was clear how hard she was having to work to keep that poise. There was one episode Neil recounted, involving a particular dress, that made me want to hit someone. Lexie’s jaw muscles worked a little as she spoke.
“So, then: he groomed her and groomed her, got his, got what he wanted, and then simply abused her?”
“Yes. I couldn’t understand why. She… we…”
He struggled for a moment, then started again.
“When we first got together, she was wearing that dress. We’d met someone in a bike shop, nice man, did us some favours, and she teased him a little. Using the dress. He said I was a lucky man. He was so right”
The need to give extra detail had bitten him, so we had an explanation of exactly how the dress fastened, and an unsurprisingly detailed description of what else she wore. Lexie waited patiently until he had finished.
“So you reclaimed good memories and washed away the nasties. Maddy must have appreciated that”
Neil’s blush was nuclear.
“Um. Yes. She… Maddy liked, really enjoyed sex, but it was more. She had a need, to be needed herself, to be wanted. She had had a boyfriend before she had, you know, sorted things out, but he was gay, really gay. Couldn’t adapt. And my Maddy, she was just, she knew who she was. I knew who she was. Just a woman. Just to be loved as a woman. And I did. Love her”
I was seeing the real man now, especially his lack of filters, and I realised how hard he must have to work to maintain his public face. Suddenly, he was looking directly at me.
“I know, Enfys. Stress does that to me. I have some techniques I was taught, mostly ways to delay speaking immediately. Counting games and so on. Maddy taught me another, an important one, but it can get in the way”
Lexie’s voice was as soft as ever.
“What did she teach you, Neil?”
His gaze went distant for a few seconds, perhaps seeing another time, another face.
“She said that I should ask myself is what I was about to say would sound weird if it came from someone else. Another filter. If I lose my filters, I lose myself”
He shook himself, before drawing deeply on inner strength I knew all too well was in limited supply.
“He found her again, this Nigel. We had our own shop by then, N and M Strachan Photography, but Maddy still did exhibition work. He must have spotted that, one of her shows, and then traced back to the shop. We started getting notes through the door”
“Did you keep them, Neil?”
“Not the first one, exactly. Maddy tore that one up. I picked the bits out of the bin. I kept all the ithers, or at least the ones I saw”
“They were abusive notes? Abusive to Maddy?”
“To both of us. Called it… Called her intimate parts things like ‘open wound’ and ‘rot pocket’. Asked me if I was disinfecting myself after being with her. That file has the notes I kept”
It was not a slim file. Once again, I saw Lexie’s jaw muscles work, as she flicked through the papers. Each in a clear plastic bag.
“Who bagged these, Neil?”
“I did. I was hoping there’d be DNA or fingerprints or something”
“Good man”
He broke down just then, but refused to take a break, so once he was able to speak, both of us did our best to ignore the continuing tears.
“We set up some security cameras, one of those door bell things. Hidden away. That file there has the prints, and that box has some discs. I got his car a few times as well”
Lexie took a quick look at the photos, muttering a couple of times, before asking what was close to the last question.
“What happened, Neil?”
By this time, I was wrapped around him, the pain so evident I wanted to scream from it.
“My parents, Lexie. They had come to our wedding, and I think… I was off their hands, even if she was older than me, and nobody else needed to know her history. They seemed to like… Sorry. I have a problem understanding how anyone could have known her and not loved her. My parents seemed to like her, but they had retired to live in Spain. There was an accident on the road and they had… They were killed. There was an inquest that went on for a week and I had to go down as—”
“Neil?”
“Sorry, Lexie”
“Not a problem, my love. If this is getting too hard for you, we can stop”
“No. Got to do this. I was in Spain. He started to come into the shop while I was away and it was just Maddy”
“Any witnesses?”
“Our cameras. No employees or other customers; he timed it that way”
Lexie went to ask another question, but he simply interrupted her, and I realised he needed to get the worst words out before he was beyond the ability.
“She sent me texts and e-mails and I still have them and I went to the police afterwards and they said it was just one of those things and they’re all prone to depression and we’re sorry she went off the top of that car park and thank you for your time Mister Strachan”
That was when he finally left us, the loss taking him into a pit of what looked very much like pain mixed with a huge flood of shame, and the two of us held him until he was able to whisper, finally, a ‘thank you’.
Sod hitting someone: I wanted to disembowel the bastard.
Lexie squeezed his hands, smiling gently.
“Neil?”
“Yes?”
“My other half, Lisa, is sorting some food and stuff with Alys, probably arguing over marinades and shit. What I would like you to do is go upstairs and wash your face. No shame, but it will relieve your eyes. Have a rest, then come back down, and we will join the others and have a good afternoon and evening. That do you?”
He nodded, and this time her smile was a little tighter.
“Not sure how much Enfys has explained, so here’s what I can do. I work for a police unit that does what the telly calls ‘cold case’ work. You know Debbie Wells, I believe?”
He was nodding before she had finished.
“I know exactly what your team did for her and her girls. I could hardly miss that, could I?”
“Fine. If you are happy, I will call my boss. I need to hand this over, if you want me to push it forward. Do you want?”
“Are you sure you’ll get him?”
“No. There’s always a risk with courts. What I am sure is that my team will want this one, and we will do our absolute damnedest. That’s my promise. Do you want me to proceed?”
He nodded once again.
“Go for it. Whatever happens, it should get the bastard’s name into the press”
She showed her teeth that time.
“Oh, indeed. Trust me on that one!”
He rose to his feet, still oozing shame, and silently walked out of the room, and I heard the steps creaking as he headed upstairs. Lexie shifted closer to me as she tapped a number into her mobile, switching it onto speakerphone.
“Hello, can I help you?”
“Sammy? It’s Lexie”
“I know. My phone tells me these things. How’s the jolly?”
“Not so jolly. Enfys is sitting next to me. Remember her?”
“I remember you two teasing the shit out of the team, girl! What do you have for me?”
She drew in a deep breath, and Sammy did his own muttering.
“Heavy one, then?”
“Absolutely shitty one, boss. TLDR?”
“Go ahead”
“Happily married couple, blissed out, same set-up as Annie and Eric. Stalker. Hubby has to go abroad. Wife goes off top of car park. Local plod not interested”
“Ah. Local force is which one?”
“Cheshire”
“Handy. We have decent contacts there. Evidence?
“Shit, Sammy, so much of it I am asking myself whose bosom buddy or relative the cunt is”
“That bad? Not your usual language”
“I have just had an afternoon with our witness. I need to hand this one on and…”
She had been poking through some of the files as she spoke.
“You are going to ask me to leave the stuff with him until we can get it picked up and a proper signature, chain of evidence, so on and so forth?”
“Naturally”
“Well, it looks like our witness has thought of that. The folders he didn’t walk us through are simply copies of the originals. If we take this on, we can get started as soon as I am back, or rather the rest of you can”
I had to ask.
“What if your bosses decide not to take it on?”
Sammy’s voice was silky, even over the speaker.
“Hi, Enfys. Even if we didn’t owe you one, this is exactly our kind of case. We open up cans of worms, that’s our job, but we don’t mind. We call that a target-rich environment, as the Yanks say. Or, as I like to say, there’s always the good old Ways And Means Act. This fucker sounds like he has connections. We have seen that before. We don’t like that. We stop it. Two things are in play here, the first being that if he feels bulletproof, there is almost certainly one or more other angles to his behaviour. And he’s not the only one with connections in the Cheshire force. He may discover ours have rather more clout. Lovely to speak with you again, Enfys, so remember: we pay our debts. Enjoy your evening, ladies”
He was gone, Lexie looking a little slumped.
“They’re going to love me, that lot”
“Too heavy a case?”
She considered my question for a few moments, then gave me the weakest of smiles.
“What I said sort of goes both ways, Enfys. Part of that is how you heard it, but the other, well: it’s why I’m still on the team, and I suspect it’s the same for all of us. Tell me: when you do a good rescue, if there’s such a thing, how do you feel afterwards?”
I thought back to that touch and go with the helicopter, what seemed like an eternity ago, and then there were the whispers from those outings where all we could bring back was a body. Not like that time with Old Pat, where someone had relaxed out of life in the most loving of company, but those where death had come as a literally terminal shock.
Put those ones away, woman.
“I don’t know. Relieved?”
“Proud? Of being able to make a difference?”
I found myself nodding in agreement, and that faint smile came out again.
“I see it as a privilege. A job where you can make a difference for the better, a real one, it’s a privilege. Not many jobs offer that”
“Yeah, but what you have to deal with—”
“Bigger the shitpile, bigger the difference we can make. This is a shitpile, but it’s a black and white one—what?”
“Sorry. Not laughing, but Neil is really into black and white photography. Just seemed apt”
“It is, I suppose. What I meant was that the morality part is clear: good man, and woman; very bad man. Now, you know Jon on our team?”
“Of course”
“He did the interview on one of the worst people I have ever encountered, man called Cooper”
My breath came out in a rush as that name struck me like a punch to the gut.
“I know who he is, Lexie”
“It’s ‘was’ now, love. Anyway, that was a shitpile, BUT: we were able to give some relief to so many of his victims, just like the Evans case. It’s… oh, closure, all those buzzwords, but in many cases, the victims have been believing that one day their tormenter is just going to reappear, status quo ante, déjà vu all over again, as the joke goes. Cases like those, our victim gets to see them in the dock, see how pathetic they really are. That’s a privilege, and it’s what kept Jon going”
She looked away, shaking her head a couple of times before wiping her eyes.
“We can’t bring Neil’s Maddy back, Enfys, but we can do our best to give him Nigel. Now, time to join the others, I think”