Sympathy for the Devil

  ‘Sorry it’s all old stuff,’ he said.

  ‘No it’s fine,’ said Catrin, ‘you’ve got okay taste.’

  Huw looked over at her then and she felt embarrassed, like maybe he thought she was flirting with him. It wasn’t her style to give compliments, she wondered if in a small way she had been.

  She decided on John Martyn’s Solid Air, a record that never failed to lift her spirits. The title track, the song Martyn was meant to have written about Nick Drake, never failed to remind her of Rhys, as if Rhys’s spirit was out there somewhere, moving through solid air.

  The way up to Glangwili was slow going. For the first few miles she drove slowly behind the tail lights of the gritting truck. There were no lights of other cars behind them. They had to stop on the outskirts of the village to allow a herd of cattle to cross the road. Then the sky ahead began to clear.

  The road twisted past a village shop and up a hill past several chapels and pubs. The place looked as if it probably hadn’t changed much since Face’s childhood in the 1970s. Through the hedges they could catch glimpses of the surrounding fields. In the lee of the trees the cows stood with heads bent low over the frozen grass.

  Catrin followed a driveway that led round the back of the last pub on the hill. Hanging above it from a peeling post, a rusted plaque read the Sporting Chance. When they stopped, she tried Pugh again, on his office line this time. She got a pre-recorded message saying he’d be off for the week, annual leave. She tried his home line again, but it just rang without anyone picking up. No answerphone, no message.

  Huw went forward and opened the door for her, then followed her through the entrance to the bar. Along the walls the mirrors were etched with images from playing cards, the character behind the barman a sour-faced queen of hearts. On the other walls roulette wheels and dice had been mounted under the light sconces, alternating with photographs of prizewinning cattle from agricultural shows of years long past.

  About half the tables were occupied, despite the early hour, mainly by elderly farming types with weathered faces. Huw walked over to a table by the door at which a morose-looking man was sitting opposite two women. The couple, she noticed, were already shifting uneasily in their seats. Huw smiled at them.

  ‘Did you know the Matthewses? Their son was Owen Face, that one who disappeared a while back,’ he asked. The old man looked uncomfortable, his wife tutting under her breath. The couple turned away from Huw, and began talking to each other in Welsh.

  The barman had come out from behind the bar and now stood by the table.

  ‘The locals don’t like to talk,’ he said, ‘they’re tired of all the journalists coming round over the years.’

  Huw took out a couple of fifties and pressed them into the young man’s hand. The barman spoke quietly now. ‘Best thing you can do, is buy Rhonwen over there a couple. She might talk.’

  They looked over and saw an elderly woman sitting on her own in the corner, two glasses in front of her, one already dead, the other half gone. Closer up, the woman’s age – at a distance she looked nigh on seventy – was less obvious. She could have been in her mid-fifties but any attempts at grooming had long since lost out to the gin.

  Huw’s nose wrinkled briefly before he realised what he was doing, then he slapped his palms on his thighs, all business.

  ‘So what are you having, Rhonwen?’

  She didn’t ask him how he knew her name, clearly she was already confident in her status as a local character.

  ‘G&T please, love.’

  Huw came back with the drinks, put down a double on Rhonwen’s side of the table. ‘Didn’t you used to know the Matthews family?’ he asked.

  Huw waited while Rhonwen took a long, slow sip on her gin.

  ‘Journalists, are you?’ she asked.

  Huw was nodding confidently.

  ‘We haven’t had many of you lot round for a while,’ she said.

  He put his glass down, out of range of her spray.

  ‘Not many, you said.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So there have been some round then?’

  ‘Well, a couple of nights back, one came in.’

  ‘How did he strike you?’ Catrin asked.

  ‘The usual sort. Polite, sounded like a Cardiff man.’

  ‘How did he look?’

  ‘He had a beard, long hair like one of those surfer types. I didn’t really get a look at him. He was here one moment then gone the next.’

  Catrin glanced at Huw, then back to the woman. ‘What did he want to know?’

  ‘Well, like yourselves he was asking if there’d been other journalists through.’

  ‘That’s all he asked?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  Catrin was about to speak, but Huw was signalling to her to let him come in. The woman picked up her glass and Huw smiled reassuringly at her.

  ‘When Owen was born, did you know the family then?’

  She paused, the glass close to her lips. For a moment Catrin wondered if they were going to get anything out of her: she seemed too lost in the drink. But then her face slowly filled with a vague warmth, that warmth that comes from remembering better days. Huw pulled out another fifty, passed it over. Would anything they got out of her be reliable? Catrin thought. Inducements always tarnished evidence.

  ‘I only lived a few doors down from them, bach,’ the woman said to Huw as if she’d known him all her life. ‘Owen was a beautiful child, so quiet, a little angel. He was born end of August 1972, I always remember it because it was during the Olympics: I didn’t have a telly then, so Megan invited me over to watch it on hers.’

  ‘What was Owen like when he was a bit older?’ he asked.

  The woman took a large gulp of her gin, held the glass against her chest.

  ‘I didn’t see him much then,’ she said.

  ‘Anything at all you remember?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  Catrin caught the woman’s eye. ‘What about when he was at school, he get into any trouble?’

  ‘No.’ She paused. ‘Well, I know Megan was worried about that, what with his father being away a lot, but no, nothing like that.’

  Huw signalled to the bar for more drinks. Catrin pulled her chair closer.

  ‘So Owen’s father wasn’t around much, then?’

  ‘Well, no, he wasn’t. But then it wasn’t easy for him with his job.’

  ‘He was in the merchant navy, wasn’t he?’

  ‘For years he was.’

  Catrin looked over at Huw. He seemed slightly detached, as if he’d already written off the interview as a waste of time.

  She turned back to the woman. ‘Do you remember anything about the father’s job? What ship he was on?’ she asked.

  Rhonwen smiled. ‘The Pembroke, I remember because it’s a local place.’

  Catrin caught Huw’s eye. ‘Call up the Merchant Navy association archive site,’ she said. ‘The records are open to the public. I checked it last night.’

  Huw pulled out his phone and called up various lists on the archive, a website he’d already bookmarked, scrolling down the pages. He ran his index finger over the screen, and pointed at a column of names and dates.

  ‘If Sion Mathews was on the Pembroke he was away at work from September ’71 until mid-February ’72, calling at Lagos, Cape Town, Fremantle.’

  It was what she’d been half expecting. She moved the screen over so Rhonwen could see it.

  ‘Away from September ’71 until mid-February ’72. Might sort of rule him out of the running as Owen’s biological father?’

  She watched Rhonwen carefully for a tell that would reveal prior knowledge of this, but with the drink glazing the woman’s eyes it was difficult to see what she knew. Finally she put her glass down.

  ‘Well, maybe he wasn’t,’ she said neutrally.

  Catrin put her hand lightly over Rhonwen’s.

  ‘Did you ever see Megan with other men? Bit of a one, was she?’

&n
bsp; ‘No, never. She always kept herself to herself.’

  ‘In what ways?’

  Rhonwen sighed, sat back heavily and looked at Huw. He put his hand in his pocket, waited to see what she’d do.

  ‘She didn’t really have what you’d call close friends.’

  He looked at her as if he had all the time in the world. He kept his hand in his pocket, crinkled up a note so it made a slight noise.

  ‘Well, you know how it is around here, we like to think of ourselves as hospitable. But Megan never used to have anyone in over the doorstep. If she met anyone down the shop she never had time to talk. It didn’t go down well. People used to think she was stuck up.’

  The woman stopped. He took out the note and looked down, as if just noticing it.

  ‘Did she ever make trips away from the area?’ he asked.

  ‘No, only to her mother’s occasionally.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  Rhonwen knocked back the last of her gin.

  ‘I think she was living near Llan then. It’s a small village out in the west.’

  Huw clicked the screen onto a detailed map of the area. The village was where the woman had described it, an isolated place, far up on the coast of the national maritime park. Catrin panned down. The place, she noticed, was about twenty miles north of where Rhys’s photographs had been developed.

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Up the road in Bancyfelin. She’s like Megan was, keeps herself to herself.’

  Huw stood, reached out his hand to shake Rhonwen’s. Catrin got up, moved out from behind the table. She looked down at the woman, avoiding her eye. Huw had put the note on the table and was keeping his fingers over it.

  ‘Did Owen ever go to his grandmother’s out in the far west?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, he’d go there for visits with his mam when he was little. Sion was away at sea and Megan was doing night shifts at the hospital, so sometimes she’d leave him with his nan.’

  Catrin nodded, then moved towards the door. Huw took his fingers off the note, the woman raised her hand in a farewell gesture.

  Catrin waited as Huw stepped quickly after her. As he opened the car door she felt his hand briefly touch the small of her back. He stared out at the low, empty hills, narrow tracks petering out into small copses and beyond them the dimmer lines of more empty hills.

  Bancyfelin lay about five miles west of Carmarthen. They arrived to find the area shrouded in mist, the frosted fields slowly regaining their deep greenness as the temperature rose, the bare sycamores along the roadside no more than blurred, skeletal presences.

  Face’s grandmother’s house was one of a group of semi-detached properties on the edge of the village. Catrin began to think they had missed the place altogether, but as Huw slowed she saw a short tarmacked lane.

  The houses all had immaculate lawns and tidily planted borders, as if a single gardener was responsible for the whole area. The one exception to this orderly scene was the front lawn to number 4a, which contained a high rockery topped with a statue of Jesus, a miniature well and garden gnomes.

  They knocked on the front door. Up close they could see that, unlike its neighbour, the door had several additional locks, top and bottom. It seemed to be made, not from hardwood, but from some reinforced synthetic material. There was no response, no sound of radio or television from inside.

  Through the thick net curtains and the concertina of security bars they could just make out the dim shapes of Victorian furnishings, pale antimacassars and religious pictures on the walls. To the side, the garden was blocked off by a high steel fence, its top covered with rusted barbed wire. Catrin knocked again, but still there were no sounds from within.

  ‘She’s old,’ Huw said, ‘maybe they’ve put her in a home.’

  As they turned away they saw through the mist a middle-aged woman standing in the doorway of the next house along. Catrin showed her card, and nodded to Huw as if he was a colleague.

  ‘You two looking for Val, then?’ The woman spoke in the gentle local accent. She ushered them towards her open door with the speed typical of a woman with too much time on her hands.

  She had clearly already taken a liking to Huw. ‘Just call me Gwen, love,’ she cooed at him, smiling approvingly at his broad shoulders. She sat them down on a three-seater while she made tea in the kitchen, bringing it in on a tray with cream cakes on a rack.

  Huw was staring out towards the garden.

  ‘Val likes to keep herself to herself then?’ His voice was low, inviting confidences.

  The woman followed his gaze, gave a quiet snort of laughter. ‘You’ll not get in there,’ she said, with an air of finality. ‘She won’t even have the delivery boy through the door when he needs paying.’

  ‘Not a sociable type then?’

  ‘She used to talk to me through the window sometimes when she saw me. Now she never comes to the front of the house except when there’s a delivery.’

  Huw put his plate down on the table. ‘What sort of person is she?’

  The woman settled her cup and saucer into her lap as if it was a favourite cat.

  ‘Very religious. She got herself a special satellite dish so she could pick up those evangelical channels. And she has one of these old-fashioned record players and nearly every record she plays is Welsh hymns; in Welsh, mind, and at full volume by the sound of it.’

  Huw bit into his éclair. ‘That’s not so unusual though, is it? The male choirs still mostly sing Welsh hymns around here.’

  The woman picked up a paper napkin with a Santa Claus design from the tray and handed it to him. ‘I used to be able to see in through the kitchen in the old days,’ she said. ‘And there was nothing on the shelves and walls there, no books or pictures, just crucifixes, row upon row of them. Now she’s moved upstairs, taken to her bed or something. Anyway, she’s gone quite peculiar.’

  Huw put his plate back on the table. ‘Did she ever explain to you how she’d first become so religious?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Had she always been that way?’

  ‘It wasn’t like she was one of the regulars at chapel, and you get some real sticklers round here. But we never saw Val, not even at Easter or Christmas.’

  Huw picked up his cup and hesitated. ‘How was she with her daughter?’

  The woman swallowed a mouthful of tea, shook her head. ‘They never had anything to do with each other. The daughter never visited.’

  ‘But we’ve been told she used to visit. The daughter used to send her son to stay with the old woman out west.’

  ‘Well, here Val’s daughter never visited, nor did the grandson.’

  ‘So something may’ve happened to cause a rift between the two women?’

  Gwen shrugged.

  ‘I honestly couldn’t say, love.’

  Catrin leant forward in her chair. ‘Did the old woman ever mention why she moved back from the west?’

  ‘She said it was because of the type of people coming into the area. That’s what she said.’

  ‘What type was that exactly?’

  Gwen dabbed at a spot of spilt tea with one of the Christmas napkins.

  ‘That was back in the time a lot of hippies and such were coming from the big cities to live out there.’

  ‘Was there any group in particular?’

  The woman sighed, rolled the napkin up into a ball, placed it in her teacup. It was something she didn’t appear comfortable talking about. Catrin gave her most understanding smile.

  ‘It’s probably not important, but if you could try to remember.’

  She had the feeling that the woman remembered perfectly well. She wondered if the hippie groups had offended her sense of what was proper. She glanced over at her again, as if to say she understood.

  ‘There was one group, well, a cult she called them. She said all the members dressed alike. Their leader reminded her of that American man, you know from the Sixties, with the beard, the one they put in prison . .
. Charles . . . Charlie . . .’

  ‘Charlie Manson?’ Huw put down his cup.

  ‘Yes. Manson. That’s right. Val said he was like him, an evil man, she said, a disciple of the devil himself.’

  Catrin saw Huw smirking at this, covering his mouth with the napkin. She leant in closer so the woman didn’t see him.

  ‘But why did she think he was evil, apart from his beard?’

  ‘Well, there was talk among Val’s neighbours that the man had . . .’ here the woman paused and lowered her voice, ‘. . . relations with all the women in the group. That sort of thing didn’t go down well, as you can imagine.’

  As Catrin put down her cup it rattled slightly. ‘Did this group have a name?’

  The woman hesitated for a few seconds.

  ‘They weren’t around for that long, no more than a couple of years, Val said.’

  ‘But something she saw this group doing made her leave the area?’

  Gwen hesitated.

  ‘I don’t know. The way she described it, this group were very private. They kept to their big house further north, so it’s not likely she’d have seen anything they did.’

  As if sensing Catrin’s eyes on her, she looked down at her lap, where her hands were twisted tightly around each other. Catrin sensed that something the old woman had told Gwen had stayed with her, marked her in some small but indelible way.

  ‘Her daughter was involved with them, wasn’t she? That’s what upset the old woman.’

  ‘Well, she never said so.’

  ‘But you suspect that was why Val no longer had contact with her daughter.’

  Gwen sat motionless in her chair. Catrin watched her fingers, but they remained still. ‘Did she mention her grandson Owen much?’

  ‘Hardly, only when I asked.’

  ‘Didn’t you think that was odd?’

  Gwen thought carefully before replying. She was taking deliberate, deeper breaths now.

  ‘I’m not sure, maybe I did a little.’

  ‘Because even if she’d fallen out with her daughter, she would have still tried to see her grandson. Yet she never mentioned him. That seems rather unnatural.’

  Gwen seemed to be weighing this up carefully before commenting.

  ‘Unless the grandson was part of the problem . . .’ She said this hesitantly, as if fearful that Catrin would contradict her.