White Trail (3 page)

Cilydd insisted on seeing where they'd found the body; the police stressed that there was no need for him to go. But the
need
they talked of was something they would never fathom; an abhorrent, insidious force in the dark folds of him, which drove him to want to experience every last shred of her undoing. He wanted to fill his lungs with the last air she had breathed, to feel the ground that had given way beneath her feet.

Arthur rang to ask if he could accompany him; Arthur, who was now full steam ahead with his investigation, the details of which he couldn't dis-close. ‘I'm starting to put it together,' he said feverishly, excitedly over the phone, ‘I feel that I'm on the verge of great... of a great discovery. Just play along with the police – they never solve anything; they simply go through the motions. But I'm getting closer, Cilydd. I will get you back your boy, I promise you. Don't tell them I'm a private eye, will you?'

He remembered nothing about the journey, only how short it was – it seemed that the grey streets gave way to green pastures in seconds, and all too soon they were approaching the scene, the sun shining too brightly for such a dark day. He was vaguely aware of a conversation going on between Arthur and the policemen. Goleuddydd was not mentioned by name. She was merely ‘the victim' – even Arthur, he ascertained, was talking of her in such terms. They talked of the vulgarities of a body he didn't recognise – a slit there, a gash here – that was not Goleuddydd. Goleuddydd was a living, breathing, complete being. At what point would she have become the victim? The second she left the supermarket? Or would it have come later? Perhaps it wasn't until they cut into her flesh that she truly knew. He recalled how wilful and spirited she had been at times in her pregnancy. Had it even been forced upon her? Or was it some sort of game? ‘My dreary husband's in there buying my maternity essentials; take me away from it all will you?' He could hear her saying it – asking to be abducted. Getting into a car with a complete stranger. Sticking her head out of the window as they sped out of the car park, sticking out her tongue to lap up those dirty snowflakes. Arthur and the policeman were still babbling on –
victim, vulnerable, time of death,
botched Caesarian
; the new, awful vocabulary of his life.

They drove up a dirt track, rounding the corner into a farmyard. The farmhouse was grey and decaying; pale green moss creeping up the walls like bad facial hair, a monster of a building. There were some disused tractors and farm machinery lying about, metallic skeletons gawping at him. It was a place drained of colour – cold and chalky, at odds with everything Goleuddydd stood for. He tried to imagine what she had felt when she'd taken all this in. Maybe that's when it hit her; that to be in the supermarket on a Saturday with a husband who loved you wasn't such a bad thing, compared to this. The policemen began walking towards a small, dark heap at the far end of the yard. It wasn't until it was right in front of him that he saw the cluster of stones for what it was – a circular pigsty. No one spoke for what felt like a long time. It was only when Arthur gave him a nudge that he realised what they were all waiting for – for him to go in, on his hands and knees, to shuffle down on his trotters, like a pig. The police officers bowed their heads, before handing him a torch.

He was surprised by how big and cavernous it was inside. Positively luxurious, he imagined, for swine. Not so for a nine-month-pregnant woman.

‘Is this it?' he hollered. He sensed the aroma of something else there amid the dust and dirt, something too awful to think about.

‘Yes, sir. That's where we found her.'

Inside it was just a dark, stench-ridden hole. He wondered where she'd been lying; remembering the size of her, her physical awkwardness those last few months. It must have been a tight squeeze. Did she know she'd never be coming out?

‘Why here?' he hollered again to the police officer. ‘Why leave her here?'

‘We don't know sir,' the police officer muttered. ‘This is what we're trying to establish.'

‘I can smell pigs,' he said.

‘Some of the samples of saliva on your wife's body do show that she was... she was... in the company of pigs at the time of death. But we can't find any traces of the animals I'm afraid. And this farm has been abandoned for quite some time.'

‘What do you mean “in the company of pigs”?' Arthur asked. Cilydd could hear the frantic nib of his fountain pen, gushing blue veins all over his white pad.

‘Pig saliva was found on the body,' one policeman stated. ‘But like I said, we're not sure where the pigs came from.'

Arthur inhaled sharply: an inhalation of pure excitement.

‘A link,' he said, knowingly.

‘A link with what?' said the policeman.

‘Never you mind... 'Arthur replied.

‘Sir, with all due respect, if you have any information you should...'

‘Oh no... just an observation... Cilydd, are you OK in there?'

‘Yes,' Cilydd said in a low voice he no longer recognised as his own. His eyes were still getting accustomed to the darkness. He was lying on his back now, as he presumed Goleuddydd would have been when it happened. In the earlier, healthy days of her pregnancy, she had told him that she wanted to be upright for the birth. ‘How nature intended,' she said. It wasn't much to ask for – the simple pull of gravity.

‘Cilydd, can I come in? 'Arthur asked.

‘Not yet,' he said.

He opened his eyes. The dark was clearing now, and it was surprising how darkness took on a new, transparent sheen once you got used to it. Even the smells were commonplace.
In the company of pigs
. It seemed so absurd, so very unlike his graceful Goleuddydd. He switched on his torch and let the tiny ball of light roll across the grimy roof. And then, suddenly, there it was, etched on to the stones.

‘Don't remarry,' it said. Written in blood. He let out a sharp gasp.

‘He's seen it,' he heard someone outside saying. ‘Sir, is everything OK?'

Don't remarry
. It was his final contact with Goleuddydd. He reached his hand towards the ceiling, towards her. His hand was left cold and empty – the dried blood did not leave a mark on his skin.

‘The blood...' he started.

‘Yes, I'm afraid the blood on the ceiling matches your wife's blood, we've checked this,' said a voice from outside. Cilydd lay back, turned off his torch.

He lay there for some time. Two police officers came in and took both his arms trying to squeeze him back out through the entrance. It was only then he realised how long he'd been in there, for it had gone dark outside. There was no light to be seen, bar the fluorescent stripes of the policemen's uniform, and the occasional glint of Arthur's teeth. Dark inside and out, he thought: this is all that's left of me, a hollow pigsty of a man, who will emerge from one kind of darkness only to fall into another, and then another, and it would be ongoing blackness from now on.

*

And so there it was; a dead wife, a missing – presumed dead – baby, and nothing left to him in the world but a scrawled message on a wall, a Palaeolithic punch-in-the-guts which was undoubtedly written by his wife's hand, the looping D, the slanting, unseriousY. It was just like her – to lay claim to her personality even as life dripped out of her; only she could make that last drop of blood count. Cilydd turned it over and over in his mind – was that really her last thought – he mustn't remarry? He thought of all the messages she could have written on that wall. She had never been a jealous woman, but then again, he had never given her any reason to be. There was nothing for him but her, nothing at all; if she was the light, then other women were mere shadows. Why should she care if he remarried? But then, who was to say what anyone would write when the last of their blood was draining away? If one could choose just one final word, one final utterance, how was it possible to choose something truly profound, something that would really communicate? But then he saw the cleverness of it. She had gone for something which could not be misunderstood. No one would ask, but what did she mean, what did she
really
mean? What she meant was,
don't remarry
Cilydd. I strictly forbid it.
He could hear her voice saying it, wryly, her lips scrunching up.

And there it was: his wife's full stop on his life, which rolled at his feet like some omnipresent cannonball. He could not go back; and he could not go forward. The media, which had been so interested, moved on. The police had to accept that they were stumped. The farm where his wife's body was found was sold to a young family. The supermarket offered him a year's supply of home deliveries – which he accepted, merely to avoid having to face that aisle ever again. There was always Arthur of course – ringing him up every now and then – sitting him down in the white space in the flat, making him go through the details of other disappearances, presenting him with more and more sketches, scribbling his son into existence with a charcoal pencil every now and then. But soon it felt as though what had happened was no more than a story and, like most stories, it had come to a rather dissatisfying end.

And so Cilydd once more started going for long walks to that tiny island, following the lure of the land further and further out towards a foaming, frothing fate. But still he raced back, against the tide, at the very last moment. It had been a year or so, not long enough, he told himself, to completely give up hope.

Something was needed to fill the hours while he waited. He could not do something as menial as go back to work (the fact that he was a loss adjuster resonated painfully now that he realised no amount of adjustment ever really covered a loss), and so he decided to take what they were offering him – 
compassionate leave
. How crisp and clean it sounded, tinged with the promise of restoration, like a good night's sleep in a hotel bed.

But he had no time for compassion. Or for leave. There was only one thing for it. His missing son, slowly but surely, became his calling, and he found himself part of a new world – the world populated by those left behind.

It was only a quick computer search that was needed to confirm that half the world, it seemed, was missing. Cilydd started to attend groups, listening to people regaling their own tales of loss. Soon he was volunteering to become the treasurer of the Missing Persons' Network. Then a secretary. Before he knew it he was spending every night typing up the profiles of missing persons on to the website. And it helped him – being able to lose himself in the details of disappearances which were just as awful, just as baffling, in some cases, as his son's. The work did not upset him. He dealt with it clinically, matter-of-factly, as though he were back in work. In many ways, he had merely become another kind of loss adjuster.

After three months at the helm, the website was more substantial than it had been in some time. Those at the Missing Persons' Network said they could not imagine a time without Cilydd. He was needed. Recognised. Commended even. He scanned back through his work almost nightly, memorising all of the profiles, particularly the names of any sons that had gone missing. There was the case of Greidiol Gallddofydd (last seen walking dog on the promenade, wearing only flip-flops), Graid son of Eri (last seen leaving a fairground with a hot dog in his hand), Cubert son of Daere (last seen getting into a taxi wearing his wife's bathrobe), Ffercos son of Poch (last seen going to the toilet at a restaurant), Gwyn son of Esni (last seen doing up his shoelaces outside a newsagent's) Gwyn son of Nwyfre (last seen at the barbers, laughing and joking), the two brothers Gwyn and Edern, sons of Nudd (last seen having a picnic on a beach) and Cadwy son of Geraint (last seen buying stamps), not to mention Fflewddwr Fflam Wledig, Rhuawn Bebyr son of Dorath, Bradwen son of Moren Mynog, and Dalldaf son of Cimin Cof, who all left nightclubs tired and alone, dancing their drunken way into the abyss.

He spent hours scanning in their photos – face after face stared back at him from holiday snaps, amorous embraces, party clinches, work dos – tens of smiles which revealed no trace of that urge to walk into the blackness and leave everything behind. And these images made it even more difficult for him to complete his son's details – who, in the absence of a photograph, had to have the ubiquitous head and shoulder box attached to his equally anonymous, nameless profile, accompanied by a question mark, plastered over the face like some horrendous birth mark.

He listened to fathers lamenting the loss of their sons; men he could imagine had once been robust and fearless, but who were now ground down to ghostly impressions of themselves, their jackets loose about them, trousers frayed at the edges, facial hair trying to mask the disappointment that was etched into their faces. But the more he listened, the more alone he felt. Every single story had its roots in a known presence, there was someone who had lived, who had been, who had filled a space, and who suddenly was no more. He was the only one who missed someone he had never met. Whom he could not even be sure actually existed. And worse still –who had no name. At the beginning of every meeting the members of the group stood up and said their children's names. They learnt quickly enough to let his turn pass. Still he felt it – that nameless presence, surfacing like bile in the back of his mouth, and there was nothing for it but to swallow the emptiness back down.

Years passed. Arthur would ring him every time a child went missing, asking if he saw any similarities. Yes, he would say. A child's gone missing and someone's world has been gutted from the inside; there's your similarity. Cilydd kept his eye on the news for stories of missing children. He envied some parents their resolutions, even if in some cases it ended with a badly mutilated body at the bottom of a ravine. A corpse was at least something, he thought, thinking of Goleuddydd lying on her slab in the morgue. But something much darker lurked in him when he heard of children being found safe and well, even against the odds. He was jealous, and he wanted the child to go away again. He wanted the child to be dead.