He left the building. It was now approaching 9.30 p.m., and they’d stopped clearing the hospital car park of snow a while ago. All traces of tarmac had vanished and cars were transformed into spectral white humps, fast disappearing under the blizzard. He located the Land Rover and drove carefully into town. It looked like a snowplough had been along a while ago and cleared a little, but it was already whiting over with fresh snow. He sized things up and decided it was madness trying to drive back to Deller’s End now.
There was a pub-cum-hotel he knew of not too far away in St Davids, at which he’d stayed on his first visit to the area when buying Deller’s End. He banked on it not being full. If so he might have to spend a freezing night in the back of his Land Rover, a prospect he did not relish.
The sullen young man who greeted him at the hotel looked faintly annoyed with having to tend to a new customer, especially one liberally dusted with snow, shoes dripping wet and looking like he’d been blown in by the weather. Fortunately, he said, there was a single room free due to a recent weather-related cancellation. They ran through the formalities of checking-in double quick and Gareth went up to his room. It was only when he’d shrugged off his sodden coat that he remembered the carrier bag and cardboard box belonging to the young woman, which he’d tossed into the passenger footwell. Not wanting it to become a lure for opportunist thieves he reluctantly went back out to the car park and retrieved it.
He tossed the bag idly onto the dressing table beside a balding sprig of tinsel someone had placed there in deference to the jolly season, and switched on the TV whilst he showered. It chattered comfortingly away in the background as the warm water fizzed out of the limescale-encrusted showerhead and he began to relax. The late news was on as he towelled himself dry; the usual stuff, snow causing absolute chaos on the roads, even though we expect it every year, indecision and anger about the proposed NHS reforms, and police had found the body of a murdered woman in a Manchester flat and in a state of some decay.
It didn’t pique his interest. Why should it? There was always someone somewhere being found dead. But his ears pricked involuntarily at the nature of her death. The police weren’t giving much away at this stage, naturally, but the thick-necked officer looking ill at ease before the cameras, his tie slightly askew, an older guy who from his worn expression looked like he’d seen many years in the force, said calmly that some dismemberment had taken place. He said there had as yet been no formal identification of the body, but she was believed to be aged between twenty-five and thirty-five, perhaps foreign, perhaps Polish. He asked for witnesses to come forward. Then it went back to the weather. More snow on its way. Great, he thought, and he flipped through the channels to find something a little less depressing.
His evening meal consisted of a microwaved pasty and a packet of crisps, which was all that was available without trudging through high drifts to find some late-night cafe open. He sat on the bed and sullenly watched the TV babble away to itself. Then his attention was drawn to the carrier bag. OK, so he shouldn’t be nosey, he thought, but he brought it over to the bed and took out the cardboard box, which turned out to be an old shoebox that, according to the illustration pasted on it, once held size ten Nike trainers. Something metallic rattled inside. He sat the box on his lap and removed the lid. He shook his head in disbelief.
There was an assortment of gold necklaces, brooches, rings — some of it quite hefty. Even as a non-expert he realised some of this was quite old, a couple of rings in particular and a bangle, all in bright yellow gold, one of the rings having a single small emerald, rough cut, sitting in an unassuming plain setting. He rifled his fingers deeper through the sea of gold. One brooch snagged his attention and he took it out. He’d no idea of date, but it was oval in shape, a large sapphire encircled by diamonds. If these stones were real, he thought, this alone must be worth a small fortune.
Where on earth had she gotten all this? Were they stolen? She looked like she owned very little, judging from her threadbare appearance. Yet he could not believe she was a thief. Or perhaps he didn’t want to believe it, he thought; perhaps he’d fallen under her spell a little. Become blinded.
It was then he saw the simple leather cord, incongruous because it was the only thing not made of precious metal. His finger hooked it and pulled it out. He almost dropped the box from his lap.
What hung from the end of the leather cord, blinking in the harsh glow of the bedroom light, was half a silver coin.
The missing half to the one he had back home. The one he’d had with him when he’d been found as an abandoned baby.
19
When he stepped out onto the street the following morning there was no question in his mind about what he should do.
Overnight snow had caused the usual mayhem on the roads. The drifts were high, the only vehicle attempting to go anywhere was a lone snowplough, and even that looked to struggle with the conditions. A rag-tag rope of sorry-looking cars followed close, if slowly, in its wake, but they could hardly keep on the road, their wheels finding little traction.
He shook his head at their attempts. He wasn’t going to risk it in his Land Rover. OK, so it was supposed to be made as all-terrain, but it was vintage, a classic, and he wasn’t about to risk taking it anywhere just yet, especially amid those maniacs trying to slalom their way to work. To be on the safe side he booked another night at the hotel.
But of course that wasn’t the real reason he was going to hang around. He was going to see the woman when it came round to visiting time, and not just because he was worried for her health. Finding the coin came almost as a body blow to him. A bizarre coincidence? And though he didn’t have his own to hand to compare he’d looked it over too many times to be mistaken that the one the woman had in her box was the missing half to his. Then, of course, doubts shrugged their way in and he admonished himself for being a fool. They couldn’t be part of the same coin. The thoughts plagued him through the remainder of the night and well into the morning. When he awoke he snatched the leather-threaded coin from the dressing table, just to reassure himself he hadn’t been dreaming the entire thing. In the cold light of day he knew he wasn’t mistaken.
He hung around till 2pm at which time the hospital was open to visitors. He was at the head of the tiny wave of heavily wrapped people that washed onto the ward to see their loved ones. For some reason he was relieved to see her there, as if half expecting her to be a smoky dream that had been torn to nothing by the fingers of morning. She looked as if she were asleep, arms laid out on top of the bed, head propped up slightly, her head encased in a bandage from which beneath sprouted a few tufts of blonde hair. The ward was hot, stiflingly so, and began to throb to the hushed voices of the visitors who sat in conversation with people in various stages of recovery from traumas and illness. Gareth Davies wasn’t particularly keen on hospitals and didn’t relish being there.
He pulled up a chair and sat down beside her bed. The metal chair creaked. She opened her eyes to the sound, and at first, only for an instant, he saw fear painted there, her body visibly stiffening. But it vanished quickly. She stared at him, half suspiciously, half expectant.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said. She didn’t reply. He was momentarily captivated by the blue of her eyes. ‘We’ve bumped into each other before,’ he quipped, trying to make light of things, but it prompted an icy glare of incomprehension. He could see her mind working on the comment. ‘I’m the one who knocked you down last night, remember?’ he explained. ‘In the lane?’