Chapter 17
DAY FOUR
Deryn’s mother suggested he stay the night, but he wanted his own bed, and more than that, a shower and a change of clothes.
It was worth the drive back through the empty streets just to be clean again.
The events of the day ought to have kept him awake, but didn’t, and he woke up early feeling unreasonably refreshed.
His morning coffee tasted delicious, and the discovery of enough marmalade for two slices of toast made him smile.
He realised that what he felt was relief.
Phillip was no longer a threat, his mother knew about his cross dressing, and he was off the hook with Glover for now at least. Plenty could still go wrong, there was a gun to dispose of, and he didn’t want to think about what was happening to Phillip, but for this morning, the weight had lifted from his shoulders.
Work called, but there would be time for a visit to the hospital.
Mason and Brody were sitting in the patients’ day room, hand in hand, so close together that Deryn felt like an impostor.
Mason was pale, almost transparent, his eyes huge in his exhausted face.
There was a dressing on his forehead, and an IV line on a stand running into the hand that wasn’t holding Brody’s.
Brody saw Deryn looking and told him, “Mason’s still a bit dehydrated, but they’ll be letting him go later today or more likely tomorrow. ”
“That’s good,” Deryn said.
“I want to thank you for rescuing me,” Mason said to Deryn.
“That was Brody.”
“I’ve already thanked him,” Mason smiled.
“Do you have plans?” Deryn asked.
“Probably go back to the States for a bit. I have a house in New York, and I’m guessing things here are going to be awkward for a while.
Brody and I have some catching up to do.
” He smiled at Brody again and squeezed his hand.
“I’m going to set up some kind of financial arrangement for the Scouts, and I have to find someone to look after the cat and the chooks. I don’t suppose you …?”
Deryn could barely contain his shudder. “Not in a million years,” he said. “I grew up in that village, and I never want to go back there. Your house is great, and so are your animals, but my family are the ones who did this to you. I’m done with Cwmcoed.”
“Reconciliation not on the cards?” Mason asked.
Deryn shook his head. “With some of them, maybe.”
“Maybe is right,” Mason said. “I couldn’t get a bead on my family until I moved thousands of miles away from them. I’m going to try to see if we can work things out. If not, well, I can live with it.”
“That’s why you came here? To get away from your family?” Deryn asked.
He got another smile. In fact, Deryn thought Mason might have been the smiliest person he had ever met, especially in hospital.
The sun slanted through the window and lit up Mason’s hair like a halo.
Whatever relationship these two had in New York seemed to be reigniting.
Deryn was happy for them. Brody was a nice guy, and in different circumstances, who knew …
? But the circumstances were what they were, and that was OK. Mason was talking.
“I don’t know why I came here, or how I found the place.
It was an accident, or serendipity — I took the wrong turning out of the airport and just kept driving west. Then I got in the wrong lane on the motorway once I got to Wales, and got hopelessly lost trying to get back.
My house was where I came to a stop. It was for rent and I rented it, and then I bought it, because why not? ”
Deryn thought of the shelf of Buddhist texts and books about spirituality.
He thought about the peace of the woods, the sound of birdsong and clucking chickens and the gentle noise of the river at the end of Mason’s garden.
It could be a place of healing and spiritual growth, he supposed, though not for him.
He couldn’t get past the ugliness of poverty and greed in the valley.
The desperation that drove people to drugs, and the willingness of other people to profit from that desperation.
Other people in this case being the family he had grown up with.
Given a choice, he wanted never to see any of it again.
“Your car is in the car park,” he said, handing over the keys. “Let’s stay in touch.”
On the bus to the police station Deryn’s thoughts returned to the night before.
He ought to care about Phillip, but the truth was that he didn’t.
Phillip had left Mason to die in the dark.
Now it was his turn. There had been three deaths due to Phillip’s drug mixture, and there was no guarantee that there wouldn’t be more in future.
The fentanyl was still out there, waiting like an unexploded bomb for its next victim.
He still had his job, thanks to finding Mason and the boxes of cash, but he was never going to escape the baggage associated with his family name.
Regardless of who won the battle to take over his father’s affairs, he, Deryn, was always going to be suspect within the police force and without.
The Glamorgan police area covered Cwmcoed and he had no guarantee that he wouldn’t be sent there again.
His mother was moving away, and his sisters had already moved out of the village, but the village had a long memory.
He didn’t know how to feel about his mother, and her manipulation of him, of his brothers-in-law, and probably of his father before them.
She’d told him that she loved all her children equally, but she had allowed his father to dominate the family and drive his brothers away.
She had allowed the threat of his father’s violence to keep him close.
At the same time, she had told him how to find Mason, and appeared accepting of his cross dressing.
Had that been part of her manipulation? So she could offer him ‘the business’?
He had no idea. He had no idea about any of it.
Mason probably had the right answer. Keep away from all of them until he could get perspective.
It felt unexpectedly strange though. He didn’t like them, but they were family.
On a whim, not caring that he was on a bus, he rang his brother Huw, not really knowing what he wanted to say, just wanting to connect.
Huw wasn’t a criminal, and he’d moved away, closer to north Wales and Maldwyn, the brother Deryn had never met.
“I’m at work,” Huw said, “I’ll ring you back tonight, and you can tell me everything.”
Huw did ring, and Deryn did tell him everything, including about their mother, Phillip’s probable fate, and the gun they still had to dispose of.
“I’d tell you to chuck the gun in the river,” Huw said, “but there’s always the chance that it’ll be found. So, drop it in that pile of fly-tipping by the tunnel and let Forensics find it.”
“The perfect solution,” he said. “But I don’t know what to do about anything else. I want to get away from here, but I also want to be a copper. I like it. I’m good at it.”
“How do you feel about cold cases?” Huw asked. “Because Clwyd, where your other big brother is currently Deputy Chief Constable, is setting up a cold case unit.”
Deryn wasn’t sure about cold cases, or about working for a brother he didn’t know, but he was very sure about getting away from Glamorgan, and if cold cases was the golden ticket, he’d take it.