Chapter 31
Revelation - Datguddiad
Rhys
How the fuck is all of this because of me? How has Aled picked me over the fucking pop star sitting next to me?
Cai’s our best mate. He’s fucking loaded. The saviour of the world with his ecological travel and running his shows with green technology. He won Rear of the Year two years on the trot. I’ve never won Rear of the Year. I’m not even on the shortlist.
Gethin’s yapping about something, but I’m not listening.
My brain replays every single interaction I’ve had with Aled over the past however many fucking years.
All the banter, the nights out. Watching games at Cardiff City Stadium with arms slung over each other’s shoulders.
Sharing chips while waiting for the last bus home.
Was every time we talked flirting to him? Fuck. I’m fucking oblivious.
‘...back to Cai’s house.’ Gethin’s words snap me back to the conversation. ‘They’ll want to close the stadium if there’s no show.’
‘Why there?’
‘The police will want to meet us at the house. The PI too.’
‘No. Aled has access to all our systems, and it’s not like I can unplug them from the wall. We’ll have to find somewhere else. The police station or something.’
‘That’s not what police stations are for.’
‘Well find somewhere else for us to fucking go!’ The shout explodes out of me. I wince. That’s going to get me a bollocking for sure. He hates it when we chat back at him.
Nothing comes. Silence drifts through the room instead. A breath of air when I don’t fucking need it.
‘I’ll speak to the venue,’ he replies, quietly. ‘Perhaps we can book a conference room.’
He eases himself out of the chair and wanders towards the door. I’ve never not seen him walk with powerful determination before.
‘Go with him,’ I say to Bryn, who nods his okay before following. Nobody goes anywhere alone until Aled’s caught. I can’t afford for anyone else to be snatched and who knows who’s lurking around a fucking corner.
There’s only me and Cai. It could give me space to break down a little, but I won’t. No time for that when Beth and Luce are out there somewhere.
Cai steps up to me, and I flinch when he slides his hand over my shoulder. ‘What’s the plan, Rhys?’
Solutions. Yes. Something we can focus on. Being practical will keep me going.
‘We only ever hung out at the pub or footie,’ I reply. ‘Never went to a house – his or mine.’
‘What about an office or something for his business?’
I shake my head. ‘Never mentioned it.’
Why am I only just realising how little I know about Aled. Everything’s surface level. How have I not been to his house, even to pick him up? What kind of mates were we, really?
He puffs out a hard breath. ‘Don’t worry, mate. We’ll figure it out.’ The shake of his voice contradicts how confident he’s trying to sound.
He lifts an arm to hug me, but a rap at the door forces him away.
Thank fuck. I might burst into tears if he were to get those arms around me.
Alina pushes open the door and a short guy with pitch-black hair follows.
His day-glo yellow vest tells me he’s a venue employee.
‘Hi,’ he says. ‘I’ve come to show you to the conference suite you’ve booked. ’
Okay. Time to sort this shit out. I use grabbing my phone and laptop as a chance to take a breath, get my thoughts in gear.
As soon as we get to the conference suite, my focus has to be on finding the girls, and not on working out why Aled picked me, or the little I know about him. Fuck all I can do about that now.
Cai might be at less of a risk now Aled’s attention’s on me, but I still walk with two other yellow jackets in a tripod around him. Gotta do my job, even if it’s me Aled’s after. This could still be a fucking ploy.
I fumble for my phone. Try Luce, just in case. Nothing. I call the PI and ask her to meet us here. S'gonna take her a while – she's on another case – but she promises me she'll be as quick as she can before hanging up.
The conference suite’s already busy when we get there. Assistants shift tables to the middle of the room. Another stretches a set of extension cords across the floor. On the side nearest the wall, a tired-looking lady sets up a vat of coffee that smells way too bitter to be tasty.
‘What do you need from me?’ the guy who brought us to the room asks.
‘More plugs,’ I tell him. ‘My phone’s going to run out of charge soon and it’s the only way they can get hold of us. I need a power cable for my laptop. If the venue has paper maps, we could use them, too.’
I rattle off anything else that might help.
It’s not like the private investigator was expecting a call-out this evening.
And the police we’ve dealt with so far don’t know what urgency fucking means.
Could be hours before they turn out, and I’m not gonna sit on my hands and wait.
‘Oh, and someone’ll have to meet the PI at the door and bring her here. ’
‘I can go do that.’ Alina follows the bloke back out of the suite before I can say thanks. It’s better she’s with him. I trust her more than some nobody.
You trusted Aled, too.
I shake the thought off.
Gethin’s deep in conversation with Bryn, so I open my laptop, grab a chair and slide in next to them. The device management system’s already loaded up. Good. It shows me, Cai, and Gethin at the stadium. That means it’s working. I can at least keep an eye on that while we chat about other shit.
There are bugger all signs of any fucker.
An hour passes, then two, then more. I lose track of the time and everything else, too deep in my hunt to care. Aled’s either real good at covering his tracks or he’s locked me out of everything important. Cos I’m getting fuck all from anything we use.
Phones off. Cameras in the house gone dark. Gethin’s sent a copper around to check it out. Would be fucking ironic if Aled’s been hiding there the entire time. Like a fucking trap.
Why can’t I crack this fucking shit?
Assistants, crew heads, people working on the tour loiter around the room, mostly hanging out to see if they can be useful, or to be the first to hear the news. I don’t have the heart to send them away.
The door to the suite opens, and everyone turns to watch as Alina leads a woman in. Our newcomer’s as tall and thin as a reed. She tugs off a wool hat, revealing a messy mane of brown curls. She shrugs her ratty cardigan back onto her shoulder, then steps up to me to introduce herself.
‘Ziva. Get rid of anyone who doesn’t need to be here.’
Gethin snaps into action, ushering the crew out of the room. I’m pinned to the spot by her gnarled face, her narrow eyes looking me up and down. A brown hand extends through the miles of tatty wool.
‘Are you Rhys Pritchett?’
I shake it. ‘Yes.’
‘Good. Nice to meet you. Shame it’s under these circumstances.’
Gethin comes back to us, but she doesn’t take her attention from me.
Once she’s let go of me, she studies the maps spread across the tables, picks up a sheet of notes I jotted.
An inexplicable urge to explain them rises in me.
They’re mostly nonsense ideas on where Aled could be hiding.
She places the sheet back on the table and claps her hands together.
‘Good idea to build your base here. Plenty of space. Close to key resources. No police yet? Doesn’t surprise me. I’ll get a coffee, and we can recap everything we know so far.’
Every move she makes is quick and sharp, and she plonks herself next to me before Gethin or Cai or anyone else can talk to her. Knows who the right person to chat to is. My laptop’s on, and the files of evidence are up on the screen. Everything organised and colour-coded, by Lucy. Of course.
I get on with telling Ziva everything. I don’t leave any detail out. The more she knows, the faster we can work out where Aled’s keeping the girls and the sooner we can rescue them.
She lets out a long breath when I’m finished. ‘Less than bloody useless. The police are shit on their best days, but their inability to work over cross-country lines has impeded this investigation. Nobody has connected the dots. We have to keep them involved, but let’s not sit around waiting.’
My phone’s been lying silent on the table next to my laptop all evening.
Time has yawned on, yet it’s not stopped me from checking on it every so often, just in case I’ve missed something.
It’s on loud, so it’s not like I wouldn’t hear it.
A minute of not knowing how Luce is, if Beth’s okay, what Aled’s next steps are, is too fucking long.
I’m about to touch the screen again to bring it to life when Luce’s face flashes up.
Then it rings.
We freeze.
I look at Cai. He’s opposite me on the massive table. His eyes soften. He wants this to be good news. Not sure how it can be. Keeping the girls safe is easy – swap them for me. How is that fucking the news of the day?
My fingers inch towards the phone. I want the girls back. I’d do anything for it. But I don’t want my last minutes of freedom stuck in this shitty conference room with everyone but Lucy.
Ziva clears her throat and places a finger on her lips for everyone else to keep quiet. All eyes glue to me. I switch the laptop screen to the device management system and put my phone on speaker when I answer it.
‘Aled.’ No point in hoping it’s Luce calling me to say it’s all a fucking misunderstanding and she’s coming home.
‘All right, butt?’ My ex-mate’s cheery voice rings around the room. Used to put an instant smile on my face, but now his greasy words slide down my spine. ‘I know it’s late, but I reckon I’m ready to sort all this shit out.’
‘Yeah? That’s good.’
‘I think so too. Looking forward to getting some time for us, mate. Missed you while you was on tour. I’ve got some nice plans for us.
Got us flights to the Maldives booked first thing.
A hot and sunny holiday is the best way to start our new life together, isn’t it?
’ Like he’s taking me on a fucking honeymoon or something.
My stomach twists. No fucking way. ‘Only, I gotta swap you for them first.’
‘Are they okay?’
‘Oh, yeah. Fine. You know, Lucy won’t stop yapping about you. Rhys’ll save us. He won’t let you get away with this. Me and her’ve got a lot in common, when you think about it. Bloody bonkers for you. We’d get on like a house on fire. Here, have a chat with her.’
In the silence of a phone being passed around, I catch a faint ringing in the background of the call. When I try to listen harder, see if I can work out what it’s from, it disappears. Fuck, I’m losing the plot. All this stress, the late nights, the worrying has me hearing things.
Ziva pulls the laptop closer to her and Gethin. The call must have picked up something by now, even if it’s just pinging the nearest cell towers. Fuck we need more.
‘Rhys? Hello?’
My attention zones in on the phone. Everything else around me disappears.
All of my resolve to find out where they are disappears, and I’m ready to march to wherever for the swap.
Her voice is thin, quieter than normal, and there’s a tremble that I’ve never heard from her.
The edge of my vision darkens, but before I can speak up, she continues.
‘Remember the house from London, Rhys? Maybe my door choice was t—’
A loud crack of a slap disturbs whatever she’s telling me, and she cries out.
My chair clatters to the floor and I’m on my feet. My fingers grip the edge of the table.
‘Leave her alone, you fucking arsehole.’ I’m leaning so far over the phone, as if I could dive in and kill him my fucking self.
‘Stupid girl,’ Aled says.
‘Listen, Aled. I can come straight to you. Please stop hurting her. I’ll do whatever it takes.’ Is he sane enough for me to bargain with? Don’t care. I’ll try anything.
‘That’s the plan. I just wanted to hear your voice, assure myself that this is all worth it. Two more hours and I’ll be ready. I’ll text you where to go when it’s time. For now, sit tight. We’ll be together soon, my love.’
The call clicks off. Ziva turns to Gethin to jabber. They consult my screen, compare it to a list in her hand, then return to the screen.
Luce’s words bounce around my brain. What was she yammering on about doors for? What’s London got to do with it? We were there for days, came across many a fucking door. But then at the Lego store, we had that chat about the house and—
‘Blue! We need to find a blue door.’ Dunno why she didn’t just tell me the colour from the off, but maybe she was scared to get hurt. Not that it helped her. Good job I cottoned on eventually.
A blue door’s not enough to go on by itself, but a yellow triangle flashes over the device management system’s map. I pull the laptop back to me, zooming in closer. ‘There was a ringing too,’ I add. ‘Faint. But I could hear it for a moment before it disappeared.’
I scour the screen. It’s just normal suburban Cardiff. Shops, a couple of schools and churches. What the hell might be ringing?
The main road splits the screen in half, from east to west. And right smack in the middle sits a fire station, one of the biggest in the city.
That must be fucking it.
‘What about this?’ I jab my finger at the screen.
‘Switch to street view,’ Ziva tells me.
Opposite the station is a small green area then a short terrace of houses. Each has a white door on it aside from—
‘The middle one. Look.’ The area’s run-down. Street view shows me newspaper covering the windows and a burned-out mattress waiting in the front garden for someone who’ll never collect it.
‘Number thirty-four.’ Ziva types something into her phone. ‘Owned by Arwr Technegol.’
Arwr. Hero. My nickname for him.
‘It must be him.’
Ziva shoots from her chair. ‘Business owned by an Aled Lloyd.’
I frown. ‘Lloyd’s his dad’s name but he never uses it. He hates him.’ It’s one of the things we bonded over in the early days – shit tads. No wonder we couldn’t find any details earlier. ‘What now?’
‘Now, Mr Pritchett. We go get your girls.’