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  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying they might be linked.’

  ‘And what about the money?’ he asked.

  The police had told him that Goleuddydd had taken a rather large sum of money out of her bank account the day before her disappearance. He caught the policeman and policewoman looking at each other as they told him this; it was as though a gust of cold air had blown into the room. The information changed their attitude towards him; the policewoman’s hand on his went limp. He found them sweeping him with their eyes – trying to work out exactly what it was about him that was so overwhelmingly present, to make a woman want to be absent.

  ‘No, there was no money missing in this case. But the girl had been acting strangely for a few weeks, according to her family. Look, just let me look into it. Trust me.’

  Cilydd trusted nobody. As the days wore on, the likelihood of Goleuddydd coming back to him diminished. The light and day of her name drained from him in thick, ugly sobs. He stopped answering the phone to Anlawdd, who left angry messages which overran the tape of the machine. He sat in the dark most evenings watching the traffic going by, watching cars slipping and sliding on the black ice, wondering where in the cold world Goleuddydd and his baby were. So she had done it; she had escaped from him, like she had joked she would. And it seemed unfair that there was no escape for him. She was everywhere. In all the papers. The photos he gave the police were all of a pre-pregnancy Goleuddydd. Her beauty and boldness took your breath away. ‘Fears mount for missing beauty’, one headline roared. He could not bear the thought of her beauty becoming ink stains on jam-sticky breakfast thumbs, of Goleuddydd entering every single household but her own.

  Every now and then he went for a walk in a nearby seaside town, walking out across the cliffs to a small island which was always deserted. You could cross over when the tide was low, but you had to be quick, otherwise you might get caught there. He stayed a little longer every time. Until the dark waters started to seep over the bridge of land –which he saw as the bridge back to his life – before deciding to return at the last minute. He knew the tide of his grief was rising, and that it was only a matter of time before he would stay put on that island. But he wasn’t ready yet. He couldn’t do it while there was still hope Goleuddydd would over-come whatever madness had taken hold of her and come back to him. And in the absence of a body there was still a chance that his baby’s ferocious beating heart – a lovely heartbeat, the midwife had said at their last appointment – was still echoing somewhere in the world.

  And when they finally came – three police officers, two men with furrowed brows and a woman whose face was a fixed, constant apology – to tell him they’d found his wife’s body, the first feeling he experienced was one of vindication, of righteousness. Rather than give in to true, genuine grief, which twisted his innards with biting ferocity, he found himself engaged in a rather elaborate tirade at the police, before fainting into the lap of the female police officer at the end of the garden path, clutching on to her curtains of blonde hair. They brought him inside and gave him hot, sweet tea. It was the classic antidote to trauma – he’d read all about it in his birth book – a short, sharp elixir of caffeine and sucrose. Even as he was drinking it he wondered how an elated father would approach the steaming cup. He wanted to pour it all over himself, let his emotional pain be replaced with a physical one. Instead he politely gulped it down and burnt the roof of his mouth.

  ‘So you’ve found her,’ he said.

  ‘Well, yes, we’ve found her. And I’m afraid she’s...’

  ‘Well she’s dead, obviously,’ he muttered, imagining the foetus hibernating inside, never to be roused from its lair. ‘I always knew she was going to be dead.’

  ‘Yes, she’s dead, and I’m very sorry for your loss. But I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that...’

  More complicated than death? What could be more complicated than the sudden termination of a life that had been thirty-three years in the making? He thought suddenly of paperwork, his wife’s clothes, books. What do to with them all? The traces of a life suspended, as though the person would return at any moment. These thoughts were followed by more unpleasant ones – he thought of that abundance of red hair, her lovely smooth shoulders, the scar on her little finger; what would become of those?

  Then he looked up into the officer’s dolorous eyes and suddenly understood what they meant by more complicated.

  ‘Oh, I see. I know. She was pregnant. So it means, two funerals, I suppose. Does it?’ He wasn’t sure. Or would it merely mean a bigger casket? Again, he was trying his best to appear sensible, to take control. ‘Two caskets?’ he said, looking up, in a tone that could very well have intimated something quite ordinary, like: ‘two biscuits?’ By striving for ordinariness he had reached the register of hysteria now, a semi-tone away from suspicion. The police officer told him to slow down, to take his time.

  ‘It’s about the baby,’ the male police officer said before looking meaningfully at the female police officer. ‘There are some things we need to discuss about the baby she was expecting.’

  ‘My boy,’ Cilydd said. Goleuddydd had told him, after the second scan, that it was a boy. Had he imagined her smiling then, knowing he had wanted a girl? He suddenly regretted not accompanying her to the hospital, to see his boy’s first tumble through the dark. But then, she hadn’t wanted him there. He had felt entirely separate from the pregnancy all the way through, as though it were nothing to do with him. The female police officer moved closer to him, until she was practically on his lap. He inhaled her sharp, floral perfume; wrinkling his nose in distaste. Why did they always push a woman on the bereaved? The doe-eyed creature stared at him and grappled with his hand.

  ‘Yes, the boy. He wasn’t, he wasn’t there when we....’

  The police woman’s hand crept up his sleeve.

  ‘Will I have to register him? Formally I mean?’ he asked, pushing the hand away.

  ‘Sir, I’m afraid there was no baby. She’d been, she’d been... there is no easy way to say this, sir. She’d been cut open. I’m afraid your wife may have been the victim of foetal theft.’

  The words made no sense to him. Foetal theft. A foetus in a bag. Men in balaclavas looting around in someone’s abdomen?

  ‘Someone’s taken the baby. It looks as though the whole thing was premeditated. Whoever did it may have had some experience, but we have to be realistic here – in the absence of medical attention we don’t hold out much hope for the baby having survived. But the thing is now, to find out who did this and...’

  ‘But my son... my son might be alive?’ Cilydd asked.

  ‘It’s possible sir, yes, but...’

  His son might be alive. It was the only thing that truly registered. Suddenly to be still missing seemed a glorious thing.

  ‘But why?’ he felt his throat constricting now with the anticipation of grief. ‘Why would someone do a thing like that?’

  ‘Well, we can’t say for sure, but these days there are all sorts of people just desperate for a baby. I suppose they just, well, they must have seen their chance.’

  The female police officer tried slinking an arm over his shoulder; he got up just as she was doing it, so that she fell slightly into the sofa. He went to look out of the window, at the garden gate that he had seen Goleuddydd coming through hundreds of times in his life. These past nine months he had seen her struggle with the latch, sometimes heaving herself over it, just to make things difficult – knowing he was watching. Wanting him to know what a sacrifice it was being pregnant, with its million inconven-iences, with this slowly ballooning body. He couldn’t quite believe that he’d never see her walk up that garden path again.

  ‘We’ll let ourselves out,’ whispered the female police officer. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

  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 th
ere 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.