Hard Option by Gwen Moffat

Author:Gwen Moffat
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AudioGO
Published: 2012-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Although it was only four-thirty and Beryl didn’t finish until five, he drove to the factory where she worked. As he’d expected, word of his appearance reached her almost immediately and he had only a moment to wait before she came across the car park. He regarded her haggardly.

‘I don’t mind waiting.’ He was justifying his presence. ‘It’s not worth going back to the combe without picking you up first.’

She didn’t ask where he’d been. ‘Well, if you don’t mind waiting . . . Maybe I can get away a few minutes early . . .’

‘Don’t trouble. By the way, we’re invited to Simon’s tonight.’

‘Oh, yes?’ She looked at him sharply, guessing the remark had some significance and wondering what it was. ‘I’m invited too?’ she asked, probing.

His eyes widened. ‘You don’t feel up to it?’ He sounded concerned.

‘His parties are a bit . . .’

‘A bit what?’

‘Lively.’ She looked away. ‘Sophisticated. You need to be ready for them.’ She smiled wryly. ‘I don’t feel like one of Simon’s parties tonight.’

‘That’s all right. You don’t mind—?’

‘No, you go. I’ll stay in the village; there’s someone I want to see this evening—one of the girls.’

His hand moved to the ignition. ‘How will you get home?’

‘Her husband will run me as far as the combe. I’ll be all right.’

He drove down the main valley. Going through the chestnut woods below the last of the tips, something dark flickered across a corner of his vision and he braked with a start. Behind him there was a squeal of sliding rubber. He accelerated in a cold sweat and the following car came out in an angry swerve on one long blare of horn. Parry would have liked the chap to stop for a confrontation, verbal or physical, but evidently the rescue signs on the ’Rover were a deterrent; the car vanished round the next bend.

He turned on the minor road that crossed the valley, then right again on the Cwm Daron track. Ahead lay the opening of the combe with nothing visible of the skyline because the cloud was down to a thousand feet, and dropping. Soon the combe itself would be full of mist and as he drove up the stony gradient under the rhododendrons of Bryn Mawr, the first drops of rain showed on the windscreen. It was setting in for a wet night. He wondered if Catrin were home yet.

He parked the Land Rover and let himself into the cottage, frowning even before he saw the cleared and empty table, the dead grate, the total absence of humanity. The silence too, was dead. He switched on the transistor and winced at a frenetic blast of sound. He turned down the volume until the pop was a background murmur and looked round for something to do.

Simon liked routine and in the normal way the big man would eat at seven so, since Parry had been invited to Hafod only to drink, he had upwards of two hours to kill. He reflected

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