Chapter 1: First Stirrings

In the Police Station canteen WPC Bronwen Jones was enjoying a quiet cup of coffee before starting the ‘drunks run’, a foot patrol round the worst pubs at closing time in the small South Wales town. It was not a prospect she relished, though she had long since stopped being afraid of it; in any case it wouldn’t be bad on a Wednesday. She was more worried about her partner, a much younger male Constable who still thought of himself as needing to protect her, and hence tried to do too much. She would have to make sure he learned to be part of a team.

Just then a Traffic Sergeant she knew by sight came in to the canteen and said, “WPC Jones? The Superintendent wants you, now.”

Leaving her coffee half-finished she went up to the Super’s office, wondering why she should want her, and why the Super was even there at that hour of the night. She had only spoken to her boss’s boss a few times and she couldn’t think of anything that she might have done wrong.

“Ah, come in, Constable,” the Superintendent said getting the rank right, but then other female officers usually did, “ Sit down. I have a little job for you. It is a bit delicate, well very delicate, so I’ll tell you all I know and then you decide whether to do it or not.”

“Pardon, ma’am? You want a volunteer?”

“Yes. The Chief Constable rang me and specified what he wanted, and he claims you fit the bill best of all the Officers on duty at the moment. He wants a woman, preferably with some experience of crowd control, young but two years or more experience, intelligent, and above all capable of keeping secrets. All he can tell me is you go with a traffic car to find a particular contact and then you accompany and help the contact in any way you can. You are to keep it all secret, even from me, in fact even from the Chief Constable, until you are told you can speak.”

She waited until it was clear that the Superintendent had finished and said, “That’s all you know ma’am?”

“That, and the fact is that I am told and believe that’s all the Chief Constable knows. He too has had cryptic orders from above.”

Bronwen shrugged, “I suppose I’d better do it then, ma’am.”

“Thank you. And good luck.”

Bronwen went out of the office and the Traffic Sergeant was waiting for her.

“Coming?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “Where are we going and what is it about?”

“As far as I can tell I am a messenger boy and my driver is a chauffeur. I assume you’re the one who knows what it’s all about.”

“All I know is we find somebody and I, or we, help him or her with some unspecified task,” she said.

The Sergeant looked at her oddly, “You don’t know any more than that?” he asked.

“No, sir, except that it is all very secret.”

“Well the somebody is a man called Huw Harris. I had a ‘phone call with an incomprehensible verbal message to give him, then he gives me a password and I give him a written message. That’s all I know. Oh, and we take him wherever he wants to go,” said the Sergeant.

“Well a quiet drive to Aberdeen will put the overtime up nicely,” chimed in the Traffic Constable who was driving.

“Do you know that?” asked the Sergeant.

“No, Sarge, I know nothing, except we start looking in a little pub three miles out of town.”

They drove off, each with their own thoughts about the oddest assignment any of them had ever had. None of their wildest guesses even came close to how out of the ordinary the assignment actually was.

It was a typical Wednesday night in the Ruperra Inn. The jukebox was loud, the customers were, mostly, happy. Some of the old codgers were their usual grumpy selves. The landlord noticed the old man who came in, mostly because this was a locals’ pub and he did not recognise him. However, some of the regulars knew him, and as the landlord had only had taken over the pub some two weeks earlier, he assumed this was a local whom he had not met before. Perhaps he had been ill, or away.