Institutions
The Call from Cwm Darran Tunnel
The shift began at 19:00 on a Tuesday. That was all. I arrived twenty minutes early, my new boots still stiff and my ambulance technician qualification and onboarding documents tucked into a document wallet I'd bought from Tesco Extra the day before.
The shift began at 19:00 on a Tuesday. That was all. I arrived twenty minutes early, my new boots still stiff and my ambulance technician qualification and onboarding documents tucked into a document wallet I'd bought from Tesco Extra the day before. Cwm Taf Ambulance Station, operated by the Welsh Ambulance Services University NHS Trust, occupied a concrete-block building beside an unnamed narrow lane leading to the A4107. It had been painted white perhaps ten years earlier and had since faded to a tired grey.
There was an ambulance bay, a tiny office with a rattling air-conditioning unit in the window, and a staff room furnished with a sofa that smelt as though people had been spilling energy drinks on it for a decade. The fluorescent lights hummed. One of them flickered.
I didn't want to be in my flat.
That was the real reason I'd chosen nights when Gareth Price, the shift supervisor, asked whether I had a preference. He probably thought I was keen. I wasn't. I simply couldn't bear sitting in the place Beth Collins and I had rented together, staring at the walls, the empty half of the wardrobe and the single chair left at the kitchen table.
So I took four 19:00-06:00 shifts each week.
Gareth was in his mid-forties and balding, with reading glasses hanging from a cord around his neck. His ageing Land Rover was parked outside. He took me through the ambulance checks, showed me where the controlled-drugs register was kept and introduced me to my practice educator, Nia Morgan.
She was already in the bay, restocking the response bag with dressings and trauma shears. She didn't look up immediately. She simply carried on working, methodical, her hands quick and certain. Her dark brown hair was pulled back tightly. Her ambulance trousers had about six pockets, all of them full, and she wore a fleece although the evening wasn't particularly cold.
"Nia, this is Jamie Collins," Gareth said. "First shift."
She looked at me then. Her brown eyes were sharp. She didn't smile.
"Have you eaten?" she asked.
"No."
"Do it now. We're available in fifteen minutes, and if we're busy you might not get another chance before midnight."
Gareth laughed. I took a protein bar from my bag and ate it beside the ambulance while Nia completed the checks.
She moved like someone who had done the same job a thousand times. She tested the suction, cycled the monitor and checked every compartment without consulting a list.
"Worked on an ambulance before?" she asked.
"No. Qualified in July. I did a few months as a community first responder in Northumberland."
"What brought you here?"
"My wife's family are from Brecon."
"She working locally?"
"Ex-wife. And no. She's still in Northumberland."
Nia said nothing to that.
She closed the rear doors and moved round to check the cab. I expected more questions, but none came. That was the end of it.
At 19:14, Ambulance 12 became available.
Nia drove. I sat in the passenger seat. The radio crackled and a calm, bored voice came through.
"Ambulance 12, cover the northern district. A4107 to the boundary of Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, then the back roads as shown on your terminal."
Nia keyed the microphone.
"Ambulance 12 received."
She glanced at me.
"That's Rhys Evans in control. You'll hear him all night."
"Got it."
We followed the narrow lane away from the station and joined the A4107, heading north.
The two-lane road curved through the valley over patched tarmac. Trees pressed close on both sides. There was still some light in the sky, but it was fading quickly towards purple.
"This road gives you a bit of everything," Nia said, keeping her eyes ahead. "Visitors heading for the national park, locals from the old mining communities. Cars leave the road on the bends when it rains. Chest pain from people who've smoked forty a day for most of their lives. Broken bones from quad bikes. Men with pneumoconiosis who wait until they can hardly breathe before calling us."
"Mining injuries?"
"Not many now. Most of the pits are long closed. But you'll see men in their sixties and seventies whose lungs and backs were ruined underground. Some of them don't trust hospitals much."
I watched the road. Small lay-bys appeared every couple of kilometres, patches of gravel where motorists could stop and look across the ridges. A few bore brown signs for Bannau Brycheiniog National Park. Most had nothing at all.
Nia continued teaching in a way that felt less like instruction than a recital of facts she expected me to absorb.
"You check your equipment at the start of every shift. No exceptions. If the monitor behaves oddly, take it out of service and fetch the spare. If we reach a casualty and you discover you're missing something, that's on you. I won't cover for you. Understood?"
"Understood."
"Stop serious bleeding first. Airway, breathing, circulation. You know the sequence, but people freeze when it matters. Don't freeze."
"I won't."
She gave me an assessing look. It wasn't hostile.
"We'll see."
The radio remained quiet for the first hour. We completed the circuit twice, following the A4107 to the entrance of Bannau Brycheiniog National Park and then returning by smaller roads that wound past static-caravan sites, former miners' terraces, isolated farmhouses and several stone chapels with small bellcotes.
Nia pointed out landmarks as we went.
"That's Valley Stores. Independent petrol station and convenience shop. Only place open after 22:00 if you want coffee. The owner's Dai Lewis. He'll usually give ambulance crews free refills."
"Useful to know."
"That turning leads to Cwm Derwen. No mobile signal once you're about a kilometre in. If control sends us back there, we radio our exact location before leaving the main road."
I began making mental notes. There was a lot to remember: road names, landmarks, gaps in radio and mobile coverage. Nia did not repeat herself.
At about 20:30, our first job came through. A man in his fifties with chest pain at an address on Decker Lane.
Nia switched on the blue lights and accelerated. She drove quickly but smoothly, every movement purposeful. I checked the route on the mobile data terminal and satnav between us.
"Just over three kilometres. Left at the fork."
"I know."
"Right."
She did know.
The chest pain proved to be indigestion. The man was embarrassed, but Nia remained kind and professional. She completed his observations, assessed him properly and advised him to arrange a review with his GP. We cleared the scene within twenty minutes.
Back in the ambulance, she looked at me.
"What did you notice?"
"He was sweating and pale, but the pain didn't radiate and movement didn't make it worse."
"Was his skin clammy, or merely wet?"
I hesitated.
"Wet. Not cold."
"Good. What else?"
"There was a Valley Stores bag on the worktop. It looked as though he'd just eaten."
Nia nodded. She didn't smile, but I sensed that I had passed some small test.
"You're observing. That's half the work."
We attended two more jobs before midnight: a child with a broken wrist after falling from a climbing frame, and an elderly woman with hypoglycaemia who refused hospital but allowed us to complete her observations, administer glucose gel and follow it with a sugary drink.
Nia critiqued me after each case. She wasn't unkind, merely direct.
"Don't apologise before asking a clinical question. Just ask it. Write your times down immediately or you'll forget them. Good work with the blood glucose check. Quick and clean."
Sometime after midnight, we were travelling south on the A4107. The road was empty. There were no other vehicles, only the ambulance moving through darkness between the trees.
Nia slowed as we passed a lay-by on the right.
It was a small three-car space, perhaps 9 metres wide, with no sign. It looked much like a dozen others we had passed, but she watched it for longer than seemed necessary.
"See that?" she asked.
"The lay-by?"
"Cwm Darran Tunnel. It's roughly 400 metres along that path. Old railway tunnel. Hasn't been used in fifty years."
"Do people go inside?"
"Yes. Drinkers, mostly. Teenagers on dares. Vandals."
She kept driving, but her jaw had tightened.
"It's a bad place. We don't enter it after dark. If a call comes from there, we stage in the lay-by and wait for South Wales Police. No exceptions."
"What's the problem?"
"No mobile signal, no lighting, and people do stupid things in the dark."
That explanation made sense, but there was something else in her voice, something beyond procedure.
"Did something happen there?" I asked.
Nia was silent for several seconds. She turned on to a side road, her hands steady on the wheel.
"Three years ago, a drunk man went in on a dare. His friends waited outside. He never came back. Search and rescue found him dead two days later in a branching maintenance shaft. He'd become disorientated and gone deeper instead of returning to the main tunnel."
"God."
"And there have been other incidents. People panic, fall, injure themselves. Getting equipment and a casualty out of there is difficult, and radio coverage is unreliable." She glanced at me. "The place gets under people's skin. I don't know why, but whenever someone goes in, it becomes a mess. So we don't go in. Clear?"
"Clear."
But I could tell it wasn't only about policy. Nia had worked those roads for years. She was not easily unsettled. Yet when she had looked at the lay-by, something in her had shifted for a moment.
She was frightened of it. Not greatly, perhaps, but enough.
I learned the work quickly, which is to say I learned everything the qualification manuals failed to cover: the parts that smelt foul and left your shoulders aching for two days.
During my first week, I suctioned blood from a man's airway after his car struck a telegraph pole beside the A4107. Nia passed me the suction unit without a word and maintained spinal alignment while I worked. The sound was worse than I had expected, wet and rattling.
The man survived, which helped. Nia said I had done well but had taken too long to clear the catheter between passes.
In my second week, I splinted the crushed wrist of a woman whose hand had been trapped in a sheep-handling gate. The bones shifted beneath her skin when I palpated the injury. She didn't scream. She simply turned grey and stopped speaking.
Nia watched me measure the splint, apply the padding and secure it. Afterwards, she told me the padding was uneven and that swelling would create a pressure point. She made me redo it on the journey to hospital while the woman sat sweating and trying not to watch.
In the third week, we brought a man up an embankment after his quad bike overturned on a trail near Cwm Derwen. He weighed roughly 110 kilograms, and the slope was still slick from rain two days earlier.
Nia took his head and I took his feet. We used a controlled slide for much of the ascent because there seemed to be no other option. My boots repeatedly lost their grip and I dropped to one knee twice.
Once he was safely aboard, Nia said I should have requested a fire and rescue crew before committing to the carry. She was right. The thought had not occurred to me until we were already halfway down the slope.
The work was brutal in the way I'd expected, but had never truly understood before doing it four nights a week. There was the lifting, kneeling on gravel, and holding pressure on wounds while the ambulance struck every pothole on roads that seemed not to have been resurfaced since before I was born. My knees hurt most mornings. I began carrying paracetamol in my fleece pocket.
Nia critiqued everything. Not cruelly, but constantly. Every job ended with a debrief in the ambulance or back at the station: what I had done well, what I had missed and what I should have anticipated.
She had a way of asking questions that made my mistake obvious before I answered.
"Did you check the pulses in his foot after applying the splint?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I forgot."
"Forget again and you may miss compartment syndrome. Then he could lose the foot."
That was all. She did not labour the point. She moved on and expected me to remember next time.
I began keeping a notebook in my fleece pocket and writing in it between calls: check pulses beyond every splint, pad bony prominences, request additional help early for heavy casualties on rough ground, and dozens of other details.
Nia saw the notebook once when I took it out during a coffee stop at Valley Stores. She didn't comment, but I noticed the slight nod.
I think she approved. It was difficult to tell with her.
What I hadn't expected was how much of the job involved reading people rather than observations: how they held themselves, whether they made eye contact, whether their answers came too quickly or too slowly. Nia was extraordinary at it.
She could enter a room and know within ten seconds whether a casualty was understating their symptoms or about to arrest in front of us. She would ask what I had noticed, listen to my answer and then add three things I had missed. The man rubbing his left arm. The woman sitting forward rather than reclining. The child far too quiet for a simple broken bone.
I improved. I began watching the way Nia watched.
But by my second week, and certainly by the third, I had noticed another pattern.
Whenever we passed the lay-by for Cwm Darran Tunnel, Nia changed. It was subtle, but after the fourth or fifth time I could no longer miss it. If we had been talking, she fell silent. Her hands tightened slightly on the steering wheel. She checked the rear-view mirror more than usual, although there was rarely anyone behind us on that stretch at night.
And she watched the lay-by every single time.
It was an unremarkable place: gravel, trees and no lighting. If she hadn't pointed it out on my first shift, I doubt I could have distinguished it from any other roadside space. Yet she always looked.
Once, I asked whether the station had ever actually received a call from there.
"No," she said.
Then, after a pause, "Not exactly."
I waited, but she added nothing.
About a week later, we were driving south on the A4107 at approximately 02:00 when she slowed as we approached the lay-by. Only slightly, but enough for me to notice.
"Mobiles don't work there," she said.
She had already told me that on my first night.
"I know."
"Sometimes calls come through anyway."
I looked at her. Her face was lit green by the dashboard, her attention fixed on the road.
"How?"
She shrugged.
"No idea. Control gets something. Coordinates, perhaps a few words. Never a callback number that works."
"Satellite phone?"
"Could be."
She didn't sound convinced.
"Has it happened often?"
"Three times since I've worked here. Perhaps more before that."
She accelerated again, and we continued down the valley.
I filed it away as station folklore, the sort of tale people invented to make an isolated posting feel larger and stranger than it was. Every station had stories: a haunted ward, the inexplicable emergency call, the dead man whose ghost triggered the security lights. It was what happened when people worked nights, travelled the same roads and passed the same dark places hundreds of times. The mind found patterns and gave weight to things that possessed none.
That was what I told myself.
But Nia wasn't someone who told ghost stories. She rarely spoke at all unless it concerned a casualty or procedure. And the way she watched that lay-by wasn't superstitious. It was careful, as though she were checking for something.
I didn't ask again. I assumed she would tell me if it mattered.
On the Thursday of my fourth week, we were covering the same circuit along the same roads. It was approaching 23:45, and we had not attended a job since 21:00. Nia was drinking petrol-station coffee from a Valley Stores cup. I was staring through the passenger window at darkness.
The radio crackled.
"Ambulance 12, ambulance control."
Nia lifted the microphone.
"Ambulance 12, go ahead."
Rhys Evans's voice came through clearly and evenly. He always sounded the same: calm and professional. I had never heard him unsettled.
"Ambulance 12, respond to the Cwm Darran Tunnel lay-by on the A4107. Injured walker. Caller reports unable to walk and requests assistance."
I looked at the mobile data terminal. The incident appeared on screen.
The location field read only: Cwm Darran Tunnel. There was no road marker, no nearby junction and no callback number.
Nia did not respond immediately. I saw her jaw tighten.
"Ambulance 12 received. Responding."
She did not activate the blue lights or siren. She merely continued at the same speed, her hands firm on the wheel.
"Shall I mark us mobile?" I asked.
"Yes."
I updated our status. The terminal recorded the dispatch time as 23:48.
Nia took the next bend at an ordinary road speed, no faster than she had driven all evening.
"Are we not travelling under emergency conditions?"
"No."
"Why?"
For several seconds she kept her attention on the road, her shoulders set in the same tense posture I had seen whenever we passed the lay-by.
"Because I'm not feeding this," she said.
I didn't know what she meant. I looked at the terminal. The sparse incident details remained unchanged.
Cwm Darran Tunnel.
Nothing else.
Nia keyed the radio.
"Ambulance control from Ambulance 12. Confirm location as the Cwm Darran Tunnel lay-by on the A4107."
"Confirmed. Coordinates correspond with the lay-by."
"Any callback number?"
There was a brief pause.
"Negative. No callback details available."
Nia pressed her lips into a thin line.
We were a little over three kilometres away.
"Do we stage and wait for the police?" I asked.
"Yes. We stage."
There was an edge in her voice I had not heard before. It wasn't quite fear. It sounded more like irritation, as though she had expected this and resented being proved right.
Our headlamps carved through the darkness, the trees slipping past on either side. The road curved, and the lay-by appeared ahead on the right.
Nia slowed. No siren, no blue lights. She turned in as if determined to give the place no more attention than it demanded.
The radio crackled before we had stopped. Rhys's voice came through without static.
"Ambulance 12, further information from caller. States they are trapped in a vehicle and unable to breathe. Approach with caution."
Nia's jaw moved, but she did not reply at once. Her gaze flicked towards the rear-view mirror and then returned to the darkness ahead. Our headlamps cast a narrow cone between the trees.
"Received," she said at last, flat and professional.
My hands were already moving. I reached between the seats, pulled the response bag forwards and set it on my lap. I opened it and checked the contents. Everything was where it belonged: cervical collars to the left, shears and tape in the centre pocket, airway equipment at the top.
I drew the portable oxygen cylinder from its compartment and checked the gauge. Full. Depending on the flow rate, it would last about forty minutes.
Nia didn't tell me to stop. She continued forwards, scanning both verges as though she expected to see headlights, hazard lights or someone staggering from a ditch and waving for help. I searched too. There were only trees and the occasional reflector post at the edge of the tarmac.
"Trapped in a vehicle," I said. It wasn't really a question. I was testing the words aloud.
"That's what control said."
"But there's still no callback number."
"No."
I ran through the possibilities. Entrapment meant we would probably need fire and rescue for extraction. Someone unable to breathe required rapid assessment and airway support. Depending on the injuries, emergency chest decompression might be necessary if it fell within the attending clinician's authorised scope.
But all of that required a collision. It required a vehicle. It required something to be there.
Gravel crunched beneath the tyres as Nia eased into the lay-by. I leant forwards and stared through the windscreen.
There was nothing.
No vehicle. No flashing hazard lights. No one beside the road trying to attract our attention. Only an empty three-car lay-by about 9 metres wide, bordered by trees on three sides and the A4107 behind us.
At the far end, the gravel gave way to a dirt path. It was narrow, scarcely wide enough for one person, and vanished into the woods.
Nia selected park but left the engine running. It idled with a low, steady vibration.
I remained seated with the oxygen cylinder on my lap and the roughly 9-kilogram response bag between my boots.
"Can you see anything?" she asked.
"No."
She did not appear surprised. She nodded once and kept her hands on the wheel.
I took out my mobile and checked it. The display showed no service, exactly as she had warned.
I held it up for her to see.
"Yes," she said. "I thought so."
I was about to return it to my pocket when it vibrated.
It wasn't a message. It was an incoming call.
The screen showed the green answer control and a number I did not recognise, only a string of digits without a name.
My thumb hovered over it. Part of my mind kept insisting that this was impossible. I had checked the screen a second earlier.
There was no service.
I answered anyway. Reflex, perhaps. A phone rings and you answer it.
I raised it to my ear.
"Hello?"
My own voice replied.
"We're at the lay-by on the A4107, about 400 metres in. Please hurry."
I pulled the mobile away and stared at it. The call timer continued counting: four seconds, then five.
I put it back to my ear. Shallow, rapid breathing came down the line.
"Who is this?" I asked.
"We're at the lay-by on the A4107, about 400 metres in. Please hurry."
The same words. The same cadence.
My voice.
I knew it as surely as I knew my own reflection, even when the angle was unfamiliar.
The call ended. The lock screen returned. There was no missed-call notification and no number in the recent-calls list.
Nia was watching me. I realised I had stopped breathing.
"What?" she said.
It wasn't quite a question. It was a prompt.
"Someone just rang me."
I turned the phone so she could see the no-service indicator.
"It rang despite having no signal."
"What did they say?"
I did not want to tell her. The words felt absurd before they even left my mouth, but she waited.
"They said, 'We're at the lay-by on the A4107, about 400 metres in. Please hurry.'"
I swallowed.
"It was my voice."
Nia's expression barely changed, although her eyes narrowed a fraction. She held out her hand.
I passed her the phone. She checked the display, searched the recent-calls list and returned it.
"Nothing recorded."
"I know."
She switched off the engine.
The sudden quiet felt heavier than it should have. I heard my own breathing, the faint ticking of the cooling engine and something dripping outside. It might have been condensation falling from the trees, or water left by rain earlier in the week.
"Could be someone playing games," Nia said, looking through the windscreen towards the path. "It happens. Teenagers find an emergency frequency or make a false call to see whether we'll attend. People can spoof numbers and alter recorded voices. I've heard it before."
"Voice changers sound altered. That was me."
"Then perhaps it was a recording. Or a synthetic copy. I don't know."
She drummed her fingers once against the steering wheel and stopped.
"The point is that malicious calls reach the station occasionally. Usually from this area. Usually this place."
I wanted to believe her. It offered an explanation that did not require me to consider how my own voice had come through a mobile with no service. But her tone suggested she did not entirely believe it herself.
"So we remain here and wait for South Wales Police," I said.
"That's the procedure."
Neither of us moved.
The silence stretched. I kept expecting something to break it: another transmission, a passing car, a night bird among the trees. Nothing did.
There was only that steady drip, drip, drip somewhere to the right. Water striking leaves or stone or something else hidden in the darkness.
It felt wrong. Not merely quiet, but unnaturally still.
I had worked enough nights by then to know the woods were never truly silent. There should have been wind among the branches, animals disturbing the undergrowth, insects if the temperature allowed. This was different.
It was the sort of quiet that made me aware of my own heartbeat.
I glanced at Nia. She stared directly ahead, her eyes fixed on the beginning of the path. Her hands now rested in her lap, but her shoulders remained rigid.
"Have you ever gone in?" I asked.
"Once. In daylight, with fire and rescue and two police officers. A teenager had entered on a dare and failed to come back. We found him about 45 metres from the entrance, sitting against the wall and crying. He wouldn't say what had happened. He only kept repeating that he'd become turned around."
"Was that the one who died?"
"No. A separate incident, about five years ago. The drunk man died three years ago. We didn't find him in the main tunnel. There's an old maintenance shaft branching away near the middle. He entered that instead of returning to the entrance."
I didn't ask why. It didn't seem the kind of question likely to have a useful answer.
The dripping continued, steady and rhythmic. I tried to concentrate on it, to let it be nothing more than falling water, but my mind kept catching on the silence around it.
Then I saw a light.
It flickered only once near the path, perhaps 20 metres among the trees where the growth thickened. It was small and weak, like the beam from a key-ring torch or a mobile with a failing battery.
It appeared and vanished.
I sat upright.
"Did you see that?"
"See what?"
"A light in the trees, just beyond the path."
I pointed, but there was nothing there now. Only darkness and the faint outlines of trunks and branches.
"It was there. I saw it."
Nia leant forwards and narrowed her eyes at the windscreen. Her hand moved to the door handle but did not open it.
"Where?"
"At the start of the path, perhaps a little beyond. It flickered once and went out."
She scanned the tree line from left to right with deliberate care. Her jaw worked as though she were considering something she did not want to accept.
"Could have been an animal's eyes," she said at last.
"It didn't look like eyes."
"Could have been."
She didn't sound convinced, and her hand remained on the door handle.
Nia got out first.
I took the response bag from between my boots and followed. The air felt different outside the ambulance. Colder, certainly, but there was something else as well. It seemed heavier, although I could not have explained what that meant.
Nia had already fitted her head torch and was tightening the strap behind her head. I took mine from my fleece pocket and switched it on. The beam spread across the gravel.
She looked at me once and started towards the path.
That was the decision. We were going in.
The path was hard-packed earth, worn by years, perhaps decades, of foot traffic. Two people could have walked abreast if they were willing to brush against the trees, but we went in single file. Nia led. I stayed about a metre behind and watched where she placed her feet.
Our head torches illuminated only a few metres ahead. Beyond their beams lay absolute blackness.
Something snapped beneath my boot, perhaps a twig or a piece of gravel washed down from the road. I couldn't tell which.
Nia's light moved from side to side as she checked the ground. I copied her. Puddles appeared black in the beams, some small, others crossing almost the full width of the path. We skirted them where we could.
The trees crowded closer as we advanced. When I looked back, I could no longer see the ambulance, only darkness and the suggestion of tree trunks. No sound reached us from the road.
Nia stopped so abruptly that I nearly walked into her. The response bag swung and struck my knee.
She said nothing. She merely directed her light at a puddle more than a metre across. We would have to pass round it.
She stepped on to apparently drier earth on the right. I followed. My boot sank slightly. It wasn't mud exactly, but the ground was softer than the rest of the path.
I pulled my foot free and continued.
The air grew colder. I noticed it first in my throat, then in my hands. I should have brought gloves, but I hadn't considered them when we left the ambulance.
The response bag dragged at my arm. I changed hands.
Nia's beam struck something ahead. She slowed again.
The entrance to Cwm Darran Tunnel stood before us.
I had seen photographs of disused railway tunnels. This matched them closely: a stone arch perhaps two and a half metres high, wide enough for a single track. The masonry was dark and slick with moss or decades of moisture. The opening beneath it was perfectly black.
From where we stood, our torches did not penetrate it at all.
Nia stopped about three metres from the entrance.
"All right?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Stay close. Watch your footing. The stone inside is uneven."
"Understood."
She stepped forwards. I followed.
The temperature dropped the instant we crossed the threshold. I am not exaggerating. It was immediate. My breath became visible in the beam of my head torch.
The air smelt of wet stone and something else I couldn't identify. Something old.
The floor was as uneven as Nia had warned. Loose stones lay everywhere, some as large as my fist. The walls curved into an arched roof a little over two metres above us.
Water dripped somewhere to my left. It was the same steady sound I had heard from the ambulance, only louder and closer now.
Our boots scraped over stone. Nia's light swept left, right and then forwards. Mine followed the same pattern.
The tunnel extended beyond the reach of our beams. Ahead, the visible section ended in solid blackness.
I shifted the response bag on my shoulder. My mobile remained in my fleece pocket. I was certain it still had no service, but I did not check.
We walked perhaps 25 metres.
The entrance remained visible behind us as a grey rectangle of slightly lesser darkness. I kept my eyes forwards. Nia carried her shoulders higher than usual beneath her jacket.
The dripping grew louder. I looked left and saw a thin stream of water running down the wall, gathering at its base and spreading across the floor. We stepped around it.
My boot slipped on a wet stone, but I caught myself.
Nia stopped again.
"Did you hear that?"
I listened. There was only the water, our breathing and the tiny movements of our clothing.
"No."
She waited several seconds before continuing.
We were nearing the middle of the tunnel. It was roughly 90 metres long, and the entrance behind us had become a much smaller rectangle. The darkness ahead did not change.
My torch caught something pale hanging from the roof about five metres away. My mind identified it before my eyes could focus.
A body.
Someone hanging.
I stopped. My breath caught. Nia's light swung upwards at the same moment.
The shape moved.
I recoiled and struck the wall hard enough to hurt my shoulder. The response bag fell from my hand and landed with a dull thud.
The pale mass broke apart.
Bats. Perhaps a dozen of them, clustered in a crack in the roof until our lights disturbed them. They scattered with high, sharp squeals.
The sound rebounded from the walls and returned doubled. I pressed myself against the stone as they wheeled past us in chaotic loops and disappeared into the darkness behind.
My heart hammered in my throat.
Nia lowered her light.
"Only bats."
"Yes."
My voice was steadier than I expected. I pushed away from the wall and retrieved the response bag. My hands trembled slightly. Not much, but enough for me to notice.
I forced myself to breathe slowly. Four counts in, four counts out, as we had been taught. It helped a little.
Nia watched me for a moment, then turned back towards the darkness ahead.
My mobile vibrated.
I froze.
It buzzed against my ribs inside the fleece pocket, steady and insistent. I pulled it out. Its light washed over my hand.
Unknown number.
The top of the screen still displayed no service. The phone continued vibrating.
I stared at it. Nia turned.
"What is it?"
"Another call."
She stepped closer and directed her torch at the screen. I saw her gaze move from the no-service indicator to the incoming-call display.
I pressed decline.
The vibration stopped. The screen went black for half a second, then illuminated again.
The call had connected.
I hadn't touched the answer control. The screen had simply changed. A green bar appeared across the top, the timer began at 00:01 and the speaker icon lit white.
Breathing came from the mobile.
Shallow. Rapid.
Then footsteps scraping over stone.
I held the phone away from my body and stared at it.
The breathing matched mine.
I took one step. A footstep sounded from the speaker at precisely the same moment.
I stopped.
The sound stopped too.
Nia had heard it. Something in her face changed. It wasn't fear, exactly. It was colder than that.
"Give it to me."
I passed her the mobile. She held it up and watched the timer count through 00:13 and 00:14.
The breathing continued. The footsteps began again, although neither of us had moved.
Nia took the radio from her belt and pressed the transmit button.
"Ambulance 12 to ambulance control."
Static answered.
Then my voice came through the radio, calm and level, exactly as I sounded during a routine handover.
"Keep going. The casualty is just ahead. You're nearly there."
I touched my throat. My mouth had not moved. I had said nothing.
Nia's jaw tightened. She keyed the radio again.
"Ambulance 12 requesting immediate police assistance at Cwm Darran Tunnel on the A4107. Possible malicious interference and an unlocated casualty."
My copied voice spoke over her transmission in the same calm tone.
"Just ahead. You're doing well. Keep coming."
The radio gave no acknowledgement from control. Whether Nia's request had transmitted at all, neither of us could tell.
She released the button, clipped the radio back on to her belt and seized my arm.
"We're leaving."
She pulled me towards the entrance. We didn't run. Our retreat was controlled and steady, but fast.
I glanced at my phone, still in her other hand. The timer continued climbing past 00:42. The breathing from its speaker quickened.
We emerged from the tunnel at a controlled jog. Nia still held my arm with one hand and my mobile with the other. The response bag struck my shin every few steps.
The breathing from the speaker stopped somewhere along the path. Or perhaps I simply could not hear it over our own breathing and the thud of our boots against the earth.
The lay-by appeared through the trees.
It was the same gravel space where we had left Ambulance 12, except it was no longer empty.
A dark blue Vauxhall Astra estate stood in the far corner, perhaps 12 metres from the ambulance. Its dim yellow interior lamp was on and the driver's door hung wide open.
I stopped.
Nia's grip fell away from my arm.
"Someone's crashed," I said.
My mind went straight to protocol: check for casualties, assess scene safety, report it to control. The car must have arrived while we were inside the tunnel. I started towards it.
Its interior lamp cast a dim yellow bubble into the darkness. Through the open driver's door, I could see an empty seat. The airbag had not deployed, and from that angle there was no visible damage to the front of the car.
Nia caught my sleeve and gripped it hard.
"Jamie."
"Someone could be hurt," I said, already trying to move again.
The roughly 9-kilogram response bag was still in my hand. I had dropped it once that night, and once was enough.
"Jamie, stop."
There was an edge to her voice that I had never heard before. It was not her usual firmness when correcting my technique or telling me to repeat a set of observations. This was different. I looked back at her.
She was staring at the dark blue Vauxhall Astra estate, her jaw set and her head torch fixed on the open door.
"That wasn't there," she said.
"They probably pulled in while we were inside."
The explanation sounded weak even as I gave it. The lay-by had been empty. Nia released my sleeve but did not move.
"We checked before we went in. There was nothing here."
We would have heard an engine as well. I considered that. We had been inside for about seven minutes, perhaps eight. Long enough for somebody to arrive, certainly.
But she was right about the engine. The woods had been utterly silent except for dripping water, our boots and the bats.
"They could have coasted in," I said.
It was a poor explanation, and I knew it.
"Why would they?"
I had no answer. Nia was still holding my mobile. Its screen had gone dark, but I could see her thumb pressed white against the side.
"It shouldn't have changed," she said more quietly. "We were gone less than ten minutes. The lay-by shouldn't have changed."
Part of me agreed with her. The part that had heard my own voice on the radio, calmly instructing us to keep going. The part that had answered a call despite having no service.
The other part had spent four weeks learning to check distal pulses, pad splints and calculate drug doses. That part saw a car with an open door and an interior light burning, and insisted that somebody might need help.
I eased my arm free. I was not rough, but I was firm enough to break her hold.
"I'm checking it," I said.
Nia did not follow. I heard one crunch of her boots on the gravel, then nothing. I crossed the small lay-by with my head torch trained on the Astra. The cold air bit at the sweat on my face.
The yellow interior lamp remained steady, illuminating beige cloth seats and a dashboard with two faded football-shirt air fresheners hanging from the rear-view mirror. I stopped beside the open driver's door and leant inside.
No one in the front. No one in the back.
The keys remained in the ignition, turned to the accessory position. That explained the lamp. There was no visible blood, no damage and no deployed airbag.
The driver's seat had been pushed a long way back, adjusted for somebody tall.
Then I saw the phone.
It lay face down on the passenger seat in a black case, perhaps an older iPhone. It was not ringing, but vibrating in the steady rhythm of an incoming call on silent.
It buzzed against the cloth and shifted half a centimetre to the left. Then it buzzed again.
I reached for it.
The smell caught me before my hand was halfway there.
River mud. The thick, wet reek of stagnant water and rotting vegetation. Beneath it was something sweeter, like fruit left to spoil in the sun. It closed my throat and made my stomach clench.
I snatched my hand back. The phone continued to vibrate. Buzz, shift, buzz. My eyes began to water.
I turned my face away and breathed through my mouth, then looked back. The phone was still face down, its screen hidden.
The vibration stopped in the middle of a buzz.
At the same instant, the interior lamp clicked off.
I had touched nothing. I had not knocked the door or disturbed the switch. The light simply died, dropping the Astra's interior into darkness.
My head torch cut through the space the yellow light had occupied, picking out the dashboard, the top of the passenger seat and the rear-view mirror. The two football-shirt air fresheners swayed gently.
I should have stepped back. That would have been sensible.
Instead, I leant closer to the passenger window, trying to see whether the phone was still there or whether I had imagined it. The glass was dark and reflective.
At first I saw only myself: a pale face, eyes too wide, the white glare of my head torch washing out my features.
Then I saw the figure behind me.
It was tall, far too tall to be Nia. She was about 170 centimetres, perhaps 173 in her boots. The figure stood a head taller than me, and I was about 183 centimetres.
Its head was tilted sideways. It did not look as though it was watching me. It looked as though it was listening.
I spun round.
There was only empty air and gravel. Ambulance 12 stood about six metres away with its headlights on, casting two cones of light across the lay-by. Nia was beside the driver's door, her head torch trained on me. Behind her, the tunnel entrance was a black mouth among the trees.
Nothing else was there.
I turned back to the Astra.
A handprint was forming on the inside of the rear window, misty and pale, as though somebody within the car had pressed a warm palm to the glass. Five fingers, a palm and a thumb. Condensation spread slowly outwards from its centre.
I watched the whorls of fingerprints appear, far too detailed to be accidental.
"Jamie."
Nia's voice was sharp and close. She had crossed the lay-by without my hearing her.
"We're leaving. Now."
"There's..."
I began to point at the handprint, but my radio crackled. Rhys Evans's voice came through.
"Ambulance 12, be advised Police 6 is responding to your location. Estimated arrival twelve minutes. Confirm you still require assistance at Cwm Darran Tunnel off the A4107."
I stared at the radio clipped to my belt.
"I didn't ask for police assistance."
Nia was already pressing her transmit button.
"Control, Ambulance 12. Clarify who requested Police 6."
Static hissed. Then Rhys returned, sounding confused.
"You did, Ambulance 12. Approximately four minutes ago. Radio traffic from inside the tunnel requesting immediate police assistance for a possible serious incident."
"That wasn't us," Nia said.
Her voice was flat and controlled, the tone she used when a casualty was deteriorating and she needed to stay ahead of events.
"We made no such request."
"Stand by."
More static followed. I could hear keyboard taps in the background.
"Ambulance 12, I have recorded traffic at 23:51 in your voice, Nia, requesting police assistance. Do you want me to cancel Police 6?"
Nia looked at me, and I looked back at her.
The genuine dispatch to the injured walker had come through at 23:48. The false request had been made only three minutes later, when we had already left the ambulance and were approaching the tunnel. It could not have been either of us.
"Negative," Nia said into the radio. "Do not cancel. We are leaving the immediate scene now. Have Police 6 stage on the A4107 and do not allow the officer to enter the trail. Repeat, stage only. We are safe and returning to the ambulance."
"Received, Ambulance 12."
Nia released the button and seized my shoulder.
"Move."
I moved. We were halfway back to the ambulance when I stopped.
Police 6 was coming. Twelve minutes, perhaps less now. The officer would pull into the same lay-by and see the abandoned Astra with its driver's door hanging open. They might follow the trail in search of the caller. They might enter the tunnel.
I turned back. Nia's grip tightened.
"Jamie."
"We have to warn them."
"We will, from the ambulance. We'll radio them to stage and meet them on the road."
It made sense. It was proper procedure: stage at a safe location, co-ordinate over the radio and do not let anyone enter an unknown scene alone.
But my mind kept showing me another responder standing where we had stood, studying the handprint on the glass and hearing their own voice calmly telling them to continue into the darkness.
"What if the radio doesn't work?" I asked. "It didn't work properly for us in there."
Nia's jaw tightened. She knew I was right.
"We can't let them go in," I said.
She stared at me for three seconds. Then she released my shoulder and turned towards the ambulance.
"Get in."
We climbed aboard. Nia started the engine and reversed hard, spraying gravel. She swung Ambulance 12 on to the A4107, heading north, and accelerated.
I checked the mobile data terminal. Police 6 was still responding. The estimated arrival time was now nine minutes.
"How far away do you think they are?" I asked.
"Depends where they were when control sent them. They could be coming from the entrance to Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, or from farther south."
Her hands were tight around the steering wheel.
"So we might miss them."
"We won't."
That edge had returned to her voice, the one that said she had had enough of the entire night.
We drove north along the valley road well above our previous pace, without blue lights or siren. I watched for approaching headlights. Nia did the same, leaning slightly forwards as she scanned each bend.
About three kilometres from the lay-by, I saw blue lights flickering through the trees along a straight section of road, perhaps eight hundred metres ahead. A single vehicle was coming towards us.
"There."
Nia saw it. She slowed, steered into the opposite lane and angled the ambulance across the carriageway to block both directions. Then she stopped, selected park and switched on the hazard lights.
The police vehicle slowed when its driver saw us and stopped roughly nine metres away, its light bar still flashing.
The driver's door opened. A tall constable, about 185 centimetres, stepped out. He had closely cropped dark hair and wore a reflective vest over his uniform. A heavy-duty police torch hung ready at his side, pointed towards the ground rather than at us.
Nia got out. I followed.
The constable halted about three metres away.
"Ambulance 12?"
"That's us," Nia said.
"Police Constable Owen Hughes, Police 6."
He gestured southwards.
"Control sent me to your location as urgent assistance. You're both safe?"
"We're fine," Nia said. "But you need to turn round."
Owen looked past us, down the road, as though he might see the lay-by from there. The bends and trees made that impossible.
"Control said there might be a serious incident. Have you got a casualty or not?"
"No casualty," I said.
"Then why request police assistance?"
"We didn't," Nia said. "That's the problem."
His expression changed, not quite to disbelief, but close.
"Control has recorded radio traffic. Your voice requested police attendance at 23:51."
"I know what they have," Nia said. "I'm telling you that I didn't make that transmission."
Owen looked at me. I nodded.
"We heard it as well," I said. "It came through on her radio, but it wasn't her."
"Someone imitating your call sign?"
"Something like that," Nia said.
He waited for more. When she did not elaborate, he shifted his weight.
"So what is the actual situation?"
"No casualty," Nia said. "No confirmed call. You need to turn round and leave the scene."
"Control sent me to an urgent request."
"And I'm telling you we're safe. We're returning to station. You can follow us or head back north, but you are not going to that lay-by."
Owen's jaw set. I recognised the look. It was probably the same one I had worn minutes earlier, when I had insisted that Nia turn back to protect whoever was responding.
"I received the same report you did," he said. "Injured walker, unable to walk, location given as Cwm Darran Tunnel. Ambulance control may have sent it to you first, but it came through to us as well."
Nia went very still.
"When?"
"About twenty minutes ago. I was near the National Park entrance, so it took me a while to get down here."
That was before ambulance control had dispatched us at 23:48.
"Did you speak to anyone?" Nia asked.
"Tried to ring the caller back. No answer. I assumed they'd lost signal."
Owen looked from her to me.
"If you've checked the location and nobody is there, I'll verify it and close the incident. Five minutes."
"No," Nia said. "It is my incident as well, and I have to clear it properly. You do not enter that tunnel."
His expression hardened.
"Would you like to tell me why?"
Nia did not answer. I could see her searching for words that would not sound insane.
I tried instead. "The scene isn't safe. We don't understand what's happening, but..."
"But what?"
I had no answer that would satisfy him. Owen looked back at Nia.
"Have you filed an incident report?"
"Not yet."
"Then, until you do, I have a call to investigate."
He stepped around us, heading for his vehicle. Nia moved into his path.
"Owen."
He stopped and looked at her.
"I'm going to that lay-by," he said. "You may come with me or you may leave. Your choice."
Nia stared at him. I could almost see her running through the possibilities. Physically restraining a constable was not one of them. Letting him enter alone was not an option either.
"If you go there," she said, "you stay at the entrance. You stage outside and wait for a fire and rescue crew."
"Of course," Owen said, but his tone suggested that once there he would make his own decision.
He returned to his vehicle, climbed in, manoeuvred around the ambulance and drove south. Nia watched his rear lights vanish around the bend, then turned to me.
"Get in."
We climbed back into Ambulance 12. Nia moved forwards, turned around and followed him.
"We can't let him enter," I said.
"I know."
"What do we do?"
"Stay close. Keep him outside for as long as possible. If he goes in, we go with him."
My stomach dropped.
"Nia, I'm not leaving him in there alone."
We drove back in silence. My hands were shaking again. I hid them in my lap so Nia would not see.
The lay-by appeared quickly.
Owen's police vehicle was already parked beside the Astra, its blue lights still flashing. He stood between the two cars, shining his heavy-duty torch through the Astra's windows.
Nia parked behind him. We got out, and Owen looked up as we approached.
"This is the car you found?"
"Yes," I said.
"The door was already open?"
"Yes."
He directed his torch at the rear window. The condensation had mostly faded, but the handprint remained, faint and distinct. Owen leant closer.
"That's fresh."
"We didn't touch it," Nia said.
"I didn't say you did."
He straightened and looked towards the trailhead.
"The owner is probably in there. They went inside, were injured and couldn't get back."
"There is nobody in there," Nia said.
"Did you search the entire tunnel?"
"We searched enough of it."
He looked at her.
"Enough does not clear the scene."
He pressed his radio button.
"Police 6 to control."
Rhys's voice answered through the shared channel. "Go ahead, Police 6."
"On scene at the Cwm Darran Tunnel lay-by off the A4107. I have one dark blue Vauxhall Astra estate, unoccupied, driver's door open. Possible missing walker. I am conducting a foot search along the trail."
"Received, Police 6. Advise when clear."
Owen clipped the radio back to his vest and started towards the trailhead. Nia caught his arm.
"Don't."
He stopped. His gaze dropped to her hand on his vest, then rose to her face.
"Ms Morgan, I appreciate the concern, but I have a job to do."
"Something is wrong with that tunnel."
"Then I'll find out what."
"Owen."
He pulled free, gently but firmly.
"Stay here if you prefer. I'll be back in ten minutes."
He walked towards the trail. Nia looked at me, and I looked back at her.
We followed.
Owen heard us coming and glanced over his shoulder, but did not tell us to remain behind. Perhaps he was grateful for the company. Perhaps he simply did not care.
The path felt different the second time. Colder. The trees seemed closer together.
We reached the tunnel entrance. Owen stopped and swept his torch from left to right across the interior. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness. The stone arch looked blacker than before.
"Hello?" he called.
His voice echoed into the tunnel.
"South Wales Police. If you're inside, call out."
Nothing answered.
He stepped through the entrance. Nia and I followed, our head torches casting pale cones into the dark.
About nine metres inside, Owen stopped.
"Can you hear that?" he asked.
I listened. Dripping water. Our breathing. Nothing more.
"Hear what?" Nia asked.
Owen tilted his head.
"Someone talking."
I could not hear it.
"Behind you," he said, looking past me. "Very quiet. Sounds as if they're saying a name."
Nia's name. I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
"They're saying Nia."
She went rigid beside me.
My mobile buzzed in my pocket. I took it out.
The screen showed no service, but an incoming call filled the display.
Nia Morgan.
I looked at Nia, standing less than a metre away. She was not holding her phone. She was staring at mine.
"Don't answer it," she said.
Owen's torch beam began to drift left, slowly, as though something were drawing it away.
"Owen," I said.
He did not respond. The light continued moving, illuminating the curve of the wall and then the darkness beyond. I stepped forwards and grabbed the back of his vest.
"We're leaving."
I pulled. Owen did not move. It was not as though he were resisting me. He felt fixed to the ground, roughly 90 kilograms of dead weight that would not shift.
I pulled harder. His body swayed, but his boots remained planted.
"Owen."
My mobile kept buzzing.
Nia's phone began to vibrate in her pocket. Then Owen's radio crackled and his mobile started buzzing too.
I closed my eyes.
The tunnel filled with sound.
Breathing, close and far too loud. It came from every direction, shallow, quick and layered, like a dozen people crowded around us. Something pressed against my back and shoulder. The air thickened.
I opened my eyes, hurled my phone to the ground and stamped on it. The screen cracked. I stamped again, and the buzzing stopped.
Nia snatched out her phone and smashed it against the wall. The casing split apart, silencing it.
I tore Owen's phone from his belt, threw it down and stamped until it shattered.
The layered breathing ceased.
Owen drew in a sharp breath as though he had just surfaced from deep water. His eyes focused.
"What...?"
The darkness moved.
It did not move like a shadow. It folded forwards towards us.
Owen was there.
Then he was not.
There was no sound and no flash. He simply vanished. His torch struck the ground and rolled, its beam revolving across the wet stone.
Something pulled at me. Not at my arm or my chest, but deeper, like a hook lodged behind my ribs, dragging me towards the space where Owen had stood.
Nia locked a hand around my wrist and yanked hard. I stumbled backwards, and the pull broke.
She dragged me towards the entrance. Then we were both running.
We burst from the tunnel, raced along the path and did not stop until we reached the ambulance.
Nia shoved me into the passenger seat and slammed the door. She was behind the wheel two seconds later. The engine started, the ambulance reversed and gravel sprayed across the lay-by.
She swung us on to the A4107 and accelerated hard.
I looked back. Owen's police vehicle remained in the lay-by, its blue light bar flashing. The Astra stood beside it. The tunnel entrance was barely visible among the trees.
There was no sign of Owen.
Nia did not slow until we were about eight kilometres away. Then she seized the radio.
"Ambulance 12 to control."
Static answered.
"Ambulance 12 to control, emergency traffic."
Rhys came through. "Go ahead, Ambulance 12."
"We need the duty supervisor and operations manager at Cwm Taf Ambulance Station immediately. We have a missing police officer."
A pause followed.
"Say again, Ambulance 12."
"Police 6 is missing. Last seen inside Cwm Darran Tunnel. We need a search operation and command staff now."
"Received, Ambulance 12. Resources are being assigned. Return to station."
Nia drove.
I sat with my hands shaking, my chest tight and the image of Owen's disappearance burned into my mind.
We reached Cwm Taf Ambulance Station at 00:20. Gareth Price's ageing Land Rover was already in the car park. So was Sian Davies's saloon car.
Gareth met us at the ambulance bay. Sian stood behind him with a tablet in her hands.
"Report," Gareth said.
Nia told him everything: the call, the tunnel, the phones and Owen entering the darkness and vanishing. Gareth's expression remained neutral throughout. When she had finished, he looked at me.
"Jamie?"
"That's what happened," I said.
Sian tapped her tablet.
"We've retrieved the control recordings. Do you want to hear them?"
We went inside. Sian placed the tablet on a desk and played the first recording.
My voice came through its speaker, calm and professional.
"Ambulance 12 to control, requesting South Wales Police attendance at the Cwm Darran Tunnel lay-by off the A4107 for a possible serious incident."
Rhys answered, "Received, Ambulance 12. Police 6 responding."
My voice returned.
"Thank you. Casualty is approximately 400 metres along the trail, inside the tunnel entrance. Advise the responding officer to stage outside."
I had never said any of it.
Sian played another recording.
This time Nia's voice came from the tablet.
"Control, Ambulance 12 is on scene. Confirming casualty contact. Continuing assessment."
Nia shook her head.
"I didn't..."
"I know," Sian said.
She stopped the recording.
"There are four separate transmissions, two in each of your voices. The timestamps coincide with periods when you say you were approaching the tunnel, inside it or standing in the lay-by."
Gareth looked at me.
"Where is your phone?"
"I smashed it."
"You did what?"
"It was receiving a call from Nia's phone when there was no service. I smashed it to make it stop."
"And Owen Hughes's phone?"
"I smashed that too."
Gareth closed his eyes briefly, then opened them.
"Nia?"
"I did the same with mine," she said.
Sian entered a note on her tablet.
"We'll need full written statements from both of you. A detailed timeline and every action you took."
By the time we finished, it was nearly 03:00. Gareth sent us home and told us we were removed from duty until further notice.
I drove back to my flat and sat in my car in the car park for twenty minutes before going inside.
Fragments of my phone remained in my fleece pocket. I took them out. The screen was cracked into a spider's web. The case had split and the battery was half dislodged.
I should have thrown the pieces away. Instead, I put them in my desk drawer.
I pulled the battery out completely and placed it beside the remains of the phone. Then I closed the drawer.
I did not sleep.
At 06:00, the rarely used landline in my flat rang. It was Gareth.
"A formal search began at 05:00," he said. "South Wales Police are leading it. They want to interview you at 09:00 at divisional headquarters, third floor."
"All right."
"Sian and I will be there. Don't speculate. Answer what they ask and stick to the facts."
"Understood."
He rang off.
I arrived at the South Wales Police divisional headquarters at 08:50. Gareth and Sian were already waiting in the foyer. So was Nia.
She looked as though she had not slept either.
A woman in a sergeant's uniform came to meet us. She was tall, with dark hair drawn into a tight ponytail and steel-blue eyes.
"I'm Sergeant Lowri Bennett. I'm co-ordinating the search for Police Constable Owen Hughes."
She took us to a conference room and interviewed us separately. She asked for the full sequence again, pressing for precise times, Owen's words and everything we had seen.
When she asked about the mobiles, I told her that I had destroyed them.
"Why?" she asked.
"They wouldn't stop. I didn't know what else to do."
She made a note.
"We'll need every fragment you still have."
"They're at my flat."
"We'll send an officer to collect them."
The interview lasted ninety minutes. When it ended, Sergeant Bennett walked me out.
"If you remember anything else, ring me directly."
She handed me a card. I took it.
A South Wales Police officer came to my flat that afternoon. I removed the drawer containing the phone fragments and gave it to him. He logged each item, asked me to sign a property form, returned the empty drawer and left.
That night, I was sitting on the sofa when I heard a buzz from my desk.
I opened the drawer.
It was empty. The officer had taken everything.
The buzzing came again, from inside the empty drawer.
I slammed it shut.
The sound stopped.
I never opened that drawer again.
Nia resigned four days later. She submitted a typed letter and gave two weeks' notice.
Gareth tried to persuade her to reconsider. She said she was moving to Swansea to stay with family.
I saw her once more before she left. She was in the station car park, clearing out her locker.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"No," she said. "You?"
"No."
She placed a box in the boot of her car.
"They're still searching."
"I know."
"They won't find him."
I did not argue.
She got into the car and lowered the window.
"Jamie, don't go back there."
"I won't."
She studied me for a long moment, then drove away.
I requested a transfer to day shifts. It was approved a week later.
I had a new rota and new routes, mostly along the A470 through the northern sector. I avoided the A4107 whenever I could. When I could not, I drove past the Cwm Darran Tunnel lay-by without looking towards it.
My replacement phone worked normally, except that sometimes, in places where there was no service, its screen would light up.
There would be no call and no notification. Only the screen, glowing white.
I no longer answer calls in areas without a signal, and I keep the phone on silent, just in case.