Aposiopesis in Aberystwyth

“I can’t say it,” I said, pointing to road signs, as Detective Chief Inspector David Wells drove us through the Welsh countryside. 

I had just crossed the Irish Sea on the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead. David had come to escort me south to the station in Aberystwyth where he worked for the Heddlu Dyfed–Powys, hethlee duhved pows, the central Wales police force. He had sent for me from across the seas, in hopes I could help him solve a tricky mystery. 

Aberystwyth. I could say that. Aburristwith. But I could not begin to imagine how to say the places we passed, like Llanfihangel-y-Creuddyn. Or Blaenplwyf, a village in Ceredigion and a word that looked like it sounded like a sneeze. 

We drove through tidy villages, Bryngwran, Gwalchmai, Llangristiolus, Gaerwen, Trawsfynydd, Ganllwyd, Pwllgwyngyll and Penrhyndeudraeth. Each township had stone walls and stone buildings with green hedgerows and old Methodist churches. 

I tried to say the names. It wasn’t pretty. 

David laughed. He spoke Welsh fluently. Many found the Irish language difficult, but Welsh seemed created to prevent English speakers from understanding. Like wading through a shrub of thorns. There were roses at the end, once you managed to find your way through the words and emerge a bit worse for wear. 

“Cymru? You’ll never guess how it’s pronounced.” 

“Kim roo? Simroo?”

“Try Cumree.” 

Cymru, David explained, is the Welsh name for Wales, which comes from the plural of Cymro, a Welsh person. 

I suggested that if Cymru is pronounced Cumree, then Cymro must be pronounced Cumrow, right? 

Wrong. It’s Simrow. 

And so went the car-ride. We deftly avoided discussing more pressing topics, about the case, and about so much left hanging heavily in the air. 

Instead I listened to David talk about words and his native tongue. Men David’s age took delicious pleasure in rolling their exaggerated “r’s” when they spoke, lifting the ends of their sentences with flair. Welsh is a musical language, with people speaking to each other in sing-song lilts. Even speaking English, they sometimes needed subtitles. It seemed purposeful, as if Welsh idioms were giving a finger to English speakers, and I was here for it. 

Alas, I was also here to help David figure out a case he’d been poring over. And not just to drive through the country listening to his musical voice. I was flattered he’d asked. But then he explained I was the only one who had responded to his letters.

We were old friends and he had signed his letter to me, “Llawer o gariad oddi, wrth Dayfdd.” Lots of love from David. In Irish David was Daithi. In Welsh, Dayfdd. My name in Welsh was Gwenhyfar. Gwen hui war. Guinevere. I liked the sound of that. When in a good mood, it’s what he called me. 

And that’s how he got me to come. David’s occasional good moods and warmth was always intriguing. But perhaps he knew that. I looked over at him, his thick black hair brushed back as if he ran his fingers through it often. He was growing handsomer with age.

We arrived at the police station, perched rather austerely between the river Afon Rheidol and the train station, not far from the beach. Aberystwyth was a coastal university city. When it wasn’t raining you could hear seagulls calling. But not today. 

David held an umbrella for me as we walked from the car. It had begun to pour buckets, transforming the mood of what had been a sunny, windy day. 

“Mae hi'n bwrw hen cyllyll a ffyrc,” he said matter of factly and paused to make eye contact as he held the door open. “It’s raining knives and forks.”

“Indeed.” I followed him in and was immediately lost in the noise of the workplace. 

He hurried me to a desk by a window. The station sounded like a cacophony of birds chirping various accents. David spoke slowly, adding unpredictable pauses in the middle of words. Others were guttural, some so thick they sounded continental. I understood little. 

But I could tell he wanted to keep the crew away from me. My presence would not be exactly welcomed by some of the officers.

I knew what I was there to do and the case wasn’t new to me. The unsolved mystery had garnered attention abroad. Two world-famous cyclists had been found dead under mysterious circumstances. And months later, Welsh police seemed no nearer to solving the case. I was not the first expert brought over. My presence meant they’d hit a wall. 

David seemed taller in the station, more serious. He was back to being DCI Wells and his laughter on the drive over was gone. I felt out of place. In the car and on the windy ferry full of anticipation, I’d felt soft and open in my bohemian scarf and skirt, artfully chosen. I’d checked my scented oils, adjusted my hair. David’s presence felt warm. Now it felt commanding. Here, I was a wilted flower in a faceless building with yellowed walls, a somber mood. But I was here to do a job after all.

He showed me an array of photos and objects in small bags and asked me not to touch them. To get me up to speed, he spoke quietly and pulled open a map with red circles marking a perimeter.

“Now there’s no point going to the site itself while it’s lashing out,” he explained. “But we can look at what we have together and see where we are now.” I nodded, only half listening. 

“The bodies were found here?” I asked, pointing to the screen and knowing the answer already. 

“They were.”

I had studied the case file for hours on the ferry and had a good sense of the details. Everything but the pronunciation of place names. 

“I’ll need to touch the bodies,” I said, knowing how he would react and saying it anyway. 

“OH FOR GOD’S SAKE GWINNIE!” The burst of noise was shocking, unwelcome and pedestrian. David rubbed at his temples and exhaled heavily through his nose. “Mae’n ddrwg gen i” he muttered. Mine thrrroog gan ee. “Sorry,” he said.

“Detective Chief Inspector, will you stop trying to teach me Welsh please?”

“Never,” he grinned. The tension was broken once more. He sighed and a slight smile appeared on his face. He looked tired in a way I hadn’t noticed. And I’d seen him look tired before.

“Listen, this is for now not a murder inquiry. We’ve had nearly every expert in the country examine the bodies in more ways than you can bury a sow.” 

He leaned on the desk and rested his foot on an open drawer. “Now. They’ve been buried. Alright? Just so. Don’t bring the coroner in and put a wasp’s nest on your head.” 

He changed his tone and tried again. “Tell me what you see in the reports. The evidence.”

“David,” I started.

“You have their teeth,” he pointed. 

I looked at the bag he was pointing to on the table and lost my train of thought. Teeth told stories. I lay the bag flat in my hand and stared. 

“Tell me what you were going to say,” he insisted.

“I can’t!” I said. “You won’t understand.”

He continued, playing the role of the detective. “You were going to say you need to see the bodies. You know that’s not why I brought you here.” 

I ignored him and ran the teeth under the light and traced their grooves with my fingers through the plastic bag. I could smell the musk of his cologne and I ignored that too. “I’m taking them out.” I said. “And that wasn’t what I was going to say.” 

He watched me as I opened the bag and moved the chair to the window to get better light. The broken human teeth poured into my hand and I rolled them gently between two fingers, like dice. 

The voices in the office faded to my ears. It was coming now. The quieting. I closed my hands lightly with the teeth inside. I listened. I closed my eyes. At first I saw only press photos of the incident. Bodies under tarps. Two bicycles at strange angles by the side of the road. 

The bicycles were across from each other and twisted as if they’d been thrown. What had people scratching their heads was the cyclists weren’t riding together. They were going opposite directions. CC tv footage showed this, cameras on main streets they’d crossed. The footage had been checked exhaustively. No sledgehammer wielding pedestrians, no cars driving away with dents. No sign of the cyclists riding together. 

They were crossing paths, two world famous cyclists in a university town in coastal Wales. Certainly they knew of each other, but no real connection could be found. The coincidence of their simultaneous visits to Wales, and their morning rides, appeared to be just that. 

But what would have stopped the cyclists on the same road, across the street from each other, going opposite directions and why were the bicycles thrown? There were no skid marks, no tire tracks, no evidence of an automobile accident. 

Just the teeth. Something or someone has broken out several of each rider’s teeth. 

David interrupted my thoughts with two mugs of tea and stretched out his arm in my direction. “Still off the coffee I presume?”

“Can’t stand the taste of it anymore,” I said, accepting the mug. “It yellows my teeth. Shall I read your leaves?” I joked. 

He smiled. “I’m not sure I want my future known. Ah well, tea is the drink, anyway. Add a bit of whisky and it will warm the coldest of hearts.”

“Can’t do whisky either,” I said, drifting back to my thoughts. I moved the cyclists’ teeth to one hand and swallowed a gulp of tea. 

David looked away. He wasn’t comfortable with me handling evidence this way, no gloves, no microscope. But he sent for me and he knew it had to be done. Still, he hated every moment of the way I worked. Not enough to hate my visit, I hoped.

The official cause of death had been put down as cardiac arrest. But it wasn’t really clear. Two heart attacks, at the same time on the same street? And each had teeth missing, knocked out. 

The teeth were found on the small, quiet side road, among the gravel. This part was held back by the heddlu and kept out of the press. This is why he had wanted me to come. This is why he called for me. The teeth. 

I pushed away the newspaper images in my head and the information in case files, and swiped everything else away from my mind. I heard voices, in sing-song lilts, but not in the office. There, on the road that day. I listened. 

Two voices, pleasant at first. Greeting, laughing almost. Friendly. 

“Two voices,” I said.

“What? Who? The cyclists?”

“They’re speaking in Welsh. I can’t … I don’t understand.” 

David unrolled his sleeves. “The cyclists weren’t Welsh,” he said flatly. 

“It’s friendly. Like a greeting. Sut mae.”

“Hello, how’s it going?” he translated. 

I closed my eyes now and sat still. David didn’t rush me. But I could hear him breathing. I tuned him out. Listening. Seagulls. 

“Was it sunny that day?” I asked with my eyes closed.

“It was. Middling so. Yes.”

“There’s the voices.” I said. 

“I see.” He cleared his throat. “And?”

“Welsh.” I said. 

David sighed. “Ack never. And here we are in Wales, where they’d be speaking Welsh. What else?”

“They sound different now.”

“Yes, well, brilliant. It was a partly cloudy day and there were voices.”

“David, be quiet. Stop chopsing.” I used one of his least favorite Welsh slang words. I was irritated. 

“Dear one,” he sighed. “I need to close this case yesterday, using whatever means necessary. Now, bringing you over was the last of it.”

I groaned with my eyes closed. 

“I don’t mind, it’s never a chore to see you,” he smiled. “But what could anyone expect to learn from teeth? If we have a short meal down the road, we can make the late afternoon ferry back to Dublin, no harm no foul.” He cleared his throat. 

“Mighty hungry.” More softly, “Unless, that is, you wanted to stay over...”

His sentence hung in the air. It was almost sweet, in its awkwardness, if I wasn’t holding human teeth in my hand. 

David broke the pause. “At the very least I’ve gotten to teach you more of the beautiful language.” He spent an unreasonable time with his mouth emphasizing the l in language. 

“How long have we known each other? You called me over, unconvinced by what I do?”

He grimaced and I felt his warm breath as he leaned closer to my face.

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked quietly.

His hand found its way to my knee as he turned toward me. I opened my eyes. He smiled. 

“Continue,” he gestured. “Please.” But he still seemed unconvinced, as if I was making up a fairytale. “Welsh voices on a road in Aberystwyth.”

Putting his sarcasm aside, I returned to the teeth. Voices arising from mouths long gone. 

“Was anything else found by the side of the road? What was in their system?” I asked. 

“Toxicology showed nothing interesting. Light breakfast and tea for one. Coffee for the other.”

“They had it with them.” 

“Had what with who?”

“Their coffee. David.” I paused. It was coming together but I couldn’t quite hear it yet. “Who reported the bodies?”

“Two witnesses, aul fellas on a walk.”

“They were the Welsh voices I heard.”

David sighed. “They were in the report, yes.”

“No listen, I heard their voices at the same time as the cyclists.”

He flipped through his witness statement files. “They were out for their morning walk, had stopped for takeaway coffee and came across the bodies.”

“And the bodies? They were missing teeth, what other injuries? Clavicle?”

“Clavicle, let me see,” he flipped through papers.

“I have a friend who used to cycle. She told me once when her husband was healthier they had both broken their clavicles on a ride and spent a long time in hospital together.”

“Yes, broken clavicles,” David said, reading the page. 

“Where are the train tracks?” 

He pointed on the map and I followed his finger from the tracks to the gravel lane where the incident occurred. 

“I know what happened.”

“From holding teeth?” David was incredulous. 

“From listening. Feeling the voices in objects. We are all energy and matter, and leave stories in our very bones.”

David was in detective mode, massaging this brow again. But he said, “alright, let’s hear it.”

“The cyclists go for a morning ride. Separately. Aberystwyth is a small place. I’m not surprised they crossed paths.”

David leaned back in his chair and motioned for me to continue.

“It’s wetter than mud and windy most of the time would you agree?”

“Alright.”

“One thing I do know about cyclists is that what presents as cardiac events is sometimes later discovered to be primary injuries.”

“Such as? The teeth?”

“The teeth came out when they crashed.”

“Crashed what? There were no cars in sight and they had a wide berth to pass.”

“They crashed. Each other.”

“But their bicycles?”

“Let’s say they see they’re riding along. This is a noisy area because of the train. They swerve to avoid something. And crash.”

“What were they avoiding?”

“They are shaken, disoriented, lost some teeth. But other than that, they can walk. They start going their separate ways. But they’re not okay.”

“Heart attack. Both of them?”

“Neither of them. With that force, often riders will have clavicle damage. With the adrenaline, some have been known to get back on their bikes and collapse later, appearing to have a cardiac arrest.”

“Hard to imagine,” David said.

“They’re in shock. But it’s due to cervical cord injuries related to broken clavicles. Their spine, David.”

He stood and paced near the window. “What caused the crash?”

“It wasn’t a murderer on the loose striking down cyclists.”

“Do tell,” he instructed.

“Simplest thing on a Welsh morning. Two old men, hard of hearing, drinking coffee, gabbing to their heart’s content, standing in the lane, oblivious to anyone or anything else in the world around them as a train passes and cyclist cries go unheard.”

He shook his head in his belief. “Oh come now. I don’t understand,” he said. 

“Those aul fellas didn’t even see or hear the crash. They only noticed the collapsed bodies later. Did the men say what they were talking about?”

“I can’t say,” David shook his head. 

“You don’t really believe me do you?”

He said nothing.

I stood up to collect my things. “Well, you have your answer then. Take me back to the ferry?”

“You won’t stay?”

I shook my head. 

The drive through the country was quiet this time as the sky poured knives and forks. Only the windshield wipers spoke their rhythmic language. I felt keenly aware of David’s hand on his own leg as he drove. I considered asking him to pull over. But I said nothing. He looked over at me wistfully once, and said nothing.

When we arrived, David got out first and opened my door. He forced a polite smile. But not with his eyes.

“Thanks for coming.”

“Of course,” I said politely.

We stood facing each other. 

I broke the silence. “You have your way of listening and I have mine!” I blurted out. 

“I know,” he replied. “It all seems so …” But he had run out of road and found no language to share.

I nodded and turned away. 

David idled the car as I walked toward the ferry. Seagulls cried out amidst the warming colors of a fading day. I heard the car fade away into the distance as David returned to Aberystwyth.