From Aberystwyth with Love (32 page)

‘What became of Gethsemane?’

‘I do not know. In the fifties, after they started emptying the camps, there were many people moving to and fro across our vast land; so many fates and tragedies. Who knows where she ended up? She may be dead but there is no reason to suppose it. I like to think she is still alive, that she journeyed along the same railway line to Vladivostok that her father took before her and that somewhere along the way, perhaps some insignificant wayside halt, she got off the train. Perhaps there she found a man and a home and had children of her own; perhaps there she found that most ardently coveted of treasures, human felicity.’

‘How did Natasha know I was travelling on the Orient Express with the photo?’

‘Mooncalf told us, of course. There is a substantial reward available for information leading to the acquisition of these photos. We do a lot of business with Mr Mooncalf. He is a great man.’

‘So people keep telling me. Why didn’t he try and steal it from me in Aberystwyth?’

‘Mr Mooncalf is an honest man, not a common thief!’

‘Why not simply wait until I arrived in Hughesovka and arrest me?’

Pyotr looked apologetic. ‘Call it bureaucratic inertia, if you like. These things have always been arranged this way. Reform is long overdue but who wants to throw thousands of honey-trappers out of work?’

Calamity took me into the gallery and showed me the exhibits. The room occupied the height of three ordinary floors and was open to the skylights high in the ceiling. It was like the nave of a vast cathedral, one in which the false god of Aberystwyth had been worshipped for a while before the people forsook the old ways. Most of the hall was in darkness, but occasional shafts of dawn light illuminated areas like sunlit clearings in a dark wood. Calamity led me to a tableau representing, according to the dusty sign, a typical Welsh serf’s dwelling from the 1950s. There was a hearthside and a false roof of low timbers. Two rocking chairs were drawn up before the fireside. There were brass fire-irons, a soot-blackened kettle and teapot complete with tea cosy. Next to the fireside was a pen for the livestock which, it was said, wintered in the same quarters. Another tableau entitled ‘Mysticism and Superstition’ detailed, through life-size waxwork figures, the three-way tug of love for the serf’s soul between the Church, the spiritualist and the dispenser of opiate for the masses in cornets, the ice-cream vendor. Next to this was a stack of framed photos recording the historic bank holiday food riots. Starving peasants dressed as Teddy boys fought with members of the local constabulary, using deckchairs as weapons. Calamity led me to a traditional Welsh dresser with a large cupboard.

‘This is the dresser that Gethsemane stowed away in.’

‘How do you know?’

‘They found out when she went to the remote-viewing school.’

‘Do we know who it belonged to?’

She looked at me with excitement gleaming in her eyes. ‘Yes.’ She opened a drawer and took out a photo. ‘Mrs Mochdre,’ said Calamity. ‘It was her Welsh dresser.’ I turned my gaze from the picture and looked at Calamity and we stood in silence, both host to a slight tingling sensation that signalled the end of a long treasure hunt. ‘Her own sister,’ she added.

I made a clicking sound in my throat that signified bafflement at the cabbalistic ways of fate. I put the photo under my arm. ‘I guess we are allowed to keep it.’

Calamity carried on walking down the aisle with me following. The golden light grew stronger, mysterious objects glittered, it was as if we were walking into the belly of a mountain towards a dragon’s treasure. We reached the end of the aisle and entered a golden cavern containing a reconstruction of the Pier amusement arcade from the late 1950s. A shaft of light from a skylight above us danced on the polished chrome and shiny glass of the machines. There was a laughing policeman, a mechanical gypsy fortune-teller and a machine for recording your own voice and cutting a vinyl disc. Next to that was a bingo console. Ghostly voices echoed down the years. I recited, ‘Eyes down, look in . . . first on the red, it’s key of the door two and one, twenty-one. Next up it’s on the blue, droopy drawers or all the fours, forty-four! Remember, ladies and gentlemen, any row along the top or down the sides, or from corner to corner. Next up it’s on the white, ooh! Never been kissed, it’s sweet sixteen, one and six, sixteen. Following that, Kelly’s eye all on its own, number one!’

‘Bingo!’ shouted Calamity.

I smiled. ‘Sorry, chum, the authorities don’t seem to have acquired the prizes. No Roy Rogers hat for you.’

‘No, I mean bingo! As in, bingo!’

‘I know, but  . . .’

‘No, not bingo I’ve won a prize, but bingo! As in eureka!’

‘I don’t follow.’

Calamity put her hands on my forearm as if to make sure I was listening and then said slowly, ‘I’ve worked out the aural signature on the séance tape.’

‘You have?’

She twisted and pointed at the machine for cutting your own vinyl record. ‘Mrs Mochdre made a recording on that. Remember the maniacal laughter we heard in the background? It’s the laughing policeman. The ghoulish squeals are the seagulls. And the bit we thought was French,
quelle ee
something? It’s Kelly’s eye, the bingo call. On the morning before Gethsemane disappeared Mrs Mochdre took her to Aberystwyth to buy a birthday present for her mum. They could have gone to the Pier and made a recording. Then Mrs Mochdre kept it and played it secretly the following year at a séance.’

‘Or maybe she didn’t really play it at the séance, maybe there wasn’t a séance, she just made it up.’

‘That’s right. And remember Eeyore saying that he arrested Mrs Mochdre once for smashing up the new gypsy fortune-teller? Look! This one has been repaired.’ I looked and beheld. Calamity was right: the gypsy’s face had dents in it. Up in the sky above the museum a cloud moved, the shaft of light, refracted by the cloud, grew suddenly stronger. It illuminated Calamity’s face and made her glow like the icon of a saint. ‘It’s all here!’ she said with breathless excitement. ‘It all fits. Mrs Mochdre was jealous of her sister marrying the balloon-folder. Maybe she made the recording and then when Gethsemane disappeared kept hold of it. The following year she sends it to spite her.’

‘I can’t believe she would put Gethsemane in the cupboard and send her off to Hughesovka.’

‘It’s her cupboard.’

‘That doesn’t prove it was her who did it.’

‘No.’

‘Anyone could have done it.’

‘Yes, or she could just have been hiding in the dresser. All the same, it all points to Mrs Mochdre.’

‘It’s intriguing. But even if it is true, even if she made the séance recording, I don’t see how we could prove any of it.’

‘She’ll confess,’ said Calamity with quiet confidence.

‘You think so? Mrs Mochdre doesn’t strike me as the sort of shrinking violet who breaks easily, even if Llunos is doing the interview.’

‘I know a way to make her confess. We’ll make her confront her accuser.’

‘Who’s her accuser?’

Calamity pointed at the mechanical gypsy fortune-teller. ‘Remember that technique I told you about, the one the Feds use, called reverse horoscopy?’ She looked at my face and mistook slight bafflement for a rebuke and hurried through her sentence as if expecting me to cut her off before the end. ‘I’ve been thinking about superseding the paradigm and all that . . .’ She let the words trail off. ‘I guess you think we’ve heard quite enough about all that, right?’

‘No, go on and tell me what you have in mind.’

Still looking unsure, she carried on. ‘Why would Mrs Mochdre attack the mechanical fortune-teller with a hammer?’

‘Because she objected to its tone of voice, or thought Satan was speaking to her or something.’

‘What if the fortune-teller told her she would one day go to prison for what she did to Gethsemane?’

‘But how could a mechanical fortune-teller do that?’

‘It couldn’t, but Mrs Mochdre could have imagined it. We know she complained about Satan talking to her all the time. That means she was hearing voices, so just think if Gethsemane really was on her conscience and she felt guilty and then . . . what’s it called when . . . when  . . .’

‘Projection, it’s called projection or transference or something. She was racked with guilt and paranoia and heard the fortune-teller accusing her of a terrible crime and predicting a lifetime behind bars for it. So Mrs Mochdre shuts Gypsy Rosie Lee up with a hammer.’

Calamity looked at me with uncertainty in her eyes. Her face fell. ‘It’s a bit silly, really, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But don’t let that stop you. Don’t forget we are superseding the paradigm.’

‘We need to get her in an interview room with the mechanical gypsy and decorate the place to pretend the year is 1955. Then we’ll tell her it is the day before Gethsemane went missing and we are going to ask the gypsy fortune-teller for Mrs Mochdre’s fortune for the next day. Llunos can arrange it.’ Her brow darkened as a thought occurred to her. ‘Llunos will never buy it, will he?’

I grinned with sheer joy at Calamity’s crazy scheme. ‘That has to be the nuttiest crime-fighting idea anyone has ever had in the history of detectives. That doesn’t just supersede the paradigm it melts it down and turns it into a brass chamber pot. Llunos will love it. Llunos will absolutely love it.’

On the way out I returned to the dresser in which Gethsemane had stowed away and began to close the drawer that had been left open. I slid it shut, stopped and pulled it open again. The drawer was lined with a copy of the
Cambrian News
. I took it out. The front page was carrying a story about a bank holiday riot, a fight between Teddy boys and local police. The main photo was a dramatic close-up of a young hoodlum punching a policeman on the jaw. It was the same edition Calamity had retrieved from the archive in Aberystwyth, the one that had been censored by having the photo removed. Suddenly I knew who had been responsible for the act of censorship. I recognised the young man punching the cop. It was a long time ago, and he had changed a lot with the long passage of time; he had grown from an angry young man into a gentle and mellow old man who shuffled slowly along the Prom. It was my dad, Eeyore.

Chapter 23

Llunos was wearing ‘drapes’, velvet collar and drainpipe trousers, and strutted up and down the interview room; his hair was carefully sculpted into a quiff at the front and combed into a duck’s arse at the back. From the expression on his face it was evidently the most fun he had ever had in an interrogation. I didn’t know, but suspected he had missed the Teddy boy phenomenon first time round, not because he was too old or too young, but simply because it was inconceivable that his father would have allowed him so much as a feather of a duck’s arse and almost certainly regarded rock’n’roll as moral poison. I read the copy of the
Cambrian News
from 1955 carrying the story of a girl from Rhyl who had been hanged at Holloway prison. Just another girl from Rhyl who had a bagful of troubles and ended up on the end of a rope. It could happen to anyone.

In a corner of the room a Wurlitzer played ‘Rock around the Clock’ and you could tell this was the type of music that Llunos liked. Mooncalf had done us proud. I attributed his willingness to help to the expression on his face when I walked in with Calamity; it was the expression of a man who had not been expecting to see her back. We made a deal: I would undertake the difficult task of not throwing him out of the third floor window if he would get hold of the ingredients of a 1950s party for us; nothing too fancy, just enough to fool a mechanical gypsy fortune-teller. In the space of a few days he managed to dig up the
On the Waterfront
cinema poster; the jukebox and its precious cargo of vintage vinyl; he found the drapes and blue suede shoes that Llunos and I were wearing, and all in the right sizes. He gave us the steam radio and rigged it up with a tape recorder to relay the sad news of Einstein’s death and the stirring story of Rosa Parks in Montgomery refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. This was Montgomery, Alabama, not the one between Welshpool and Shrewsbury. There were seven or eight months separating those two events in 1955 but something told me Mrs Mochdre was no history teacher. The mechanical Gypsy Rosie Lee had been given to us by Pyotr along with the complimentary tickets on Air Hughesovka Flight 003 that had landed at Aberporth military base a couple of days before.

Calamity was outside watching through the two-way mirror as we reversed the horoscope and superseded the paradigm in ways the writers for
Gumshoe
magazine could never have imagined. She had spent the past two days making a concerted attempt to keep the smug expression off her face. It was a very mature performance and did her credit, but she was fighting a losing battle. It was good to see. I no longer had any worries about Calamity’s crisis of confidence.