The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still (24 page)

I ignored the turning to Borth this time and headed directly across the flat marshland towards Furnace and Ynys Greigiog. But you can never quite elude the calling sea. Away to my left, far but unmistakable, a long, thin line of silver sparkled on the horizon; forever glittering, forever restless.

Farmer Pugh was no longer curled up in a ball. He answered the door himself; he was unshaven and he looked tired, but otherwise seemed pretty normal. He was wearing his glasses too and looked at me with suspicion and without recognition.

‘Yes? I’m not talking to the press.’

‘I’m not the press. They’ll be here tomorrow if you don’t talk to me.’

‘Cops?’

‘They’ll be here this afternoon. I’m private, I don’t like cops and they don’t have to know, that’s up to you. I’m here to talk to you about the smell coming from the cellar in your old house. I haven’t got much time and I need some information fast and you’ve got it. If you give it to me, nothing happens. If you don’t we start digging up the concrete. I suggest you invite me in.’

He pulled the door open and I walked in.

‘Shall I put the kettle on?’

‘Not unless you can’t go five minutes without a cup of tea. I want to know what went on in the hypnotism session with Mrs Bwlchgwallter.’

‘But I don’t know, I . . .’

‘I know the story; you were found curled up in a ball gurgling like a little girl. You can’t remember a thing. But I’m not buying it. I’m here to talk about your brother Rhys, whose head you smashed in with a spade because you caught him messing around with your sister; buried him in the cellar. Killed the dog too with a house brick. I’m a compassionate man, I don’t see any reason any of this has to come out now, when it’s all too late to change anything. I can see you’ve grieved in your own way over it, I can see the life you have lived since that day has been punishment enough. We can let it all lie, let those dogs, both sleeping and the one with the head all mushy like a smashed-in boiled egg, sleep. But I don’t have to play it that way. It’s up to you.’

‘But, really, I have no idea what I said, really I don’t.’

‘You’d better start remembering quick, then.’

‘How can I do that?’

‘If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in gaol think of something.’

‘Please, I can’t remember.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Maybe it wasn’t your brother messing around with your sister, maybe it was you. Maybe he caught you and you had to silence him. Was that how it happened?’

‘No.’

‘I can find her and ask.’

‘You leave her out of this.’

‘I want to, really I do, but I need you to help me.’ I moved to the door.

‘Stop!’ His voice filled with anguish. ‘Stop, please, don’t tell my sister. Why don’t you ask Mrs Bwlchgwallter?’

‘Her memory isn’t so good these days.’

‘But the tape, she can play you the tape.’

‘There’s a tape?’

‘She recorded it. She brought one of those portable tape recorders . . . it was in her handbag.’

I scrutinised his face for a second or two and then decided to believe him.

I drove back to town and went to see Doc Digwyl. I found him sitting in a dressing gown shivering next to an unlit fire in the front room of his house on Laura Place. He was eating beans on toast and listening to a 78-rpm gramophone record of the
Merry Widow
. Apart from the cold, the room was not greatly changed since the last time I’d been there when Mrs Lewis the housekeeper had been still alive. And yet everything was different; it seemed as if the doctor’s life had imploded.

He stared past me, addressing his words to a fireless grate. ‘Thirty years Mrs Lewis served me,’ he said. ‘Ministered to my every need, nursed me in sickness, comforted me, was my solace through the dark times, and in all that time I never said a pleasant word to her. I thought I despised her for her silly ways, all that endless demented polishing, the gossiping and perpetual insistence on seeing the bright side of things.’ He snapped the fork down onto his plate with an air of pointless finality. ‘Now look at me.’

‘Do you think . . . is it possible that . . . that the mayor could have killed her?’

‘And why would he do such a thing?’

‘I don’t know, it’s just a suspicion . . . because she talked to me about that night in 1965 when the boys robbed the Coliseum cinema, when Iestyn Probert came round here with . . . with . . .’

‘With an alien?’

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know what it was. It was a boy in a strange silver suit.’

‘Preseli took him away. What happened after that?’

‘I don’t know, how should I?’

‘You must know. I need to know.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m an empiricist. I can only tell you of the things I have seen with my own eyes.’

‘You don’t always need to see something to know it. The truth isn’t like that. Truth is the wolf I have spent my life tracking.’ I stood up and walked to the mantelpiece to look at the photos. ‘You track with the heart, not the eyes. The eyes are easily deceived; easiest thing in the world to show something that isn’t true and make people believe it. The truth is more elusive, but sometimes you know when you are in its presence. The first time I came here I knew there was something wrong about all these pictures.’ I lined them up and arranged them, straightening some, moving others. There were no clues to indicate the chronological sequence; such clues had been carefully filtered out. But even so, they fell into two broad camps. In one group the woman was always shown too far away, so you couldn’t recognise her. ‘A man and woman fall in love, they plan to marry, but something goes wrong. She tries to walk out on him, but he doesn’t want her to. Perhaps she has found another. Sometimes, when men are in love, they love so much they would rather no one has their love if they cannot. She left the neighbourhood, or so it seemed. And so the neighbours’ tongues start wagging. In the meantime, the doctor helps the sheriff out with his own little difficulty. He agrees to keep quiet about the events of a strange night that some have called the Welsh Roswell. One good turn deserves another. So the following year the sheriff helps the doctor silence those wagging tongues. The missing fiancée returns for a week. There can be no doubt about it because the sheriff sees and speaks to her. But there’s one funny thing about it. The car.’ I placed two photos side by side. ‘It was the same number plate, but the wrong model car.’ I turned to look at him.

‘You can’t seriously be trying to blackmail me?’

‘Where is she?’

He made a noise that was part chuckle and part sneer. The sound a man makes when there is nothing left in the world that he cares about.

‘Tregaron Bog, where else? It’s the customary place, I believe, to store the mistakes of one’s youth. There’s a map in the sideboard somewhere. I’ll show you roughly where to look. I’ll even lend you the spade.’

‘I don’t feel like digging myself. Maybe I’ll just call the cops.’

‘The phone’s in the hall. Be my guest.’

‘You really want to spend the remainder of your life in prison?’

He sneered again. ‘Mr Knight, can’t you see? I’ve been in prison since the day she . . . died.’

It was getting on for 9.00 when I parked in Patriarch Street and walked down to the office. They said it was a rounder’s bat that he hit me with. It struck the back of my head, behind the ear. I fell forward, onto my knees. Another blow followed. The world began to spin, so now the night sky was beneath me, like the sea. I knelt, trying to rise, another blow fell, and a spot of blood dropped to the pavement where it spread out to form a starburst. I twisted round to hold up an arm in protection. Meici Jones stared down at me, his eyes bright and wide, like a frightened animal, and his teeth were clenched from the exertion. ‘Dirty double-crosser,’ he said.

He raised the arm holding the bat. I lay on the paving slab and noted details with the strange detachment that passengers in a car accident often report. The pavement was gritty and grimy, covered in spit and chewing gum and sweet wrappers.

‘Dirty double-crosser,’ he said again as the bat reached the acme of its swing.

‘Please, Meici,’ I said.

The slight clenching of his teeth indicated that his arm was about to fall.

A voice cried out in the night. ‘No!’ Miaow appeared from between the parked cars on the other side of the road. ‘No, leave him, please, leave him.’

‘Dirty double-crosser!’ The bat came down. A shot rang out followed by the xylophonic chime of the bat hitting asphalt. Meici clutched his shoulder with a hand that turned red with blood. He fell to his knees and then onto his face. Miaow stood transfixed, holding a smoking gun. I slipped into unconsciousness.

Chapter 14

I
opened
my eyes and stared up into the face of Sauerkopp holding an ice cream. He smiled. I closed my eyes and waited. I opened them. He was still there, sitting on a grey-blue hospital chair, next to a grey-blue bedside table.

‘Everything is grey-blue,’ I said.

‘They do it to be soothing on the eye,’ he said.

‘Blue and grey.’

‘Soothing, you see? Soooooooooothing.’

‘Yes, I feel calm.’

O fervent eyelids letting through

Those eyes the greenest of things blue

The bluest of things grey.

‘That’s lovely.’

‘Swinburne. A much under-appreciated poet if you ask me.’

‘You’re eating ice cream. You’re always eating ice cream.’

‘I like it. Do you want one?’

‘Not really. It’s nice here, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Such a shame you have to leave.’

‘Do they need the bed?’

‘No, but it might be a good idea for you to depart before they find out you are not Nathan Carolingus, which is the name we booked you in under, but Louie Knight, a small-time Aberystwyth shamus wanted for attempted murder.’

‘I didn’t attempt to kill anybody.’

‘No, Louie Knight did. He shot a man called Meici Jones. Nathan Carolingus was just an innocent bystander.’

‘How did Nathan get these bruises on the back of my head?’

‘Meici put up a brave struggle and defended himself stoutly using a rounders bat until Louie Knight pulled out the gun and shot him in the shoulder. He’s not on the critical list, but that was more due to luck than intent on the part of Louie. In the confusion Nathan Carolingus got hit by the bat.’

‘I know Louie Knight, he wouldn’t shoot anyone.’

‘Someone shot Meici, and he says it was Louie. He said Louie attacked him for no reason outside his office.’

‘Did they find the gun?’

‘Not yet. It’s probably in the river or somewhere. They usually are. Meici Jones works for the human cannonball –’

‘I know who Meici Jones is. Why did you kill Mrs Lewis?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Who did, then?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I think it was you. I think you like killing people.’

‘I’ve never killed anyone in my life, and if I had I certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed it.’ He stood up and removed his hat which had been hanging from my saline-drip dispenser. ‘If I were you, I’d walk out of this room filled with furniture which you rightly point out is predominantly blue-grey; turn left outside the door and take the lift, which is situated at the midpoint of the corridor. You press G and emerge on the ground floor some seconds later and turn left and then straight ahead, and in less than a minute you are outside feeling the warm sun on your pallid face.’

‘Then what?’

‘I don’t know; running might not be a bad plan. There’s a cleaner’s cubbyhole opposite the Gents, just before you get to the lift. There are some overalls in there. Take a clipboard, too. No one ever stops a man with a clipboard.’