The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still (28 page)

‘Sure, he never should have shot that Pinkerton, but it’s not like he wanted to. He did it because he probably couldn’t see any way out of things, and didn’t have enough brains in his head to figure one out. They were hiding away in some bolt-hole, surrounded; their discovery was a surprise, I think. I’m sure if he’d had a choice he wouldn’t have wanted to shoot that man. But people like Big Nose George Parrott never have a choice; they spend their lives in a corner with nowhere left to run, and the cards they hold are always twos and threes; it’s the first governors of Wyoming who get the picture cards. The names change but the story never does. In 1950 builders doing alterations to the Rawlins National Bank across the road from the gaol found the shoes in a barrel. That’s how it goes. People like that governor spend their lives walking all over the little guys. He just took it one stage further and made it literal.’

‘Big Nose George Parrott, eh?’

‘The thing about people like that first governor of Wyoming is they get all the breaks in life, sleep in a nice feather bed, go to the best schools, and it’s easy for them; I don’t mind that. It’s the automatic sense of entitlement that goes with it that I despise. The presumption that they get all those good things because they are special people, that they are better than others. As far as I can see, there is only one difference between that governor in his fancy waistcoat and Big Nose George Parrott. He was luckier. That governor stuck his head out of the womb in a nicer room.’ He turned to me and whispered, ‘Son, all you can do sometimes is try and wipe the smile off their faces.’

Miaow held the door ajar on a safety chain that stretched across the bridge of her nose, her face twisted in the scowl of the householder disturbed late at night. She was wearing striped men’s pyjamas: pink vertical bars sandwiching thinner lines of grey. There were three buttons on the jacket, the bottom one missing. Without the button the fabric parted, revealing the taut satin of her midriff. In the dim light it shone like antique amber.

‘I’m worn out,’ I said.

She put on a pair of spectacles and focused on my face.

‘You’re soaked through.’

I followed her in and sat at the Formica table. I placed my elbows on the tabletop and my head in my hands. Miaow slipped next to me and put her palms on my cheeks. Her hands were cool and soothing, like the hands of an alabaster saint. ‘Poor you,’ she whispered. I sat there and let myself be soothed. She moved her hands and pressed her head against mine. Her breathing took on the rhythm of the sea out in the darkness; the earth slowed, ceased its pointless celestial whirligig. She pressed her head closer, pulled tighter with her arms, but said nothing. Just breathed, like the ocean, with a hint of Jack Daniels.

‘I just want to sleep.’

‘You can.’

‘They’ll find me here.’

‘If they do, I’ll shoot them. I’ll make some cocoa.’ She stood up, moved over to the stove and began to boil milk. I went and stood next to her, slumped against the wall.

‘Where did you get the gun?’

‘It used to belong to my father.’

‘What did he need it for?’

She smiled. ‘He was an outlaw like you.’

‘What sort of outlaw?’

‘His name was Iestyn Probert.’

I looked at her in astonishment, mouth agape in the dark. ‘Well, I’ll be . . . all this time you . . . you’ve been . . . I don’t know what to say.’

‘I’m so sorry. I hated lying to you. I’m just a little kid, Louie. I don’t think I’d be strong enough to stand on that battlement.’

I took her face in my hands and kissed her. ‘You would, trust me.’

‘Iestyn spent a week on the run before they caught him. My mother hid him in her cottage. Nine months later I was born.’

‘And now you are looking for him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Even though they hanged him.’

‘A lot of people say he’s alive.’

She carried the two mugs of cocoa over to the table. I followed and sat down. She topped them up with Jack Daniels.

‘And you are here in Aber now because you think he will come back because of the flying-saucer reports?’

‘Yes. It’s worth trying, isn’t it? I want to see him. Wouldn’t you want to see your father?’

‘Yes, but –’

‘I’m sure he would come if he could.’

‘Do you know why Raspiwtin is here?’

‘He’s looking for Iestyn, too. He thinks I know where he is, so he watches me. But I don’t. He’s watching and waiting. What are you going to do now?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve run out of ideas.’

‘You need to rest.’

Stupefied with tiredness, I followed her across the caravan to the bed. I slumped down and said, ‘I’ll be gone early tomorrow. I have something to do.’

‘You said you’d run out of ideas.’

‘I’m going to see Sauerkopp. Two days after Mrs Lewis was murdered he turned up in my office with a Polaroid of her body. His people must have been following me the night she was murdered. He must know who did it. He pretends he doesn’t, but he must do. I’ll ask him. If it was the mayor, I can use that to get him to make Meici drop the accusation against me. If it was Doc Digwyl, then that must have something to do with the mayor.’

‘What makes you think he will help you?’

‘I’ll make him. I need to borrow the gun.’

She kissed me and said, ‘OK.’

I watched through the obscuring gauze of my drooping eyelashes as she gently undressed me. Girl on the battlement; angel in pyjamas; her hands were cool and soothing like the apse of a church on a summer’s day.

Chapter 16

I
rose
at first light, dragged from the depths of sleep by the first barely perceptible lightening of the curtains. It was damp outside and a sodden parcel lay on the metal step, addressed to me. It was from Chastity. Inside was a piece of wedding cake wrapped in a red napkin. Next to it, a letter written on lilac Basildon Bond notepaper that was almost certainly kept by her aunt in a zip-up leather case along with matching envelopes. Matching your letter paper and envelopes is like polishing the heels and toes of your shoes with equal dedication: not many people do it nowadays, but those who do would continue to do so even in the event of a nuclear war. The letter was neatly written in a childish variant of Victorian copperplate that hinted at many hours spent practising beneath the unflinching gaze of her aunt:

Dear Louie,

Please do not condemn Meici. I know this will be hard for you to believe in the circumstances but he loves you, more perhaps than you can imagine. In fact, we both do. This misunderstanding that has arisen has also driven a wedge through my own heart. We are both so happy now, together at last, and the only pall over our joy is the knowledge that fate prevented you from attending our wedding. Please be assured that I will labour ceaselessly in my efforts to repair this rift and effect the reconciliation of which I hope and pray. Until, then, please accept this enclosed sweetmeat as a token of the bond of love that joins us all eternally and as a harbinger of the good times that will come again.

Chaleureusement

Chastity

I fetched a coffee from the vending machine outside Reception and ate a makeshift breakfast of wedding cake and coffee as I drove east, towards Ystumtuen. The gun in my pocket felt as cold against my thigh as a linoleum floor in winter. Three wasps woke from their slumbers and buzzed repeatedly against the windscreen, seemingly looking back in dismay as Maelor Gawr caravan park receded in the distance. Once fully awake they transferred their energies to the cake. I drove one-handed and waved the cake erratically in a vain bid to fend them off. They ducked and weaved like First World War biplanes, darting in and out almost as if they were attached to my hand by elastic.

I wanted to call Sauerkopp but not from just anywhere. It needed to be a place with a telephone kiosk, place to park the car and a derelict house nearby. Iestyn’s ruined house would do just fine. It began to rain and the drops whipped across the windscreen, overwhelming the feeble wipers to form a bleary and uniform opalescence. The gloom thickened; I drove in a trance.

The red telephone kiosk was situated at the junction of the main road and the lane that led up to Iestyn’s old house. I parked the car in the lay-by further up and walked to the phone. The door squeaked like a frightened mouse; inside it smelled of urine and sheep dung; cold wind blew through a broken pane in the door. I called the number, hung up and returned to the car. Half an hour later a car arrived and parked opposite the kiosk. Sauerkopp spent some time looking round the telephone kiosk and then walked towards my car. He saw me, bent down to the window and found himself facing the gun. I got out, told him to turn around and put his hands on the roof of the car the way the cops did. He grinned as if it were the best joke he’d heard all week. I hit him over the back of the head with the gun, and he crumpled against the car, then slid to the ground.

When he regained consciousness fifteen minutes later, he was sitting against a wall in the abandoned croft, trussed up with gaffer tape. Staring at the gun. It took him a while to grasp all the details of the scene, but once he had he smiled and said, ‘You’ve done well. I knew my faith in you wasn’t misplaced.’

‘Sorry I had to hit you.’

‘It’s OK, I’m used to it. If you’re going to threaten to shoot me, I might as well tell you now, I won’t believe you.’

‘I’m not going to shoot you.’ I eased the safety catch on and slipped the gun into my pocket. ‘I just want to chat.’

‘My door is always open.’

‘I’m in trouble.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m wanted for murder; the only witness is Meici Jones, but he’s lying. I think the mayor put him up to it. I don’t know why, maybe because I poked my nose into his business and he didn’t like it. It’s something about this famous kid in the silver suit.’

‘How can I help?’

‘You told me at the hospital it was your job to look after people who worked for the Aviary.’

‘I can’t get them off a murder charge.’

‘I didn’t do it and you know it.’

‘What I know doesn’t count, it’s what I can do that counts.’

‘Your people were following me the night Mrs Lewis was killed. You must know what happened to her. I think it was the mayor who killed her. If I was sure of that, maybe I could get him to lean on Meici.’

‘What if I don’t want to tell you? Normally you need some sort of persuasion, and we both know you aren’t going to shoot me in cold blood. You’re too nice. I told you before, you and me are alike in many ways.’

I slipped my hand inside his jacket and pulled out his wallet. I took out the picture of his daughter. ‘It’s Sunday today, remember?’

He stared at me without expression.

‘Remember that sacred five minutes? There’s a phone 20 yards from here. How do you fancy staring at it for the rest of the day?’

He pulled a jokey face.

‘It’s going to be a very disappointed little girl not getting a call from her daddy this year. He never forgets. Maybe something terrible has happened to him.’

He shrugged. ‘So she doesn’t get a call from her daddy this year. She’ll survive.’

‘It seems like a good deal to me. The way I see it, you want to help me, you just don’t like to do things the straightforward way. You like to have your fun first.’

‘I like you, Louie, I really do. You remind me of a man I used to know, a friend of mine, he’s dead now, he was just like you.’

‘Who was he, your pimp?’

‘My brother, sort of.’

‘What you mean is, the man was you. The man you used to be before you lost your soul. It’s a corny routine; I’ve seen it too many times before.’

‘The reason you resist is, you know it’s true.’

‘One phone call away.’

‘You’ve got me wrong. We’re both fighting for the same thing. I told you before, heads on sticks, that’s what it all comes down to.’

I shook my head. ‘You’re on the wrong side, the side of the bad guys.’