The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still (9 page)

‘Thank you for coming.’

‘No problem, I was passing anyway.’

He looked round to the mandarin, as if unsure how to react and needing a cue. The mandarin made an impatient grimace and said, ‘We want you to help us.’

I smiled.

‘If it was up to me,’ the brass hat added, ‘I’d have you flogged.’

‘What a shame it’s not up to you; you look like you’d enjoy it.’

‘Don’t get funny. It doesn’t mean I can’t have you flogged, or that I won’t. It’s just not in our best interests at the moment.’

‘Or mine.’

His face turned a deeper shade of red. ‘Look here you –’

The mandarin placed his hand on the officer’s forearm. ‘Let’s not get distracted.’

‘How can I help you?’ I asked.

‘We want you to betray someone,’ said the mandarin.

‘Who do you want me to betray?’

‘The man calling himself Raspiwtin,’ he said.

‘What do
you
call him?’

The mandarin sighed. ‘Please don’t keep asking impertinent questions. We’re not here to negotiate. We’re offering you a deal you can’t refuse.’

‘It’s not a deal then, is it?’

He raised his head slightly and looked over my shoulder. He nodded. Four strong, hard hands grabbed me from behind, hoisted me clear of the chair and dragged me across the room. In one fluid movement they twisted me round and slammed me into the wall. Then they did it again and put me back in the chair. My nostrils began to clog with blood which frothed and bubbled. I could feel it trickling across my upper lip. Drops fell and spattered the tabletop. My interlocutors gave no hint of having noticed.

‘You will observe, Mr Knight,’ said the mandarin in a tone that suggested my being thrown into the wall had somehow tried his patience to the limit, ‘that the wall is made of brick.’

‘What is it you want?’ I asked.

‘Raspiwtin has been to see you.’

I shrugged.

‘What for?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘We already know what for.’

‘Who are you? And don’t say, “We ask the questions”.’

There was the sound of movement behind me and I braced. I was thrown into the wall again. When I was back in my chair, he said, ‘Our organisation is a secret subsection of the Welsh office known as the Aviary.’

‘Which branch?’

There was a moment’s silence.

‘Look, snooper,’ said the cop, ‘quit the comedy. We could rub you out now. Not just here, everywhere. We could make it so you never existed. We could remove every record of you. We’d change the hospital records to say stillborn. We’d arrange a fire in the church where you were baptised. Anyone who claimed to remember you, we’d convince them they didn’t. We can do that. The ones who stubbornly clung to your memory, we’d have them sectioned. We do it all the time; it would be like swatting a fly to us.’

‘Is that what you did to Iestyn Probert?’

None of the assembled faces showed a sign of recognising the name, but this stony absence of a reaction was in its own way a reaction, as was the slight but palpable increase in tension. The cop spoke too quickly. ‘We’ll keep you in a cell and send you the tapes of your father going to the police station to report a missing person. “What missing person?” they’d ask him. “There’s no record of such a person ever having existed. Go back to your donkeys, you silly old fool.” For a long time he wouldn’t believe it; he’d cling to the belief he once had a son, but he’d get used to it. We’d put him in the cell next to yours so you could hear him crying in the night. You could tap out messages to him on the plumbing, saying, “Hey, it’s me, Louie.” And he’d tap back, “Louie who?” ’ He stopped and for a moment there was silence. ‘We can do that,’ he said.

‘Who is Raspiwtin?’ I asked.

‘He’s not who he says he is,’ said the mandarin.

‘That’s who he isn’t, not who he is.’

‘You need to know who the man is before you betray him?’

‘I’ve never betrayed anybody before.’

‘I’m sorry, we don’t work for the Boy Scouts, Mr Knight. We have issues of grave national security at play here; sentiment doesn’t come into it. We could do this other ways, we have plenty of options; you have none. We could get the information a dozen other ways, but for reasons it is not necessary to disclose to you, this avenue of approach appears the least problematic.’

‘You’d be helping your country,’ said the chaplain.

‘My country can go to hell and so can you.’

The hands grabbed me again and slammed me against the wall before returning me to my seat. This time I sat hunched forward, in pain, without the strength to right myself. There was silence for a while and then the mandarin said, ‘It makes no difference to us. We can arrange for your mangled corpse to be found in the wreck of a stolen car, wrapped round a tree somewhere. We will do it tonight. It makes no difference to us.’

I pulled myself up. ‘Please don’t.’

The chaplain smiled as if he hadn’t noticed what they did to me. ‘Raspiwtin is looking for someone. When he finds this someone, you tell us. That’s all you have to do.’

‘Just tell you?’

‘Then you walk away a free man. There will be no repercussions. No one has been hurt yet, just think of that. It really is an excellent time to walk away from the table.’

‘Who is the man he is looking for?’

‘You don’t need to know that,’ said the brass hat.

‘How will I know when he finds him?’

‘You don’t need to know –’

The mandarin raised a hand to silence him. ‘Of course, it’s Iestyn Probert. There is no need to pretend. We know Raspiwtin has you looking for him. He believes some nonsense about Iestyn having a rendezvous with some aliens from a UFO. All you have to do is let us know if you find him. That way you don’t crash into a tree.’

‘I thought they hanged him.’

‘Well, they obviously didn’t make a very good job of it, did they now,’ said the brass hat.

‘There is nothing to deliberate about,’ said the mandarin. ‘The arrangement is so obviously to your advantage that you can’t be stupid enough to turn it down.’

The army chaplain took a scrap of paper out of his pocket and slid it across the desk.

‘This is a number you can call if you need to contact us. Just call and hang up, we’ll find you.’

I stared at the slip of paper, not making a move.

‘It’s just a number,’ said the chaplain, ‘it won’t bite.’

I paused and regarded him. ‘I knew an RAF pilot, once,’ I said. ‘He served during the Second World War; he said the chaplain told them God approved of their bombing, but woe betide them if they slept with the girls in the town.’

He forced a chuckle, trying to be my friend. ‘I’ve heard that story, too. It’s very funny.’

‘I always find it strange seeing a man who works for Jesus dressed as a soldier.’

‘Oh yes, why’s that?’

‘Jesus was a subversive. Are you?’

‘I like to think so –’

The mandarin slapped the table and made an impatient gesture to the men behind me.

‘We didn’t come here to discuss theology. The interview is over.’

I picked up the scrap of paper. The hands reached out again and lifted me to my feet.

‘You’ll be dropped back at your caravan,’ said the mandarin. ‘It’s a crap caravan where you live a life of squalid desperation. But I understand it’s all you’ve got. If you don’t want to lose it, I advise you to take the proceedings of this evening very seriously.’

Chapter 7

Calamity and
I sat stiff-backed on a bottle-green chesterfield next to a Georgian window overlooking Laura Place. It wasn’t much of a ‘Place’ really, any smaller and it would have been called Laura Mews. But it possessed an air of modest affluence. It was the sort of square where you might expect to come across a film crew and a horse and carriage clip-clopping across the cobbles; just the sort of address, in fact, to which country doctors retired. We stared at a mantelpiece crowded with knick-knacks – framed photos, china figurines, a Toby jug holding letters from abroad, a brass shell case acting the part of a vase for dried flowers, a brass bowl containing hairpins, matches and a bottle of eye ointment.

‘I’m not sure I’d like to be treated by a doctor who moonlights at executions,’ said Calamity.

‘I know what you mean, but it’s not really moonlighting. It was a serious duty. If you are going to hang people, it stands to reason you need a doctor in attendance to certify the death and things.’

‘It doesn’t seem right for a doctor. Don’t they swear some sort of oath to preserve life?’

‘People thought differently about such things back then; they weren’t so squeamish. I’m sure he probably can hardly believe it himself, looking back.’

‘Still, it’s a bit ghoulish.’

‘You’re the one who dug up his name from the
Cambrian News
 . . .’

‘Yes, I know. We have to ask him. Iestyn Probert. That’s quite a common name. They might have executed more than one. Maybe he’s forgotten.’

‘I’m sure he will remember the Iestyn Probert who took part in the raid on the Coliseum cinema; everyone else seems to.’

‘I’ll let the doctor know you are here,’ said Mrs Lewis, his housekeeper, from the doorway.

The gloom in the sitting room was as palpable as plasticine; you felt you could grab it from the air and mould it into shapes. Heavy velvet curtains, kept in check by sashes of braided gold, hung from curtain rails; closely packed lumps of mahogany furniture pressed down on the spirit; a grandfather clock stood sentinel and delivered tocks like water dropping in a cave. The tops of all the chests and cabinets were arranged with black-and-white photos, pictures of frozen happiness from the ’50s. A car, an Austin perhaps, with shiny chrome trim, amid the tufts of marram grass overlooking a beach. Caravans were discarded on the dunes like children’s blocks; a woman in a headscarf and sunglasses sat amid a picnic and gazed at the camera; from her expression, the mixture of tenderness and gentle reproach, it was possible to imagine the photographer peering inexpertly into the viewfinder of a Rolleiflex camera, giving instructions. Who was she?

‘You promise we’re going to see the farmer who saw the flying saucer after this,’ said Calamity.

‘I promise, even though I would like to put it on record that I think it’s an unpromising avenue of inquiry, although not as unpromising as advertising a black 1948 Buick in the
Cambrian News
.’

‘It’s a ’47, not a ’48.’

Mrs Lewis showed us up. The door was ajar at the top of the stairs and darkness seeped out, perfumed with the faint smell of formaldehyde that clings to the lives of old doctors. We walked in; there was a rustle of sheet; two ferret-bright eyes shone from amid the shadows.

‘Good morning,’ he whispered.

‘We’re sorry to disturb you . . .’ I began.

‘I wasn’t doing anything – apart from dying. Come into the light. It’s nice to see you whoever you are. I don’t get many patients these days; they don’t like my bedside manner. Isn’t that what they told you?’

‘They told us you were a fine doctor,’ I said.

‘They told you I was an awful doctor.’ He put on a cartoon voice: “
I sent my little boy to him with tonsillitis and the damned fool told the boy he was dying
”. Isn’t that how it goes? Well, I make no apologies for not sugar-coating the truth.’

‘You told a little boy he was dying?’ asked Calamity.

‘I tell all my patients they are dying; it’s the only diagnosis I can make with any certainty. You’d think they would be grateful. Set against the implacable fact of their mortality, what does a cold or case of tonsillitis matter? It’s all too trivial for words.’

‘Ultimately, yes,’ I said. ‘But it’s not trivial at the time.’