Aberystwyth Mon Amour

He shot up and started to leave again but I grabbed the sleeve of his coat. The waitress looked over and then quickly away again.

'What happened to him?'

'What do you mean?'

'I hear he left the Museum.'

'So?'

'Bit sudden wasn't it?'

He shrugged. 'Maybe he wanted a change of career.'

'Did you do any business with him?'

'Yeah. Some.'

'What happened?'

Archie looked sadly at the panties, thought for a while, and then said, 'That thing with the semen stain was bollocks. He'd never get caught like that. He was a pro; we all were.'

I nodded.

'We had a well-run group — you know, respectable people, vicars and school teachers and the like, none of your riff-raff. Everyone was clean. No stains, no mess. Everyone used protection. It was understood. If anyone got caught we'd all go down. The authorities had known about it for years; they didn't care as long as they all received their fat envelopes of cash at the beginning of every month. Then one day they went for Iolo.'

'What about the rest of the ring?'

'That was the funny part. It was just him. Whatever it was he'd done, it wasn't the underwear.'

'What happened to him?'

'I heard he managed to get out of town; or maybe they let him, I don't know.'

'Do you know where he went?'

He shrugged.

I placed a hand on the panties. 'Don't force me to do this, Archie.'

He shook his head. 'I really don't know where he went, but it's not hard to guess ... I mean the man's got to make a living hasn't he?'

'So?'

'So years ago, long before he became Mr Big Bollocks, he had a different trade. The sort they don't paint your picture in oils for and hang up in the Rotary Club.'

'What was it?'

Archie looked into my eyes and stared long and hard. He knew he was going to tell me, but he still didn't like it. Eventually he said the three words:

'Punch and Judy.'

Chapter 10

IF THE PIRATES caught you,' I explained, 'they chained you to an oar and rubbed chillis in your eyes to keep you awake. Unless you were a woman in which case they sold you into slavery.'

Calamity stood in front of the map of Borneo and studied the route of my great-great-uncle.

'What makes you so sure she didn't drown?'

'She probably did.'

Calamity unwrapped a sugar lolly. 'So you just sit here staring at your uncle?'

'It's the second rule of being a private eye.'

She looked at me with interest. 'How does it go?'

'Look after your shoes.'

She frowned.

'It means don't waste shoe leather walking around all over the place when a lot of things can be worked out with your head.'

'What's the first rule of being a private eye?'

'Don't be one.'

She frowned again. 'And the third?'

'I'll tell you later.'

'You mean you haven't thought of it yet.'

I laughed. 'Come on, get your coat, it's time to violate the second rule.'

In Venice a nobleman would arrive at the Duke's palace in furs and silks and half an hour later would exit the back way over the Bridge of Sighs to prison. With Iolo Davies the way led over Trefechan Bridge but the symbolism was the same. For years he had basked in the warm glow of Aberystwyth respectability. Not a duke or a lord, perhaps, but a man occupying an eminent position, enjoying the esteem of the movers and shakers of his little world. Invited every year to the Golf Club Summer Ball and the Rotary Club Christmas Party; holder of a seat on the St Luddite's School board of governors; advisor to the examining boards; publisher of several pieces of research into the lost art of whalebone corsetry. A proud man who had his suits tailored in Swansea, and bespoke aftershave mixed to a personal recipe by the perfumers of Gwent. A man of culture now forced to scratch a living putting on marionette performances in the back rooms of pubs.

Aberaeron was the centre of the Punch and Judy circuit and as we drove south along the coast road, we talked more about Hermione Wilberforce. I explained how years later Bartholomew's journal was found in the jungle. It recorded how his guides and bearers abandoned him one by one, until finally he ploughed on alone; how his last weeks were spent racked by fever and madness. And how in the final delirium before he died he described the day when, alone in the jungle and too ill to move, he was visited by Hermione.

'The thing is,' said Calamity, the lolly still in her mouth, 'that doesn't prove anything, does it?'

'Nope.'

'It could just have been a hallucination.'

'Of course.'

'Or an orang-utan. Or he could have just made it up.'

'Except for one thing.'

There was a slight pause. Calamity looked at me sensing the mild air of melodrama in my voice.

'What?'

'He took a camera with him.'

I could sense her interest quicken.

'It was one of the very first ones — the size of a step-ladder and he lugged it all the way to Borneo and then upriver. He was the first person ever to record images of the headhunting tribes. He once described how he arranged a photo session and had to wait an hour for the women of the tribe to get ready. He said women were the same all over the world.'

Calamity snorted.

'Most of the film was eaten by insects but a few plates survived.'

'Where are they?'

'Sydney University.'

'You're not going to tell me he took a picture of Hermione?'

'I don't know. That's the fascinating thing: the camera was never found — they found his journal and other effects but not the camera. Then fifteen years later it turned up, or so the story goes, in a junk shop in Hong Kong. An American merchant bought it and there was a plate still inside. They say he had it developed and although partially ruined you could still make out the ghostly image of a European woman in the midst of the rainforest.'

'What happened to the picture?'

'He lost it.'

It was late afternoon when we drove into the fishing village of Aberaeron. I pulled up and parked outside the butcher's shop on the main street. A fawn Allegro pulled in and parked about thirty yards behind me. It had been following us most of the way from Aberystwyth.

'How many pubs are there in this town?' Calamity asked.

'Loads.'

'How are we gong to find the right one?'

'Third rule of being a private eye. When confronted with a mystery, don't ask what's the answer, ask what's the question.'

Calamity considered that one for a second. 'That's a good one; better than the first two.'

'Can you see the fawn Allegro behind us?'

'It's been following us since Southgate.'

I squinted at the driver in the rear-view mirror. Trench coat and trilby, beard, dark glasses, newspaper balanced on the steering wheel, it didn't prove anything, but when did an innocent person ever dress like that?

'So what's the question?'

'The question is: not which pub will he be in tonight, but which of these two butchers' shops will he be getting his sausages from.'

Calamity considered this new approach to detective work.

I took out the pamphlet on the history of the Museum that I had picked up from the library. 'Whatever else I know or don't know, I know you can't do Punch and Judy without sausages. There's always a bit where the Chinaman falls into the sausage machine and comes out as a yellow sausage with a pigtail.'

In the list of contributors at the back of the booklet there was a picture of Iolo Davies. They may have removed his portrait from the Museum cafe but they had done nothing more painstaking than that. Chubby red cheeks, a toothbrush moustache which he may have shaved off and bushy eyebrows which he probably hadn't.

He turned up shortly before closing time at about 5.20pm, sauntering down the sunlit street with the air of someone who has just woken up. The once-sharply tailored suit was now dirty and torn. Both knees were patched with the sort of big ugly stitching you normally only saw on clown's trousers; the handmade shoes were scuffed and open to reveal his toes. He walked into the shop and came out a few minutes later with a bag of sausages under his arm. As he walked off down the street, I eased the car out into the traffic and followed. He walked down the High Street, across the pelican crossing and into a pub overlooking the harbour called the Jolly Roger. I drove a couple of blocks and let Calamity out at the lights. The plan was for her to double back and keep an eye on the pub; I would carry on and try to lose the tail. We agreed to rendezvous at 7.30pm. I drove on and parked on an embankment overlooking the harbour; there was time to kill and the way to do it was wind down the window, let the muggy late-afternoon air in, and snooze to the muted cries of the gulls. The Allegro overtook and turned into a side street.

I awoke at the time when the town was poised between the edge of day and the beginning of night. The shopkeepers and office workers had all walked the few minutes it took them to get home and it would be a while before anyone set out for an early-evening pint. The sky in the west was mauve and one or two street lights were beginning to flicker orange and pink. The scent of fried onions drifted through the car window.

It was a five-minute walk down the main road to the pub, but I took a longer route on foot through the harbour. By early evening it was a deserted stretch of nets, lobster pots and boats hoisted out of the water. The air was sharp and stank of dried fish. Midway along the route, I turned a corner and then stepped into a doorway and waited. A figure in a trench coat and trilby appeared walking quietly and furtively. I stepped out and stood in his path without saying anything.

He froze, and then turned to run just as I lunged forwards and grabbed the front of his coat. We struggled and fell against a pile of fish-smelling cages. In the tussle the man's beard came off. It was a cheap joke-shop one held on with plastic spectacle frames which hooked over the ears. I looked into his face in astonishment. It was a woman. The surprise was enough to give her the split-second she needed. Out of a pocket came a can which she sprayed into my face. Pepper spray. My spine arched backwards with a vicious kick as I struggled to escape the stinging needles of the gas. At the same time, the woman struggled free and ran off, leaving me holding a false beard and the button off the front of her coat.

I couldn't take Calamity into the pub so I gave her some money for fish and chips and told her to make herself scarce. Then I entered the front bar. It had a pleasant careworn air about it, the round wooden tables were ingrained with years of spilled beer and cigarette stains and the plain wooden chairs were worn smooth. It was tricked out with sailors' hats and maritime odds and ends and behind the bar there was a ship's wheel that looked like it had come off a real ship. It was a plain old-fashioned boozer populated by plain old-fashioned people.

I asked the landlord about the Punch and Judy show and he interrupted his polishing of a gleaming pint glass to gesture at a set of double doors leading on to a yard at the back. If it had been slightly less scruffy you could have got away with calling it a terrace. Rows of chairs had already been set and gulls hopped among the seats.

'Should be quite a show,' the landlord said, observing my interest.

I nodded.

'Oh yes, if you like that sort of thing, you should find it most edifying. Very interesting slant it is.'

I raised my eyebrows.

'Oh no, don't get me wrong, sir. It's very traditional. All the old favourites. Nothing too avant-garde. Regulars wouldn't stand for those — what do they call them? — "contemporary interpretations" like you get in Swansea.'

I grimaced politely. 'You can't beat the old way of doing things.'

'I see you're a man after my own heart, sir.'

'When they throw the baby out of the window I expect a visit from the policeman, not the social services.'

'And that's exactly what you'll get here. Although,' he added, 'Mr Davies is no dinosaur either. He does make one or two interpretations of his own, but not in such a way as to ram it down your throat, if you'll pardon the expression.'

I picked up my pint. 'I think I'll go and make sure of a good seat.'

'Very wise. It'll be standing room only in another quarter of an hour.'

As I started to walk away he called me back and leaned conspiratorially across the counter and took hold of my lapel. 'Seeing as you're a bit of sportsman, sir, you might like to know..." He pulled my ear closer to his mouth and whispered, 'We've got a bit of a game going on upstairs afterwards. "Mr Chunky".'

'Mr what?'

'Chunky. Mr Chunky says Parsnip — the drinking game.'

I nodded. 'Ah!'

He looked cautiously from side to side and added, 'Llanfihangel-y-Creuddyn rules: vomit once to join the table and twice to leave.'

By 8.15 there were three people in the audience including me. The other two were an old couple, silver-haired and wrinkled and shaking like jelly. The bar man had been lying, of course, but I had known that all along. It was obvious from the state of Davies's clothes that he wasn't packing them in every night. Even in Swansea no one ever got rich on the Punch and Judy circuit. The dream of seeing your name in big red type on the wall of the bandstand was just that — a dream from the same tattered rag-bag of empty hopes that had been filling the second-class railway compartments to Shrewsbury for more than a hundred years.

* * *

Davies came on just after 8.30. He made a quick glance at the empty seats, put on a defiant look and went behind the stripey canvas booth. Seconds later the squeaky voices started. I wondered about his life. I wasn't familiar with 'Mr Chunky says Parsnip', but I knew plenty of games like it, and I knew what they did to people. After about ten minutes of the performance the old couple left, Iolo carried on gamely for another fifteen minutes before winding up. It was a very ordinary performance but not as hopeless as it could have been; he had some skill at least. Towards the end he had even indulged in some experimental interpretation with a scene I hadn't seen before where the policeman plants a piece of trumped-up evidence on Mr Punch. The echoes of Iolo's own fate were clear if pathetically pointless.

When the show ended I clapped slowly and deliberately. It took Iolo Davies five minutes to gather his things together, put away the puppets, and emerge from behind the booth. I carried on clapping and he looked over at me.

'You taking the piss?'

'My name's Louie.'

'Did I ask?'

'I thought you might like to know.'

'What do you want?'

'Information about Dai Brainbocs.'

He stopped and looked round. 'Just leave me alone.'

'It won't take long.'

'What do you want to ask about him for? He's dead isn't he?'

'I want to know why.'

He looked at me through narrowed eyes.

'Who are you?'

'I'm a relative of Brainbocs.'

'No you're not.'

'I'm a private detective investigating his death.'

He turned to leave again.

'Look!' I said hurriedly. 'It would only take a few minutes, and I might be able to help you.'

He snorted. 'You're out of your depth.'

I tried a final gambit. 'You think it was right what happened to you?'

He laughed bitterly. 'Does it matter?'

'All I want is a few minutes.'

Iolo Davies put the last chip in his mouth, scrunched the wrapping paper up and threw it out of the car window. Then he turned to me, the light from the street lamp silvering the edge of his face.

'How much do you know?'

'I know Brainbocs was working on Cantref-y-Gwaelod; I know he disappeared shortly after handing his essay in; I know the kids say he stumbled on to something big, something the Welsh teacher didn't like. I know Lovespoon is planning to reclaim the land of Cantref-y-Gwaelod and take a group of pilgrims there in an Ark. I know three other kids working on the same essay are dead and one is missing. I presume they were killed because they copied Brainbocs's homework and found out whatever it was he found out. I know you lost your job about the same time as well. And it's my guess you were punished for helping Brainbocs.'

The old Museum curator wiped his greasy fingers down the thighs of his trousers and shook his head gently in admiration as he recalled Brainbocs's scholarship. His voice took on a sad and distant quality.

'The Cantref-y-Gwaelod stuff was genius. No other word for it. He did it all, you know. This whole Exodus project to build the Ark and settle the land — it was all Brainbocs's idea. He was down the Museum a lot, usually in the archives. He wanted to do things with the school essay that people didn't even dream could be done. He had this idea that you could somehow shake the world with one. I mean, partly it was some sort of compensation for the bad leg. But still, it was more than that. He once said he could wrestle with destiny and force her to her knees.' He laughed without mirth. 'I know, it sounds a load of crap when I say it, but when you listened to him . . . you just . . . well it's funny but it didn't seem so strange.'

'But surely he couldn't really locate this lost iron-age kingdom?'

'This boy could do anything. You know how he pinpointed where it was? Triangulation. He set up recording devices at points along the coast where people claimed they could hear the ghostly bells; then he analysed the Doppler shift in the frequencies and then did a load of sums I wouldn't have a clue about and triangulated the source of the bells. Unbelievable. And that was just the start. Then he took echo soundings to map the terrain and draw up the drainage scheme. And to cap it all he designed the Ark.'

'I don't get it, what did he do wrong? I thought Lovespoon loved the idea. Was he trying to steal the boy's glory?'

Iolo shook his head and took a breath. 'It wasn't anything to do with Cantref-y-Gwaelod. Of course Lovespoon loved the project; he told me to give Brainbocs all the assistance he needed. Not that he needed any. But then one day the kid changed tack. Just like that. Came in with a gleam in his eye that was even crazier than the usual one. He started working in a different section of the Museum. He said he'd had this new idea and that it was going to be his piиce de rйsistance.'

'And the Welsh teacher didn't approve?'

'The kid told me not to tell Lovespoon — it was meant to be a surprise. But the teacher found out anyway.'

'And that's when they put the stain on the camisole?'

'It wasn't a camisole, it was a rare corso-pantaloon in tea rose crepe de chine.'

'So what was the new area of research? What did he switch to?'

The chair made a low farting sound as Iolo turned to face me. The light glistening on the two sad puddles of his eyes. 'I'll tell you. Only don't ask me to explain it, because even now —'

He paused.

'Yes?'

'Even now I have no idea what was so bad about the new -'

There was a sound from outside the car. The museum curator froze, his jaw agape. I threw my hand across, to grab his arm. To reassure him. But it was too late. He was staring with a wild, transfixed look past the side of my head. I spun round and saw out there in the featureless night, hovering on the threshold of discernibility, dark figures. Like crows or, more accurately, like the woman in the trench coat I had fought with earlier in the day.

'You bastard!' cried Iolo as he tore free of my hand. 'You dirty, double-crossing bastard!' He threw the car door open, and ran out into the night. By the time I too had got out of the car both he and the mysterious figures were gone.

*

It was well after eleven when I picked up Calamity and drove back to Aberystwyth. Just outside Llanrhystyd an ambulance streaked past at full pelt in the opposite direction. With the roads so empty it shot through the darkened countryside like a blue flashing arrow. As things turned out, the high speed was in vain. By that time Iolo Davies was already dead.

Chapter 11

EEYORE PEERED AT the button through the magnifying glass he used for the 'spot the ball' competitions. 'Yep,' he said. 'It's them all right.'

'Sweet Jesus League?'

He nodded.

At first glance it looked like any other black plastic button, the sort all old ladies had on their overcoats, but if you looked closely at the holes for the thread you could see they were arranged differently. There were two large round ones, and underneath that a single triangular one, and then beneath that a rectangular one. The shape of the button wasn't perfectly round, either, but had indentations on either side that made it look vaguely potato-like. Sewn on to a coat these things would be difficult to spot. But hold the button up to the daylight and you saw it straight away: it was a skull. Eeyore handed the button back to me, over the gleaming back of Henrietta. I leaned my arms on her saddle as she stood looking patiently over the railings and out to sea.

According to the newspaper Iolo Davis had been found at the foot of the cliff. Broken turf high up on the cliff's edge had indicated where he lost his footing in a tragic accident. His injuries were entirely consistent with a fall and foul play was not suspected. That was the official version anyway.

'Not the old bags who sell pamphlets outside the Moulin,' Eeyore continued. 'This belongs to the big girls: the ESSJAT.'

'ESSJAT?'

'It's a sort of secret commando unit; an elite force drawn from the ranks of the foot soldiers. The name comes from the initial letters of Sweet Jesus against Turpitude.'

I whistled.

'Officially, they don't exist.'

'And I led them straight to him.'

He scoffed. 'Don't waste time blaming yourself. They would have got him eventually; they always do.'

'I should have taken more care.'

'No Louie!' he snapped with an uncharacteristic edge in his voice. 'Once he was on their list he was dead. It was only a matter of time. You have to accept that.'

'Where do I find them?'

'You don't. I mean you can't. Or, you shouldn't.'

'You know I've got to.'

'No one knows who they are or where they are. They make the postman wear a blindfold.'

'Come on, Dad . . .'

'What business is it of yours, anyway? You think this Evans the Boot chap deserves it?'

'It's not about him, you know that.'

'What is it about then?'

'Lots of things.'

He paused and stroked Henrietta's mane and then said with an air of resignation, 'Well, I suppose you're going to go ahead and look for them whatever I say. But don't go round thinking you killed Davies. If the ESSJAT were after him, he was a dead man walking. It's that simple.'

*

The avuncular white-bearded man kneels at the shore's edge and stares through narrowed eyes out to sea. Around him children gather. The man speaks.

'That's our land out there, beneath those constantly shifting waters. A good land, a rich land. A land where our people can reap and sow and our children's laughter will fill each silver day-'

Calamity Jane picked up the remote control and turned off the TV. 'What crap!'

'Now, now! There's no need for language like that.'

'Who wants to go to Cantref-y-Gwaelod anyway?'

'Quite a lot of people, it seems.'

'Why do they have to do TV commercials then?' She threw the remote control on to the sofa and started pacing up and down the office, counting off points on her fingers. 'Item one: Brainbocs masterminded the plan to reclaim Cantref-y-Gwaelod. Lovespoon loved that scheme. Item two: then he starts researching something else. Lovespoon hates that and tells the Museum curator not to help him. Then the curator loses his job and then . . .' she paused. 'And then he fell off a cliff.'

We exchange glances like guilty children.

'Item three: Brainbocs hid the essay in a well-known beauty spot and was looking for a woman called Gwenno.'

'Item four,' it was my turn, 'Evans the Boot had a piece of Mayan tea cosy in his possession.'

'Not Mayan — Welsh, it was just a Mayan design . . .'

The words trailed off and she looked over to the door. Myfanwy was standing framed in the doorway and she didn't look pleased.

'Hey, come in!'

'I'll stay here, thank you, I'm not staying.'

'Not even for a cup of tea?'

'I just want to tell you to stop investigating my cousin Evans's disappearance. Send me a bill for what you've done up until now.'

'You don't owe me any money, I turned the case down, remember?'

'Yes, but I talked you into it.'

I turned to Calamity. 'Hey, do you think you could put the kettle on for me?'

'She said she didn't want a cup of tea!'

'Well I do.'

'Right now?'

'Yes, right now!'

She looked over to Myfanwy in search of an ally, but Myfanwy simply said, 'Scram, kid.'

Calamity shuffled across to the kitchen. 'If it's about this investigation, it involves me too.'

I turned to Myfanwy. 'You look like a walking thunderstorm.'

'That's hardly surprising, is it?'

I was puzzled. 'I don't know, isn't it?'

'No, it isn't . . . after . . . after . . .'

'After what?'

'After what you did.'

'What did I do?'

'You mean you have to ask?'

I raised my hand as if to indicate a temporary truce and walked over to the kitchen. I closed the door with an exaggerated action.

'Myfanwy, please tell me, what have I done?'

'You mean you don't know?'

'No!'

'That makes it worse.'

'Oh, for God's sake,' I said walking over to the desk because I couldn't think of anything better to do, 'stop playing games and tell me what I am supposed to have done.'

She paused and looked at me. I looked back and smiled encouragingly.

'You slept with Bianca.'

I gaped at her.

'Don't try and deny it, she told me everything.'

'I'm not trying to deny it, I'm just staggered -'

'You think we don't talk to each other or something?'

'Myfanwy!'

'I mean of all the cheek — you think you can just jump into bed with my best friend and she won't tell me?'

'But Myfanwy!' I howled again.

'My best friend, Louie! My best friend!'

'Funny sort of friend!' I shouted.

'And what's that supposed to mean!?'

'I don't know, fuck it all, Myfanwy, it was you who told me to do it!'

'I -' This time it was her turn to stare open-mouthed.

'At the Club, remember?'

'But I didn't mean it!' she screeched, and then flung her hands in the air in exasperation, before turning in the doorway and stomping down the stairs. Her last words, thrown over her shoulder were: 'How can anyone be so stupid!'

I stood rooted to the spot, staring at the empty doorway. Calamity came back in.

'She needs a slap, boss.'

'Don't you start,' I warned her.

'I'm not starting, I'm just observing. She's walking all over you.'

'Is that any of your concern?'

'Yes it is as a matter of fact.'

'Oh really!'

'Yes. Firstly because you're my friend and I don't like to see you acting the doormat; secondly because things like this can interfere with your professional performance; and thirdly because it affects the bottom line.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Didn't I just hear you say you weren't charging her for any of this?'

'That's none of your business.'

She picked up her school satchel adding nonchalantly, 'Fine, but shoe leather's not free. Second rule of being a private eye.'

As she skipped through the door I picked up the phone and called Meirion. After the usual round of pleasantries I asked if he'd heard anything about Iolo. Of course he had. He'd heard everything, he just couldn't print it.

'Most of the injuries seem to have been sustained during the fall from the cliff,' he said.

'Most of them?'

'Well some of them don't look like the sort of mark you'd get from falling off a cliff.'

'What do they look like?'

'More like the sort of holes a hatpin might make.'

I sighed. 'Anything else?'

'Yes, something very strange. Someone's daubed some graffiti on the pavement outside Aberaeron Co-op ... in blood.'

'Blood?'

'The victim's blood.'

I screwed up my brow and held my breath. I could tell Meirion had more.

'Now I'm no expert,' he laughed, 'but as far as I can see there are only two ways that could happen.'

'Go on.'

'Either some idiot went to the foot of the cliff and collected Iolo's blood. Or Iolo wrote it himself.'

'How could he, he was dead?'

'Ah!' Meirion laughed. 'Depends when he wrote it, doesn't it?'

'All right, Meirion, I know you've got a theory. What is it?'

'If you asked me I'd say he was murdered outside the Co-op and he wrote the graffiti himself. Dipped his finger in his own blood and daubed it on the floor with his dying strength. Then whoever killed him dragged him to the cliff and threw him off to make it look like an accident. Only because it was so dark no one noticed the blood until next morning.'

I could almost feel him beaming on the other end of the phone. He was obviously right.

'So what does the graffiti say?'

'Two words. "Rio Caeriog".'

*

The following afternoon Calamity and I drove to the Museum as Iolo Davies's last words drifted through my thoughts. Had he written the words for me? He must have done.' Rio Caeriog. The famous battle from the war in Patagonia. A name once written on the map with the blood of a generation and now inscribed in the Museum curator's blood on the pavements of Aberaeron. Was that the new essay subject Brainbocs had chosen? The one that got him killed? As I parked in the shadow of the Lancaster bomber I mentally reviewed the story of Rio Caeriog. It was well enough known. For months in 1961 the First Expeditionary Force had been taking unsustainable losses in the foothills of the Sierra Machynlleth. Sniped at by day and taunted and ambushed at night by an enemy they couldn't see. And then came the famous raid. A Rolex watch was rigged up by the boffins of Llanelli with a radio beacon inside. The watch was deliberately lost in a card game to one of the bandits in the back room of a cantina. And when the bandit took it home to his base the Lancaster bomber followed. But why did it interest Brainbocs? What was the connection to Cantref-y-Gwaelod? We got out of the car and walked up the steps into a foyer of gilded cherubs and alabaster columns. The Devil's Bridge Tin & Lead Steam Railway Co. had built with a confidence that had long since disappeared from our own age. The grandeur was now sadly defaced by charmless municipal sign boards: Combinations and Corsetry; Two-headed Calves and other Curios; Coelecanths.

Inside the foyer was another of the success stories of that far-off time. A passport photo booth created by the same boffins of the special operations executive at Llanelli Technical College. It was the world's only micro-dot photo booth and gave you your portrait the size of a currant. To see it, you had to buy a special viewer from the gift shop. Most of the micro-dot camera technology familiar from so many spy movies had been developed during the Patagonian War. An animal clinic had been established in Buenos Aires from which the military intelligence, condensed on to micro-dots, had been smuggled out as eye patches for hamsters with lazy eyes. As kids we had polka-dotted the wall of the art class with our drawings of it. Calamity ran to the photo booth and disappeared inside with a swish of orange curtain. I waited patiently for the flashes wondering idly what obscene gestures she was no doubt making to the camera.

Upstairs, in the main gallery, two super-enlarged black and white photographs filled the whole of one wall with a grainy ghostly sea of grey. One was a picture of the two Lancasters leaving Milford Haven aerodrome to cheering crowds. And the other showed five aviators standing in a relaxed circle outside some forgotten South American cantina, drinking tequila and clowning about. They were young and fresh-faced and laughing into the camera lens with a gaiety that suggested the picture must have been taken right at the start of the conflict. It was the Rio Caeriog bomber crew. Lovespoon, Dai the Custard Pie and, with a much younger horizontal crease in his face, Herod Jenkins the games teacher. A triumvirate of the current movers and shakers of Aberystwyth. Did Brainbocs discover something about them that might have taken the glint off those famous medals? Some awkward tidbit that would have wiped that horizontal crease off Herod's face? The smiles frozen in Ilford black and white gave nothing away.

Calamity walked over with the air of one who has made a discovery. I looked up and smiled and she handed me a sheaf of plastic laminated cards bearing the biographies of the airmen. Lovespoon: war hero, school teacher, prize-winning poet and Grand Wizard on the Druid council. Custard Pie: purveyor of fine soaps that make your face go black, and Red Indian arrows that appear to pierce the neck. Herod Jenkins: school games teacher; capped for Wales in his youth and subsequently, although the card did not record this distinction, famous for sending a consumptive schoolboy to his death during a blizzard. The last was Oswald Frobisher. A nobody. One of the handful of English intellectuals who were so dismayed at missing the Spanish Civil War they had signed up for the Patagonian adventure. The card said merely that he died of his wounds when his Lancaster ditched into the Rio Caeriog. There was no clue as to what the wounds were but any schoolkid could tell you: the bandits cut off his John Thomas and stuffed it in his mouth.

Calamity was still holding one card. I looked at her enquiringly and she passed it across. It contained even fewer details than hapless Frobisher's. None at all in fact, just bare white card, and a name. A name that I had last heard from the lips of Dai Brainbocs's Mam. The name of the woman her son had gone to see in the week before he died. Gwenno Guevara, it said simply, freedom fighter.

Chapter 12

BIANCA GINGERLY PULLED out the shards of broken glass from the picture of Noel Bartholomew and wrapped them up in newspaper.

'If I was lost in the jungle would you come looking for me?'

'No, it's too dangerous.'

'Not even to take my picture, like your great-great-uncle?'

I laughed. 'We don't know for sure that he did.'

She carried the parcel of jagged glass through to the kitchen, shouting over her shoulder as she went: 'Of course he did.'

I looked at the portrait. Did he? Did he really find her? Or was it all a hoax played on a gullible American tourist by a wily Chinese shopkeeper? It was Eeyore who gave me the portrait and the chest full of papers and artefacts, back in the days when I believed in common sense and thought the expedition must have ended in failure. But Eeyore had quietly disagreed with a patient conviction he only rarely displayed. It depended on what you considered failure, he said. And added that one day I would understand. But I never really have, even though I return again and again to that diary. Those cracked and yellow pages in which Noel records in a malarial scrawl, growing ever more indecipherable by the day, how she came to see him in his sickness. A passage which ends with the words taken from St Augustine: 'Faith is to believe what you do not yet see.'

Bianca walked back in to the office.

'I think he took her picture in Heaven.'

'He did what?'

'In Heaven. That's where he took her picture.'

I grinned and, seeing the expression, Bianca became suddenly cross.

'You think you know it all, don't you? I suppose you don't believe in ghosts either?'

'No. Do you?'

'Of course. I'm going to. be one.'

On our way out we met Mrs Llantrisant. She looked tired and pale, and swabbed robotically.

'Prynhawn da, Mr Knight!'

'Prynhawn da, Mrs Llantrisant! You look worn out.'

'I'm feeling my age, Mr Knight, that's what I am.'

'Why not take a few days off and put your feet up?'

'And who would fold the serviettes for the Ark if I did that?'

'Is that what you've been doing?'

She stopped and leaned like a drunkard on her mop. 'I'm glad to be able to play my part.'

'You believe in all this then, do you? This Ark business?'

'What's there not to believe?'

'I mean, you'd like to go, would you?'

She grabbed a loose strand of hair and tucked it up beneath the hem of her headscarf. Her hand was shaking.

'It's the kids I'm doing it for. It's too late for us, but the little ones - they deserve it.'

'With Lovespoon as king?'

'Social gerontocracy, Mr Knight, just like in ancient Greece.'

'What's wrong with Aberystwyth?'

She put the mop in the water.

'I'm surprised to hear you ask that, Mr Knight. What do you like about it all of a sudden?'

'It may have its faults but at least it's not currently under ten thousand feet of water.'

'Not ten thousand, less than twenty fathoms. Scarcely a puddle.'

Suddenly, Mrs Llantrisant lost her balance and fell into me. I grabbed her arm and held her upright.

'I'm all right, really I am,' she moaned. 'Just slipped on the wet step, that's all.'

'You're pushing yourself too hard, you are. We don't want another repeat of Easter do we?'

Bianca and I walked along the Prom, heading for Sospan's.

'Silly old bag.'

'There's no need for that.'

'Did you see the look she gave me?'

'She can't help it. She's old and set in her ways.'

'What happened at Easter?'

I ordered a round of ice creams. 'She had a funny turn. Said it was the apples in her pie but she took so bad she called a priest to administer the last rites. She's been all right since, though.'

Bianca leaned her head on my shoulder and said, 'Why didn't you call me?'

'What about?'

'What about!' she cried.

Of course. The last time we met had been the night I took her home.

'I'm sorry, I -'

'Don't apologise.'

I put my palm against the side of her face and ruffled her hair. Sospan handed us the ice creams with the discretion of a brothel madam. We ate them in silence for a while, and then Bianca spoke to the folds of my shirt.

'I've got something for you. I haven't got it yet, but I can get hold of it. That's if you want.'

'What is it?' I spoke to the top of her head.

'Something very, very special.'

'What?'

'Something you'd give your right arm for.'

'There's nothing I'd give my right arm for.'

'I bet you'd give it to marry Myfanwy.'

'No I wouldn't.'

'It's an essay.'

I breathed in sharply and Bianca giggled.

'Really?' I said cautiously. 'What sort of essay?'

'Ooh, just Dai Brainbocs's last essay.' She giggled again.

I pushed her away and looked into her face. 'What are you talking about?'

'Dai Brainbocs's last essay. You are looking for it, aren't you?'

'What makes you think that?'

'Myfanwy told me.'

I closed my eyes in pain.

'It's all right, I won't tell anyone.'

'She shouldn't have told you.'

'What do you expect, she's a big mouth.'

'There's no need for that.'

'I know you think the sun shines out of her backside, but she's not all sugar and spice you know.'

'I'm sure she's not. No one is.'

'So do you want it?'

I didn't answer for a while, just stared at her. 'Are you being serious? You know where Brainbocs's last essay is?'

She nodded. 'I know where there's a copy of it.'

'Where?'

'Pickel's got one.'

'Pickel?'

She nodded again.

'Lovespoon asked him just after Brainbocs died to design a safety box so good, no one in the world could open it, not even the person who made it. Pickel agreed to do it even though he said there wasn't a lock in the world he couldn't open. He said Lovespoon was a wanker. Lovespoon used the box to keep Brainbocs's original essay in — the one he told the papers he'd lost. Pickel took it out when he wasn't looking and made a copy. His insurance policy he called it.'

'Pickel told you this?'

'Yes.'

'How do you know he's not just making it up?'

'Why should he? Besides, I know where he hides it — in the belfry. I could get it, if you wanted.'

I held her head in my hands and stared into her eyes. 'Don't do anything until I've had a chance to think about it.'

The lightning was already flashing in the sky far out over the western horizon when I left for the Moulin that night. I was too late to get a good table and had to sit. right at the back with a very bad view of the stage. The showgirls didn't normally venture so far back and I was served by a plain Jane of a waitress in a simple black skirt and white blouse. I had to share the table with a group of men who looked like they had just been picked up off a desert island by the air-sea rescue helicopter. Their hair was wild and unkempt, their clothes torn and ragged. One of the men offered me his hand to shake and, not wishing to offend, I took it gingerly.

'Welcome, brother,' he croaked in the voice of a mariner who hasn't spoken to another soul for ten years. The rest of the group looked at me intently, their gazes playing over my face like searchlights.

'I'm not your brother.'

The man giggled in a way that made my flesh crawl and turned to his companions. 'He says he's not our brother!'

The rest of the group broke into hoarse, wheezing laughter.

The first man looked at me and said, 'I'm Brother Gilbert. This is Brother Frank, and this is Brother Bill. I'll introduce the rest of us later.'

'Don't bother.'

'Oh it's no bother. It's such a pleasure to have you join us. We have so much to talk about.'

My drink arrived and I drank it down in one and ordered another.

'I used to be a bank manager,' said Brother Gilbert. He grabbed my arm and added with a strange urgency, 'And Brother Bill used to be a Justice of the Peace. What do you think of that?'

'I thought you were all fishermen.'

They turned to each other and laughed again.

'We like that,' said Brother Gilbert. 'Fishermen. That's very funny!'

When the laughter died down Brother Gilbert turned to his brothers and said, 'I suppose in a way we are all hooked!' The laughter erupted once more.

I waited patiently, and then said, 'Do you come here a lot, then?'

'Oh yes, every day. Haven't you seen us?'

'No.'

'That explains it then.'

'Explains what?'

'Why you don't understand.'

They all stared at me with a wild glimmer of madness in their eyes, expectantly gauging the effect of Brother Gilbert's words on me. A showgirl passed through the tables halfway between our position and the front and for a moment I thought it was Myfanwy. I craned my neck for a better look.

'She's not here yet,' said Brother Gilbert knowingly.

'Who isn't?'

There was a split-second pause and then the brotherhood fell about laughing again. This time the laughter swept them away. Tears streamed down their cheeks and thighs were slapped. Whenever the laughter looked like petering out, one of the brotherhood would repeat the word 'who?' and it would start all over again.

'You all seem to have a very similar taste in humour.'

'That's because we're a fraternity.'

'We're five people with one mind,' added Brother Bill.

'Like a colony of ants, in a way,' explained Gilbert. 'We're united in suffering.'

'I'm sorry to hear it.'

'Oh no!' cried Gilbert, 'we don't need your sympathy; you're one of us now!'

That took me aback for a second. Again they stared at me like dogs outside a butcher's window display.

'Me? Why?'

Gilbert leaned closer and, as he did, the rest followed suit. His voice took on a cloying, conspiratorial air. 'You mean you don't know?'

I lowered my voice, 'No, what?'

'We're from Myfanwy Anonymous!'

The eyes of the brothers as they scrutinised my face were as wide as children's on bonfire night.

'We used to sit up the front like you,' said Brother Gilbert.

'But not any more,' added Brother Frank forlornly. 'That was a long time ago. Now it's someone else's turn.'

'Now we just sit here and wait for our turn in the sun again,' said Brother Bill.

'I've never heard of your organisation.'

'Not many people have,' hissed Gilbert excitedly, 'you can join if you like!'

'Why would I want to join a bunch of losers like you?'

The brotherhood looked at me sadly. Not with indignation, but with that infuriating understanding that holy men have for other people's human failings.

'Ah, Brother Louie, you're still in denial.'

'Don't give me your cheap armchair psychology,' I shouted.

'Please don't get annoyed,' said Bill. 'For a long time I was just like you.'

'Look, I'm not like you, OK? I'm a good friend of Myfanwy.' It sounded pathetic.

They exchanged glances with a mute understanding but said nothing.

'And don't look at me like that!' I had started to shout again, and to speak faster as if speed would somehow add the conviction that I now felt irresistibly seeping away. 'I'm not like you. This is all a mistake. I came late so there was no room at the front. That's why I'm sitting here; you watch, when she comes she'll come and talk to me!' I was staring around wildly now, almost challenging anyone in the brotherhood to contradict me. But all I met with was a bottomless well of compassion and understanding.

'It's all right, Louie, we understand.'

'No you don't.'

'Oh yes. It's all a mistake. Don't worry, there's no need to get upset.'

'I'm not upset!' And then aware of the passion in my voice I said again in a controlled tone, 'I'm not upset.'

'Of course. But there is one thing you should know. Myfanwy won't come back here to talk to you, the girls don't come back here.'

This time Brother Bill grabbed my arm with sudden urgency, 'But that doesn't mean you don't have a chance. Everyone has a chance.'

'Oh really!' I sneered. 'Is that what you think? Everyone has a chance, do they? Even old Brother what's-his-face over there drooling into his pint?'

They turned and looked sadly at an old man at the end of the table. He was trying desperately to follow the conversation but it was obvious his hearing wasn't good enough. Instead he sat there trembling and forcing himself to laugh when the others did.

'That's Brother Tobias, and he has as good a chance as anyone.' The warmth had left Brother Gilbert's voice now.

Brother Bill leaned across to me. 'You didn't ought to talk about the brothers like that. You didn't ought to disrespect them.'

'Well wise up and see the truth. Brother Tobias doesn't stand a chance with Myfanwy and neither do any of you.'

Brother Frank punched the table and squealed at my heresy. 'No! No! No! It's not true! Everyone has a chance!'

'Because Myfanwy is so good and pure.'

'Is that what you think, is it?' I sneered.

'I can prove it!'

'Yeah! How?' If only I hadn't asked.

Brother Frank brought his face right up to mine, his eyes moist with anger.

'Because . . . because she even went out with that crippled schoolboy!'

'Could have had any man in Wales, as well,' added Gilbert.

I sat there aware that my stomach had just dropped into my shoes. For seconds I couldn't speak, until finally I managed, 'Wh . . . what did you say?'

'The crippled schoolboy — with the bad leg. The one that died. Lovers they were.'

'You mean Dai Brainbocs?'

'Yes!' Gilbert insisted. 'Him!'

'Good God!' I said finally.

I sat unable to speak or move. Twenty minutes later Bianca walked in and told me Myfanwy was up at the hospital. Evans the Boot was dead.

Chapter 13

IT WAS RAINING heavily outside and the streets, glassy and shiny, were largely deserted as I sped down Great Darkgate Street to the hospital. My heart was racing and my mouth dry with fear; the news that Evans the Boot was dead meant nothing, but the revelation that Myfanwy and Brainbocs had been lovers was a pile-driver to the heart. At the hospital I parked as close as I could get to the main door, stepped out and walked across through the driving rain to the garishly lit entrance. A policeman stepped out of the shadows and blocked my way.

'Where you going?'

'Is there a law against visiting the hospital?'

'It's not visiting hours, come back in the morning.'

Another figure stepped out of the shadows. It was Llunos. As usual he didn't look pleased to see me.

'Your mum shag a vulture, or what?'

'What's that mean?'

'Every time I find a corpse, you turn up.'

'I could say the same for you.'

'You could but you'd need to visit the dentist after. What do you want?'

I realised there was no way Llunos was going to let me in, so I decided on a long shot — the truth. 'I need to see Myfanwy.'

I could see he was unused to dealing with it.

'What makes you think she's here?'

'Someone told me they found Evans and she's down at the morgue. I don't need to go in, my business is with her, not Evans the Boot. If you could get a message to her, to tell her I was here, I could wait over there in my car.'

The uniformed policeman started to laugh, 'Oh isn't that sweet! If we could just get a message —'

Llunos shut him up by waving an impatient hand at him. Then he looked at me, 'In your car?'

I nodded.

'OK we can do that. I'll let her know.'

I waited in the car for about half an hour, listening to the rhythmic droning of the windscreen wipers. Eventually I saw Myfanwy walking through the parked cars towards me. I flashed the lights. When she got in we were both in near-prefect darkness but even though I couldn't see, I could tell she'd been crying.

'Myfanwy -'

'Don't.'

Silence filled the car and amplified the sounds as we shifted in our seats.

'Can we just drive somewhere?'

'Where?'

'Anywhere, it doesn't matter. Please.'

I turned on the engine.

'Anywhere as long as it's away from Aberystwyth.'

The rain was driving hard, sweeping in from the sea. Outside the hospital car park I turned right, up over Penglais Hill, and on into the darkened landscape beyond. Myfanwy told me about Evans. He'd been found earlier in the day by a man walking his dog. The dog had run off to fetch a stick and returned with a finger. The body had been crudely buried under gorse bushes but little attempt had been made to conceal it. Someone had disfigured it and removed the fingerprints in the time-honoured way of immersion in a mixture of battery acid and local cheese. Police were still hopeful of a positive identification when the pathologists were finished.

We drove to the caravan. I shouldn't have revealed its location to Myfanwy but I didn't care. The park was quieter than a cemetery when we arrived, the only sound the squeaking of the Fresh Milk sign from the general store and the far-off hum of the ocean beyond the dunes. The rain had stopped. It was cold and damp inside the caravan, but the camping-gas heater soon filled the interior with a cosy yellow warmth. The lamps sighed as they burned. Myfanwy sat at the horse-shoe arrangement of seats at the end, rested her elbows on the Formica table-top and buried her head wearily in her hands. I made two cups of packet soup in the kitchenette, poured a shot of rum into each, and took them over to the table. Myfanwy had found the ludo and was setting out the counters.

'Suppose you tell me about Brainbocs.'

She rolled the dice. Four and a five; you needed a six to start.

'What do you mean?'

I rolled a six and a one, and set off on my journey around the board. How many other people, honeymooners and young families, had made the same journey as the rain swept in from the sea and pounded on the plywood roof of their shoebox on wheels? Families who had driven for two or three hours, stopping occasionally for puking children, to this world of gorse and marram grass, dunes and bingo and fish and chips.

'Your cousin's dead, Myfanwy. Don't you think it's time to stop playing games?'

She picked up the dice and shook. They made a hollow clip-clopping sound inside the cup.

'I'm not playing games.'

'You haven't been straight with me.' Clip-clop, four and three.

'I've told you everything I know.' Double six. 'Oooh!'

I put my hand palm down on the counters before she could move them.

'You didn't tell me you and Brainbocs were lovers.'

It caught her by surprise and she bit her lip. 'We weren't.'

'That's not what I hear.'

'Well whoever told you that was a liar. We weren't lovers. I mean we didn't you know ... do it.'

'What did you do?'

'Nothing. Honest.'

'Why don't you tell me about it?'

'It's not like you think.'

'You don't know what I think.'

'We weren't lovers, he just had this thing about me. All through school he'd had a thing about me; a lot of boys did. It's not a crime.'

'No,' I said gently, 'but a crime has been committed, and now you have to be straight with me.'

Clip-clop, double five. She paused. 'It started just after I took the job at the Moulin - when he found out about it he was really upset. He came down one night but they wouldn't let him in. So he waited outside. I left that night with a gentleman and I saw Brainbocs just as I got into the car. He was standing in the doorway of Army Surplice and staring like he'd seen a ghost. The next night he was there again. And the next. It came to be a pattern: he'd come down and try to get in, they wouldn't let him, and then he'd spend the rest of the evening standing outside. At first the bouncers tried to frighten him away. But he didn't seem to care. I think he knew there wasn't much they could do to a poor lame boy. When it rained he stood there in the rain, soaked and not even shivering. Eventually the boss asked me to go and speak to him. So I did.'

'When did all this happen?'

The Legendary Welsh Chanteuse stuck her tongue into one cheek like a schoolgirl doing a hard sum.

'It started last autumn. At Christmas be stopped coming. Then at Easter he ... he died.'

I nodded and wondered at the casual precision with which she recited the dates. Wasn't it all a bit late in the day for a revelation such as this?

'So what happened when they sent you out to speak to him?'

'He said, "Myfanwy, please don't do this." I said, "Do what?" (like I didn't know); and he said, "Work in this establishment." Just like that, "Work in this establishment", like he was straight out of Oliver Twist.'

'And then what?'

She sighed and lowered her eyes back to the board. 'So I said, "What do you want?" And he didn't really say anything for a long time. He just kept looking at me like he wanted me to know but didn't want to say it. So I said it again, "What do you want? I've got to go back to work." And then it started to rain and I told him again I really had to go back inside. And then he put his hand on my arm. A hand like a girl's and he said, "Myfanwy, I love you." Just like that, and I laughed. And then when I saw the look on his face, I sort of stopped laughing. He looked like . . .' The words trailed off. Myfanwy's jaw moved silently as she struggled to find an expression appropriate for the abyss of misery to which her careless laugh had condemned the lame, unworldly scholar. But she couldn't. There was no experience in her carefree life to match his despair. How did I know? I, who had never met Brainbocs, and had never observed the scene in the rain outside the Moulin Goch? Oh, I knew. I just knew.

'Anyway,' she said finally, 'he looked really hurt.'

Clip-clop, one and five.

'And he asked me if he could buy me an ice cream the next day after he finished school. At first I said no. And then he pleaded and still I said no. It wasn't that I didn't want to, I just knew that if I said yes, that look in his eyes, I just knew it would come to no good. Then Mr Jenkins appeared in the doorway across the road and tapped his watch. I said again that I had to go. And again he begged me to have an ice cream with him. And then something awful happened.'

She looked up from the board and straight at me.

'Yes?'

'He started unbuckling that metal thing he has on his leg. The what's-it-called?'

'Calliper?'

'And I said, 'Dai what are you doing?' And he said he was going on his knees!'

I shook my head in sympathy at the sad scene.

'So of course I agreed to have an ice cream. But only on condition, I said, that he never came waiting outside the Club like this again and that he didn't go round telling everyone he was my boyfriend, just because I had an ice cream with him.'

'Did he agree?'

'Yes. Next day I met him at Sospan's, but it was a cold day and so we went to the Seaside Rock Cafe and over a plate of humbug rock he proposed. He asked me to marry him. I told him not to be so stupid. And he said, "It's my leg isn't it?" I said, "No, of course not." And then he said something strange. He said, "Myfanwy, what is the one thing you want more than anything in this world?" And I said "Nothing." But he wouldn't listen. He said there must be something I wanted. He said I must have a dream. I said no. And he said everybody, even a beggar, has a dream. But again I said no. And he went all quiet. Paid for the rock and left. That was in November, and weeks went by and I never saw him. Then as I left the Club on Christmas Eve, there he was again standing in the doorway as the snow fell. And do you know what?'

I raised my eyebrows.

'He had one of my school essays with him. From long ago. I hadn't a clue where he got it. It was about how it had been my dream to sing in the opera in Patagonia, and how I would give my hand in marriage to the man who made my dream come true. I'd forgotten I'd written it. And he held it under my nose and said, "See, you have a dream!" And I laughed sarcastically and said, "No, David, I had a dream. I don't have a dream any more. Now I'm just a Moulin girl with no time for dreams." Then he said, "One day I will make your dream come true, and then you will marry me." I was going to laugh but the look in his eyes . . . well I knew I shouldn't. So I just stared at him. And then he walked away. That was the last I saw of him. Limping off into the snow on Christmas Eve. Then a few weeks later a package arrived for me. There was no letter, just the essay. All about Cantref-y-Gwaelod; I didn't even bother reading it. Then one day I read that he'd been killed.'

'And what did you do with the essay?'

'I gave it to Evans the Boot.'

*

It was sometime between two and three when I pulled up outside the Orthopaedic Boot store on Canticle Street. I was dog-tired and made only the vaguest attempt at parking straight before climbing the sad wooden stairs to my office. It was like climbing Everest. I didn't bother changing, just collapsed on to the bed. As soon as my head hit the pillow I was asleep and as soon as that happened the phone rang.

'Yes?'

'Where on earth have you been?'

'Uh?'

'You've got to come quick.' It was Bianca.

'Bianca? What's up?'

'I'm in trouble. I haven't got much time. Can you come here now?'

'Why what's happened?'

'I've got the essay.'

The hair on my head would have stood on end if it hadn't been too tired.

'You've what?'

'The essay. I've stolen it, when Pickel catches me he'll —' There was a scream, and the line went dead.

When I arrived at her flat in Tan-y-Bwlch her front door was ajar. Furniture and fixtures were thrown across the floor, crockery was smashed, papers littered the carpet. There were bloody handprints on the wall and smeared down the gloss white of the door. I looked at the phone and knew I should call Llunos. Things had gone far enough. And for all I knew, the police could be on the way here right now. I looked at the phone. I really should call the police, but I didn't.

Chapter 14

I FOUND HIM sitting next to the cauldron in a belfry that smelled faintly of gin. Alerted by the sound of stair-climbing he was already looking at the entrance when I walked in.

'What do you want? This is private property."

There was no wind, no sensation at all except the steady whirr of the clockwork, and the faint smell of gin.

'Where is she? And don't say "who?"'

'Fuck off.'

The floor was a series of boards suspended high up in the tower. In the middle there was a gaping chasm and beneath it the fabulous iron and brass monster of the clockwork mechanism. It was from here that Mr Dombey had fallen or been pushed into the shark's jaw of the cogs. And at the moment it separated me from Pickel. I started to walk round towards the other side.

Pickel picked up a brass rod from the floor. 'You stay where you are.'

'The deal is very simple, Pickel. Tell me where she is, or I throw you into the clock.'

He waved the rod uncertainly and took a step back. 'That's close enough.'

I continued walking and ducked under the horizontal spindle that turned the hands.

'I'm warning you!'

I took another step. 'There was blood on the walls.'

He stepped back again and shook his head. 'Not me.'

'If you've harmed her, I'll kill you.'

'You've got the wrong man.'

'Why don't you tell me who the right man is?'

I looked down at the precipice. Lying on the floor a few feet from the edge was an old blacksmith's anvil. Covered in dust and cobwebs now, but probably used at some point in the past to repair a piece of the machinery. Pickel's gaze landed on it at the same time and the same thought went through both our heads.

'No!' howled Pickel.

I smiled.

'Don't you dare!'

He made a jump towards me but stopped like a fly hitting a window pane the moment I rested my foot on top of the anvil.

'Don't what?'

He was standing on one foot, poised like a relay racer waiting for the baton. Immobilised by the terror that any movement of his might induce me to slide the lump of iron over the edge and into the teeth of his beloved clock.

'Don't do it,' he cried in a softer voice. 'Please!'

'Where is she?'

He held his hands out in supplication. 'I don't know.' It was a simple statement delivered in the beseeching, wheedling tone of a mother begging for her baby back.

I pushed the anvil a bit further until it was lying at the very edge of the precipice. The clock was well built, but still extremely delicate. An anvil crashing through it would do a lot more damage than the emaciated frame of Mr Dombey.

'I don't believe you.'

I could see fear in Pickel's eyes. If I had threatened to throw his mother out of the window, he probably wouldn't have batted an eye, but the prospect of seeing his clock destroyed was too much. I pushed the anvil even further until it was now teetering on the brink, held in place only by the slight extra weight from the sole of my shoe.

'Where is she?'

'Please, they took her.'

I looked at him impatiently.

'Lovespoon and his tough guys. She stole the essay from me, y'see - the stupid bitch. I mean I had to tell them. They'd have killed me if they'd found out; probably will anyway.'

His eyes were riveted on the anvil.

'Where did they take her?'

He shook his head. 'I don't know. Really I don't.'

I let the anvil swing a bit to refresh his memory.

He cried out. 'Why the fuck would they tell me, anyway?'

'Look, you pile of shit, I don't care what they will and won't tell you. I'm trying to find that girl before any of you monkeys harm her. Now either I leave this tower knowing where to find her, or your clock is fucked.'

He sank down on to the floor and supported his head in his hands.

'Lovespoon is up at the school.'

'What's he doing up there?' I asked in surprise.

'He goes there every night ... to his study ... to write ... and -'

He stopped.

'Yes?'

'And to look at his Ark.' He shrugged. 'That's where he goes.'

'Even at four o'clock in the morning?'

'He'll be there. He never sleeps any more.'

I pulled back the anvil and walked to the door. If you're lying, I'll be back with my own anvil.

Nothing had changed: the squeaky floor, the stale smell of feet and disinfectant, and the skeletal coat pegs, empty except for the occasional lonely anorak. But night gave it an alien, ghostly appearance. Breaking in was as easy now as it had been twenty years ago when we used to come and piss in the sports trophies in the assembly hall. I crept down the corridor, my shoes squealing on the tiles like birds in the rainforest. It was difficult to believe Lovespoon would be here at four in the morning, but Pickel was right. At the end of the corridor, across the foyer, I could see a shaft of light coming from the door of his study. The section where the senior masters had their offices was set off from the main foyer and used to be called the Alamo. A powerful Pavlovian reaction, dormant for two decades, was set in motion as I approached. Mouth went dry and ears began to throb in anticipation of being cuffed. I wrestled with the force inside me which was turning me once again into a subservient, defenceless schoolboy. A target for board rubbers, someone to be lifted bodily by the ear and pulled by the hair. To be upbraided with inferior sarcasm and terrorised into not answering back. How would I find the courage to stand up to him? To accuse him of murdering five of his own pupils? What business is it of yours, anyway, little boy? What if he had his cane? I hesitated outside the door and a voice came from inside: 'Come in, boy, don't stand out there dithering!'

He was at his desk, side-on to me, hunched over and marking essays. Without looking round he raised a hand and waved it in my direction, indicating that I should wait. I stood up straight and took my hands out of my pockets and then cursed myself for the cringing subservience. The only light was the lamp on his desk, and from outside the window the reflection from the huge wooden Ark which now filled up most of the scrub grass to the left of the games field. It shone in the intense white glare of the lights, and security patrols could be seen wandering up and down in front of it. Lovespoon finished marking with a dramatic flourish, closed the last exercise book and looked up.

'It's about that girl, isn't it?' And then adding, as he transferred his entire attention from the marking to this new subject, 'Such a silly girl.'

I said nothing and stared.

He scrutinised my face, trying to place me in the endless stream of pustulating, squeaky-voiced adolescent boys that had flowed through his life, boys who perhaps grew to be as indistinguishable as the leaves that littered the drive each autumn.

'Mr Ballantyne the careers master tells me you're a private detective?'

I didn't answer and the old Welsh teacher sucked on his tongue as he considered the merits of my career choice. 'I always had you down for something more clerical. Drink?'

He pulled a bottle of wine out from behind the angle-poise lamp.

'I'm not thirsty.'

'Ffestiniog Chardonnay, the '73. Really quite good.' He poured himself a glass and added, 'I was under the impression that hard-boiled private eyes were constrained by the requirements of stereotype to drink on every possible occasion.'

'Fuck you!'

The teacher flinched slightly and then said, 'Ah!' before drumming his fingers softly on the desk.

'Where is she?'

He smiled weakly and made an almost imperceptible shrug. 'I don't know.'

'Try again.'

'No, really I don't.'

He leaned slightly closer and peered at me. 'I don't remember teaching you actually.'

'You chipped my tooth when you threw the board rubber.'

He reached and picked up a pen, and then put it down again. 'This is all a terrible mess. Apparently she did it for you.'

Even in the dark I couldn't disguise my reaction.

Lovespoon laughed. 'So romantic. Still, you'd make a better match than Pickel, I dare say. So one can hardly blame her.'

'Just tell me where she is, and I won't hurt you.'

'Hurt me?' he said in phoney surprise.

'Not that you don't rucking deserve it, I owe you plenty.'

The Welsh teacher rutted at my language, and ran a hand lovingly along the ornately carved wooden arms of his chair. It was like a throne.

'Do you know what this chair is?'

I knew he was playing for time, trying to think of a way out or hoping someone would come, but it was difficult to resist the drift of his conversation.

'It's the bardic chair from the Eisteddfod. You won it for the poetry.'

'Three times. That's why I got to keep it.'

'Like Brazil in the World Cup.'

He winced. Then stood up wearily and walked through the darkened office to the window.

'That's the trouble with people like you, Knight, you only know how to mock. How to break things. You don't know how to create anything. You never did.'

'Where does killing your pupils fit into the picture?'

'Brainbocs was unfortunate.'

'You'll be telling me you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, next.'

He shrugged and turned back to face me. 'It's not a bad philosophy.'

'Is that what Bianca is then?'

'Surely you're not going to get all sentimental about a tart?'

I jumped and lunged at him; he stepped back in time and I ended up grabbing his arm. As he struggled to break free we both fell on to the desk, scattering photos, half-marked essays and a pair of scissors.

'She's worth ten of you.'

He laughed wildly. 'She's not worth one of my farts.'

'Tell me where she is!' I shouted. We rolled off the desk on to the floor. Lovespoon struggled to push me off and I fought to get above him, to push him down. He was strong but I had twenty years on him. Soon I was kneeling on his chest. The struggle had knocked the table lamp over and the thin yellow beam pointed at his face.

'Where is she?'

Lovespoon was breathing hard and spoke in gasps. 'I told ... you ... I ... don't know.'

I balled my fingers into a fist and raised it. He looked straight at me with clear, calm grey eyes. There was no fear in them. It was then that I noticed the scissors on the floor. They were those heavy craft scissors with black-painted finger holes. I picked them up and held them hovering above his face.

'Don't make me do it.'

He sneered. 'You haven't got the balls! You never did have, did you? You were too much of a milksop to play rugby — yes I remember you; and now you think you can come here threatening me?'

I brought the scissors down so low that the point was almost touching his eye. The eyelashes brushed against it. I could see him visibly forcing himself to remain composed.

'You can't frighten me, you know. I fought in Patagonia.'

'With Gwenno Guevara.'

He sneered. 'You'll never find her, you know. Brainbocs managed it but he died, and you don't have the brains.'

'What have you done to Bianca?'

'Since when did you care so much about Pickel's tart?'

I tightened my grip on the scissors. 'If you don't tell me where she is I'll put out your eyes so you never see Cantref-y-Gwaelod.'

For a while there was silence except our breathing. Lovespoon stared up at me and I stared down at him and in between were the scissors. Finally he said: 'I'll make a deal.'

'You're not in a position to.'

'Herod has the girl; I don't know where. We'll bring her to you tomorrow.'

'Why should I trust you?'

'Because you haven't got the rucking balls to use those scissors, have you?'

Chapter 15

HE WAS RIGHT, of course. Maybe in the heat of a fight I could have used them but not like that in cold blood. Perhaps if I had paid more attention during Herod Jenkins's games lessons I could have done it, but I was, as he said, too much of a milksop.

There was nothing to be done. I left the school and drove aimlessly inland, through Commins Coch and on to Penrhyncogh, and then began a. long sweep west towards Borth. As I drove, the words of Lovespoon echoed through my thoughts. Since when did I give a damn about Bianca? I thought of the night I took her home. To perform that act — the one that along with money was responsible for most of the trouble that came in through my door. For years I had sat and watched them all squirming on the client's chair, gored by the suspicion that their partners were cheating on them. Each one thinking that the disaster that befell them was unique, thinking that paying me to confirm it would somehow make them feel better. I had heard it all a thousand times before, like a priest taking confession — me with my phoney absolution. That act that so twisted the heart. Which the newspapers called sexual intercourse, and Lovespoon called sexual congress, and the man in the pub called bonking and Bianca called, paradoxically, making love, and which Mrs Llantrisant didn't even have a name for which she felt comfortable with. That act of cold animal coupling that so often in this town was nothing more than simple rutting. I didn't know why I had done it. Lonely and frightened, and drunk, perhaps. I hadn't given it any thought. Why? Because she was a Moulin girl and we all knew they had no feelings, or the ones they had were invented to suit the occasion. As men we warned each other with smug pride at our worldliness to steer clear of their treacherous hearts. And then this happens. She risked her life to help me; and might now be dead, or worse. A course of action that could only have been prompted by tenderness or love or some feeling she wasn't supposed to be capable of. And I thought of Myfanwy, so much more wise and versed in the ways of the Aberystwyth street, and I tried to imagine her sacrificing herself for me like that. And even as I tried to picture it, I knew with iron certainty that it was out of the question.

The first light was filtering through a veil of grey clouds when I reached Borth. I drove through the golf course and parked at the foot of the dunes and got out. I had intended going for a swim but when I reached the top of the dune, I thought better of it. Instead I sat on the sand and watched the slow, endless advance of the cleansing waves. My eyelids dropped lower and lower, until I slept. It was Cadwaladr who woke me. The war veteran Myfanwy and I had shared our picnic with. He offered me a drink from his can of Special Brew and I took it despite the waves of nausea brought on by the high-alcohol lager hitting an empty stomach. For a while we didn't speak, just stared out at the eternity of the ocean and I asked him the same question that I had asked Lovespoon. Who was Gwenno Guevara? This mysterious soldier Brainbocs had met in the week before he died.

Cadwaladr didn't answer immediately, and when he did he said simply, 'She was a whore.'

'Is that it? Just a whore?'

'Before the war she was a whore. A tea-cosy girl. Then she went to Patagonia and became a fighter. After the war — who knows? She disappeared.'

The old soldier stood up to leave and I called after him.

'You remember what you said about Rio Caeriog?'

He paused.

'You said they didn't teach your version of it in school. Do you remember?'

'Yes.'

'Can you tell me your version? The true story of Rio Caeriog?'

'No.'

'But you were there, weren't you?'

'Oh yes, I was there.'

He shook his head and added before tramping off: 'But I can't tell you that story. It's not mine to tell.'

When I got back to the office, there was a note from Eeyore to call him, and Llunos was once again sitting in my chair. He was picking bits of dirt from underneath his fingernails, and spoke without looking up, 'Have a nice swim?'

'Not bad; you should get out in the sunshine a bit more yourself.'

He continued to talk to his fingernails. 'You're probably right.'

I slumped down into the client's chair across the desk from him and waited for him to say what he had to say. Nothing came. We sat in silence like that for a while. The phone rang.

'Louie Knight Investigations.'

'If you want to see the girl, come to the harbour tonight at midnight. Outside the Chandler's.'

'Who is this please?'

'Come alone or we'll slice her up.' The caller hung up and I put the receiver down while trying to keep the look on my face neutral.

Llunos seemed too bored to even ask about the call. When he finally spoke it was about palaeoanthropology.

'Fascinating discipline,' he said looking up from his fingernails.

'If you've come to borrow a book on it I gave my last one to Mrs Llantrisant.'

'It's quite a hobby of mine, actually.'

I wondered why he was here. Had they found Bianca?

'Chap at the University specialises in it. He's got this wonderful 3D modelling software for his computer. He takes the skulls of stone-age men and scans them in and then slowly builds up the tissue and muscle and things until eventually presto! he gets to find out what Stone Age men looked like.'

'Why bother? We all know they looked like you.'

He flinched, but persevered with the air of studied detachment he'd adopted for the occasion. 'We found some fibres under Evans the Boot's fingernails. Hardly any really, but we gave them to this chap and he put them in his computer and he managed to recreate the knitting pattern. It was a tea cosy. Then we got two speedknitters up from the Bureau in Cardiff and they knocked us out a copy of the original cosy.'

I knew what was coming next.