From Aberystwyth with Love

Chapter 23

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

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

Calamity was outside watching through the two-way mirror as we reversed the horoscope and superseded the paradigm in ways the writers for Gumshoe magazine could never have imagined.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

Llunos put another penny into the jukebox and selected ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ by Johnny Cash. Oh yes, he was enjoying himself.

I’m stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin’ on

But that train keeps a rollin’ on down to San Anton . . .

He paced around the room for a while to let the irony of his music choice sink in and then, as if inspired by a sudden decision, he walked up to the high-backed chair in which Mrs Mochdre sat, placed his palms on the table next to her and leaned round to speak into her face. It was the ‘invading the personal space’ routine that you saw in all the cop shows. He even had the authentic sweat stains under the arms. ‘It’s up to you, Mrs Mochdre,’ he said. ‘We already know the facts, about the terrible thing you did to your sister’s little girl, but we need to hear it from you. You recognise Gypsy Rosie Lee here, don’t you? You thought you’d seen the last of her, didn’t you? Thought you’d done her in good and proper that time when you took a hammer and smashed her face in.’

I re-read the report in the Cambrian News, strangely moved, and threw it down on the desk taking care that the story fell under the nose of Mrs Mochdre. Maybe it would help concentrate her mind. A smarter woman might have noticed the yellowing and fading of the aged paper, or wondered why the masthead had changed, but a smarter woman wouldn’t even be here. Mrs Mochdre held herself erect, too proud or stubborn to look at the newspaper. She held her handbag pressed against her chest and trembled. No one, not even a tough guy, knows how to play it cool in a police interview room. The ones who tell you they can are just bluffing.

Llunos grabbed a desk calendar which was opened to the date 30 August 1955 and slid it across the desk towards Mrs Mochdre. ‘Tomorrow’s the day, Mrs Mochdre. Tomorrow’s the day you take little Gethsemane to Aberystwyth and tomorrow’s the day she disappears never to be seen again. Tomorrow is when it all happens. We’re a bit cloudy about the details, we don’t know exactly what happens tomorrow, but we’ve got a good idea. And Gypsy Rosie Lee here knows everything. All I have to do is put the coin in and she starts singing. You remember the gypsy, don’t you? You are probably surprised to see her back, in view of the beating you gave her. But mechanical fortune-tellers are not like little girls,’ said Llunos, ‘they can be repaired. We hunted her down and brought her back. She recognises you. She picked you out of the line-up. She remembers the beating you gave her. You see the calendar. As soon as we turned her on she took one look and presto! She thinks it’s August 1955. It doesn’t have to be that way, Mrs Mochdre. You could tell us in your own words instead. I don’t say it would keep you out of gaol, but it might knock a few years off the time you have to serve. For someone of your age those few years could make all the difference. So you sit here facing a choice. Either you tell us in your own words, freely and uncoerced, how it was, or we ask the fortune-teller.’

‘No court would take the word of a common gyppo.’

Llunos paused. He exhaled deliberately and wearily. He said nothing. All cops know the right words to use, but the real smart ones like Llunos know how to use silence; at the right moment it can be crushing. He put his forearms on the desk next to her and buried his head in his hands. Still he said nothing and Mrs Mochdre began to tremble. Llunos straightened up and began pacing up and down.

‘Underneath it all, Mrs Mochdre,’ he said finally, ‘I’m a human being and I believe in human beings. It’s the only reason I can still bear to put on this uniform every morning. And I believe in you too. I don’t believe any of this was how you intended. It couldn’t be, it’s not possible. Not to your own sister. I don’t believe you are insane, probably not even wicked. I think you are weak, and stupid and mean and not very smart. But you’re no fiend. There has to be an explanation for what happened. I can only think it was an accident, it got out of hand. As a cop, I’ve seen this sort of thing a thousand times before, you’d be surprised how common it is. People who do a small crime and would never be capable of doing a big one end up doing the big one to cover up the small one. In fact, I’d say that’s how most criminals are except the real psychos. You never meant it to happen like this, did you? It just somehow started and once it had started, it was like a snowball rolling down the hill, you couldn’t find a way to stop it. Even now, thirty years later, you still can’t believe what has happened. Isn’t that right, Mrs Mochdre? Isn’t that how it was?’

‘Yes, yes, something like that.’

‘Tell us what happens tomorrow.’ He pointed at the calendar, and then at the mechanical gypsy. ‘Or we ask her.’

Mrs Mochdre loosened her grip on her handbag, as if coming to a decision, and put it slowly down on the desk in front of her. ‘I never meant . . . she was such a naughty girl, she knocked my cruet set over and scratched it. Well, it was the last straw . . .’

‘Let’s start with the first straw, start at the beginning of the day, start with the séance tape. Tell us about that.’

‘It was her mum’s birthday the following week, you see. I took her into town to buy a present and we went to the amusement arcade on the Pier as a treat. They had one of those machines where you can record your own voice and make a disc, like that one.’ She pointed to the machine against the wall. ‘So I paid for her to have a little go. The disc was going to be the present. I kept hold of it. After that we had a milkshake in the milk bar and went back to Abercuawg. Then, once we got back . . . she was always such a naughty girl . . .’

‘Just tell it.’

‘She threw her lunch on the floor so I . . . put her in the pig pen. I told her, little girls with no manners can eat with the pigs.’

Llunos didn’t bat an eye but this was news. We assumed she had packed her in the cupboard.

‘Then what happened?’

‘I went out for a little while and when I came back . . .’ Sobs overcame her and Llunos waited patiently. ‘When I came back, she was gone. The pigs had eaten her. There was nothing left except a single shoe. They’d eaten her, just like people said they did to Goldilocks’s mother.’

Llunos sighed and sat down opposite her. We had departed from the script. ‘OK, so the pigs ate the girl.’ He shot me a glance and I did my best to communicate that this was a surprise to me too. ‘Then what?’

‘I told the Witchfinder. He promised to help, if in return . . . if in return I agreed to marry him.’ She collapsed into sobs, and held her face in her hands. ‘Thirty years I’ve been paying for it, every night. He’s . . . he’s . . . oh, I can’t bring myself to say!’

‘Then what happened?’

‘He took the shoe and buried it in Goldilocks’s garden. He told me not to breathe a word to anyone and they would all think Goldilocks had done something with the girl.’

‘So where does the séance tape come in?’

Mrs Mochdre paused, thinking perhaps about how far she had to go.

‘Don’t contemplate, just tell us, Mrs Mochdre. The time for contemplation is past. Today we need the truth.’

‘I thought . . . I hoped . . . Alfred the balloon-folder would still want me, even though I was married to that beast. I thought he could rescue me. But he was too broken-hearted over the loss of Gethsemane. I thought if he knows she has died he will stop grieving and come to me. So I sent the tape. But he just took to his bed. He said, “She’s in heaven now and there’s nothing left for me on earth. I’m taking to my bed.” And he did, too. Died of a broken heart. It all turned out wrong.’ She made token dabs at the tears with a screwed-up handkerchief.

‘And that’s it?’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s all.’

‘You’re a liar, Mrs Mochdre.’

‘No!’

‘That’s not what happened at all. This stuff about the pigs is a fairy tale. You locked her in the cupboard, didn’t you?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

Llunos slammed his hand down on the desk. ‘Yes! I say, yes! Tell us everything, Mrs Mochdre, or you’ll die in prison, would you like that?’

‘Why should I care? What have I got left to live for?’

Llunos let that one rest and played another card. Silence. No one said anything and for a while the only sound was breathing. Eventually, Mrs Mochdre began again. ‘It was me he loved. He said so, he was going to break off with her. Then she fell pregnant, the scheming little hussy. I saw straight away what her game was. She knew, you see; she knew he loved me, not her. He was too decent for his own good. He went along with it, even though he knew that he had been tricked. Have to make an honest woman of her, he said. I said why? And he told me he couldn’t bear the thought of a child of his entering the world as a bastard.’

‘So then you packed Gethsemane off in the cupboard—’

‘I didn’t! It wasn’t like that . . .’

‘Yes, and then you went out for a walk and when you came back the cupboard was gone. It had been collected by Mooncalf. You realised what had happened, but you didn’t say anything. That was the time to say something, wasn’t it? But you chose not to, you chose not to because a little thought had wormed its way into your head: without her around, maybe, just maybe . . .’

‘No, no . . .’

‘Of course you did, anyone would. It would be the first thing you thought of. It’s only human, Mrs Mochdre. We like to pretend that we don’t have thoughts like that, but we do, we all do. They are the first ones, what’s in it for me? That’s how it was, I know that’s how it was, it had to be. You thought, if I say nothing and she goes away maybe Alfred would come back to me. But he died of a broken heart instead and you ended up handcuffed to that old creaking wooden bed for the next thirty years shuddering beneath a man wearing a goat outfit. Tough break.’

Llunos stormed out of the interview room and left the two of us. After a pause I followed him. Outside, the three of us stood watching her through the window. She picked up the paper and glanced at it, then put it down and waited. Llunos put his arm on Calamity’s shoulder. ‘I have to hand it to you, kid,’ he said. ‘This is genius.’

‘Not really,’ said Calamity.

‘Forty years in the force and never seen anything like it. I wasn’t sure if she would fall for it, but she did. What’s it called again?’

‘Superseding the paradigm,’ she answered with pride.

‘Amazing!’ Llunos took me by the arm and pulled me to one side. He beckoned me to follow him. We walked up the corridor out of earshot of Calamity.

‘It will never work,’ he said simply.

‘No?’

‘She won’t sign. What do you make of the pig-pen story?’

‘It must be true. I can’t believe she would invent it. Gethsemane must have escaped from the pig pen and left a shoe behind in the mud. We need to find out who put her in the dresser.’

‘Maybe Gethsemane just hid,’ said Llunos.

‘With a tin of corned beef? Only an adult would put something like that in. If a kid was packing stuff to take with her she wouldn’t think of that.’ I smiled. ‘Don’t they teach you anything on your psychology course?’

Llunos looked puzzled for a second until he realised what I was talking about. ‘I stopped all that.’

‘You did?’

‘It wasn’t me. It was the detective version of mutton dressed up as lamb. I prefer the old ways, the ones I feel comfortable with.’

‘Abercuawg isn’t the repressed unconscious of Aberystwyth then?’

‘It’s just a lake filled with old prams. Come, I want to show you something.’ He beckoned again and I followed.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Someone’s confessed to killing Arianwen Eglwys Fach – in the interview room at the end.’

My skin prickled. ‘The Witchfinder?’

‘Why him?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t like him.’

‘You would make a good cop.’

It was difficult to know whether he was being ironic or sincere. Most of the cops round here worked on a similar principle to the one I had outlined.

‘It wasn’t him,’ said Llunos. ‘Look.’

I peered through another two-way mirror into the interview goldfish bowl. Meici Jones was sitting at the table across from two cops.

‘He says it was his mum,’ said Llunos. ‘Smashed the girl’s head in with a rounders bat.’ He paused for a second and said, ‘Your name was mentioned. Again.’

A grisly image of Arianwen lying bloodied and face-down in the gutter flashed through my mind. My voice was thick with passion: ‘The guy is in his thirties and wears short trousers; he lives with his mum and she hates him because he smothered his little brother to death when he was three. He’s never had a girl in his life or even a friend and because he took a shine to Arianwen and saw me talking to her this is what happened. He saw me talking to her. Imagine how it makes me feel. She was a lovely kid.’

Llunos put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Sorry, Louie. If you want to go in there and sort him out I’ll turn off the sound.’

‘Back to the old-fashioned ways, huh?’

‘Murder is a pretty old-fashioned sort of crime, isn’t it?’

I went back to Mrs Mochdre and chose another song for the jukebox.

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie

That’s amore . . .

I sang along softly, Mrs Mochdre stared disconsolately at the table, occasionally looking up at me with the hostility of a cornered beast. I stopped singing and spoke. ‘Who killed the students?’

She said nothing.

‘I think it was the Witchfinder, but what I want to know is why.’

‘If you’re such a clever dick I’m sure you’ll think of something.’

When the stars make you drool just like a pasta fazool

That’s amore . . .

‘I can help you, Mrs Mochdre, but you have to help me.’

She gave me a look that symbolised a silent snort.

‘What would you say if I told you Gethsemane didn’t get eaten by the pigs? If I told you she climbed out of that pig pen and walked away alive?’

Mrs Mochdre forced herself to stare down at the table but it cost her a lot of effort.

‘What would you say if I told you I have proof, that I am the only one who knows? If I say nothing, Llunos throws the book at you. But if you help me, I produce my evidence. You’re a free woman.’

‘You must think I was born yesterday falling for a trick like that. I know how it works, good cop, bad cop; my husband does it too when he’s interviewing witches. Llunos will be out there watching through the mirror.’

‘You watch too many cop shows.’

‘Just don’t try and take me for a fool.’

‘OK, I’ll level with you. This is the truth. I don’t know whether Gethsemane is alive now, but she was back then. She didn’t die. The pigs didn’t eat her and your husband the Witchfinder knew it all along. I’m not saying the pigs wouldn’t eat a human given half the chance but it would take a damn sight longer than—’

She looked up slowly and I sensed in that motion the dropping of a penny. Thirty years of conjugal beastliness and pent-up hatred gleamed as sharp twin points of fire in her eyes.

‘That’s right, Mrs Mochdre, he knew. Of course he knew.’

‘H . . . h . . . how do you know?’

‘Anybody would have known. You were terrified of what they would say if they found out you locked her in with the pigs. My guess is, it wasn’t the first time you had mistreated her. You were worried about what would happen if they found out, so you panicked. You didn’t think clearly. If you had, you would have worked it out too. There wasn’t enough time for them to eat her. Gethsemane just climbed out and the mud caught her shoes. That’s all. The second shoe is probably still there. The Witchfinder just—’

‘He knew? He knew!’ Her jaw gaped and her eyes became wide as saucers as the full implications of his trickery settled in. ‘The bastard!’

‘He just played along to entrap you into marrying him.’

She bit her knuckle.

‘I’m not here to make you suffer. I don’t approve of what you did to your sister, but I can see you’ve paid a price in your own way. I just want to know who killed the students. You tell me that and I promise to tell Llunos what I know.’

‘The Witchfinder killed the students of course. To stop nosey parkers. When they paid that actress to impersonate Gethsemane it got him worried. He thought if he killed them and made it look like what happened to Gomer Barnaby people would think Goldilocks had come back and would be too frightened to start digging up the past.’ When she stopped speaking she collapsed in on herself slightly, as if she had been punctured.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

She looked up at me. ‘He really knew?’

‘I’m sorry.’

She nodded as if only now fully understanding. She spoke in a dream, ‘All those years . . . that bed . . . You know, sometimes he liked to dress up as a wolf; Heaven knows what for. And all along he knew.’

‘If I go and get Llunos you can sign the statement and then go. I don’t think he’ll keep you here.’

Mrs Mochdre pulled herself up and sat erect once more, the flame inside her visibly rekindling. ‘I’m afraid I won’t be signing anything today, Mr Knight. I don’t have time. There is an urgent matter I need to attend to.’ She pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘It concerns my husband.’ For a second, before turning away, her eyes bored into me and I saw a repressed fury so intense it made me wince. For most of his adult life the Witchfinder had been exorcising and casting out demons; he had summoned and beaten, so they said, the finest champions of hell. His c.v. listed victories over Belial and Leviathan and Belphegor and Beelzebub and Asmodeus and probably Lucifer too. But that look in his wife’s eye told me nothing in his professional life would have prepared him for what was coming when he got home for tea that evening.