The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still

Chapter 6

The next morning was damp and grey – chilly. On such days, the Prom never looked more forlorn. The only hint of colour was the glossy scarlet tube of the human cannonball they were erecting, pointing like a finger at God. This was how we chose our mayors: on the premise that public men may lie, but you can’t fake flying through the air.

Calamity was sitting on the floor of the office, amid photocopies of newspaper cuttings, and an OS map of the area spread on her knees like a blanket. She looked up and smiled. I went into the kitchenette, put the kettle on and returned to sink down to the floor opposite her. I did so without the easy grace that Calamity displayed.

‘We must get a table,’ she said.

‘Yes, the room looks bare without it.’

‘I’ve been checking out the Cambrian News archives about the night they raided the Coliseum cinema.’

‘Found anything interesting?’

‘Loads. There were three perps: two brothers called Richards from Llanfarian, and Iestyn. There was a lot of bad feeling about the case; a cop got run over in the chase. They pinned that on Iestyn. The Richards brothers each got twenty-five. I’m still trying to find out what became of them.’

‘What about the hangman? If we are investigating the claim that a hanged man might still be alive, he would be a good place to start.’

‘Died ten years ago, but I’ve found the doctor who presided at executions; he lives at the top of town in Laura Place.’

‘We’ll have to pay him a visit. Ask him if he might have made a mistake about the hanged man being dead.’

‘Stop making fun!’ said Calamity. ‘Here’s something else. The cop who arrested them turns out to be our old friend Preseli Watkins, the mayor.’ She let her gaze linger on me for a second. She knew this was significant.

‘So the mayor claims to have a premonition that I will be poking my nose into his business and chops up my desk to teach me a lesson. The very same day a man walks in with a case involving Iestyn and two crooks who robbed a cinema twenty-five years ago. The cop who arrested them just happens to be the mayor. Sounds like he has a good soothsayer. Or he knew Raspiwtin was coming to see us.’

‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

I formed my hand into a mock pistol and shot her. She grinned, then smiled shyly and said in a small voice, ‘There’s something else. Something you . . . you won’t like.’ She placed the palm of her hand down on a cutting and twisted it round. The headline read, ‘MORE STRANGE LIGHTS IN CARDIGANSHIRE SKIES’.

‘Don’t get angry.’

‘I won’t get angry.’

‘It’s the Ystrad Meurig incident – the Welsh Roswell. Just like Raspiwtin said.’

‘I told him Roswell was just a crashed weather balloon.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘It’s what the US Air Force said.’

Calamity rolled her eyes. ‘What do you expect them to say?’ Her tone suggested that she expected better of me than to fall for the official narrative. ‘They performed autopsies on three aliens; that was some weather balloon.’

‘We don’t know that.’

‘We do! I’ve seen the footage.’

‘So have I – on a documentary once. But I don’t understand – how come the footage is so shaky and grainy?’

‘Because they . . . they’re shooting covertly.’

‘But the cameraman must have been in the same room as the medics. You can’t hide in an autopsy room, so why not just use a proper camera and a tripod and shoot a proper film?’

‘I don’t know . . . loads of reasons.’

Calamity’s spirits began to sink under the weight of my obtuse refusal to see the dark truths of this world. I backed off.

‘Tell me about the Welsh Roswell.’

‘It took place the same week as the raid on the Coliseum cinema; it happened in a wood outside Ystrad Meurig. There had been a number of flying-saucer sightings in the days leading up to it, and then, so the story goes, a saucer crashed and the military sealed off the area. They found wreckage and dead aliens in silver suits. Some say there were three, others five. Some say they were still alive.’ She looked at me, not crestfallen but fully expecting the eventuality. ‘I know you don’t believe this stuff.’

‘I don’t want to be a killjoy, but aliens in silver suits? Looking humanoid? Why would they look like us if they were from a different star system?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe they just disguise themselves to look like us so as not to frighten us, the same way people who shoot ducks have whistles that sound like duck calls.’

‘Don’t you think it’s odd, though, that these super-advanced beings from another star system keep crashing their saucers?’

She began to lose patience with me. ‘They don’t keep crashing –’

‘Yes, they do! It seems to happen a lot. How can they master the intricacies of inter-stellar flight and then hit a tree?’

‘You’re making assumptions.’

‘Yes, I’m assuming there is probably a simpler explanation located in the realm of human psychology. People have been seeing strange visions throughout history; once upon a time they attributed it to the Devil or his works; now we live in a more rational scientific age and people are embarrassed to profess belief in the Devil –’

‘Not in Ystrad Meurig, they aren’t.’

‘Most people are, so they find a more scientific explanation. I’m not saying they are lying; I’m sure they genuinely experience the hallucination and their mind provides an interpretation with which they can feel comfortable.’

‘You could be right, but there’s one sure-fire way to find out, isn’t there?’

There was a pause. I gave her a quizzical stare. ‘Is there?’

‘Of course. Men in Black.’

‘Who are they?’

Calamity pulled a library book from under the pile of clippings. ‘I’ve been looking through Project Blue Book, the official US Air Force investigation into the flying-saucer phenomenon in the ’50s. Judging from the newspaper report, it sounds like the aliens from the Ystrad Meurig incident were Nordics, whereas the ones from Roswell were Greys. Greys are malign and are known to say the thing which is not.’

‘Not what?’

‘Just “not”. They say it, whereas the Nordics are more spiritually advanced. Some people call them Pleiadeans because they come from the Pleiades star cluster.’

‘How do you know the difference between a Nordic and a Grey, apart from saying the thing which is not?’

‘Nordics are very attractive and look like Scandinavians. They are tall and statuesque and have pale skin and blonde or white hair. They admire the human race.’

‘Are you sure? That sounds like the thing which is not.’

Calamity ignored the jocular tone and continued with earnest mien. ‘Nordics never say the thing which is not. Maybe “admire” is the wrong word. They take a close interest in our spiritual development.’

‘And what about Greys?’

‘They are short and stumpy and grey. They have big almond-shaped, slanted eyes that go round the sides of their heads, like a praying mantis. They also have no irises or . . .’ – she consulted her notes – ‘Sclerae.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know; I think it means the white of the eye. They mean us harm.’

‘They are not great admirers of the human race, then?’

‘No, they are malign.’

‘So is it just those two races?’

‘Of course not! There are loads of exobiological entities visiting us.’ She counted them off on the fingers of her hand: ‘Reptilians, Sirians, Tall Whites, Hairy Dwarfs, the Hopkinsville Goblin, Dropa, Andromedans and the Flatwoods Monster. But the interesting thing is this: in all the celebrated cases, the contactees received visits shortly after from mysterious strangers dressed all in black. The first was the Maury Island incident. Harold A. Dahl was scavenging with his dog for some logs on Puget Sound in Washington State in 1947. He saw six flying doughnut-shaped craft and one of them seemed to be in trouble; it started ejecting debris which fell on his dog and killed it. A few days later he got a visit from the Men in Black; they seemed to know everything about what had happened and told him not to talk about it. Men in Black always turn up in a black ’47 Buick. They claim to be from the Government, usually the Air Force, and give names and stuff, but when their IDs are checked it turns out that either they don’t exist or are the names of dead people. Men in Black act strange; sometimes they giggle and seem unfamiliar with Earth customs.’

‘I think I saw a film about them once.’

Calamity looked irritated.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m being serious.’

‘I know. So am I.’

‘The films are . . . films like that just make jokes of it, but the Men in Black are a very real and mysterious phenomenon attached to early flying-saucer contact reports.’

‘OK, forget the movie. Who do they work for?’

‘Some people say they are G-men, but my money’s on them being aliens. They turn up afterwards to silence witnesses.’

‘If they are aliens and they don’t want people to talk, why do they abduct people and make love to them in flying saucers?’

‘When they do that they wipe the memory, it only comes out later under hypnosis.’

‘You mean they dream it.’

‘It’s different.’

‘It seems awfully similar to me.’

‘They report details under hypnosis that they couldn’t possibly have known.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like the map of Zeta Reticuli. In 1961 Barney and Betty Hill were taken aboard a saucer and saw a map on the wall. They drew it under hypnosis. It had stars on it that hadn’t been discovered yet.’

I stood up and went over to the kitchenette. ‘You really think they have maps of the stars pinned to the wall of their flying saucers? It seems a bit primitive.’

She followed me, not willing to let the subject drop. ‘Why not? You’ve got a map in the glove compartment of your car. What’s the difference? It had lines connecting the stars; the aliens said they were trade routes.’

‘I can’t believe that if there really are such things as flying saucers the skipper needs a star map to avoid getting lost.’

‘How else can they find their way? There are more stars in the Milky Way than grains of sand on the whole of Planet Earth.’

I filled the kettle and shouted over the sound of gushing water. ‘But there are no corners in space, there’s nothing for the stars to hide behind. You just work out which star you want and head for it. You don’t need a load of lines on a chart. What for?’

‘We’ll see, then, won’t we?’ said Calamity. To disguise her growing irritation she began to help me; she swirled hot water round in the teapot to warm it and then put three tea bags in. ‘The black ’47 Buick is the nutcracker; this is what we use to crack open the case.’

‘You’re about to unveil one of your schemes, aren’t you?’

Calamity pulled two mugs down from the cupboard and carried on as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘The way I see it, the aliens are not likely to carry the Buick in the saucer all the way from Zeta Reticuli, are they?’

‘It would seem an extravagant thing to do, although of course people often tow boats behind their cars when they go on holiday, so it’s not out of the question.’

‘I’m going to assume they don’t do that; in which case they must get them when they arrive. And that is how we trap them.’

‘Don’t forget that the most likely possibility is this whole Raspiwtin story is moonshine.’

She carried on doggedly. ‘We don’t know why the aliens insist on black ’47 Buicks, but the evidence is clear. Back in the ’50s, that wasn’t a difficult item to get hold of, but here, now, in Aberystwyth, there aren’t any. So what do they do?’

‘Look in the classifieds.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I was joking.’

‘I’m not. We advertise a second-hand black ’47 Buick in the Cambrian News classifieds section. If anyone rings up we can count them as a possible alien, or an intermediary representing their interests.’

‘Nothing I say will stop you, will it?’

‘It’s worth a try.’

‘Is it? Of all the wildest goose chases you’ve ever proposed, this . . . this takes the biscuit.’

‘How can a goose chase take a biscuit?’

‘You know what I mean. We’re looking for a chap called Iestyn who robbed a cinema in 1965 and was hanged; but for some reason as yet unexplained he is still alive. Allegedly.’

‘Looking for a dead man is also a wild goose chase. If you are allowed then so am I. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.’

I looked at her in surprise. She grinned. ‘Point is, we are not the only ones looking for him. If the farmer is to be believed, so are the aliens. Raspiwtin says they had a rendezvous arranged. So we find out what their connection is. That way we find Iestyn.’

‘Assuming the farmer can be believed. My guess is, he dreamed the whole thing up.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘I don’t know. We’ll ask him. Get his address.’

‘Already have. He lives out at Ynys Greigiog.’

I filled the teapot with hot water and carried the tray over to where we once had a desk. ‘We’ll go and see him.’

‘Sure, but we also do the ad.’ She picked up a sheet of paper torn from an exercise book and read. ‘For Sale. Secondhand 1947 Buick, black. One careful lady owner, 27,000 miles on the clock. Must be seen to be believed.’ She looked up grinning. ‘I’ve already placed it.’

I put my hat on.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to see the mayor and ask for the address of his soothsayer.’

It was raining on the Prom but not heavily – a drizzle. Dark rags of cloud scudded across the blue sky and turned the world to silver and anthracite. The pale blue wooden benches misted over; the charcoal grit that passed for sand on the beach darkened; there were no bathers to disturb, just dog-walkers who didn’t care, and a few students defiantly sitting on the pebbles, dressed in that strange amalgam of charity shop and high street, a sort of Dickensian-New Aquarian oddness. It probably wasn’t a good idea to see the mayor, but that was often the trouble with being a private eye: most of the good ideas were simultaneously bad ones.

I cut through the public shelter to South Road. The town hall was up ahead on the left; the mayor held an afternoon surgery every Wednesday. I entered a small anteroom and approached a counter. I gave my name and told the clerk I wished to speak to the mayor about the arrest of Iestyn Probert in 1965. Then I took a seat. There was one other person waiting. He was staring at me with a venomous intensity. It was Meici Jones.

‘I thought it was you,’ he said.

Meici was a spinning-wheel salesman I had encountered on a previous case. He was one of life’s mistfits who had lived with his mum till the age of thirty-five and still wore short trousers on her orders. As a consequence of that case – indirectly, although I was sure he didn’t see it that way – his mum had been sent to jail for murder. At the time of the trial I had wondered how he would cope on his own, and the image that presented itself to me in the mayor’s anteroom suggested not all that well. He was wearing long trousers now, but they were ragged and crumpled. His white shirt was grey and blotched, though he had managed to wear a tie. His hair was badly in need of a cut.

‘Hi Meici.’

‘I saw you come in. I was here first.’

‘How have you been keeping?’

‘To tell you the truth, Lou, things have been pretty difficult. I’m on my own, did you know that?’

‘Yes, I . . . assumed . . . at the trial I –’

‘I wash my own clothes and stuff now, and I get my own food. Mum used to be quite hard sometimes, but . . . it’s funny . . . now she’s not there . . . no one’s there . . .’ He didn’t finish the sentence, but shook his head disconsolately. People like Meici have something painful about them. An earnest, bovine simplicity, a gaucheness and the air of a soul not at home in the world and easily wounded. These traits constitute the cheese in the jaws of a psychological mousetrap that snaps shut the moment you begin to feel sympathy.

‘That’s tough,’ I said. ‘Living alone isn’t easy if you aren’t used to it.’

‘She got fifteen years, did you know that? She doesn’t find it easy either, Lou.’

I prickled with shame.

‘I died, did you hear about it?’

I turned to give him a puzzled look.

‘When they sentenced her, I was in court. I collapsed and my heart stopped beating. They put me in an ambulance. I had one of those near-death experiences, have you heard about them?’

‘No, Meici.’

‘I was in a tunnel of light, Lou, climbing towards a really bright light, like the sun. I could hear singing up ahead and then there was a gate and an angel with a clipboard. He said, “Meici Jones, you’re not due today.” I looked over his shoulder and I saw Esau – you remember me telling you about my little brother Esau who died when I was five?’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘He was sitting in an orchard and he waved. I was going to say something but the angel said, “You have to go back, your task is not completed.” Then I felt a sucking force behind me, dragging me back. It got stronger and stronger, and I felt myself being pulled back and back, down the tunnel, and the light dimmed. I opened my eyes and found myself in the ambulance staring up at the medic. He was playing cards on my chest. He looked quite shocked and said, “Oh, sorry mate.” ’ Meici turned to me and gave me an intense gaze. ‘He made me promise not to tell anyone he had been playing cards on me. What do you think of that?’

‘That’s a pretty amazing story, Meici.’

‘My task isn’t finished, Lou. I’ve always sort of known I was put on this earth for a reason. That’s partly why I am here today. I’m applying for the human cannonball, I hear there’s a vacancy.’ He opened his fist and revealed a crumpled newspaper advert, roughly torn out. ‘It’s for the election, Ercwleff is looking for . . . for . . .’

I peered at the advertisement. ‘A surrogate?’

‘Yes. I could do that.’

‘What happened to the other guy?’

‘He hit a wall.’

‘Doesn’t that put you off?’

‘I’m ready for it. Marathon runners get the same problem, don’t they? Something to do with carbohydrates. You have to eat spaghetti. I love spaghetti hoops.’

Soon after that he was called in and I didn’t see him again that afternoon. There must have been another way out. I was next in the mayor’s private office. He had a client’s chair, like mine only grander and made from mahogany treble clefs. It was the sort of client’s chair Queen Anne used to favour before she got out of the gumshoe business. The desk was also mahogany with a glass top on which were arranged a telephone blotter and a pen holder, both even cornier than the chairs. I sat down and smiled.

The mayor removed a cigar from a box on the desk, took pains not to offer me one and spent a long time retrieving a device from the inside breast pocket of his jacket. With this he sliced off the end of the cigar. Then he belaboured the ritual of lighting it and taking the first draw, still affecting not to notice me. I made a few half-hearted snoring noises. Finally, once his cigar was satisfactorily alight, he positioned it in his cocked index finger, across the top of his other four knuckles, and aimed it at me.

‘Where have I seen you before?’ he asked.

‘Damned if I know.’

‘I’m usually pretty good with faces.’

‘You mean rearranging them.’

‘Wisecracker, eh?’

‘It was a clue to my profession. I thought it might help you place me.’

He nodded slowly. ‘In my experience, only two professions are distinguished by a predisposition for the wisecrack. Cops and peepers. You’re not a cop.’

‘This is where you do the phoney act of dawning realisation. But you can spare me that one; not even the mayor of Aberystwyth is so busy he can’t remember the face of a man whose desk he chopped up two days ago.’

‘I must admit I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon.’

‘I’ve come about the human-cannonball job.’

‘You’re too tall. You would stick out too far from the end of the barrel.’

‘Why do you need a surrogate anyway? I thought the candidates were supposed to do it themselves.’

‘Delegation. The ability to find the right man for the right job. It’s an essential requirement in a mayor. You are not the right man, I’m afraid. We’re looking for someone with a better knowledge of semiotics. That’s the study of signs and meaning.’

‘I know what it is.’

‘There are a lot of danger signals involved in a job like that, red flags. You strike me as someone who ignores red flags.’

‘You shouldn’t rush to judgement; I got map-reading and signals intelligence badges in the Cub Scouts.’

‘The last thing I want to do is prejudge you unfairly. How would it be if I gave you a little aptitude test?’

‘Fire away.’

He observed me through narrowed eyes and stroked his chin. ‘Well, using all your skills and wide knowledge of semiotics, which we have both agreed is the study of signs and meaning, tell me how you would read the following situation. A man walks into your office and chops your desk up with an axe.’

I scratched my head. ‘That’s a tough one.’

‘Any red flags there you can see?’

‘This is pretty advanced semiotics.’

He put the cigar down on a vulgar onyx ashtray. Then took out a semi-automatic pistol, pointed it at the ceiling and made a clicking sound in the back of his throat. ‘Walther PPK, my favourite, the one favoured by James Bond –’

‘There are not many mayors who can say that.’

‘Adolf Hitler shot himself in the bunker with one, too. What do you think the PPK stands for?’

I shrugged.

‘Polizeipistole Kriminalmodell or Polizeipistole Kurz?’

‘You got me there.’

He looked unhappy. He put the gun down on the desk and swivelled it round to point at me. ‘Why have you come to see me?’

‘It’s about your soothsayer. I need to know how good he is. You told me that I would soon be poking my nose into your affairs and for that reason you were taking the precaution of chopping up my desk in advance. Then shortly after you left, a man entered my office with a case that may or may not constitute poking my nose into your affairs, but I need to know.’

‘Who was this man?’

‘I’m afraid that information is protected by client privilege.’

‘It was that fool Raspiwtin.’

‘I can’t confirm or deny.’

‘You don’t need to. My soothsayer gives very detailed prophecies.’

‘Maybe you should let me have his card. I like to have my fortune told.’

‘I don’t think you would like what’s in store for you.’

‘I need to know if I had a client who wanted me to ask questions about say, for the sake of argument, a man called Iestyn Probert, would that be OK?’

He narrowed his eyes slightly and you could see he was debating whether the forced politeness was worth the effort any longer. The debate went on for a long while. Eventually he said, ‘Mr Knight, I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely frank with you. I don’t have a soothsayer. When I referred to my soothsayer I was being . . . I was just . . .’

‘Cracking wise?’

‘Call it a figure of speech. You see, Raspiwtin is a man with whom I have had some dealings in the past. Word reached me that he was in town and that he had been asking for your office. How do I know this? Because I am the mayor and I get to hear about things. I am well informed: I know where he stays and what pyjamas he wears. I know what brand of toothpaste he uses and what he has on his breakfast toast. I know because I know. Unfortunately Mr Raspiwtin is unwell in the head, and in that head there is an obsession with matters from the past that I wish to remain private. But there is no soothsayer, just a prediction that your fate will mirror that of your desk if you decide to oblige Mr Raspiwtin.’

He glanced for effect at his watch. ‘Goodbye, Mr Knight. Your time, I’m afraid, is up, both here in this office and in the wider context of life in Aberystwyth. I gave you fair warning; let’s hope I haven’t wasted my time. The mayor of Aberystwyth is not a guy who likes to have his time wasted; he’s not the sort of guy who likes to give duplicate warnings, it’s wasteful.’ He reached forward and pressed a buzzer that indicated the interview was over.

It was just after midnight, maybe 1.00 or 2.00 in the morning. I lay asleep in my caravan in Ynyslas. The far-off susurration of the waves was barely audible, but the wind coming in off the sea cuffed the caravan like the hand of a giant schoolteacher and made the metal fabric sing. There is something deeply comforting about that sensation, of feeling protected and cocooned in warmth and yet aware, too, of the proximity of the ocean. Ynyslas is 6 miles north of Aberystwyth and lies hidden from the world in a corner of sand adjacent to the estuary. During the day in summer nothing moves here except tide and cloud and, occasionally, across the estuary on the distant hill, two carriages of a toy train going north.

There was a noise. Close. I opened my eyes, knowing without knowing how that there were people inside. The deepest, darkest fear of every householder in the night. The one that has never changed throughout time. The moment when you come face to face with your own mortality. Someone shone a flashlight into my face; someone put a gloved hand over my mouth; someone pressed the barrel of a gun into my eye. I was ordered to dress, and a hessian sack was placed over my head. I was pushed out into the cold night and into a car. We drove off. Fifteen minutes later the chimes of the station clock striking 2.00 told me we were passing through Aberystwyth.

When the hood was removed, I was sitting in a hard-backed chair facing four men across a desk in a dingy room. It felt like a basement but there were no clues for thinking this. Just the conviction that the business to be transacted was probably going to be hidden from the world. An Anglepoise lamp was trained on my face. After the darkness of the hood it was unbearable. I pushed the lamp down to cast its beam on the desk. One of the men was an officer in the military, wearing combat fatigues; he had silver hair, closely cropped, and his face was red. One was dressed in the neat, sober and expensive suit of a Whitehall mandarin in his sixties, with the pallor of a snail, the Man from the Ministry but not one you can find in the telephone directory. The third had cop written all over him: standard-issue crumpled suit, police hair grease, truncheon-battered ear – he was eating an ice cream. Next to him, doing his best to counterfeit a kindly face, was a military chaplain. The brass hat looked to the mandarin for a cue regarding the lamp. The mandarin nodded acceptance. His shirt was crisply ironed, the tie knot small and rammed home without compromise. He looked tired, his face lined and pallid with the air of one used to dispensing authority in rooms that seldom saw daylight. The cop simply stared at me with a look that might have been bored contempt or maybe amusement. The brass hat spoke first.

‘Thank you for coming.’

‘No problem, I was passing anyway.’

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

I smiled.

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

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

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

‘Or mine.’

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

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

‘How can I help you?’ I asked.

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

‘Who do you want me to betray?’

‘The man calling himself Raspiwtin,’ he said.

‘What do you call him?’

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

‘It’s not a deal then, is it?’

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

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

‘What is it you want?’ I asked.

‘Raspiwtin has been to see you.’

I shrugged.

‘What for?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘We already know what for.’

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

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

‘Which branch?’

There was a moment’s silence.

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

‘Is that what you did to Iestyn Probert?’

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

‘Who is Raspiwtin?’ I asked.

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

‘That’s who he isn’t, not who he is.’

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

‘I’ve never betrayed anybody before.’

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

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

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

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

I pulled myself up. ‘Please don’t.’

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

‘Just tell you?’

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

‘Who is the man he is looking for?’

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

‘How will I know when he finds him?’

‘You don’t need to know –’

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

‘I thought they hanged him.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Oh yes, why’s that?’

‘Jesus was a subversive. Are you?’

‘I like to think so –’

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

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

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

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