Last Tango in Aberystwyth (24 page)

‘Women and children first,' said the girl from the take-away. ‘I said you lot were sentimental. On a Chinese ship the order given would have been, Men first, children second, women last. It makes perfect economic sense.'

Eeyore chuckled and then became thoughtful again. ‘It was just a tiny bump they said. It's always haunted me, that bit. All those people drinking and dancing and partying late into the night, their lives so glittering and full of promise. And then a strange noise, a little bump – almost perceptible – and yet the shard of ice had opened up the ship like a tin-opener.'

He turned to me, and said, ‘I know you're scared, son, everyone gets scared. It's what comes next that matters.'

‘But I don't know what comes next.'

‘No, perhaps not yet. But you will. You just need to go beyond your medicine line.'

I smiled softly. ‘Sitting Bull again.'

‘It's like I was saying, you see. Most of the time we live like the sheriff's posse, penned in by the medicine line. Never going beyond. But there are times when it disappears. Something happens and we just pass right through it like Sitting Bull and his braves. Such a moment, I believe, took place on the ice-strewn deck of the
Titanic
. In that precise instant when the men saw that they were doomed the code that bound them disappeared. For the first time in their lives, it didn't matter what they did or how they conducted themselves. It didn't make a difference any more what society thought of them. Each man stood there naked. That's when you perceive the existence of the other code. The one that lies hidden all your life like the iceberg beneath the
sea. That's when you find out what you're really made of. We know that many men became little better than snarling dogs. They panicked, and screamed, and lost their wits. But not everyone did. There were men there who …' He stopped and thought for a second, struggling to find a suitable term to sum them up, these men who had made such a lasting impression on him. ‘There was some retired military chap there, for example, who stood before the lifeboats and fought those wild dogs back with an iron bar.' Eeyore paused and smiled in admiration, perhaps imagining himself standing there too, his iron bar gleaming palely in the Newfoundland starlight.

‘It must have been an amazing scene,' he continued, ‘but the one that has always haunted me took place elsewhere on the ship, away from the turmoil. It was about the time the water entered the engine room and hundreds of stokers were scalded to death; and the rest surged up on deck armed with shovels with which to beat their way to the lifeboats.

‘At this moment, Ben Guggenheim, the millionaire, walked into the first-class lounge with his servant. They were both dressed for dinner. The room was deserted now, the floor listing crazily, and an eerie silence prevailed, perhaps the only sound the distant strains of the band on deck playing “Autumn”. The ship's officers pleaded with them to return to the deck and to a lifeboat, because it went without saying that such important passengers would get a place in a boat. But Ben Guggenheim said no. There he stood: the whole pre-war world of luxury, privilege and impossible splendour laid out at his feet … the savour of life could not have been sweeter for any man alive in the world that night. And he was being offered a place in a lifeboat. But Ben Guggenheim refused to go. Instead he calmly ordered a brandy and said, “Never let it be said that a woman or child died on this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward.”'

Eeyore paused for a second and nodded to himself as if making
sure he had got that right. ‘It doesn't mean anything, son, I know, it's just a story …' He turned and smiled at the girl from the take-away. ‘And if it had been a Chinese ship we probably never would have heard of him. But so often when I see you, Louie, doing what you do here in Aberystwyth, risking your life and getting knocked on the bonce once a week by some piece of dirt who's not fit to wipe your shoes … well I see it and you know what I think? And you'll laugh, I know, because it's daft, but I don't care. I see it and I think to myself, there goes Ben Guggenheim!

He walked over and put a tired old hand on my shoulder, a hand that had fingered the collars of multitudes of villains in its time. ‘I don't know what you are going to do about Calamity, son,' he said. ‘But I know you'll think of something … Because my son has never let anyone down yet.'

THE NEXT MORNING the storm had passed, leaving the town damp and steaming and fanned by the dregs of the gale. Llunos was already waiting for me when I got back to the office. One of his men had hauled Harries in that morning, or whoever it was pretending to be him. He was waiting down at the station. I didn't bother to wash or shave, just made coffee and picked up the Colt 45. I took out the cartridges, fetched a Ziploc bag from the kitchen and gave it all to Llunos.

Harri Harries was in Llunos's office, with a policeman standing watch outside. As he opened the door, Llunos put his arm in front of me and barred my way. ‘I need five minutes with him alone first.'

I nodded.

He went in and closed the door, saying, ‘Teach him to make a monkey out of me on my own patch.'

There followed a couple of minutes of loud banging from the room. The sort you might get if you swung a sack of potatoes from wall to wall. Then the door opened and Llunos ushered me in, mopping a sweaty brow as he did. What little furniture there was in the room was upturned, a notice-board disarranged on the wall; a broken table lamp flashing uncertainly. Harri Harries sat in the chair, blood coming out of his nose and mouth. One eye puffed up. His shirt torn and spattered with bright red berries of blood.

‘You've got him, now,' said Llunos. He walked to a cupboard
and took out a dusty old scuba gear bag and emptied its contents. A rusty tank, an equaliser, some lead weights, a mask … all smelling mildly of the ocean floor. He held the bag up.

‘Do you think he'll fit in it?'

I gave it an appraising look. ‘Well, it's roughly maggot-shaped and about his size.'

Harri Harries looked on with fear and uncertainty. Llunos took out the Ziploc bag and slid it across the desk to me. Inside was the gun.

‘It's as cold as they come. No way of tracing it.'

‘Thanks.'

‘Make sure you wipe it off afterwards.'

I took the cartridges out of my pocket and started wiping them methodically with a handkerchief and then setting them up like toy soldiers in a row along the desk-top.

‘Look,' said Harri Harries. ‘I know –'

‘I haven't asked you anything yet,' I said in a voice colder than ice. ‘So shut up.'

When the cartridges were all free of prints I slid one into the chamber and gave it a spin. Llunos walked towards the door. ‘I'll be in the next room, use one of the cushions to muffle the sound.'

Then he closed the door and we both looked at each other. I slowly levelled the barrel at his face and said, ‘Where is she?'

He took a breath and said, ‘You've got to believe –'

The rest of it never came. I rammed the gun forward so the end of the barrel smacked into his mouth and then, as he gasped at the pain, the barrel was in his mouth. I'd seen this done once in a movie and it seemed to work. I don't know what difference it makes really, gun in or gun out, if it fires you're not going to know much about it. But it certainly frightened me to watch it. I pulled the trigger and it clicked on an empty chamber. His whole body stiffened like a cat electrocuted in a cartoon and his face went purple.

‘You were lucky.' I took the gun out of his mouth, wiped the blood and spittle off on his shirt and then slid in two more cartridges. Then I pressed it against that other favourite spot, between the eyes, and spun the chamber.

‘Where have they taken her?'

He spoke quickly, trying to get as much explanation in before I shot him. ‘She didn't turn up, I was supposed to meet her, Custard Pie arranged it, but she never came … please it's the truth –'

‘Like fuck it is!' I pulled the trigger. It clicked and this time Harri made the sound of a scream done with the mouth closed. Then he wept. I almost felt sorry for him.

‘Please, please, please …' he gasped. ‘I'm telling you the truth …'

I picked up the remaining bullets and slid them all in. There was no point spinning the chamber now but I did anyway just for effect. ‘Full house,' I said and aimed squarely at his face.

‘Now where is she?'

‘I … please … please …'

I squeezed and the hammer pulled slowly back like a striking snake in slow motion.

His face was the colour of green milk, his eyes bulging and he said, ‘I don't know. You must believe me!'

‘Make me believe you. Tell me something worth not shooting you for.'

He pressed his eyes tightly shut and pleaded with me. ‘Please, I don't know any –'

I pulled the trigger all the way and as I did Llunos slipped quietly back into the room and banged the door the moment the trigger slammed home. Harri Harries screamed and jerked forwards, landing heavily on the floor.

Llunos walked over and hoisted him back into the chair. ‘OK, you've had your fun. As far as I can see there are only two possible reasons you haven't told us where she is: either you
don't know, or you knew the gun was a replica. And I don't believe you don't know. So we're going to play a little game of mine. It's called Welsh roulette.'

He took out his truncheon and put it down on the desk. ‘You can think of it as a variation on blackjack.'

He walked over to a filing-cabinet, took out some keys, and opened a drawer. He brought out two things and put them down in front of Harri Harries. There was a truncheon that had been painted red. And a kid's roulette wheel.

‘The rules are simple so you won't have any trouble picking them up. We spin the wheel. If the ball lands on black seven, I hit you seven times with the blackjack. If it lands on red two, I hit you two times with the redjack. The game is over when you tell us where Calamity is.'

He spun the wheel and dropped the ball. Red three. Llunos turned to me. ‘You see! I told you he was lucky.' Then he hit him three times with the red truncheon. The next one was black four. He hit him four times. He spun the wheel, dropped the ball. Red thirty-six. ‘Bingo!' shouted Llunos and picked up the cosh. I turned away in dread. And Harri Harries confessed.

‘OK, OK, OK!' he cried. ‘I'll talk, I'll talk. It doesn't matter now anyway. We had a rendezvous arranged last night – Custard Pie set it up. He told the girl if she went there she would find out the identity of the Raven. But of course it was a trap for her. I got there at midnight but no one came. Neither the girl nor Jubal. I waited and waited and finally, at about three, Jubal turns up. But he's out of his mind. Raving and screaming and crying. He was all like dressed as if for a wedding or something, you know a flowery shirt and a suit and tie, and wearing a flower in his buttonhole, but he'd slashed his clothes and covered himself in ashes. And he had a suitcase with him, said he was getting out of town. And I said, why? And he said if they caught him they would kill him, and I said, who? He said, them, Custard Pie or
Herod or Mrs Llantrisant. He'd betrayed them. Everything was ruined, he said. And I said, what the hell have you done? And he cried out like … like … I don't know … like … a … an elephant giving birth or something, and said he'd been a total idiot and fallen into his own trap. And I said, what about the girl? And he said, she won't come now, you idiot, we're ruined, it's finished, we're all dead … don't worry about her, save yourself.' He stopped and gasped for breath, ‘Honest, it's the truth.'

*

I didn't know what Ben Guggenheim would have done this morning, but one thing was clear from Eeyore's story. He knew how to keep a cool head. The very opposite of what I had done. Chasing out to Mrs Llantrisant's island and torturing Harri Harries and generally running around not thinking. And that was the whole point really. Thinking. All along I had known about the one man who knew where Herod would have his base, the man who had studied his psyche and made a map of it. Dr Faustus, whoever he was. He must know the answer. And now he was going to give it to me.

I took the Llanbadarn Road out towards the mountains of Pumlumon, along the course of the Rheidol for a while. And then cut south at Ponterwyd on the A4120 towards Ysbyty Cynfyn. A sign told me I was taking the Pont Ysbyty Cynfyn over the Nant Ysbyty Cynfyn and that was reassuring to know. Before too long, if my car didn't give out, I would be heading towards Ysbyty Ystwyth. The world was full of Ysbytys today and I wondered what it meant. Not knowing the answer in Lovespoon's classes would have resulted in the board-rubber exploding next to one's ear like flak. Ysbyty Ystwyth – the map gave it a black cross for a place of worship and a black box underneath meaning one with a tower rather than spire, minaret or dome. It also had
a little symbol to say there was a public telephone. Compared to Ysbyty Cynfyn, which had none of these, it was Las Vegas. But I wouldn't be able to go and ask what it all meant, Ysbyty Ystwyth would have to wait for a brighter day. At Hafod Wood I turned off.

I pulled up in the lane a quarter of a mile from the perimeter wall and put on my old mac and hat – a standard-issue sleuth traipsing across rain-spattered, mist-smothered soggy Welsh hills. Up ahead was the sanatorium, the soft mist effacing all detail like gentle amnesia. I wasn't sure how I was going to get in. In my pocket I still had the Colt 45. Maybe I would use that. Or maybe I would just go and ask for help. Giving succour to strangers is the job of a philanthropist after all. It was easy. Just go and ring the bell. Hi, I'm looking for my partner, Calamity. She's a detective although you might not think so because she's only sixteen and really should be in school. In fact you might think I'm a louse for letting her get mixed up in all this, and you're probably right. But actually I didn't want her to, but you just can't stop her. You know Calamity, or perhaps you don't. But if you could keep an eye open. We're working on a case … there's a gang of them – Dai the Custard Pie, Mrs Llantrisant and Herod Jenkins. I think you know Herod Jenkins? You cured him of his lost memory, but somehow a lot of people wish you hadn't. Right now they are holding out somewhere in the hills up by Nant-y-moch. They say there's a sacred place up there, something sacred to Herod. I thought you might know where they were, you being a special friend of Herod and all that. In fact, I understand you've made a map of his psyche. What does it say? ‘Here be dragons'?