The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth (13 page)

‘Depends what it is.’

‘If I die and they say it was an accident, will you investigate my death?’

‘Seren, you’re not going to die.’

‘But, if I do, will you?’

‘But—’

‘Please Louie! Please. All you have to do is ask what happened and see if there was anything fishy about it.’

‘OK. I’ll do that. Now will you do me a favour?’

‘Of course. Ask anything in the whole wide world.’

‘Tell me why you planted the locket on the dunes.’

‘Who says I did?’

‘You know damn well who. Why did you do it?’

‘Are you angry?’

‘No.’

‘Did you love Myfanwy?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m so sorry. I wish I hadn’t done it.’

‘But why did you?’

‘I don’t know.’ She opened the car door and put one leg outside and said in a voice that mimicked Sister Cunégonde, ‘I suppose, because I’m impossible.’

Seren climbed the gate with the ease of someone who has had plenty of practice and I sat in the car for a while watching the darkened school. Then I got out and started to wander aimlessly along the sands by the water’s edge, with no particular direction in mind, just away from the caravan that I had made my home. The thunder rumbled, getting closer. The only other sound was
the occasional bark of a dog. I smelt the rain before I felt it. A hot, bright, sharp summer wetness that suddenly filled the air. And then a fat drop of water on my face. And then a patter of them and soon a continuous curtain. I ran towards the shack at the bottom of the peat cutter’s garden.

It was a stable, built of stone with exposed low beams of wood and a slate roof. Some of the tiles were missing and through the gaps I could see the luminescence of a rainy night sky. A horse, unseen in the darkness, whinnied and stamped and bumped about in a stall. The drum beat of thunder and the presence of a stranger filling him with a fear that was palpable to me. The reek of straw and the hot meaty smell of horse combined with the tang of warm rain hitting parched soil.

The light was on in the peat cutter’s kitchen and I could see him at the table, sitting motionless, perhaps studying the soil geologist’s book. Perhaps doing nothing at all except staring at the grain of the wood and searching for meaning. Gradually, the rumble of thunder grew fainter and the flashes briefer and almost as suddenly as it started the rain eased off. I was about to leave when the approach of a storm lamp weaving across the marsh stopped me. I waited. I could make out the outline of a figure in the night carrying the lamp, heading towards the cottage. The figure knocked on the door. The peat cutter got up and walked out of the rectangle of light that was the kitchen window. A few seconds later the back door opened; there was little light from inside. I could intuit rather than see him on the threshold interrogating his visitor. He seemed reluctant to let the visitor in but the visitor remonstrated and he stepped aside and the visitor stepped in. Seconds later they both appeared in the tableau of the kitchen window. They stood awkwardly on either side of the wooden table, neither of them sitting down, talking, not angrily nor cheerfully but as if agitated by some long past grievance, as if two ghosts had met by coincidence on a lonely road in the middle of the marsh. The visitor was a woman, perhaps fiftyish,
about the same as the peat cutter and though they struck formal poses it seemed to be the stiff formality of people who have once known each other well. The conversation became more intense. The woman seemed to be imprecating the man and he responded repeatedly by shaking his head. And then he raised an index finger and shook that at her in accusation. And then seeing this she pointed to herself in an exaggerated pantomime as if to say, ‘Me? Me?’ ‘Yes, you!’ the man seemed to be saying and the woman threw her hands out as if that really took the biscuit. She became more impassioned and the man turned away and grabbed the sides of his head with his hands as if he didn’t want to hear any more and then alerted by what must have been a noise he spun round and rushed over to the woman, who appeared now to be crying. And Meredith the peat cutter seemed to melt at the sight of this and held out his arms as if the woman was on the verge of falling to the floor. He took one final step forward and Sister Cunégonde collapsed into his arms and wept.

‘DO THIS,’ SAID Calamity. She wrapped the fingers of her left hand round the two middle fingers of her right. ‘Why?’

‘Trust me. Now do this.’ She tapped her palm with her index finger, pointed at her eye, waved her hand and then made a curious gesture like someone emptying a bag. ‘OK? Got that?’

‘This is sign language, isn’t it?’

‘Now do this.’ She speeded up like someone doing high-speed origami.

I tried to copy the sequence and Calamity corrected me until I’d about got it right. Maybe the accent was a little strong, but the words were in the right order.

‘OK, so what did I just say?’

‘You just said, “Sorry but we still haven’t seen him.”’

‘Who?’

‘Mr Bojangles. That’s what you just said.’

‘Where did you learn to do that?’

‘I have my sources.’ She picked up the card she had been scribbling on and walked over to the incident board. She pinned it on and stood back with the same satisfaction of someone putting the first bauble on the Christmas tree.

‘Another clue, huh?’

‘Slowly but surely. Bit by bit, the full picture emerges.’

‘Is that how it works?’

She looked up slightly and across as if peering askance at the neighbour’s garden.

‘Yours isn’t looking too good.’

‘I keep my incident board in my head.’

‘That means you haven’t got anything yet.’

‘I’ve got loads of things.’

‘Share them with your partner.’

I held out a finger and grabbed it as if ticking off items in a long list. ‘One, I’ve got a girl from the Waifery who deliberately planted a locket to mislead the search party. Two, I’ve got the Mother Superior from the Waifery who is definitely not dealing in straight goods. Three, I’ve got Brainbocs. Four I’ve got a Pat vet called Rimbaud seen in the vicinity of the car after I left to buy the ice creams. And five … five … he’s got a tattoo.’

Calamity nodded. ‘Uh-huh. My hunch is the veteran’s a red herring.’

‘My hunch says he knows something.’

‘Yeah, but my hunch came first.’

‘But my hunch counts for more because it’s based on more experience.’

‘What does that prove? A hunch is a hunch.’

‘Sure, but they can’t both be right, so when hunch meets hunch something has to give.’

‘So you’re pulling rank in the hunch department?’

‘When your name is on the frosted glass outside, you get to out-hunch your partner.’

‘All right. That’s a lot of “gots”. What does it all mean?’

‘No idea whatsoever.’ I walked over to the wall and bent forward to read the cards. ‘What about you? Housekeeper dismissed shortly after the fire. Is that suspicious?’

‘I don’t know yet, it’s just a detail. You never know which ones will turn out to be significant.’

‘That’s true. Gems showed signs of fire damage. What does that mean?’

‘The peeler’s report said the gems were found in the stable and were the main evidence used to nail the kid. But the
jeweller’s evidence – not presented at the trial – said they showed signs of fire damage which means they must have been removed after the fire, not before.’

‘That’s very good. You know, it was Llunos’s great-grandfather who was in charge of this, don’t you? Cardiganshire’s first peeler.’

‘I know. He told me. He’s writing a book about it.’

I started reading again. ‘Groundsman testified that he saw the boy climbing into the room, later altered testimony to say he saw him climbing out.’

‘Claims he was mistaken, but I don’t see how you can make a mistake like that.’

‘That’s very good. Where do you get all this?’

‘Here and there.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Oh, you know, around and about.’

‘You haven’t been talking to Gluebone again have you?’

‘No!’

We heard the by now familiar unmusical clang of the barrel organ beign dumped against the wall outside and the sound of foot and paw steps on the stairs.

‘Hi there,’ said Gabriel. ‘Just dropping by because Cleopatra wanted to ask if you’d—’

I raised my hand to silence him and turned to the monkey. I did the sequence of hand signs, just as Calamity had shown me. When I finished, there was a brief, astonished pause and then Cleopatra squealed, jumped into the air, landed on the floor, did two forward somersaults and then ran in a single bound up the desk, up the wall, and – don’t ask me how – along the ceiling, until she got to the light fitting from which she swung with one arm, screeching ‘Woo woo woo!’

Gabriel turned to me in amazement. ‘You’ve seen him!?’

‘Seen who?’

‘Mr Bojangles.’

‘No, we haven’t seen him.’

‘But you just told her you’d seen him.’

‘I said I hadn’t.’

Gabriel slumped into the client’s chair, rested his head in his hands and said softly, ‘Oh Lord.’

It took about ten minutes to get Cleopatra down from the light. And another ten minutes to explain how sorry we were over the mistake. To try and smooth things over I asked Gabriel to tell us about Mr Bojangles, and he filled us in on the background.

‘The primate language research unit used to supply a lot of monkeys to the physics department for the satellites. You remember the space programme in the Seventies?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, like most people in Wales, we were glued to the TV.’

‘There’d been animals in orbit before, of course, the Russians sent dogs and the Americans sent some chimps. But this was the first time any of them were able to tell us what they saw up there. It was quite a coup. Cleopatra was the wife of one of the astronauts – a chimpanzee called Major Tom—’

Cleopatra took a letter out of her waistcoat pocket and proffered it to us.

‘She still keeps his first day cover.’

The envelope had University College of Wales insignia on it and a single stamp showing a group of chimps in a space suits. There was also a Latin motto:
per ardua ad astra
.

‘That’s Major Tom, there, second from the right.’

‘Good-looking guy.’

‘During their time together they had a son, Mr Bojangles, and he … well … he …’ Gabriel seem uncomfortable with this part of the story. ‘He went away … to … er … to Timbuktu.’

‘Timbuktu?’

‘Yes … the … er … university. I expect you’ve heard of it?’

He looked at us with eyes that implored.

‘Yes, of course. It’s a great institution. The Harvard of the Sahara …’

Gabriel translated and Cleopatra swelled with pride. She took out another letter and reached it across.

‘He still writes when he can get the time,’ explained Gabriel. ‘But his research, well …’

‘I expect he doesn’t have much spare time, being a famous scientist,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Gabriel sadly, ‘he doesn’t get a lot of time to write.’

I looked at the letter. It was postmarked Llanrhystud.

When Bassett left I found a note slipped under the door from Poxcrop. It told me to meet him at the Cliff Railway base station at eleven and bring a bone. It didn’t say how big or what kind, but I dutifully stopped at the Spa in Terrace Road and bought a chop. I arrived five minutes late and asked the shoeshine kid if he’d seen Poxcrop. The shoeshine kid was Poxcrop.

‘You’re late, Mac,’ he said looking up from his shine stool, not bothering to rise.

‘Don’t try and kid me you’ve got better things to do with your time. What have you got for me?’

‘Two hot tips but there’s a little problem about my expenses …’

‘I already gave you a fiver.’

‘I’ve been undervaluing my services. I’ve been hearing about you, about how sweet you were on the night club singer. Seems to me—’

I grabbed Poxcrop by his collar and jerked him to his feet.

‘Look here, you little runt!’

Poxcrop threw his hands up in mock surrender. ‘No violence, no violence!’

The stationmaster rapped sharply on the window of his office. Heads turned. Disapproving looks were dispensed. I let Poxcrop
go and he brushed himself down with a well-rehearsed air of insulted dignity.

‘I abhor physical violence. I’m a businessman. Either you respect certain civilised norms or we can’t do business.’

‘If you want to stay in business don’t ever make another remark about my relations with Myfanwy.’

‘All right, you’re in love, I can understand that. Plenty of guys feel the same about my sister.’

‘Just tell me what you’ve got. If it’s good I’ll give you some more money.’

Poxcrop looked round and then drew me over to the shadows in the corner next to the milk-dispensing machine. If he’d wanted to flag the fact that he was about to contract some nefarious business he couldn’t have done it better. To complete the effect he lowered his voice.