Aberystwyth Mon Amour (3 page)

‘Evening, Mr Knight!’

‘Evening, Mrs Llantrisant! You’re looking very glamorous tonight, new hair-do is it?’

‘Guess again, Mr Knight, new something else.’ She lifted her left heel and did a pirouette to show off her wares. I studied her keenly; what was new?

‘Go on! Can’t you tell? Honestly, you men!’

‘It’s those orthopaedic boots, isn’t it?’

She beamed and bent forward to look at them. ‘Got them this morning; imported from Milan they are: calfskin with sheepskin lining – hypoallergenic, as well, so’s the cat doesn’t get a cough.’

Mrs Abergynolwen came over. ‘Going into the Club, is it?’

‘I thought I might.’

‘Like a nice little sedative to put in your drink, Mr Knight? You’ll need it.’

‘Not with my luck, ladies.’

‘Just in case now. Keep the lid on those raging hormones. Better safe than sorry.’

‘Honestly, it would be like locking the stable door when you haven’t got a horse!’

The Club was a dimly lit basement made up of adjoining cellars knocked into one. The theme was nautical: fishing nets hung from the ceiling and other maritime bric-à-brac littered the room. To one side there was a small dais that acted as the stage. It was edged with sequins that glittered in the spotlights, and an unattended microphone stood in the middle. Nearer to the stage there were closely packed wooden tables, each with an oil lamp on top, while further back there was more elaborate seating made up of coracles and rowing boats sawn in half and padded to form intimate sofas. In the far corner there was an entire fishing boat washed up behind a crimson rope, accessible only to Druids and high-ranking party functionaries. Between the tables a sea of dry ice billowed, dyed blue and turquoise by the luminous plastic fish entangled in the ceiling nets. The effect was wonderful and outshone only by the club’s most famous assets of all: the Entertainment Officers, or, as we all affectionately knew them, the Moulin girls. Their job was to keep everybody happy; their uniform, anything to do with the sea that they could dig up from Dai the Custard Pie’s fancy dress basement. There were cabin boys and pirates; captains, smugglers and mermaids. And also, inexplicably, a girl in Welsh national dress and two Marie Antoinettes.

I was shown to a table near the front by a door officer in a dinner jacket. Myfanwy was advertised as coming on at 8pm, but never appeared before 11pm, so I ordered a rum and pondered the significance of my ransacked office. The man from the Orthopaedic Boot shop said he’d seen a group of men leaving the premises hurriedly and driving off in a mauve Montego with blacked-out windows. Only one group of people drove cars like that – the Druids. I thought of how completely the tentacles of their organisation now encircled our town; how they reached into every nook and crevice, and controlled all aspects of life – the public affairs and those goings-on that dare not show their face to the sun. How they organised the crime and also those people put in office to stop it; and how they took a cut from both. It was so familiar now it was easy to forget that it hadn’t always been like this. There was a time when they just organised the Eisteddfod, licensed the application of spells and judged the poetry. When I was in school we would eagerly push ourselves forward outside assembly to have our hair tousled by the Grand Wizard when he came from the temple to deliver an address. When did it change? When did mothers start pulling their kids into shop doorways as the men of the shroud passed? When did they become gangsters in mistletoe? Was it the time they started wearing the specially tailored surplices? That day when the usual sheets, pillow cases and Wellington boots painted white with emulsion no longer sufficed? Or was it when Lovespoon the messianic Welsh teacher became Grand Wizard? And the high-ranking officers started staining their cloaks red and black to distinguish the hierarchy like the Daleks on TV? Now, of course, they eschewed sheets altogether in favour of sharp Swansea suits and silk handkerchiefs.

I ordered another drink and pondered the damage to my office. What had they been searching for? Did it have something to do with Myfanwy’s visit? Nothing had been stolen. Admittedly there wasn’t much to steal, but there were a few things in the attic that I didn’t want disturbed. The attic still connected to the main building of the public library and I had secreted a store of cash and a disguise up there as an emergency escape route.

*       *       *

And then there was the message on the answerphone. Short and to the point: a boy with an Italian accent claimed to have information to sell about Evans the Boot and told me to go to the 24-hour Whelk Stall tonight at 1am.

The girl in the Welsh national dress appeared in front of me, blocking off the light.

‘Hi, handsome!’

I looked up warily. ‘Hi.’ At close quarters I could see her outfit was only a faint echo of Welsh national dress: a basque, fishnet tights, a shawl and a stovepipe hat sitting at a jaunty angle on a mass of black curls.

She held out her hand. ‘I’m Bianca.’

It would have been ungracious not to shake her hand, but I knew that once shook, that arm would act like a drawbridge enabling her to gallop across and sack the citadel of my wallet whenever she pleased. I hesitated which made her wiggle her hand impatiently in front of my face, grinning. Reluctantly I took her hand and shook. There was no resisting these girls, and if you wanted to – went the unvoiced accusation in their mocking smiles – why bother coming in the first place? She grinned and spun round excitedly before seating herself on the empty chair opposite me.

‘Myfanwy told me to look after you.’

My heart fluttered unaccountably. ‘She did?’

‘Mmmm,’ she giggled. ‘She’ll be along later, so she made me her deputy; only she didn’t give me a star – boo hoo!’

‘Are you sure she meant me?’

‘Of course. You’re Louie aren’t you?’

I opened my mouth to speak but only managed a croak. She reached across and tousled my hair. As she did so, her basque slipped forward and I stared into the shadowy abyss of her cleavage. I groaned unintentionally before finally dragging my eyes back up to the safety zone of her face. But the damage was done: the cheeky expression poised halfway between a grin and a smirk made it clear she had registered the kill.

‘Naughty boy!’ she said and flicked my nose.

She moved her stool closer so we were sitting side by side, arms touching and her hair spilling out on to my shoulder, tickling my face. Her skin was hot next to mine and the moist animal scent of hair filled my nostrils like incense.

‘Mmmm, I can see why she likes you!’

‘But how did she know I was coming?’ I said weakly.

‘I don’t know, I suppose you told her.’

‘No I didn’t.’

A waiter appeared.

‘Did you tell her you weren’t coming?’

‘No.’

‘Well, same thing then.’ And then looking up at the waiter, ‘Brandy-coke and another of whatever he’s having.’ The waiter nodded and moved off.

In a panic I shouted after him, ‘Hey wait a minute!’ He stopped and turned, but only slightly.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Bianca, her brow clouding.

I wanted to ask how much a brandy-coke cost, but thought better of it. Bianca waved the waiter away.

‘Don’t you want to have a nice time?’ she cooed.

‘Yes of course, but …’ The words were lost as I considered the implications of what Bianca had just said. Myfanwy knew I would come. I hadn’t said I was going to, and she hadn’t invited me or anything; we hadn’t even discussed it. In fact, I didn’t even know myself until this afternoon. But she had known. Not just assumed it, which was bad enough, but had been so confident of it she had even appointed a friend to look after me. And damn it, here I was.

As the minutes ticked away after 11.15 the Club filled up quickly. Just before Myfanwy came on, one of the Druids from the roped off section got up and made for the gents and I followed him. I stood next to him in the stall and looked at him, but made no attempt to piss. After a few seconds he looked over. I smiled.

‘That your Montego outside?’

‘What the fuck’s it to you?’

‘Some people driving a car that like smashed up my place this afternoon. Wondered if you knew anything about it?’

He shrugged. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

‘It looked like they were searching for something.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘Well tell your friends if they want anything from me, they should come and ask. It’s more polite.’

‘Dunno what you’re talking about.’ He shook his dick and walked out. I went back to my table.

By the time I returned to my seat, a change had come over the room. As if reacting to an unseen signal, the private conversations started to fizzle out, one by one, until in just a few seconds there were only three or four people talking. Then two, then none. We all looked to the stage like children who have scented that Father Christmas is in the building. A wave of restlessness then swept through the gathering like a breeze through a field of corn. A man appeared on the stage, clutching a microphone and holding out a supplicatory arm, admonishing the restless crowd into silence.

‘All right, settle down, settle down!’

There was an outbreak of chair-squeaking as people turned their seats to face the stage.

‘Settle down. We’ve got a long show ahead of us tonight, we can’t start until you let us.’

The compère paused, as if to leave a respectable gap between his persona and the new one he was about to adopt. He adjusted his bow tie and then spoke in a voice borrowed from the days of Old Time Music Hall.

‘My Lords, ladies, gentlemen!’ he began to a huge roar of delight. ‘Bards and High Priests, it’s time once again to welcome our sweet little songstress from St Asaph …’

The audience went ‘Ooooh!’

‘The little lamb chop from Lampeter … the farmer’s favourite and Druid’s delight …’

The audience went ‘Aaah!’

‘The babe that makes the bards bubble at the brim with the basest beastliness …’

The room thundered a delighted ‘Whooah!’

‘Ladies and gentlemen I give you the cute, the candy-coated, the coracle-sized crackerjack from Cwmtydu! The legendary, leek-scented lovespoon from Llanfihangel-y-Creuddyn, the one and only legendary Welsh chanteuse – Myfanwy M-o-n-t-e-z!’

It took a full three minutes for the applause to die down. During that time, the already dim lights were dimmed further, until nothing could be made out in the room except the cigarette ends in the faces of the audience and shadowy movements on the stage. Then, all of a sudden, dawn broke in the form of a single spotlight trained on Myfanwy, shimmering in an evening gown of pale blue silk.

She sang all the old favourites: ‘David of White Rock’; the ancient Welsh hymn ‘Calon Lan’; ‘Una Paloma Blanca’; and, of course, ‘Myfanwy’. Everyone had heard it a thousand times before, and no one cared. It was a class act and lasted for well over an hour. Towards the end she came down from the stage and wandered like a minstrel among the tables, teasing the men who made good-natured grabs for her. I tried not to catch her eye, but it was impossible. For the final chorus of ‘Myfanwy’ she came and stood at my table. I looked slowly up from my glass, our gazes locked, and to the everlasting grief of the yearning audience, she delicately plucked the rosebud from her hair and threw it into my lap. Then the lights went out.

Outside, much later, the night had turned cold and the air was full of that moisture that hangs halfway between drizzle and rain. It was about five or so minutes to one and the streets were deserted except for the occasional lone figure lurching drunkenly home. I pulled up my collar and walked along the Prom past the old university building and towards Constitution Hill. Above my head, illuminated cartoon figures shone with electric smiles in the night, and on the other side of the road, high up on the wall of the old college, Father Time sat preserved in a mosaic. His long white beard and hour glass warning everyone who looked up – and in a language they could all understand – that, for every man alive, the hours left before closing time were short.

By the time I reached the Whelk Stall the drizzle had finally made up its mind and turned into rain, driving full and hard off the sea and into my face. The booth was quiet: no one there except the kid in charge – a pimply adolescent in a grubby white coat and a silly cardboard hat. I ordered the special and waited, as the youth kept a wary eye on me; trouble was never far away at this time of night. Some instinct had long ago told me that the kid on the answerphone was not going to turn up, but I had to stay just in case. So I waited, grimly crunching the gritty pickled delicacies. After half an hour, and soaked to the skin, I gave up and left.

When I got home there was someone in the office, standing at the window with his back to me. It was Detective Inspector Llunos. Short and portly with a permanent look of weary sadness.

‘You keep late hours,’ he said without turning.

‘Is that a police matter?’

‘Depends what you get up to during them.’

I went into the kitchenette, picked up two glasses from the draining board and poured us both a rum. By the time I returned he was sitting in the client’s chair, just like Myfanwy had done earlier in the day. It seemed like last year.

‘What did you get up to?’

I waited a few seconds and let the fire of the rum chase out the late-night damp.

‘I was at the Moulin.’

‘I know. What did you do after that?’

‘Went for a walk.’

‘A walk?’ He pretended to consider my answer. ‘That’s nice. Anywhere in particular?’

‘No, just around.’

I wondered what he was getting at; he wasn’t here for a chat.

‘With a girl were you?’

I shook my head.

‘Or was it little boys?’

I poured another drink and looked at him sleepily.

He sighed. During his years on the Force in Aberystwyth he’d seen everything there was to see and had long ago lost the energy to be offended by it. Just as the man who cleans up after the donkeys on the Prom no longer notices what it is he sweeps up. I’d run into him a number of times before. There was a sort of uneasy truce between us. Like any cop he didn’t like having private operatives sniffing around on his turf. I didn’t blame him for it; when I was walking the beat in Swansea I didn’t like them either. But I had a right to operate, as long as I kept within certain limits; and as long as I did, he tolerated me. The key requirement was that I dealt straight with him; if I did, things ran smoothly enough. But if I played what he called ‘silly buggers’, he could be very, very hard. Sadly, my instinct was telling me that on this case I was going to be playing silly buggers.