The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth (25 page)

‘I did. I found out a long time ago. And a few other things besides. There’s a lot I find out about that I don’t publicise. All I’m saying is, we don’t know what goes on. He probably did his best in the circumstances, and now we don’t know what the circumstances were. I’m not going to judge him. If Calamity wants to, that’s up to her. One thing she’ll find out though, the only thing I know for sure and it took me a while to learn it – is things are never what you think. Tell her to send the dossier round and I’ll sign it.’

‘She threw it in the bin.’

‘There was no need for that. She’s earned that badge. Take it out and I’ll sign it.’ He paused and took a long slow drink. ‘Haywire’s down the station. We couldn’t find Bassett but we got the monkey. I’ve sent a car down to the deaf school for Mrs Watkins. She can translate. I thought we’d do the interview together – hard cop, soft cop.’

‘I really appreciate it.’

‘Don’t bother. I owe you one.’

‘What for?’

‘I can’t tell you but, trust me, I do. Let’s see the skull.’

I dragged the bag across to his side under the table and unzipped it.

‘We thought it might be a monkey.’

He glanced down and shook his head. He dropped his index finger into the bag and drew it along the outline of the brow. ‘You’d get more pronounced prognathism if it was an ape … It’s human. An infant.’

‘You seem pretty sure.’

‘I’ve seen some like this before. How good’s your memory?’

‘So-so.’

‘Drink up, I want to show you something you’ll never forget. And then I want you to forget it.’

SOMETIMES, THE SUN sinking out in the bay beyond the rocks was a cool silver penny like the moon, and sometimes a Spanish doubloon that sizzled and threatened to turn the sea to steam, but today it was the colour of a crimson rose petal, the image repeated in every window of the seafront hotels. We drove along the Prom and pulled up outside the old police station annexe, five doors down from the precinct station. It had been locked and unoccupied since the flood. Llunos jumped out and climbed the stone steps to the doors which were secured with a thick chain from which hung a big old-fashioned padlock. He brought out a set of keys and tossed them around in the palm of his hand until the one he wanted became evident.

‘Don’t forget to forget you were here. We’re going to have a conversation that never took place and quite possibly we’ll share a phantom tot of rum.’

He unwound the chain and gave the door a shove with his shoulder. The air that puffed out smelled of wallpaper paste and seaweed. We walked in and closed the door behind us. We were in the old station foyer and it had that same atmosphere you get in rooms that have been suddenly abandoned and remain preserved for ever at the moment of sudden crisis – like the excavated dwellings of Pompeii, or those images of wrecked ships taken by underwater robot cameras. Must and damp and mildew spores filled the air, and timbers fallen from the ceiling lay aslant the dust-covered desk in which the hinged section was raised and would always remain that way.

‘Spooky, huh?’ said Llunos.

He jumped over the desk and opened a small door in the wall. It was a utility cupboard and he reached inside with a practised hand and flicked down the electrical circuit switches. A thin hum started from somewhere and in the ceiling above us a fan started to spin slowly, causing bits of insulation fluff and scraps of newspaper to dance along the floor.

‘Come,’ said Llunos.

I followed him down gritty steps and along a corridor to some some more steps. We arrived at another padlocked door and Llunos found the key on the ring and opened it. He flicked a light switch on the door jamb outside and walked in. I followed.

‘Not many people have seen this room,’ he said, ‘even when the rest of the place was occupied. Don’t forget, you haven’t seen it either.’

It was a lumber room. Most of the floor space was filled with discarded office furniture. Shelves along one wall were piled with books and papers, not in any order but simply thrown there by people who didn’t care and weren’t expecting anyone to come along and inspect their handiwork. Three heavy filing cabinets stood in the middle, positioned as if they were having a conversation. Behind them were two desks, one empty, one laden with old typewriters. They were Remingtons, heavy-duty and robust as iron stoves, with carriages and bells louder than on a district nurse’s bike. Some of the carriages still had sheaves of paper in them, sheaves made up of five or six sheets with carbon sheets sandwiched in between. Dust gave everything a uniform grey coating like volcanic ash and spiders hung on threads and eyed us without blinking. Llunos lifted two chairs from a stack, gave them a quick dusting with his hands, and set them either side of the empty desk.

‘I come here sometimes,’ he said simply.

He took out a hip flask, unscrewed the top, and poured out a shot into the cap and set it down on the desk in front of me. He took a drink from the flask and raised it and made a circular motion. ‘Hear that?’

‘What?’

‘Listen.’

We both stopped our breaths and listened. I became aware of a distant rhythmic sighing sound, a susurration that seemed to come from nowhere and then from everywhere, and then sometimes it seemed to come from inside my own head and I wondered whether it was the sound of my soul inhaling and I myself had died.

‘Sounds like breathing, doesn’t it?’ said Llunos. ‘Sounds like the whole place is alive and breathing.’

‘What is it?’

‘Spooked?’

‘No.’

‘It’s the sea.’

I looked surprised. Llunos took another swig from his flask and raised it towards the ceiling. ‘Right up there.’

He pulled open the drawer in the desk and reached in. He took out a small skull and placed it on the desk. Then two more and set them beside it.

‘They’re human. Infants. All less than a month or two old.’

‘Where are they from?’

‘The pond. We’ve got a collection, been handed in over the years. Folk at Borth reckon they’re pixies. Calamity was a bit out in her dates – the pond was filled in two years before the Cliff Railway robbery. The loot’s not buried there. And I’ve already examined and discounted the theory that Mrs Prestatyn’s daughter is buried there, in case that’s what you are thinking. The story of the pond is much older than that. Seven hundred years older.’

‘So what does it mean?’

He stood up and walked over to the shelves and took down a book and brought it over to show me.

‘Ever seen this before?’

It was Ulricus’s
Life of Pope Gregory
.

‘Frankie Mephisto sent a copy to Sister Cunégonde.’

He opened it and began leafing through the table of contents like an old scholar.

‘Pope Gregory the First is usually known as the guy who thought up the seven deadly sins. But there is a far more interesting, less widely known story about him. How’s your Latin?’

I laughed. ‘About as good as my Greek.’

Llunos took out a pair of reading spectacles and set them on the end of his nose. He began to intone in Latin.

‘
Memorabile quod ulricus epistola refert Gregorium quum ex piscine quadam allata plus quam sex mille infantum capita vidisset
…’ He looked up and slapped the book shut. ‘Ulricus is discussing the subject of celibacy in the holy orders. In particular he describes the day when Pope Gregory drained a fish pond near a nunnery and found six thousand infant skulls. Soon after that he rescinded the decree forbidding priests from marrying. Better to marry than burn. By all accounts this was not an uncommon discovery in medieval times. Luther records a similar finding in the basement of a nunnery at Neinburg in Austria. More recently, workmen excavating the foundations of a convent at Avignon found a similar cache. It seems that wherever you get a lot of healthy young women living together, it doesn’t matter what vows they take, or how strong you make the lock on the door, that old master locksmith, Mother Nature, will find a way in. The Sisters of Deiniol founded the original convent in twelve seventy something, about the same time as Aberystwyth Castle. After the chapel and the kitchen, the ornamental fish pond was the first thing they built. The skulls have been there a long time. It’s just that they keep turning up from time to time. The earth moves a lot next to an estuary apparently. My guess is they’re probably not too proud of them down at the Waifery, and Frankie Mephisto was threatening to publicise their little secret.’

He put the book back on the shelf and said, ‘Come. Let’s go and do some interviews.’

*     *     *

We walked the five doors down to the precinct station and found Haywire waiting for us in interview room one, looking scared. We sat across the interview table from him and Llunos said, ‘Do you know why you are here?’

Haywire shrugged.

‘This man says he went to see you earlier today and asked you some questions about a certain monkey called Bojangles. He says you weren’t very helpful. This man is a friend of mine, so if he wants to know what happened to the monkey, so do I. The only difference is I’m not so politely brought up as he is. Do you understand?’

‘But I don’t know this guy called Bojangles.’

I squeezed my eyes together involuntarily. That was not a good way to answer a question from Llunos.

‘Sure you do,’ said Llunos. ‘You’ve seen the chap wheeling the barrel organ round town? You’ve seen the little monkey on top? Her name’s Cleopatra. Bojangles is her son. But she hasn’t seen him for fifteen years. He was born up at the college during the space programme but we don’t know what happened to him. Now you used to work up there at that time, so we thought we’d ask you. Am I making myself clearer, or do you need a truncheon in your mouth to help you concentrate?’

The old professor swallowed hard, his eyes brightening with fear. He nodded anxiously; the nod that says, You don’t need to take out the rubber hose, I’ll tell you what you want to know. The pointless look of supplication. The people with the rubber hose already know you are going to tell them everything. They know from long experience that outside the movies there isn’t anyone tough enough to take what they have in their power to give. And you’re going to feel the rubber hose anyway, not because it’s necessary but because they like it. It’s that simple.

Llunos pulled a cassette tape recorder across the desk. ‘This here is to ensure that you get a fair hearing and that no unfair
pressure is applied to you during the interview process. Do you understand what I am telling you?’

Haywire nodded.

The policemen pressed down the record button and spoke gruffly. ‘Interview with Professor Haywire. Present are me, Haywire and a few other people. The witness has been advised of his rights and declined the presence of an attorney.’

Haywire looked surprised to hear that but chose not to say anything.

Llunos flicked the lid of the cassette player open and replaced the tape with another from his pocket. He pressed down the play button and we found ourselves listening to Mantovani. Llunos stood up, walked over to Haywire, grabbed his lapels, hoisted him to his feet, and threw him violently into the corner. Then he walked over to that corner, grabbed Haywire and threw him into the next. This procedure was known as the suspect falling off his chair. After Llunos had helped Haywire fall off his chair a few more times he put him back in the chair, sat down and turned the volume down. ‘As you can see, it’s not infallible.’ He put the original tape back in and began the interview.

‘OK. What happened to Bojangles?’

Haywire paused while he collected his wits and then said, ‘I want you to know it wasn’t my idea—’

Llunos leaped forward, veins throbbing at his temple, ‘I don’t give a fuck whose idea it was, you idiot!’

Haywire threw his hands out as if shielding himself from a bright light. ‘OK, OK, OK. We called it sending them to Timbuktu. You see, we had a lot of monkeys born on the project so we had to get rid of them. It got to be pretty distressing, you know, taking the kids away from their mothers, so we invented this thing. We told them the kids were going to be research fellows at a foreign university, the University of Timbuktu, that way they would be sort of proud of their kids, you see. We even had a little “going away” suit made with a University of Timbuktu
badge on the pocket. And a scarf and a bag. It was always the same suit, of course, but they never noticed. We’d have a little going away party and all the chimps would gather at the door and wave the little fellah off. Then when the door was closed we took his suit off and took him down the corridor to the animal behaviourists where they were conducting research into resistance to fear-extinction in primates—’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Oh, you know, the usual questions of whether phylogenetic and ontogenetic stimuli are comparable once the orientation and aversive consequences of the ontogenetic FR stimulus are taken into account. That sort of thing.’

There was a second’s silence in the room as Llunos blinked and the thought dawned on Professor Haywire that he might have said the wrong thing.

‘What,’ said Llunos in a slowed-down voice, ‘the fuck does that mean?’

Haywire turned pale and Llunos looked at me, bubbling with rage. ‘Did you understand a word of that?’