The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still (18 page)

Something clenched in my loins, it was like an angry baby kicking against the wall of its womb; I didn’t let evidence of it reach my face. ‘She should have known better, the tide tables are clearly posted. Where did you get the snap?’

‘From my camera.’

‘Am I a suspect?’

‘I would say so, wouldn’t you?’

‘Are you arresting me?’

‘Why would I want to do that?’

‘You look the type that might enjoy it.’

He made a sour grin. ‘Not really. Arresting people is boring. It looks fun in the TV cop shows, but in real life it’s just paperwork and spending a lot of what the Americans call quality time with people who don’t wash very often. Sometimes they try and bite you. They never show that on TV, but that’s what it often comes down to. Being bitten by a fully grown man is a very unpleasant experience. Sometimes they struggle in such a way that they threaten to injure themselves. That’s not necessarily a big deal, but it means more paperwork, so you have to spray a little something in their eyes; nothing calms a man down faster than a little something in his eyes. Trouble is, it makes them produce a lot of mucus – from their eyes, their nose, out of the mouth. You’d be surprised how much the body can pump out in a situation like that. Believe me, grappling with a man producing loads of mucus isn’t fun. I don’t arrest people, I get the flatfoots to do it.’

‘You can arrest me, I wash every day.’

He smiled. ‘You are forgetting one thing: I like you. How are you getting on with Raspiwtin? Anything you want to tell me?’

‘There’s nothing I want to tell you.’

He threw another photo down on top of the first. It showed me and Mrs Lewis talking on the Prom. ‘Looks like you had a date the night she died. As far as I can tell, the cops don’t know about it. They’re not as quick on their feet or as well informed as old Sauerkopp. But it could change. If something happens that might interest us and you are tempted to forget to tell us, I could forget not to show them the photo.’

I picked up the photo and stared at it while my heart tumbled slowly down the stairs.

‘Don’t look so sad, it’s not as bad as it seems. I know what you are thinking: you don’t photograph too well these days. It’s the light; sodium lighting is very harsh; it gives a greenish cast. I should have used a filter but I can never remember which one to use. Orange, I think.’ He took the photo out of my hand and walked out, saying, ‘Pack a toothbrush just in case.’

I loosened my tie, leant back and closed my eyes. Cops and ex-cops have a routine disdain for private operatives, and I don’t blame them. I would feel the same too if I were a cop. They know if they want to use testimony in court it helps if it comes voluntarily. When they arrive at a crime scene the first thing they have to do is seal it off, record everything in detail and take great care not to contaminate it with stuff from somewhere else. Not because they care about justice and fairness and due process but because they have learned through bitter experience that all their hard work will end up wasted if they don’t follow the rules. The first thing a private operative does when arriving at the scene of a crime is walk all over it looking for significant stuff before the cops come. He doesn’t care about contaminating it; let someone else worry, he doesn’t have the time. On occasion he will rearrange it, sometimes to eliminate his own presence, at others to try and effect a rough natural justice he has no right attempting but he does anyway. Sometimes he will wipe a murder weapon of prints or put someone else’s on it. Sometime he simply takes a key piece of evidence and throws it in the river, leaving a crime scene like a jigsaw puzzle missing a piece. I know the private operative does all these things because I have done them, and the cops know it too. In fact, if they know someone like me is sniffing around they assume the worst right from the start, and this often results in the private operative taking a tumble down the police-station steps.

I made a call to Meirion, a friend of mine on the crime desk at the
Cambrian News
. I asked him what he knew about the Mrs Lewis case. He didn’t know anything and so I told him to forget I’d even asked. Calamity walked in and I told her what had happened.

She put on a deep frown. ‘Who do you think did it?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The mayor, maybe.’

‘Or the doctor.’

I nodded.

‘Do you think it’s connected to us?’

‘What do you think?’

She thought for a while. ‘Iestyn and Skweeple turn up at the doctor’s surgery. They call Preseli. When he comes, Iestyn escapes, so he takes Skweeple away. That’s the last we hear of him. A week later Iestyn is caught and hanged. The papers don’t mention Skweeple. Something must have happened to him while in Preseli’s custody. The doc knows about it too. They’re both in on it.’

‘Why kill Mrs Lewis; she doesn’t know what happened.’

‘Maybe she does know, or maybe they think she knows. Or maybe just knowing that Preseli took him is enough.’ She stood up. ‘I think it is definitely time to try the Barney and Betty Hill routine.’

‘I’ll probably regret this, but what is that?’

‘Barney and Betty Hill are one of the most famous contactee cases of all time, from 1961. They were driving home through New Hampshire after a vacation in Quebec and they saw a bright light in the sky . . .’ She stopped.

I looked at her sourly. ‘You might as well go on, although try and keep in mind that someone I spoke to the day before yesterday has been murdered and I was probably one of the last to see her. Presumably it won’t be long before the cops find out.’

‘Fine,’ said Calamity. ‘We don’t do the Barney and Betty Hill.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You didn’t have to.’

‘You might as well finish it.’

‘What’s the point, you are going to think it’s dumb.’

‘OK. I promise to try not to. Tell me in the car.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Remember James the Less and his son the forensic linguist?’

‘The kid who knows more types of duck than you’ve had hot dinners.’

‘I thought we could go and show him the letter Raspiwtin gave me.’

We set off for Cwmnewidion Isaf and Calamity told me about Barney and Betty Hill.

‘They were driving home one night,’ she began, ‘and they saw a bright light. They stopped and got out to take a look. Then somehow they found themselves at home and six hours had passed which they couldn’t account for. After that they started getting nightmares. Eventually they were questioned by the military and offered hypnotism, and it all came out. How they’d been abducted aboard the saucer and given medical examinations and stuff. The aliens were baffled by Barney’s false teeth.’

‘This was 1961?’

‘Yes. In America.’

‘Were they Greys or Nordics?’

‘Greys.’

We drove south out of town and turned off the main road at Rhydyfelin.

‘Mrs Bwlchgwallter from the gingerbread shop does hypnotism. I thought we could get her to hypnotise the farmer.’

‘What do you expect to learn?’

‘I don’t know. My hunch is they are looking for Skweeple. They asked for Iestyn because they think he can tell them what happened to Skweeple. What do you make of Jhoe?’

‘Three possibilities,’ I said.

‘Number one,’ said Calamity, ‘he’s from the star system Noö.’

‘That’s number three. Between number two and number three there is a wide gap.’

‘What’s number two, then?’

‘He could be an actor sent by the Aviary, or some other body, to bamboozle us.’

‘I thought about that, but why?’

‘I really don’t know. Disinfo, I suppose.’

‘Buying a Buick is disinfo?’

‘He’s not really buying it, is he? You haven’t got one to sell. He’s just posing as a buyer. Maybe whichever organisation he works for wants to sound you out, see what your game is. Who knows? Did Barney and Betty Hill drive a Buick?’

‘No, a ’57 Chevrolet Bel Air. Do you really think he works for an organisation?’

‘The alternative is . . .’

‘Number one: he’s a loony.’

‘That’s not an expression I would use. But I think we should consider the possibility that he may, I don’t know, he may have absented himself from the secure wing of a psychiatric hospital.’

‘Mmm.’

‘In fact, I think you should ring a few when we get back and make some discreet enquiries, see if someone who sounds like Jhoe has gone missing.’

‘You really think so?’

‘It’s up to you, but you did place the ad, and I think that gives you a certain responsibility.’

‘Thing is, I think I like Jhoe.’

‘All the more reason.’

Cwmnewidion Isaf was a small village where the inhabitants took refuge from the twentieth century, preferring to hearken back to a lost idyll in that land of the golden past that probably never existed. They still fetched water from the well and farmed using only the natural fertiliser their animals provided; theirs was one of the few communities left in West Wales where they preserved the ancient custom according to which you could ask people directions without having to pay them. We did this, and were pointed in the direction of a barn, but first we stopped off at the village shop and bought a bottle of dandelion and burdock. It was carbonated, which technically made it proscribed technology, but the shopkeeper explained with a wink that if the carbonation process took place a long way away where you couldn’t see it, one could turn a blind eye. As bribes go, it was a lot cheaper than the ones used in Aberystwyth. James the Less and his son were grooming a horse inside the barn and beamed with pleasure to see us. Their eyes locked on to the fizzy drink with barely concealed lust.

‘We thought you might like a little drink,’ said Calamity. ‘It must be thirsty work living in a world without machines.’

‘How thoughtful of you,’ said James the Less. ‘Samson, go and fetch some cups. It is so nice of you to come and visit. Most people shun us for our alien ways, even though our lives are not so very different from the ones their forebears would have lived.’

‘That’s very true,’ I said.

‘If they only cared to wish us good day or engage us in conversation, they would discover the same heart beats in our breasts as in everyone else’s.’ He sat on a bale of hay. ‘Yes, it is so nice of you to come out all this way just to say hello to some strangers you met on the train.’

‘To be honest,’ I said, prickling with guilt, ‘it would be wrong of us to mislead you into the belief that we came here solely to say hello.’

Samson returned with some unglazed earthernware mugs. Calamity poured the drinks. We raised mugs and wished each other good health. But instead of drinking, James the Less hesitated, then said, ‘You . . . you haven’t got anything stronger, have you?’

A glance of complicity passed between us.

‘Does a still count as a machine?’ I asked.

James the Less smiled sheepishly. ‘On this particular issue the scriptures are far from clear.’

I took out my hip flask of rum and unscrewed the cap. ‘In that case, at least until the scholars reach a consensus, it would be best to proceed on the assumption that a still is not a machine.’

Like a dog who keeps dancing and jumping up to your hands while you’re still opening the tin of dog food, James the Less struggled to maintain a dignified reserve in the face of mounting excitement. ‘It would be impertinent to argue with such a learned man,’ he said and threw the dandelion and burdock onto the floor with a surprising lack of ceremony. He held out his mug. I gave him a generous measure and took one for myself. James the Less took a deep gulp, coughed, swallowed, coughed, swallowed harder and finally looked up with the air of one electrocuted. ‘Wow!’ he said. ‘That hit the spot! Now, what was it you wanted to see us about?’

I handed him the top-secret Aviary document. As I did so, a chit of paper fell out and James the Less picked it up and gave it to me. It was a newspaper cutting, a report, a few lines amounting to a fragment of column space that detailed an atrocity on the Thai–Burmese border. It was one of those stories that are terrible but not deemed newsworthy and serve only to provide copy to fill an empty inch. I wondered: did the story describe the tragedy in which Raspiwtin had been involved? Or did he just read about it and pretend it had happened to him?