Aberystwyth Mon Amour

'I've never been in a private detective's office before.'

'Don't expect too much.'

'What's in the trunk?'

'Some charts of the South China Sea, a Burmese tribal headdress and a shrunken head.'

She gasped. 'Really?'

'Really.'

'Is that Caldy Island?' she asked pointing at the map of Borneo.

'No, it's Borneo.'

She paused, bit her lip and said, 'I expect you're wondering why I'm here.'

'It had crossed my mind.'

'They say you're the best private detective in town.'

'Did they tell you about the others?'

'What about them?'

'There aren't any.'

She smiled. 'That must make you the best then. Anyway, I want to hire you.'

'Have you got any job in mind, or do you just want to take me for a walk?'

'I want you to find a missing person.'

I nodded thoughtfully. 'Anyone I know?'

'Evans the Boot.'

I didn't say anything, just raised my eyebrows. Very high. I could have whistled as well, but I decided to stick with the eyebrows.

'Evans the Boot?'

Myfanwy looked at me and fidgeted awkwardly.

'Is he a friend of yours?'

'He's my cousin.'

'And he's gone missing?'

'About a week now.'

'Are you sure you want to find him?'

She sighed. 'Yes, I know he's a bad lad, but his mother doesn't see it that way.'

'That's the great thing about mothers.' I leaned back and folded my arms behind my head. 'Have you been to the police?'

'Yes.'

'What did they say?'

'They said it was the best news they'd had all week.'

I laughed but stopped myself as soon as I noticed her glaring at me.

'It's not funny!'

'No, sorry. I suppose not.'

'Will you help me?'

What was I supposed to say? That she was better off going to the police, who would have the resources and the connections? That with missing persons you need a lot of patience because quite often they don't want to be found? That Evans the Boot was almost certainly dead? Instead I said, 'I don't like Evans the Boot.'

'I'm not asking you to like him, just find him.'

'And I don't like the sort of people he goes round with. If I go poking my nose into their affairs I could go missing too.'

'I see, so you're scared.'

'No, I'm not scared!'

'Sounds like it to me.'

'Well I'm not.'

She shrugged. We glared at each other for a while.

'I'll admit that looking for Evans the Boot is not a healthy way to earn a living,' I said, looking away, unable to hold her stare.

'Fair enough.' Her tone suggested I was a failure.

'I mean, I'm sorry and all that.'

'Don't bother, I know what the real reason is.' She stood up and walked over to the door.

'What is that supposed to mean?'

She picked up her hat. 'You just don't want a girl like me as a client.'

I opened my mouth to speak but she carried on.

'It's OK, you don't need to explain,' she said breezily. 'I'm used to it.'

I scooted across the room to the door. 'What are you talking about?'

She flashed a look of scorn. 'Moulin girls!'

'Moulin girls?'

'That's it, isn't it? You despise us.'

'No I don't!'

'You wouldn't want to be seen with me when you're playing golf with the Grand Wizard.'

'Hey hold on!' I cried. 'You think I play golf with the Druids?'

She stopped at the map of Borneo on her way out and said, as if her previous remarks had been about the weather, 'What do the little red dots mean?'

'Sorry?' I said, still reeling.

'These little red dots on the map?'

'It's the route taken by my great-great-uncle Noel on his expedition.'

'What was he doing?'

'He was looking for an Englishwoman rumoured to be lost in the jungle.'

'Did he fancy her?'

'No, he'd never met her; he'd just read about the case and it fascinated him.'

She traced her finger along the route — up the Rajang river and across the Bungan rapids, covering in two seconds what took Noel six months.

'Where is this place?' she said to the map.

'It's near Australia.'

'He went all the way to Australia to help a woman?'

'Yes. I suppose you could say that.'

She looked up at me and said slyly, 'Are you sure he was your uncle?'

Before I could answer she had skipped through the doorway and was off down the stairs. I ran out and leaned over the balcony to toss a comment down, but I couldn't think of anything to say. The front door slammed.

I walked back, put my feet up on the desk and contemplated the morning. As usual clients were thin on the ground and I had just turned down one whose cheques would probably be honoured by the bank. The framed sepia image of Noel Bartholomew stared down and chided me with an expression that many have described as enigmatic but which has always struck me as supercilious. Starched tropical whites, pith helmet, a dead tiger at his feet and jungle behind him. Even in 1870 the camera was busy lying: the tiger was stuffed, the jungle ferns picked in Danycoed wood and the whole scene composed in a studio before he left Town. I gave a wan smile and thought about Evans the Boot. I knew him of course. An opportunistic thief with an eye for a climbable drainpipe or an easily opened back door. Still in school but broad-shouldered and bearded. Capable of seducing the wives of his school masters and then boasting to them of it afterwards. A violent thug who invoked a tingling, visceral fear. That same fear you feel when in a strange town you enter an underpass and hear from up ahead the primaeval, ritual chanting of football hooligans. Yes, I knew him, we were both creatures of the same nocturnal landscape. But our paths seldom crossed. His evenings would be mapped out by the various intricate routes from pub to pub that characterised the night out in town. While I would be sitting in cold cars, clammy with breath and condensation, watching bedroom curtains. A professional snoop in a world where most people did it as a hobby. I looked again at Noel. It was obvious now what I should have shouted down the stairs to Myfanwy: uncle Noel never came back alive. That's where misplaced chivalry gets you. But the thought didn't comfort me; the morning's peace had been disturbed, and there was only one place to re-establish it.

*

Et in Arcadia ego. The fibreglass ice-cream cone was five feet high and the Latin motto curved around the base in copperplate neon. Sitting on top of Sospan's stall, and visible to the sun-parched fisherman from ten miles out to sea, it was as much an Aberystwyth icon as the Cliff Railway or Myfanwy's mole. I too was in Arcady. I knew what it meant because I had once looked it up at the library; but if you asked Sospan he would shrug and say he found it in a book and thought it had something to do with the amusement arcade. That was his story and he stuck to it. But he knew better than anyone what strange demons brought the troubled souls to his counter.