Aberystwyth Mon Amour

*

The avuncular white-bearded man kneels at the shore's edge and stares through narrowed eyes out to sea. Around him children gather. The man speaks.

'That's our land out there, beneath those constantly shifting waters. A good land, a rich land. A land where our people can reap and sow and our children's laughter will fill each silver day-'

Calamity Jane picked up the remote control and turned off the TV. 'What crap!'

'Now, now! There's no need for language like that.'

'Who wants to go to Cantref-y-Gwaelod anyway?'

'Quite a lot of people, it seems.'

'Why do they have to do TV commercials then?' She threw the remote control on to the sofa and started pacing up and down the office, counting off points on her fingers. 'Item one: Brainbocs masterminded the plan to reclaim Cantref-y-Gwaelod. Lovespoon loved that scheme. Item two: then he starts researching something else. Lovespoon hates that and tells the Museum curator not to help him. Then the curator loses his job and then . . .' she paused. 'And then he fell off a cliff.'

We exchange glances like guilty children.

'Item three: Brainbocs hid the essay in a well-known beauty spot and was looking for a woman called Gwenno.'

'Item four,' it was my turn, 'Evans the Boot had a piece of Mayan tea cosy in his possession.'

'Not Mayan — Welsh, it was just a Mayan design . . .'

The words trailed off and she looked over to the door. Myfanwy was standing framed in the doorway and she didn't look pleased.

'Hey, come in!'

'I'll stay here, thank you, I'm not staying.'

'Not even for a cup of tea?'

'I just want to tell you to stop investigating my cousin Evans's disappearance. Send me a bill for what you've done up until now.'

'You don't owe me any money, I turned the case down, remember?'

'Yes, but I talked you into it.'

I turned to Calamity. 'Hey, do you think you could put the kettle on for me?'

'She said she didn't want a cup of tea!'

'Well I do.'

'Right now?'

'Yes, right now!'

She looked over to Myfanwy in search of an ally, but Myfanwy simply said, 'Scram, kid.'

Calamity shuffled across to the kitchen. 'If it's about this investigation, it involves me too.'

I turned to Myfanwy. 'You look like a walking thunderstorm.'

'That's hardly surprising, is it?'

I was puzzled. 'I don't know, isn't it?'

'No, it isn't . . . after . . . after . . .'

'After what?'

'After what you did.'

'What did I do?'

'You mean you have to ask?'

I raised my hand as if to indicate a temporary truce and walked over to the kitchen. I closed the door with an exaggerated action.

'Myfanwy, please tell me, what have I done?'

'You mean you don't know?'

'No!'

'That makes it worse.'

'Oh, for God's sake,' I said walking over to the desk because I couldn't think of anything better to do, 'stop playing games and tell me what I am supposed to have done.'

She paused and looked at me. I looked back and smiled encouragingly.

'You slept with Bianca.'

I gaped at her.

'Don't try and deny it, she told me everything.'

'I'm not trying to deny it, I'm just staggered -'

'You think we don't talk to each other or something?'

'Myfanwy!'

'I mean of all the cheek — you think you can just jump into bed with my best friend and she won't tell me?'

'But Myfanwy!' I howled again.

'My best friend, Louie! My best friend!'

'Funny sort of friend!' I shouted.

'And what's that supposed to mean!?'

'I don't know, fuck it all, Myfanwy, it was you who told me to do it!'

'I -' This time it was her turn to stare open-mouthed.

'At the Club, remember?'

'But I didn't mean it!' she screeched, and then flung her hands in the air in exasperation, before turning in the doorway and stomping down the stairs. Her last words, thrown over her shoulder were: 'How can anyone be so stupid!'

I stood rooted to the spot, staring at the empty doorway. Calamity came back in.

'She needs a slap, boss.'

'Don't you start,' I warned her.

'I'm not starting, I'm just observing. She's walking all over you.'

'Is that any of your concern?'

'Yes it is as a matter of fact.'

'Oh really!'

'Yes. Firstly because you're my friend and I don't like to see you acting the doormat; secondly because things like this can interfere with your professional performance; and thirdly because it affects the bottom line.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Didn't I just hear you say you weren't charging her for any of this?'

'That's none of your business.'

She picked up her school satchel adding nonchalantly, 'Fine, but shoe leather's not free. Second rule of being a private eye.'

As she skipped through the door I picked up the phone and called Meirion. After the usual round of pleasantries I asked if he'd heard anything about Iolo. Of course he had. He'd heard everything, he just couldn't print it.

'Most of the injuries seem to have been sustained during the fall from the cliff,' he said.

'Most of them?'

'Well some of them don't look like the sort of mark you'd get from falling off a cliff.'

'What do they look like?'

'More like the sort of holes a hatpin might make.'

I sighed. 'Anything else?'

'Yes, something very strange. Someone's daubed some graffiti on the pavement outside Aberaeron Co-op ... in blood.'

'Blood?'

'The victim's blood.'

I screwed up my brow and held my breath. I could tell Meirion had more.

'Now I'm no expert,' he laughed, 'but as far as I can see there are only two ways that could happen.'

'Go on.'

'Either some idiot went to the foot of the cliff and collected Iolo's blood. Or Iolo wrote it himself.'

'How could he, he was dead?'

'Ah!' Meirion laughed. 'Depends when he wrote it, doesn't it?'

'All right, Meirion, I know you've got a theory. What is it?'

'If you asked me I'd say he was murdered outside the Co-op and he wrote the graffiti himself. Dipped his finger in his own blood and daubed it on the floor with his dying strength. Then whoever killed him dragged him to the cliff and threw him off to make it look like an accident. Only because it was so dark no one noticed the blood until next morning.'

I could almost feel him beaming on the other end of the phone. He was obviously right.

'So what does the graffiti say?'

'Two words. "Rio Caeriog".'

*

The following afternoon Calamity and I drove to the Museum as Iolo Davies's last words drifted through my thoughts. Had he written the words for me? He must have done.' Rio Caeriog. The famous battle from the war in Patagonia. A name once written on the map with the blood of a generation and now inscribed in the Museum curator's blood on the pavements of Aberaeron. Was that the new essay subject Brainbocs had chosen? The one that got him killed? As I parked in the shadow of the Lancaster bomber I mentally reviewed the story of Rio Caeriog. It was well enough known. For months in 1961 the First Expeditionary Force had been taking unsustainable losses in the foothills of the Sierra Machynlleth. Sniped at by day and taunted and ambushed at night by an enemy they couldn't see. And then came the famous raid. A Rolex watch was rigged up by the boffins of Llanelli with a radio beacon inside. The watch was deliberately lost in a card game to one of the bandits in the back room of a cantina. And when the bandit took it home to his base the Lancaster bomber followed. But why did it interest Brainbocs? What was the connection to Cantref-y-Gwaelod? We got out of the car and walked up the steps into a foyer of gilded cherubs and alabaster columns. The Devil's Bridge Tin & Lead Steam Railway Co. had built with a confidence that had long since disappeared from our own age. The grandeur was now sadly defaced by charmless municipal sign boards: Combinations and Corsetry; Two-headed Calves and other Curios; Coelecanths.