Aberystwyth Mon Amour

My eyes widened at that one, but I said nothing.

'So he let me in and I sneaked into Bianca's flat and just as I was checking the stove the first policeman turned up and caught me. He drags me downstairs saying he's going to give me a good hiding and down at the bottom when we got to the gate the other policeman looks up and says, "Sarge, I've heard it all now, there's a woman here who wants to clean the stove!" And do you know who it was? It was Mrs Llantrisant!'

This time we both looked at each other and stared.

'Mrs Llantrisant?'

She nodded

'I don't like the sound of that. Not at all.'

'Not much chance of it being coincidence is there?'

'I'm afraid not. So then what happened?'

'I bit the policeman's hand and ran for it.' She paused and then said, 'Are you angry?'

I blinked in puzzlement. 'Angry? What for?'

'Because I gave the game away.'

'No you didn't!'

'I did. Because of me she found out we were looking in stoves. I screwed up."

I punched her playfully in the arm. 'Kid you did a brilliant job. I really take my hat off to you and one day — maybe next week — you are going to be a famous private eye.'

Her face brightened. 'Well I'd better get back to them stoves.'

I raised a hand. 'Don't worry about the stoves.'

'No?'

'By my reckoning, counting out my stove and Bianca's which you have checked, there must be about 3,998 left in town. It's hopeless.'

She blew a raspberry. 'What sort of talk is that?'

'Look, the way my luck is going, it will start snowing soon and then every stove in town will be lit up anyway.'

She picked up her coat. 'We don't need to check every stove in town. We just have to work out what her movements were and check the ones she would have had access to. It's simple.'

Later that afternoon I decided to go out. It was not a clever thing to do with half the countryside looking for me, but I decided, what the hell. I might as well be arrested as sit in the caravan doing nothing. I tied the old coat on with the packing string and covered my hands and face with soil. It was bitterly cold out so I stuffed crumpled-up newspaper inside my coat as insulation. Lastly, and this was something I hated most of all, I smeared myself with a liquid I had prepared from rotting fish, boiled cabbage and mouldy cheese. It was the nearest I could get to that sour unwashed cheesy smell that the vagrants seemed to have.

From Ynyslas I walked across the bog to the railway track, climbed on to a goods train, and jumped off a mile before Aberystwyth station. From there I walked through town to the sea front. And then I climbed up to the camera obscura on the top of Constitution Hill. At the cafe at the top I bought a tea and a bag of old sixpences for the telescope mounted in the corner overlooking the town. The town astronomy society met here twice a month to use the little sixpenny telescope but there was no one here now. I turned it away from the sky and trained it on Sospan's stall. There was no one there apart from Sospan and so I sat down and drank my tea. After five minutes I looked again and this time found what I was looking for. Llunos enjoying his regular afternoon ice cream. I walked over to the phone.

'Yeah?'

'I didn't do it.'

'Sorry?'

'I said I didn't do it.'

'Who is this?'

'Can't you guess?'

'Louie?'

'I'm just calling to tell you it wasn't me. And you know it.'

'Do I?'

'Run a girl down in cold blood?'

'It was your car.'

'But I wasn't in it.'

'We found your fingerprints on it.'

'Of course you did, it was my bloody car!'

'What do you want?'

'I don't know.'

There was a short silence. Llunos was obviously taken aback by the honesty in the reply.

Then he remembered:

'You locked me in the toilet, you bastard!'

'Look, forget about that now, it's not important —'

'You won't say that when I get hold of you!'

'I mean we can discuss it later; right now I want you to know it wasn't me.'

'All right, Louie, if you're innocent why did you skip town the same night?'

'That doesn't prove anything.'

'It doesn't prove it, but it doesn't look very good, does it?'

'If I hadn't run away I would be locked up by now.'

'You think you won't be when we find you?'

I sighed in exasperation. 'It wasn't me, Llunos.'

'Look, say you weren't involved. Say someone else took your car and ran her over. Just say that for a moment. And you were safely home in bed at the time, why then would you leave town? You wouldn't even know she'd been killed. First thing you would have known was when we came knocking on your door.'

'I didn't do it, Llunos, and you know it.'

'You got an alibi?'

'Not a very good one.'

'Where were you on the night in question?'

'What time?'

'Between eleven and midnight.'

I paused.

'Well?'

'I was at the harbour.'

'That's a great alibi!'

My eyes smarted as I took in the mess I was in. It was hopeless.

'Fuck it all, Llunos, why would I want to kill Bianca?'

'Who did it then?'

'One of Pickel's mob.'

'Why?'

'Ask him.'

'You'll have to do better than that.'

'He was with her that night.'

'He's with her every night.'

'He stole something from Lovespoon and kept it hidden. He shouldn't have had it, but he did. He boasted to Bianca about it, so she stole it. If Lovespoon had found out, he would have killed Pickel so he told him first. The Druids took her and tortured her to find out what she had done with the thing she had stolen. They must have gone too far. Beaten her too much. She was probably going to die. So they arrange a car crash and use my car. Kill two birds with one stone.'

I could tell he was listening hard. It was troubling him, this murder. He probably had enough evidence to send me down. But he knew in his heart I didn't do it.

'What did she steal?'

'Some important papers belonging to Lovespoon.'

'Papers? Why would the girl care about papers? She couldn't hardly read.'

'She did it for me. She thought I wanted them.'

'Did you?'

'Not like that. Not for her to get involved.'

'What was so special about the papers?'

'They could prove that Lovespoon killed those schoolboys.'

There was silence. Had I got him? My heart started to beat a little faster.

'You know where the so-called papers are now?'

'Not really.'

'What do you mean not really? You're hanging by a thread, Louie. You tell me this cock-and-bull story —'

'Look, all I know is she hid them in the stove.'

'Which one?'

'Look, I know it's a big job, but a team of men could probably —'

'Louie!'

'What?'

'Look up at the sky.'

I leaned back and looked out of the cafe window. It looked like someone had burst a feather pillow in the sky.

'See that white cold stuff?'

I held the phone cradled against my cheek for a few seconds and then hung up.

Snow in June. Five minutes from now, every stove in Aberystwyth would be lit.

Chapter 17

THE SNOW FELL all afternoon but didn't stick, it just turned to a dirty grey slime on the pavement, and soon it was gone. I hung around the deserted town all day, dressed as a veteran and forced to live the life of one, which meant no life at all. There was no bar or cafe which would allow me in, and eventually I took refuge in Eeyore's stable where I could find warmth among the donkeys. I stayed there until evening and then I wandered over to the south side of Trefechan Bridge and waited in the shadows behind the bus stop. After half an hour I heard Myfanwy clip-clopping down the wet pavement in her high heels. In my veteran's outfit she didn't give me a second glance and came and stood right in front of me.