Aberystwyth Mon Amour

My gaze followed him as he walked briskly up the Prom towards the Bandstand. When I turned round there was a Labrador sitting at my feet, staring up and politely licking his muzzle. I looked at the ice cream.

'You sure? Paid for by the Druids, you know.'

He gave a lick of affirmation and I threw the ice into the air. The dog leaped up and caught it while it was still rising.

* * *

When I got back to the office Calamity Jane was sitting in the client's chair.

'Tough break about the Bronzini kid,' she said nonchalantly.

'So you heard?'

'Was it you?'

'Was it me what?'

'Was it you that killed him? The word is, the police took you in. That makes you a suspect doesn't it?'

I choked for a second. 'Why you little — scallywag!'

'Nothing personal, I just deal in facts.'

'Yeah? Well perhaps you'd like to explain the fact that they found that card I gave you on his body?'

She looked puzzled for a second, then she reached into her pocket and pulled out my card.

'Been with me the whole time; you mention my name to the police?'

'No.'

She gave me a look of deep scrutiny.

'Sure?

'Scout's honour.'

'Hmmm. OK. So who do you reckon did it?'

'I've no idea.'

'It shouldn't take us long to find out.'

'Hang on, kiddo, what's all this "we" business?'

'I thought I'd help you out on this one.'

'Did you now!'

'As a partner.'

'Do I look like I need a partner?'

'From where I'm sitting you do.'

'Oh really!'

'Yep.'

'Shouldn't you be in school?'

She ignored that and slid off the chair; then started pacing around the room.

'I won't ask for much. 50p a day.'

I laughed. 'That's 50p more than I earn most days.'

She walked over to the map of the town.

'We'll need some red pins.'

'What for?'

'To plot all the murders. We'll need bus timetables, witness statements, a computer database and some fresh coffee. Oh yeah,' she said turning from the map, 'if it's OK with you I might need to use your sofa, there's going to be some late nights on this one.'

'What happens if there aren't any more murders?'

She stared at me. 'What are you talking about?'

'Bronzini dead, that's one red pin — I reckon I could find one in the drawer somewhere. No need to waste money on a box. Does it have to be red?'

She took out a pack of cigarettes and said matter-of-factly, 'Boy, you're really good; you've almost got me fooled.'

'Did anyone say you could smoke in here?'

'Don't worry, I'll open a window.'

'I mean you're too young to smoke.'

'How can you be a private dick if you don't smoke?' She rolled her eyes and made a big deal of petulantly putting away the cigarettes. Then she sat down.

For a while neither of us spoke; a mild air of antagonism growing in the silence. We both knew whoever spoke first would lose. She started drumming her fingers on the table-top. I was damned if I was going to speak. I shifted in my seat and rested my elbow on the back of the chair. She copied me, the little minx.

'I mean, come on, kid . . .' I said finally.

She started counting off names on her fingers with exaggerated childishness. 'Bronzini, Brainbocs, Llewellyn and Evans the Boot.'

I stared at her suspiciously. 'What?'

'That's four pins, wouldn't you say?'

'W . . . what's that you're saying?'

'OK I'll admit Evans isn't officially dead. Maybe half a pin, but I'm only saying that to be kind to you. Won't be long before he's a whole pin.'

'Evans the Boot?'

'Probably trying to jemmy open them pearly gates as we speak.'

'Calamity!' I said sharply.

'St Peter better get himself an Alsatian.'

I banged my fist on the table. 'Calamity, stop it! What are you talking about? Who are these other people?'

'I'm sure you must have them on file. The police are keeping a blanket on it, but you being a private dick would have your own sources, wouldn't you?'

She gave me a look of crushing superiority.

Aberystwyth was a great place for a connoisseur of irony. The most underworked man in town was Meirion, the crime reporter on the Gazette: he worked fewer hours in a year than Father Christmas. Not because of a lack of material. There was enough going on to keep an entire department on overtime, but the money that owned the newspaper also owned the seafront hotels and the ghost train and the putting green and various other bits of tourist infrastructure. To read the Gazette you'd think we were a town full of Tibetan monks. We were sitting now on the terrace of the Seaside Rock Cafe, overlooking the crazy golf course.

'So far there have been three dead schoolchildren,' he said sucking thoughtfully on a stick of Blackpool humbug. 'All in the same class at school. Bronzini, Llewellyn and Brainbocs; and Evans the Boot is still missing.'

The waitress appeared and I ordered the assiette.

'It's all being kept under wraps of course. And you didn't hear any of this from me.'

'So how did they die?'

He took the rock out of his mouth. 'Brainbocs fell into one of the slurry vats at the cheese yards. Bronzini and Llewellyn were both given "squirty flowers".'

'Cobra venom?'

'Some sort of neurotoxin.'

I whistled. It was an old trick. Send a kid one of those squirt-water-in-your-eye flowers from the joke shop and fill it with cobra venom.

'Any idea who's doing it?'

'Hard to tell. Three of the kids were all of a bunch. Llewellyn, Bronzini, Evans the Boot were all hooligans. And we know there was no love lost between them and some of those South Aberystwyth gangs — posses or whatever it is they call themselves these days. But Brainbocs doesn't fit in. This kid was a child prodigy. The Cambrian Mozart they called him. Brilliant at history and just about everything else he turned his hand to. He spent last summer transcribing Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu into runes.'

I gasped. 'Wow! I couldn't even manage the cat sat on the mat!'

'Normally Brainbocs wouldn't go near kids like that, not unless he wanted his head kicked in.'

'So Bronzini and Llewellyn would have had plenty of enemies, and Brainbocs wouldn't say boo to a goose?'

'Just about. Although even Brainbocs had a few enemies.'

'Really?'

'Brainbocs got a Saturday job working at the rock factory — helping out in the R&D unit after hours. He became interested in the great age-old puzzle of rock manufacturing, called De Quincey's Theorem. It's very complicated, but basically it concerns the attempt to change the wording of the letters midway through the rock. You know, so it starts off saying Blackpool and then after a few mouthfuls it says Zanzibar or something. It's one of the last great challenges of the rock-maker's art. And he cracked it. Just like that. Sat down with a pen and paper and a set of log tables and worked it out. So then the management make him head of R&D and within a week — and the kid is still in school, don't forget, hasn't even done his O levels — within a week he'd found a way of computer type-setting the letters. Saved a fortune: twenty old-timers were thrown out of work the same afternoon. Entire factory closes down on strike. The Unions say, "Get rid of the kid, or you'll never make another stick of rock in this town." So they fire the kid. His parting shot was forty cases of rock that said "Aberystwyth" and then after two mouthfuls read: "I've pissed in this rock".'

If you walk south past the Pier and the Bandstand you come to Castle Point where the Promenade turns sharply as if on a hinge. After that the town takes on a different character: an exposed, wind-beaten strip leading down to the harbour with a down-at-heel air where life seems a constant battle with discarded newspapers flying in the wind. The buildings are mostly guesthouses or the sad annexes used by the hotels on the main Prom when they are full. The only people you see are beachcombers and dog-walkers in their flapping macs.