‘Not normally.’
‘As he lies dying he writes “Hoffmann” in his own blood. According to Tadpole, she used to nurse a soldier who fought in the Mission House siege and who cried out “Hoffmann” in his nightmares. Are you following me?’
‘I think so.’
‘So maybe we should try and find out what really happened at the Mission House siege. The version that didn’t make it to the big screen.’
‘OK.’
‘We’ll talk to the man in the hobby shop.’
‘Is he the madam?’
‘Yes, sort of. He supplies people who come in for stuff to make models of battles and stuff. He’s bound to know.’
‘Uh-huh. Maybe we should try one of the techniques from my Pinkerton book to get him to talk.’
‘Yes. We could buy some rubber hose off him for our submarine model, and then hit him with it.’
‘They don’t do that. They use psychology. It’s called Interrogative Misdirection.’
‘How does that work?’
‘Tell me how you were going to handle the interview.’
‘I was going to walk in and ask him if he’s seen the Clip movie.’
‘That’s your first mistake. You shouldn’t let him know what you’re after. You’ve got to use subtlety, like the Pinkertons. You start by asking him about something you’re not interested in. It’s like a conjuror, you see, you have to use misdirection. You divert his attention to this something else and then casually slip in the real thing. We’ll share it. You ask about something you’re not interested in, and I’ll use one of the techniques to steer the conversation round to Patagonia. Agreed?’
I considered for a second and then laughed. ‘OK, we’ll let the Pinkertons handle this interview.’
We walked up Pier Street and Calamity, having chalked up a small victory for the Pinkertons, became expansive. ‘Yes, there’s definitely room in this game for a more systematic and scientific approach in line with the precepts and methodology established by the Pinkertons.’
‘Did you read that in the preface?’
‘It’s empirical.’
‘I bet you read that, too.’
‘What if I did? It’s true, isn’t it? We rely too much on outdated methods.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Take the Butch Cassidy case, for instance.’
‘There is no Butch Cassidy case.’
‘How do you know? There might be. If we just contacted the Pinkertons—’
‘Calamity!’ I said sharply as we reached the doorway to the shop. ‘There is no Butch Cassidy case. It may be the most celebrated case of the Pinkerton organisation but it’s not our case. Ours is the celebrated Hoffmann case.’
‘But they’re linked.’
‘No, they’re not.
I opened the door and we walked in, entering a world in which the real one had been miniaturised and rendered claustrophobic and obsessive. There were flocks of miniature sheep on papiermâché hillsides arrayed alongside armies of footsoldiers from Lilliput; kits to build Aberystwyth Castle scaled down to fit on the dining-room table; kits to make fishing boats and the brigs that took the settlers to the New World in the last century; replica spinning wheels . . . Pride of place went to a scale model of Aberystwyth Pier as it was in the days before the sea chopped off the end and left a vestibule leading to nowhere – although that was a popular destination in the town. The detail was impressive: it even had a miniature fibreglass boy with a calliper on his leg, standing at the entrance, for ever soliciting charity from the stony hearts of the townspeople.
‘Can I help you?’ The voice belonged to a man behind the counter; a small greasy man with an obsequious air, a shiny bald pate, a pair of tortoiseshell-framed glasses that had been repaired with sticky tape, and that cloying look of deep understanding which is shared by the ice man and the brothel keeper. He smiled, an invitation to me to unburden myself and a reassurance that, whatever it was I was after, he would probably have it and in such quantities that I need not worry that I was alone in my obsession.
‘I’m looking for a gift . . . for a friend.’
The man nodded and smiled but made little attempt to conceal the fact that he didn’t believe me. No one ever came into this shop and admitted he was shopping for himself.
‘He’s a trainspotter.’
The man nodded again and said, ‘And you’d like to buy him a little something?’
‘He’s not a close friend.’
‘No?’
‘Really an acquaintance.’
‘Mmmmm.’
‘I met him at the railway station.’
‘Where else?’
‘We just talked a bit, you know.’
‘It’s not a crime in this shop, sir, as you see. Are you sure it was a friend?’
I ignored the insinuation and carried on, feeling strangely ill at ease. I wished Calamity would hurry up and subtly misdirect him.
‘Nothing extravagant, maybe an 0–0 gauge sheep for his layout or something.’
‘The mockery is never far away, is it?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘My friend, I would say the best gift you or any man could give to this –’ he paused in a way that cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the next word – ‘friend, as you call him, would be to stop classifying him by that disgusting epithet.’
‘Which one?’
‘Spotter.’
‘They don’t use that word?’
‘Only those who revile them call them that. Call him a cranker, or a basher, and he will thank you far more sincerely than if you were to buy him a model signal box, which I suspect is what you with your limited understanding had in mind when you came in.’
‘Cranker?’
‘It’s their chosen term.’
‘Do you use it?’
‘I am just the dealer. I supply what my customers desire. I take no sides. I’m not proud of what I do, but neither am I ashamed. A man must make a living in this world and there are worse ways of doing it.’
I began to sweat around the collar.
‘Oh look, Louie!’ Calamity cried in a voice suffused with insincerity – the voice a wife in a farce uses to deny the presence of her lover in the wardrobe. ‘Look at this!’
I allowed my attention to be diverted to a model layout of the Fairbourne railway.
Fairbourne is a small town just below Barmouth on the Mawddach estuary, about thirty or forty miles north of Aberystwyth. The estuary is even more beautiful than the one we have at Aberdovey, if such a thing is possible. But Fairbourne itself is not so interesting, apart from a lovely beach and the little train that runs the entire length of it.
I bent forward to take a better look. ‘This looks very accurate.’
‘It is,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Only the magnificent pointlessness of the journey is missing.’
‘No, not that,’ said Calamity. ‘I meant this.’
It was a scale model of Clip the Sheepdog. I moved across and the shopkeeper dutifully stalked me from behind the counter. If any of this was fooling him he was doing an excellent job of concealing it.
‘We sell a lot of those,’ he said.
‘He must have been an amazing dog.’
‘Yes.’
‘I saw the movie. Quite a famous victory.’
‘Yes, famous,’ he said in a voice that suggested he didn’t think so.
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘Who am I to say? I just sell the little toy soldiers, I don’t comment on the broader historical sweep.’
He gave me the obsequious smile that the private detective in Aberystwyth comes to recognise like the yelp of a faithful dog. The smile that says: my lips are sealed and can only be unlocked by a special pass key, available from all good off licences. I took out a flask of rum and waved it in front of his obsequious face.