I grimaced and he noted it from the corner of his eye. And I noted that he noted.
A waitress appeared in the doorway leading to the kitchen and at the same time the door to the Gents opened and a police constable walked out drying his hands on the thighs of his trousers. He looked at me and made a strangled scoffing sound that implied he knew who I was. I didn’t recognise him. He walked over and joined the cop, who turned to the girl and said, ‘Hey, stop staring and clear away this shit.’
She was in her early twenties, slender in a scarlet cheongsam embroidered with golden flowers; her face was as smooth and expressionless as alabaster. She began to clear. The slit in her cheongsam opened over the thigh and the two cops stared with no attempt to conceal their lust.
‘No thanks, we haven’t got time for dessert,’ said the big cop. The deputy guffawed dutifully. Or maybe he genuinely thought it was funny.
The girl flinched and moved her leg to let the parted fabric fall back. I winced again.
This time the cop looked over. ‘Something wrong with your eye?’
I said nothing.
‘Every time I look round, I find you looking at me like you got soap in your eye.’
‘It’s conjunctivitis.’
‘My auntie had that, too – purgatory it was. She never looked like she had soap in her eye, though. I reckon it’s something else. Maybe you can see something on our table we got that you haven’t?’
‘You mean apart from that inimitable Swansea sophistication?’
‘Ah!’ The cop nodded as if all had become clear. ‘Now I get it. I get it. It appears that quite by chance this fine Aberystwyth morning I have stumbled on someone purveying an item I greatly disdain. Namely the wisecrack.’
‘The wisecrack?’
‘I disdain it. Always have, always will.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘I would recommend that you do. Because to crack wise in my presence is not wise at all. It’s stupid. I call it cracking stupid.’
He picked up the corners of the napkin and wiped his mouth again, unnecessarily.
The deputy chuckled with a sycophantic air. ‘Oh, he just loves to crack wise, this one does, he’s famous for it.’
‘You know this man?’
‘He’s a peeper. He’s working the Santa case,’ said the deputy. ‘He’s got an ad in the paper.’
The cop put on that smile you get to recognise after a while, the one they wear just before they hit you. ‘Must be getting slow in my old age. Normally I can spot a shamus two blocks away.’ He furrowed his brow as he contemplated the seemingly paradoxical nature of what he was witnessing. ‘A shamus working a murder case. That’s kind of hard to believe.’ He leaned towards me. ‘Didn’t they tell you peepers are not allowed to poke their snouts into murder investigations? I’m sure they must have told you that.’
‘I thought maybe we could work together as a team.’
The deputy chuckled again. The cop’s smile deepened. It was clear I was asking for trouble and that was his favourite request. But also it was clear he was a connoisseur of situations like this, and preferred to savour them rather than rush things.
‘Oh yes, a purveyor of the dumbcrack.’
He stood up, threw the napkin down, and walked to the door. The deputy followed.
The sour cop continued to talk to himself, shaking his head in mock incredulity. ‘A peeper who likes to crack stupid, and he’s working a murder case. It must be Christmas.’
The girl began clearing the table.
I said, ‘I guess he must be the new community policeman.’
The girl looked at me, but said nothing. Carried on clearing.
‘Know his name?’
She paused. ‘Erw Watcyns. He’s from Swansea. He likes the food and hates the people. Our favourite type of customer.’
‘Were you working the night the guy got killed in your alley?’
It was as if she hadn’t heard.
‘Yes, I know. No one saw or heard anything. Could have happened in your kitchen and no one would have seen anything.’
‘Why should we care? The affairs of the round-eye are no concern of ours. You’ll be wasting your time asking round here. Even with your Kierkegaard.’
‘I know. I can understand why you don’t want to talk to the cops. I wouldn’t, either.’
She said nothing.
I took out a business card and put it on the table. ‘An old man killed in an alley at Christmas, that’s a terrible thing. All we’re doing is trying to find out why. It’s not a lot to ask. You can find us at this address if you hear anything that might help.’
‘We won’t say anything to the police,’ added Calamity.
‘In fact, if you want to get up the nose of the cop who was sitting at that table, talking to us might be a grand idea.’
The girl stopped clearing and stared at us. Calamity smiled at her.
‘We’ve nothing to say.’
‘Mind if we look in your alley?’
‘It leads to the street, it’s not ours.’
‘We’re polite people, we always ask first.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s not our alley.’
The alley led nowhere unless you considered a yard full of bins a place worth going to. It smelled of stagnant drains, hot laundry water, soy sauce and barbecued pork. There didn’t seem much reason to go down there and you wondered why the Father Christmas had. Maybe he was dragged there. It wasn’t a great place to die; or to spend much time while alive. I waited patiently in the entrance while Calamity held the newspaper in front of her and tried to match the image with the layout of the alley.
Finally she found it, nodded, put the newspaper down and followed the direction of the wrong-ways-round leg. She turned to face a wall. There were drainpipes, and a bricked-up window. She started scrabbling around the window ledge and I walked over.
‘Are you going to do the ballistics thing with the knitting needles as well?’
‘I thought I’d wait until after dark.’
‘Doesn’t seem to be much here, just litter.’
Maybe the litter is what we’re looking for.’
She ran her finger along the ledge, pushing through a wedge of dirty, rain-sodden paper. Sweet wrappers, a scrap of something, coloured chits . . . it didn’t seem like much. The sort of detritus that gathered on ledges in alleys everywhere.
‘You have to look for the Gestalt,’ said Calamity.
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’m not sure, I think it’s something about looking at something but not seeing it. Like not seeing the wood for the trees.’ She picked up a red chit of paper with a number on it.
‘You think that’s it?’
She looked at me with a glint of excitement in her eyes. ‘It’s a receipt from the Pier cloakroom.’
I was about to say that didn’t prove anything. It could have just blown there. No reason to suppose the dead man hid it here and did the phoney leg routine to point it out. I was about to say that but then I noticed a man standing at the end of the alley watching us. He wore a black hat with a wide brim, and a long black coat. His beard was long and grey and wispy like candy-floss spun from cobwebs. Calamity put the chit in her pocket and we walked back along the alley towards the man, feeling strangely guilty. When we reached the street we avoided his gaze and walked to Pier Street and then right towards the sea front. The man in the black coat followed. We walked some more and I glanced over my shoulder.
‘Is he still following us?’ asked Calamity.
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe we should go to the hat-check office a bit later.’