‘I think I saw a film about them once.’
Calamity looked irritated.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m being serious.’
‘I know. So am I.’
‘The films are . . . films like that just make jokes of it, but the Men in Black are a very real and mysterious phenomenon attached to early flying-saucer contact reports.’
‘OK, forget the movie. Who do they work for?’
‘Some people say they are G-men, but my money’s on them being aliens. They turn up afterwards to silence witnesses.’
‘If they are aliens and they don’t want people to talk, why do they abduct people and make love to them in flying saucers?’
‘When they do that they wipe the memory, it only comes out later under hypnosis.’
‘You mean they dream it.’
‘It’s different.’
‘It seems awfully similar to me.’
‘They report details under hypnosis that they couldn’t possibly have known.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like the map of Zeta Reticuli. In 1961 Barney and Betty Hill were taken aboard a saucer and saw a map on the wall. They drew it under hypnosis. It had stars on it that hadn’t been discovered yet.’
I stood up and went over to the kitchenette. ‘You really think they have maps of the stars pinned to the wall of their flying saucers? It seems a bit primitive.’
She followed me, not willing to let the subject drop. ‘Why not? You’ve got a map in the glove compartment of your car. What’s the difference? It had lines connecting the stars; the aliens said they were trade routes.’
‘I can’t believe that if there really are such things as flying saucers the skipper needs a star map to avoid getting lost.’
‘How else can they find their way? There are more stars in the Milky Way than grains of sand on the whole of Planet Earth.’
I filled the kettle and shouted over the sound of gushing water. ‘But there are no corners in space, there’s nothing for the stars to hide behind. You just work out which star you want and head for it. You don’t need a load of lines on a chart. What for?’
‘We’ll see, then, won’t we?’ said Calamity. To disguise her growing irritation she began to help me; she swirled hot water round in the teapot to warm it and then put three tea bags in. ‘The black ’47 Buick is the nutcracker; this is what we use to crack open the case.’
‘You’re about to unveil one of your schemes, aren’t you?’
Calamity pulled two mugs down from the cupboard and carried on as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘The way I see it, the aliens are not likely to carry the Buick in the saucer all the way from Zeta Reticuli, are they?’
‘It would seem an extravagant thing to do, although of course people often tow boats behind their cars when they go on holiday, so it’s not out of the question.’
‘I’m going to assume they don’t do that; in which case they must get them when they arrive. And that is how we trap them.’
‘Don’t forget that the most likely possibility is this whole Raspiwtin story is moonshine.’
She carried on doggedly. ‘We don’t know why the aliens insist on black ’47 Buicks, but the evidence is clear. Back in the ’50s, that wasn’t a difficult item to get hold of, but here, now, in Aberystwyth, there aren’t any. So what do they do?’
‘Look in the classifieds.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I was joking.’
‘I’m not. We advertise a second-hand black ’47 Buick in the Cambrian News classifieds section. If anyone rings up we can count them as a possible alien, or an intermediary representing their interests.’
‘Nothing I say will stop you, will it?’
‘It’s worth a try.’
‘Is it? Of all the wildest goose chases you’ve ever proposed, this . . . this takes the biscuit.’
‘How can a goose chase take a biscuit?’
‘You know what I mean. We’re looking for a chap called Iestyn who robbed a cinema in 1965 and was hanged; but for some reason as yet unexplained he is still alive. Allegedly.’
‘Looking for a dead man is also a wild goose chase. If you are allowed then so am I. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.’
I looked at her in surprise. She grinned. ‘Point is, we are not the only ones looking for him. If the farmer is to be believed, so are the aliens. Raspiwtin says they had a rendezvous arranged. So we find out what their connection is. That way we find Iestyn.’
‘Assuming the farmer can be believed. My guess is, he dreamed the whole thing up.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘I don’t know. We’ll ask him. Get his address.’
‘Already have. He lives out at Ynys Greigiog.’
I filled the teapot with hot water and carried the tray over to where we once had a desk. ‘We’ll go and see him.’
‘Sure, but we also do the ad.’ She picked up a sheet of paper torn from an exercise book and read. ‘For Sale. Secondhand 1947 Buick, black. One careful lady owner, 27,000 miles on the clock. Must be seen to be believed.’ She looked up grinning. ‘I’ve already placed it.’
I put my hat on.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to see the mayor and ask for the address of his soothsayer.’
It was raining on the Prom but not heavily – a drizzle. Dark rags of cloud scudded across the blue sky and turned the world to silver and anthracite. The pale blue wooden benches misted over; the charcoal grit that passed for sand on the beach darkened; there were no bathers to disturb, just dog-walkers who didn’t care, and a few students defiantly sitting on the pebbles, dressed in that strange amalgam of charity shop and high street, a sort of Dickensian-New Aquarian oddness. It probably wasn’t a good idea to see the mayor, but that was often the trouble with being a private eye: most of the good ideas were simultaneously bad ones.
I cut through the public shelter to South Road. The town hall was up ahead on the left; the mayor held an afternoon surgery every Wednesday. I entered a small anteroom and approached a counter. I gave my name and told the clerk I wished to speak to the mayor about the arrest of Iestyn Probert in 1965. Then I took a seat. There was one other person waiting. He was staring at me with a venomous intensity. It was Meici Jones.
‘I thought it was you,’ he said.
Meici was a spinning-wheel salesman I had encountered on a previous case. He was one of life’s mistfits who had lived with his mum till the age of thirty-five and still wore short trousers on her orders. As a consequence of that case – indirectly, although I was sure he didn’t see it that way – his mum had been sent to jail for murder. At the time of the trial I had wondered how he would cope on his own, and the image that presented itself to me in the mayor’s anteroom suggested not all that well. He was wearing long trousers now, but they were ragged and crumpled. His white shirt was grey and blotched, though he had managed to wear a tie. His hair was badly in need of a cut.
‘Hi Meici.’
‘I saw you come in. I was here first.’
‘How have you been keeping?’
‘To tell you the truth, Lou, things have been pretty difficult. I’m on my own, did you know that?’
‘Yes, I . . . assumed . . . at the trial I –’
‘I wash my own clothes and stuff now, and I get my own food. Mum used to be quite hard sometimes, but . . . it’s funny . . . now she’s not there . . . no one’s there . . .’ He didn’t finish the sentence, but shook his head disconsolately. People like Meici have something painful about them. An earnest, bovine simplicity, a gaucheness and the air of a soul not at home in the world and easily wounded. These traits constitute the cheese in the jaws of a psychological mousetrap that snaps shut the moment you begin to feel sympathy.
‘That’s tough,’ I said. ‘Living alone isn’t easy if you aren’t used to it.’