He glanced for effect at his watch. ‘Goodbye, Mr Knight. Your time, I’m afraid, is up, both here in this office and in the wider context of life in Aberystwyth. I gave you fair warning; let’s hope I haven’t wasted my time. The mayor of Aberystwyth is not a guy who likes to have his time wasted; he’s not the sort of guy who likes to give duplicate warnings, it’s wasteful.’ He reached forward and pressed a buzzer that indicated the interview was over.
It was just after midnight, maybe 1.00 or 2.00 in the morning. I lay asleep in my caravan in Ynyslas. The far-off susurration of the waves was barely audible, but the wind coming in off the sea cuffed the caravan like the hand of a giant schoolteacher and made the metal fabric sing. There is something deeply comforting about that sensation, of feeling protected and cocooned in warmth and yet aware, too, of the proximity of the ocean. Ynyslas is 6 miles north of Aberystwyth and lies hidden from the world in a corner of sand adjacent to the estuary. During the day in summer nothing moves here except tide and cloud and, occasionally, across the estuary on the distant hill, two carriages of a toy train going north.
There was a noise. Close. I opened my eyes, knowing without knowing how that there were people inside. The deepest, darkest fear of every householder in the night. The one that has never changed throughout time. The moment when you come face to face with your own mortality. Someone shone a flashlight into my face; someone put a gloved hand over my mouth; someone pressed the barrel of a gun into my eye. I was ordered to dress, and a hessian sack was placed over my head. I was pushed out into the cold night and into a car. We drove off. Fifteen minutes later the chimes of the station clock striking 2.00 told me we were passing through Aberystwyth.
When the hood was removed, I was sitting in a hard-backed chair facing four men across a desk in a dingy room. It felt like a basement but there were no clues for thinking this. Just the conviction that the business to be transacted was probably going to be hidden from the world. An Anglepoise lamp was trained on my face. After the darkness of the hood it was unbearable. I pushed the lamp down to cast its beam on the desk. One of the men was an officer in the military, wearing combat fatigues; he had silver hair, closely cropped, and his face was red. One was dressed in the neat, sober and expensive suit of a Whitehall mandarin in his sixties, with the pallor of a snail, the Man from the Ministry but not one you can find in the telephone directory. The third had cop written all over him: standard-issue crumpled suit, police hair grease, truncheon-battered ear – he was eating an ice cream. Next to him, doing his best to counterfeit a kindly face, was a military chaplain. The brass hat looked to the mandarin for a cue regarding the lamp. The mandarin nodded acceptance. His shirt was crisply ironed, the tie knot small and rammed home without compromise. He looked tired, his face lined and pallid with the air of one used to dispensing authority in rooms that seldom saw daylight. The cop simply stared at me with a look that might have been bored contempt or maybe amusement. The brass hat spoke first.
‘Thank you for coming.’
‘No problem, I was passing anyway.’
He looked round to the mandarin, as if unsure how to react and needing a cue. The mandarin made an impatient grimace and said, ‘We want you to help us.’
I smiled.
‘If it was up to me,’ the brass hat added, ‘I’d have you flogged.’
‘What a shame it’s not up to you; you look like you’d enjoy it.’
‘Don’t get funny. It doesn’t mean I can’t have you flogged, or that I won’t. It’s just not in our best interests at the moment.’
‘Or mine.’
His face turned a deeper shade of red. ‘Look here you –’
The mandarin placed his hand on the officer’s forearm. ‘Let’s not get distracted.’
‘How can I help you?’ I asked.
‘We want you to betray someone,’ said the mandarin.
‘Who do you want me to betray?’
‘The man calling himself Raspiwtin,’ he said.
‘What do you call him?’
The mandarin sighed. ‘Please don’t keep asking impertinent questions. We’re not here to negotiate. We’re offering you a deal you can’t refuse.’
‘It’s not a deal then, is it?’
He raised his head slightly and looked over my shoulder. He nodded. Four strong, hard hands grabbed me from behind, hoisted me clear of the chair and dragged me across the room. In one fluid movement they twisted me round and slammed me into the wall. Then they did it again and put me back in the chair. My nostrils began to clog with blood which frothed and bubbled. I could feel it trickling across my upper lip. Drops fell and spattered the tabletop. My interlocutors gave no hint of having noticed.
‘You will observe, Mr Knight,’ said the mandarin in a tone that suggested my being thrown into the wall had somehow tried his patience to the limit, ‘that the wall is made of brick.’
‘What is it you want?’ I asked.
‘Raspiwtin has been to see you.’
I shrugged.
‘What for?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘We already know what for.’
‘Who are you? And don’t say, “We ask the questions”.’
There was the sound of movement behind me and I braced. I was thrown into the wall again. When I was back in my chair, he said, ‘Our organisation is a secret subsection of the Welsh office known as the Aviary.’
‘Which branch?’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘Look, snooper,’ said the cop, ‘quit the comedy. We could rub you out now. Not just here, everywhere. We could make it so you never existed. We could remove every record of you. We’d change the hospital records to say stillborn. We’d arrange a fire in the church where you were baptised. Anyone who claimed to remember you, we’d convince them they didn’t. We can do that. The ones who stubbornly clung to your memory, we’d have them sectioned. We do it all the time; it would be like swatting a fly to us.’
‘Is that what you did to Iestyn Probert?’
None of the assembled faces showed a sign of recognising the name, but this stony absence of a reaction was in its own way a reaction, as was the slight but palpable increase in tension. The cop spoke too quickly. ‘We’ll keep you in a cell and send you the tapes of your father going to the police station to report a missing person. “What missing person?” they’d ask him. “There’s no record of such a person ever having existed. Go back to your donkeys, you silly old fool.” For a long time he wouldn’t believe it; he’d cling to the belief he once had a son, but he’d get used to it. We’d put him in the cell next to yours so you could hear him crying in the night. You could tap out messages to him on the plumbing, saying, “Hey, it’s me, Louie.” And he’d tap back, “Louie who?” ’ He stopped and for a moment there was silence. ‘We can do that,’ he said.
‘Who is Raspiwtin?’ I asked.
‘He’s not who he says he is,’ said the mandarin.
‘That’s who he isn’t, not who he is.’
‘You need to know who the man is before you betray him?’
‘I’ve never betrayed anybody before.’
‘I’m sorry, we don’t work for the Boy Scouts, Mr Knight. We have issues of grave national security at play here; sentiment doesn’t come into it. We could do this other ways, we have plenty of options; you have none. We could get the information a dozen other ways, but for reasons it is not necessary to disclose to you, this avenue of approach appears the least problematic.’
‘You’d be helping your country,’ said the chaplain.
‘My country can go to hell and so can you.’