‘So far, I have been able to demonstrate certain features of the confession which indicate strong prima facie likelihood of police co-authorship; of particular interest is the non-standard frequency of the word then.’
‘Non-standard,’ said James the Less.
‘Then?’ I said.
‘Normally people making statements say “then I”, but police diction is notoriously stilted and basically – what is the phrase? Up its own backside, I believe – in police statements there is frequent post-positioning, namely, “I then”. I amassed a database of police statements and witness statements for comparison and found “I then” to occur once every 119 words in police statements but not at all in witness statements. Except in the statement of Iestyn Probert, which evinced nineteen occurrences. This was statistically highly significant. I’m hoping to get Iestyn a posthumous pardon, but some rumours that he is still alive render the undertaking problematic.’
‘Would he have even known how to drive?’ I asked. ‘I mean as a Denunciationist . . .’
‘That was his tragedy,’ said James the Less. ‘If he had stayed in his community where he belonged, none of it would have happened. But the fever seized his brain. It always starts in adolescence. You get feelings, we all do, about . . .’ – he shot a swift guilty glance at his son – ‘. . . engines. Motorcars are the worst because you can see them pass by the fields as you till the soil. If only Iestyn had spoken to one of the elders . . .’ He shook his head ruefully at the waste of a young life. ‘They could have told him, as I tell my boy, how to manage the temptation. But, like so many young men before him, he dreamed of running away to Aberystwyth and becoming a mechanic. I remember him sitting on the hill at the end of each day, staring into the west. It was no surprise when the news came that he had gone.’
After we passed Cwm Rheidol, Calamity began to scan the adjacent valley side with a pair of small binoculars. Just before the station at Rhiwlas we saw the duck-shaped discoloration on the hillside.
‘I’d say it was more of a drake,’ said the boy.
We left the train at the station and climbed down the steep hillside to the ford at the bottom.
‘The sky’s always bluer when there are clouds,’ said Calamity.
I didn’t answer but pondered the phenomenon. She was right; the surrounding sky was bluer because the clouds were brighter, as if illuminated from within.
There was a bridge at the bottom made of slabs of slate laid on stones embedded in the stream. We crossed and climbed over a stile, then began to climb. From the train in the valley below the discoloration in the hillside had, indeed, looked a bit like a duck. But as we climbed towards it, the outline became less and less distinct. The path reached another stile which led onto a rough farm track and we proceeded up what was presumably the duck’s leg.
‘If you ever have some butter that you don’t want to melt,’ I said to Calamity as we climbed, ‘it might be a good idea to put it in that kid’s mouth.’
‘Either that or my fist, I can’t work out which would be best.’
I laughed. ‘I’m just glad you didn’t do it there and then.’
‘Why do you think the aliens asked about Iestyn Probert?’
I didn’t answer.
‘I know what you think. There are no aliens.’
‘Got it in one.’
‘How come they knew his address?’
‘Don’t you think it’s more likely that the farmer invented the whole story?’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘People are funny.’
‘All the same, don’t you think it’s odd? This Raspiwtin bloke has been looking all his life for Iestyn Probert, and then some aliens turn up looking for him, too.’
‘Odd, yes, but not uncanny. My guess is Raspiwtin’s story is largely fiction and he got the name from the newspaper on the way to the office.’
‘He said we’d find Iestyn’s old house by a duck’s bill in the hillside, so the story can’t be all fiction, can it, because we’ve found the duck.’
‘You think so? Looks more like a drake to me.’
She paused and turned to me with a grin. ‘Do you think the duck stain might be deliberate as some sort of a sign to the flying saucers?’ asked Calamity.
‘No.’
‘It would make sense.’
‘In your universe perhaps.’
‘It happens a lot. Plenty of ancient monuments are laid out in ways that only make sense from the air. In South America there are loads.’
I rolled my eyes.
‘Your mind is closed,’ said Calamity with amusing pomposity.
‘It’s not closed, it just has a strict door policy. I don’t admit riff-raff.’
‘UFOs aren’t riff-raff. Loads of people have seen them.’
‘Loads of people have seen something they personally weren’t able to identify.’
‘They can’t all be hallucinations.’
‘Why not?’
‘I saw one in Pwllheli. Are you saying I didn’t?’
‘You saw a light in the sky; there are lots of things that cause lights in the sky. And because you had read about flying-saucer sightings recently, you interpreted it as one. Five hundred years ago you would have called it an angel or a wheel of fire.’
Calamity made a raspberry sound and then we both suddenly stopped our ascent. The track we had been following ended abruptly in a flat section of ground cut into the hillside; it was overgrown with grass, brambles and gorse, but the rectangular outline signifying the foundations of a house were unmistakable. Lumps of masonry littered the brambles. Two rooms were still standing, open to the sky; slats of wood and bits of plaster lay entangled in the undergrowth like twigs in hair. Off to the right on a raised piece of ground there was a grave. Calamity walked over and knelt down. I joined her. Time and weather had effaced the writing on the simple stone which protruded from the turf like a tooth, but at the foot, encased in a clear plastic sandwich bag taped to the stone, there was a business card. Calamity took it out, read it and handed it up to me. It was for Jezebels, the nightclub at the caravan site. In colours of scarlet, mauve and black the silhouette of a lady in a stovepipe hat raised a leg clad in fishnet stockings; in the foreground was a martini glass. I turned the card over; on the back someone had scribbled in biro, ‘Ask for Miaow.’
A voice interrupted our thoughts and we looked up. An old lady, bent at the waist and carrying a basket, hobbled down the hillside towards us. ‘Haven’t seen any Bishop’s Trumpet have you, dears?’ she asked. The curvature of her spine forced her thorax forward and she looked sideways and up at us. Strands of silvery hair, pinned in a bun, slipped out and veiled her face, which was ruddy and kindly. Her back was alive with the agitated flapping of some birds trapped in a net slung across her shoulders.
‘What’s Bishop’s Trumpet?’ asked Calamity.
‘What indeed! You’re from the town, I can see.’ The woman pushed her basket, laden with freshly plucked roots and leaves, towards us. ‘I’ve got me Foxbright and Marly, me Blue-Dog, Purple Trolls-foot, Night-feather, Trollop-me-Bright, Bog-Grail, Prim Willow, My Lady’s Hymen, Fan-white, Silver Milchgrüssel and a pinch of Satanicus, but I’m blessed if I can find any Bishop’s Trumpet.’
‘We can help you look, if you like,’ said Calamity.
‘That’s very kind of you, but we won’t find any today; the spirit of the mountain is being grumpy. But you could help me carry my basket back to my cottage, it’s just over the hill. Would you do that?’
I took the basket and we followed her up the hill and then down the other side to a small cottage on the edge of the Forestry Commission plantation. We went through a garden gate and waited while she took the net over to an aviary in which birds of all descriptions fluttered about. The woman released the new birds and took us into her kitchen, where she put the kettle on without asking. ‘You will stay for tea, now.’