'That was the thing about Gwenno, you see, sir,' explained the old policeman. 'Whatever she turned her hand to she excelled at. Great hooker, great soldier and great chief of the ESSJAT.'
After the War Lovespoon rewarded her by offering her any job she wanted, not expecting the former hooker to choose a position in the newly formed League against Turpitude. But true to form she not only took the job but excelled at it, rising through the ranks until eventually she sat the top. At which point she simply disappeared. No one outside the organisation knew who she was, or where, although it seemed likely that Brainbocs had found out. But he of course was dead.
It was about ten to midnight when I made my way through the rows of boats, warehouses and lobster pots that made up Harbour Row. In the distance I could hear the whoop of a police siren and the engine howl of a car being driven at high speed. A chase. I took up a position deep in the shadow of a public shelter across the road from the Chandler's and thought about what I had just done. By locking Llunos up like that I had committed myself to a course from which there seemed no way back; it was as if I had been holding on to the precipice of a normal life in Aberystwyth and the last of my fingers had lost its hold.
A cat mewed at my feet and I jumped, my shoes making a harsh scraping sound which my fear convinced me could be heard across the whole neighbourhood. The racing car was nearer, but the police car seemed to have moved off, the klaxon getting fainter and fainter somewhere in the direction of Penparcau. Suddenly a door opened across the way. The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up and I stopped breathing. There was a pause. The beats of my heart louder than kettle-drum notes.
A figure stumbled or was pushed out of the warehouse. A woman's figure. She turned round and looked over to where I was standing. There was no way I could see in the light and with the distance, but I knew it was Bianca. I stepped forward, terrified that a trap was about to be sprung; Lovespoon had given me his word, but what was that worth? Why arrange the meeting at a place and an hour like this? As I walked across Bianca recognised me and opened her mouth to speak, but as she did the car that had been racing through the neighbourhood rounded the corner on two wheels. I darted a glance over — it was a car I'd seen before, very recently. Bianca spun round and a cry erupted in my throat. Confusion and terror swept across Bianca's face, and then there was a bang and Bianca went sailing like a rag doll into the air. Turning, turning, turning, before hitting the ground with a single, sharp crack like an axe hitting a tree. I stood transfixed, unable to move, and watched the car reverse a yard and then slam forwards back into Bianca's broken body. The car door sprang open, a figure leaped out and sprinted round to the other side of the car and down one of the dark alleys between two warehouses. Seconds later I heard from the harbour the sound of an outboard motor being fired up.
I ran over to Bianca's side and knelt down.
She looked up, eyes glazed with pain, and tried to force her mouth to overcome the agony and speak. Far off the banshee wail of the police siren was getting louder. I grasped her shoulders tenderly and ordered her not to speak.
'Louie!'
'It's OK, don't speak.'
She curled the fingers of her hand round my forearm weak as a baby.
'Louie!'
'I'm here, baby.'
And then her index finger detached itself from the rest of her fingers and slowly formed a curl like the finger of the grim reaper; she beckoned slowly towards herself and mouthed a word. I felt myself being pulled down by the finger as if attached by an invisible thread, and when my ear reached so close to her mouth that I could feel the warmth of her breath, she spoke again. Each word making her smashed body quiver like the pangs of childbirth.
'Louie!'
'It's OK, don't speak!'
'I ... love . . . you!'
'There, there . . .'
'The essay . . .'
'No, no! Don't talk!'
And then as if at the exact moment her spirit left her she gripped me with a terrifying new strength.
'The essay . . .' she gasped desperately, 'it's in the stove!'
The grip broke and her head fell with a thud on to the tarmac glistening with her blood.
The police car skidded into view at the far end of the Prom and I looked at the murderer's car, engine still running, and realised where I'd seen it before. It was mine.
Chapter 16
I SIPPED MY coffee and read Meirion's editorial about Bianca:
It is almost a week since the tragic death of Sioned Penmaenmawr, better known to the denizens of our notorious entertainment district as 'Bianca'. A girl who cocked her final snook at the society that cast her out by being buried in her night-club costume. By now most people will already have begun to forget about her; and the rest will never have cared in the first place. More fool them. The photo of the miserable funeral at Llanbadarn Cemetery on Tuesday contains a message for us all. There were four mourners at the sad interment. Her close friend Myfanwy Montez; Detective Inspector Llunos; a photographer from this newspaper; and a solitary figure who passing by felt the touch of pity in his heart. Wearing a dirty old coat tied up with packing string, his face dirty and lined with the years of suffering, it was a man only too familiar with the condition of exile from the hearthside of the Aberystwyth good life: a Patagonian War veteran. His lot it was that afternoon to teach us all not only the meaning of the word 'pity', but also alas, the meaning of shame.
The War veteran with the coat tied up with packing string had been me. Had Meirion known? It was hard to see how he could have done. I went to the funeral in the hope of speaking to Myfanwy, but she stayed too close to Llunos the whole time and rushed off in his car immediately afterwards. Llunos said in the newspaper that he was desperate to talk to me in connection with the death, which they were treating as a tragic hit-and-run, but he didn't mention that I locked him in the toilet.
Ever since the night she died I had been hiding in the caravan. I still didn't know how I survived: standing over her dead body, the car that killed her — my car — parked nearby with the engine still running, the police only seconds away. In a situation like that the only thing to do is make a decision. Any one, it hardly matters. The one I made was to jump in the car with Bianca's blood and tissue still smeared across the grille and drive off. She was dead, I could see that. And if by some miracle she wasn't, the police would be better able to help than I was. So I saved myself. As the police car screeched to a halt I did a U-turn, turned right at the Castle and over Trefechan Bridge; then I pulled off on to the track leading to Tan-y-Bwlch beach. From there I abandoned the car and set off on foot across the darkened fields and over the Iron Age hill fort. The plan was to double back, making a wide arc around the town, and head for the caravan in Ynyslas. It took me four hours, but I did it.
Since then, the weather had closed right in with expanses of dove-grey clouds filling the sky; it was cold and windy and moisture hung in the air ready to occasionally spit at the windows of the caravan. I didn't go out much, but when I did, the disguise as a War veteran worked well. Such was the stigma, most folk simply averted their gaze when they saw one.
There was a knock on the caravan door. I opened it and Calamity burst in.
'Take your time, won't you?'
'Sorry, I didn't hear you.'
'It's freezing out there, like the middle of winter.'
'It's all right, I've made coffee, that will warm you up.'
She took off her anorak and walked over to the table. 'I've made some progress.'
'Oh yeah?'
'It could be the breakthrough we've been waiting for.'
She opened her school satchel and pulled out three books. I picked them up and read the titles. 'On Pools of Love by Joyce Moonweather; Governing a Sloop by Captain Marcus Trelawney; Towards a New Pathology of Slovenliness by Dr Heinz X. Nuesslin.' I put the books down.
'I got them from the school library. You won't believe who was the last person to borrow them.'
'Brainbo
cs?'
'No. Guess again.'
'Sorry, chum, that's my best effort.'
'You won't believe it.'
'Amaze me.'
'Evans the Boot!'
I picked up the New Pathology of Slovenliness and examined the flyleaf. 'Maybe we misjudged him all along.'
'I don't think so. Look at the title page.'
Obediently I opened the book. Letters were missing from the title page, crudely cut out with scissors leaving jagged edges.
'He got into trouble for it, you see. That's how I knew. I remember hearing this story ages ago about how he turned up at the library one day and borrowed all these weird books. And then when he returned them he'd cut them up. So I checked on his record which ones they were.'
I opened the other two books; each one had been vandalised in the same way.
'OK, clever-clogs, what does it mean?'
As if impatiently waiting for this question she took out a piece of paper and unfolded it.
'These are the letters he cut out: O.V.E.N.L.O.O.P.S.'
'You still got me.'
'Rearrange them.'
I stared at the paper for a second and then it hit me. 'Lovespoon!'
'That's right!'
'So what does it all mean?'
'What do people use cut-out letters for?'
I shrugged.
'Blackmail notes of course. He was blackmailing the Welsh teacher. No wonder they did him in.'
I thought about the significance of it for a few seconds but it did little to lift my depression.
'Don't get carried away with excitement will you?'
'Sorry, Calamity, I'm sitting here wanted for the murder of a prostitute. It's difficult to get excited about things.'
'But this is the way we're going to clear your name.'
'I don't see how.'
'Evans was blackmailing Lovespoon. Why? Because he copied Brainbocs's homework and found out something incriminating about the teacher. What else do we know about Evans? He stole a rare tea cosy from the Museum. Now it's my guess these two facts are related.'
'Sure, but what's the link?'
'I don't know. We haven't got all the pieces of the jigsaw yet.'
'But it doesn't really take us forwards. We already know why Lovespoon killed Evans.'
She looked at me, the frustration bringing tears to her eyes. 'We have to explore every angle, Louie. We have to be thorough, we're building a case, sod it!'
'OK. What else have you got?'
She pushed the books away and placed her palms flat down on the table. 'Operation "stove-search" not so good. Bianca could have hidden the essay in any number of stoves. I tried yours but Mrs Llantrisant wouldn't let me into the kitchen. She said you wouldn't be needing a stove, clean or otherwise, where you were going. It would be bread and water down at Cwmtydu Prison for you from now on.'
'I'm touched she has so much confidence in me.'
'She said, "You never really know anyone, do you?" Then I went to Bianca's flat and tried there but it was cordoned off and the policeman wouldn't let me in. I said I'd come to clean the stove and he said he'd never heard such a load of codswallop in all his life. I waited till he was replaced by another policeman. Then I tried again and this time I said I wanted to go and see my auntie who lived above Bianca and was ninety years old and very frail and I had to check up on her now and again just to make sure she wasn't dead.'
My eyes widened at that one, but I said nothing.
'So he let me in and I sneaked into Bianca's flat and just as I was checking the stove the first policeman turned up and caught me. He drags me downstairs saying he's going to give me a good hiding and down at the bottom when we got to the gate the other policeman looks up and says, "Sarge, I've heard it all now, there's a woman here who wants to clean the stove!" And do you know who it was? It was Mrs Llantrisant!'
This time we both looked at each other and stared.
'Mrs Llantrisant?'
She nodded
'I don't like the sound of that. Not at all.'
'Not much chance of it being coincidence is there?'
'I'm afraid not. So then what happened?'
'I bit the policeman's hand and ran for it.' She paused and then said, 'Are you angry?'
I blinked in puzzlement. 'Angry? What for?'
'Because I gave the game away.'
'No you didn't!'
'I did. Because of me she found out we were looking in stoves. I screwed up."
I punched her playfully in the arm. 'Kid you did a brilliant job. I really take my hat off to you and one day — maybe next week — you are going to be a famous private eye.'
Her face brightened. 'Well I'd better get back to them stoves.'
I raised a hand. 'Don't worry about the stoves.'
'No?'
'By my reckoning, counting out my stove and Bianca's which you have checked, there must be about 3,998 left in town. It's hopeless.'
She blew a raspberry. 'What sort of talk is that?'
'Look, the way my luck is going, it will start snowing soon and then every stove in town will be lit up anyway.'
She picked up her coat. 'We don't need to check every stove in town. We just have to work out what her movements were and check the ones she would have had access to. It's simple.'
Later that afternoon I decided to go out. It was not a clever thing to do with half the countryside looking for me, but I decided, what the hell. I might as well be arrested as sit in the caravan doing nothing. I tied the old coat on with the packing string and covered my hands and face with soil. It was bitterly cold out so I stuffed crumpled-up newspaper inside my coat as insulation. Lastly, and this was something I hated most of all, I smeared myself with a liquid I had prepared from rotting fish, boiled cabbage and mouldy cheese. It was the nearest I could get to that sour unwashed cheesy smell that the vagrants seemed to have.
From Ynyslas I walked across the bog to the railway track, climbed on to a goods train, and jumped off a mile before Aberystwyth station. From there I walked through town to the sea front. And then I climbed up to the camera obscura on the top of Constitution Hill. At the cafe at the top I bought a tea and a bag of old sixpences for the telescope mounted in the corner overlooking the town. The town astronomy society met here twice a month to use the little sixpenny telescope but there was no one here now. I turned it away from the sky and trained it on Sospan's stall. There was no one there apart from Sospan and so I sat down and drank my tea. After five minutes I looked again and this time found what I was looking for. Llunos enjoying his regular afternoon ice cream. I walked over to the phone.
'Yeah?'
'I didn't do it.'
'Sorry?'
'I said I didn't do it.'
'Who is this?'
'Can't you guess?'
'Louie?'
'I'm just calling to tell you it wasn't me. And you know it.'
'Do I?'
'Run a girl down in cold blood?'
'It was your car.'
'But I wasn't in it.'
'We found your fingerprints on it.'
'Of course you did, it was my bloody car!'
'What do you want?'
'I don't know.'
There was a short silence. Llunos was obviously taken aback by the honesty in the reply.
Then he remembered:
'You locked me in the toilet, you bastard!'
'Look, forget about that now, it's not important —'
'You won't say that when I get hold of you!'
'I mean we can discuss it later; right now I want you to know it wasn't me.'
'All right, Louie, if you're innocent why did you skip town the same night?'
'That doesn't prove anything.'
'It doesn't prove it, but it doesn't look very good, does it?'
'If I hadn't run away I would be locked up by now.'
'You think you won't be when we find you?'
I sighed in exasperation. 'It wasn't me, Llunos.'
; 'Look, say you weren't involved. Say someone else took your car and ran her over. Just say that for a moment. And you were safely home in bed at the time, why then would you leave town? You wouldn't even know she'd been killed. First thing you would have known was when we came knocking on your door.'
'I didn't do it, Llunos, and you know it.'
'You got an alibi?'
'Not a very good one.'
'Where were you on the night in question?'
'What time?'
'Between eleven and midnight.'
I paused.
'Well?'
'I was at the harbour.'
'That's a great alibi!'
My eyes smarted as I took in the mess I was in. It was hopeless.
'Fuck it all, Llunos, why would I want to kill Bianca?'
'Who did it then?'
'One of Pickel's mob.'
'Why?'
'Ask him.'
'You'll have to do better than that.'
'He was with her that night.'
'He's with her every night.'
'He stole something from Lovespoon and kept it hidden. He shouldn't have had it, but he did. He boasted to Bianca about it, so she stole it. If Lovespoon had found out, he would have killed Pickel so he told him first. The Druids took her and tortured her to find out what she had done with the thing she had stolen. They must have gone too far. Beaten her too much. She was probably going to die. So they arrange a car crash and use my car. Kill two birds with one stone.'
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