Aberystwyth Mon Amour an-1

by Malcolm Pryce

  When I awoke late next morning, one thing was clear to me: it was time to get out of town. If Llunos had known all about my hiding hole plenty of other people probably did as well. And I'd had enough of skulking around disguised as a War veteran. With the games teacher running the police force we were all in the shit. I threw a few things into a zip-up hold-all and put the veteran's disguise on for what I hoped was the last time. Maybe Myfanwy and I could get the train to Shrewsbury.

  At Myfanwy's flat the door was ajar and the place deserted. Not empty with the atmosphere of a room from which the tenant has nipped out to buy milk, but with air of a nest in which the eggs are cold and the parent birds have been frightened away. There was nothing concrete to suggest it, but sometimes you know these things without needing evidence. Bras and panties were left drying on cold radiators. T-shirts and inside-out jeans were strewn across the floor. Mugs of instant coffee covered in green fur cluttered every surface next to wine bottles and beer cans filled with cigarette ends all glued down with sticky rings of stale beer. There were half-eaten take-away meals and tins of tuna stuck to the carpet, with forks sticking out of the jaggedly opened tops. Clothes draped on hangers hooked over door handles, Schwarzenegger and Stallone videos, Lady Di souvenirs, posters of Bon Jovi, shiny vinyl cases from which make-up bottles spilled out on to the floor. Birth-control pills and tampons. And everywhere the air was rank with the smell of old beer, candles and stale farts. It was as if a butterfly had emerged from a chrysalis on a dung heap. But the butterfly had flown.

  I almost didn't care. Like a regularly beaten dog I was too tired to yelp. The fall of the stick had become routine. Myfanwy had pleaded with me to take her away and I had been too stubborn and now it was too late. What did I expect? Everyone knew you don't get two bites at a cherry like that. With her gone I no longer had any desire to leave, or to stay, or in fact to do anything. Maybe, I thought, I should just go back to my old flat and wait for Herod's men to arrive. I wandered down to the harbour and then on down past the castle and stood for an hour on the Prom leaning on the sugar-white railings and staring emptily out to sea. The waters were a chill unwelcoming gunmetal colour and the breeze stiff and salty. Above my head the Noddy illumination swayed and creaked eerily and I thought grimly of the likely consequences if a man turned up in this town wearing a red hat with bells. Eventually I headed for the only suitable place for a man whose world has collapsed: the Whelk Stall.

  The boy was reading the newspaper on the counter when I arrived and gave no sign of stopping. I stood pointedly in front of him for a while but still he ignored me. This was not a wise policy. I slammed my hand down on the page he was reading.

  He looked up with hatred in his eyes. 'Sorry, Smelly, we don't serve tramps.'

  I gasped in disbelief. Didn't he know what I had been through recently? Didn't he know that I was an outcast, wanted for murder? That this filthy coat was just a disguise? Didn't he know I had lost Myfanwy? Didn't he know how dangerous that made me? Didn't he know any of this? Of course he didn't but that was just tough. There comes a time when someone has to pay and it doesn't matter whether it's the wrong bill or not. Someone has to pay.

  'What did you say, Sonny Jim?'

  'I said, fuck off, granddad, and stop stinking up my stall.'

  I nodded slowly and thoughtfully. And then I hit him. He flew backwards more from surprise than from the force of the punch and fell heavily into a pile of saucepans. Before he could recover, I jumped over the counter, paused for a second while I recovered my balance, took aim, and kicked him in the stomach. He grunted and struggled desperately to escape on all fours, unable to get to his feet. I picked up a frying pan and swung it against the side of his head. I could feel the cartilage in his ear cracking and vibrating through the handle of the pan. 'No, please, no mister, please,' he cried. But it was too late. Two weeks too late; the invoice was in his in-tray and he was going to pay it. He scuttled away still on all fours and the sight of his desperation served only to increase my fury. I ran forwards and grabbed the scruff of his neck, pulled him backwards and slammed the frying pan full into his face. Blood from his nose spattered on his dirty white chef's tunic. 'Please, mister!' he cried, and I pushed him into a pile of cardboard boxes and waste bins. .Trapped, with nowhere left to go, he turned to face me, cowering and pulling back at the same time. I picked up a knife with a long blade from the counter and advanced another step. This time he was too frightened even to speak. I could smell urine as his hands clutched at his groin.

  'Right then,' I hissed. 'Are you going to serve me some fucking whelks or not?' The knife pointed at the end of his nose and he stared at it in cross-eyed fascination. He nodded.

  'Yes sir,' he whispered. 'It'll be a pleasure.'

  While he prepared the evening special which we had agreed would be on the house I read the newspaper. Back page first. Then I turned to the front; the main story was Herod's appointment, complete with a photo of the games teacher smiling through that familiar horizontal crease in his face. The same teacher who had sent a consumptive schoolboy out on a run in the worst blizzard to hit Cardiganshire in more than seventy years. The only other story was a small one-column piece on the right under the headline VICE GIRL GRAVE DESECRATED. I turned the page angrily. Then stopped like a cartoon animal that has just run over the edge of a cliff. I turned the page back and re-read the headline, my eyes wide open with shock. It was about Bianca's grave. Feverishly I skimmed the article. Two nights ago someone had dug the coffin up at Llanbadarn Cemetery and broken open the lid in what the paper described as a sick and motiveless crime. The attackers had used a power saw to open up a rectangle eighteen inches long and ten wide in the lid covering Bianca's face. Nothing had been taken, and the corpse hadn't, as they put it, been interfered with.

  I pushed the paper away and sat there stunned. Aberystwyth was shocked and baffled by the crime. No one could imagine who could do such a thing. But I could. It was the same person that killed the Punch and Judy man.

  Chapter 19

  TO THINK OF all the millions of useless, pointless, empty, cruel, vain, proud, mean, obscene and utterly valueless words we spit out during our lives; to think of all those words and all those syllables, more syllables than grains of sand on Borth Beach. Oh Bianca, all you needed was just one more. What evil jinni stood on your shoulder and robbed you of that last, crucial puff of air? To think of all the nonsense you talked. All the lies and flatteries you spent your nights pouring into the ears of pink-faced Druids! All those empty, wasted words. If only you could have bitten your tongue just once: withheld a word and kept it on credit for that rainy day when an extra syllable could have changed the world. One syllable, perhaps the only one in your whole life, that could have made anything better. The essay is in the stove, you gasped. Oh no! You didn't put it in the stove. You who cocked a final snook at society by wearing your night-club costume in the coffin. You put it in your stovepipe hat!

  Chapter 20

  THE DOORSTEP WAS smeared with dust, cats' piss and muddy boot prints. And someone had daubed 'murderer' on the wall. I climbed the stairs. The door to my office was ajar and I could see Mrs Llantrisant sitting with her feet on the desk eating peanuts. So lost in her own world, she didn't notice me. Mechanically she reached into the brown paper bag, withdrew a handful of nuts, cracked them between her fingers and threw the shells willy-nilly across the floor, cackling to herself as they spattered against the portrait of Noel Bartholomew. The smell of peanutty breath was overpowering even out in the stairwell. I pushed the door open and she let out a gasp.

  'You!'

  I stared at her through narrowing eyes.

  She cast a furtive glance across the desk to the phone, silently judging the distance and deciding against it. She recomposed her features and forced them into a beam of joy.

  'You're back!'

  'Got tired of swabbing, did you?' I said in a cold monotone.

  The beam of joy became a pantomime of anxious concern.

&n
bsp; 'Oh, Mr Knight, it breaks my heart it does to see the step like that, it really does. It was the police, you see, told me not to touch anything - not that I think for one moment that you ... I mean, all those things they're saying. . . never heard such . . .' The words trailed gently off into the ether. She cast another look at the phone and smiled at me with less conviction this time.

  'Still, it's nice to see you back. Will you be staying long?'

  I walked across to the desk. She moved back unconsciously pressing herself against the back of the chair.

  'I don't know. How long does it take to beat the crap out of an old lady?'

  I yanked out the phone cable. Her pupils flashed open.

  I sat on the edge of the desk and leaned across. 'Where is it?'

  'Where is -'

  The words stopped as I raised my index finger.

  'Please don't say "where is what".'

  She looked at me without saying a word.

  'I have to hand it to you,' I said, 'you're a real dark horse.' I started flicking the broken telephone cable against the desk. 'I mean, you give the impression that you haven't got two brain cells to rub together, but you certainly worked the stovepipe hat out a lot quicker than me.'

  She said nothing, just continued staring at me wondering how much I knew and what I was going to do.

  'But then you don't get into the upper echelons of the Sweet Jesus League without being smart, do you? Not into the ESSJAT you don't.'

  'I'm not in it, Mr Knight.'

  'Not in what?'

  'In ... in what you said.'

  'What did I say?'

  She looked at me uncertainly. 'That organisation you mentioned; I'm not in it.'

  'What's it called?'

  'Er . . . I don't know.'

  'Then how do you know you're not in it?'

  'I ... I ...'

  'You're a lieutenant in the ESSJAT, Mrs Llantrisant.'

  She shook her head in desperation. 'No ... no ... no I'm not, I'm not!'

  'All these years you've been swabbing my step and all the time you've been listening at the keyhole.'

  'No, Mr Knight, no!'

  'That's how you found out about the Punch and Judy man.'

  She shook her head and put her hands to her ears. 'No!'

  I leaned closer until my face was only inches away from hers. I could smell the musty reek of Eau de Maesteg.

  'You killed him, didn't you?'

  'Who?' she whined. 'I haven't killed anybody, Mr Knight. Honest I haven't. I'm just a step-swabber. I'm sorry about the peanuts —'

  I whipped the end of the phone cord across her face and the words stopped in mid-sentence. A fine pink groove appeared in the thickly plastered foundation cream.

  'It wasn't enough for you to destroy his life:' knock him off the pedestal he stood on for thirty years and force him to scratch a living in the Punch and Judy tents of Aberaeron. You had to throw the poor man off a cliff.'

  'No, Mr Knight, not me, not me!'

  'It was you I fought with that night down at the harbour, wasn't it?'

  'No, please, Mr Knight. You've got it all wrong.'

  'Have I? Have I?' I shouted. 'I don't think so.' I paused, breathing heavily, and waited for myself to become calm again. I needed to stay in control.

  'Tell me, Mrs Llantrisant. Are you familiar with the works of Job Gorseinon?'

  She looked at me blankly.

  'Brainbocs was. They found a copy of Gorseinon's Roses of Charon in his satchel. It's an enquiry into the darker side of Greco-Roman horticulture. Have you ever read it?'

  She watched me, confused and suspicious. 'I don't think I have. Good book is it?'

  'Ooh, curate's egg really. But there's one nice bit where Gorseinon describes how Livia is alleged to have murdered Augustus. He was a wily old bird, you see, Augustus. A bit like you if you don't mind me saying so. And he was paranoid about being poisoned. With good reason as it turned out. It got to the point where he wouldn't eat anything except fruit he had picked from his own orchard. So Livia smeared the figs on the tree with deadly nightshade. Ring any bells does it?'

  She looked at me with an empty face like a poker player.

  'The story reminded me of that occasion just before Easter when you were taken ill all of a sudden from eating that apple pie. Remember how you called the priest? How he took your deathbed confession? It's funny because we also found in Brainbocs's satchel a book on how to perform the last rites and a fancy-dress hire ticket from Dai the Custard Pie's. It doesn't say what costume he borrowed but I bet if I went down and looked at Custard Pie's ledger I'd find it was a Catholic priest's outfit. What do you say?'

  Slowly a change came over Mrs Llantrisant. As if she had decided that the time had come to drop the mask. She brought her hands down from her ears and looked me in the eye. The silly, frivolous old gossip faded away and in its place there sat a different woman. Self-possessed and steely with an expression of stone. Suddenly she darted sideways out of the chair. I leaped after her grabbing at the tails of her housecoat but she moved like a cat and was almost at the door when I managed to grab her ankle. She was strong and fast and would have got away, but my nails caught on her old varicose vein scars. The sharp pain pulled her up for a split-second and made her gasp. It was all I needed. I reached higher and took a firmer grip on her coat. Then her training took over, banishing pain, and focusing every sinew on the task in hand, she turned and sized me up in one cold, robotic look. She lowered one knee, transferred her weight and then spun round driving a backhand smash into my face. I reeled and fell backwards and she moved in with cold precision.

  In came the elbow, ramming into my head above the ear and I started to go down. The room swirled and birds sang inside my head. I could see the knee moving up now, the confusion in my brain slowing its hideous progress down to a crawl. A crawl that I felt powerless to avoid. I remember seeing insignificant details with a strange detachment: how the housecoat parted and revealed the elasticised bottom of the bloomer, slightly above the knee. The knee, fish-white and blue-veined like Gorgonzola cheese, slamming upwards like a ramrod. At the last second I jerked to the side and the knee crashed into the filing cabinet. I could see, almost feel myself, the fireworks of pain that shot through her. A deep gash appeared, blood splattered, and she fell to the floor.

  I bent over her and suddenly jumped backwards as she jabbed at me with a hatpin which she had pulled from her boot; the hypo-allergenic calfskin boot made in Milan. I dodged the pin and she tried again, but crippled by the wound to her knee she could only lunge and crawl dementedly. I stepped clear of her range of action. Took a careful look round the room and spotted what I wanted. Among the fire irons in the grate was a big cast-iron poker. I picked it up and walked over to where Mrs Llantrisant lay. She looked up at me too convulsed with hate to display any fear. With bitter deliberation I smashed the iron down on her knee. She screamed like a wolf, her spit-covered dentures jettisoning out on to the carpet. Then she blacked out.

  When she came round she was sitting in the client's chair, bound at the ankles and wrists with the flex from the TV. I threw a washing-up bowl of cold water with ice cubes into her face. She lifted her head and looked at me, her face still twisted and contorted with misery. I smiled. Then kicked her in the knee; she jerked and writhed, straining at the flex with a power that looked as if it might break the back of the wooden chair.

  'That was for killing the Punch and Judy man.'

  She spat blood on to the carpet but said nothing.

  'Now when you're ready I have some questions I'd like to ask you.'

  'Bugumph a dwonba frum ga fum paschtad!'

  I screwed up my face 'What!?'

  'Ga fhaard bu mon get aggyfun oumpa me ga frunbin pash schtern!'

  I picked up the dentures and shoved them back into her mouth.

  She started manipulating them furiously with her tongue, making obscene gob-stopper mounds in alternate cheeks. When they were in place she shrieked at me, 'I sai
d you won't get a fucking word out of me, you bastard!'

  I kicked her in the knee and she squealed in agony. I spoke to her in a soft bedside manner.

  'You know, something puzzles me.' She looked up, interested despite her attempts not to be. 'You're always whingeing to me about the amount of time your friends have to wait at the hospital to get their hips done, and here I am fucking up your knee and you don't seem bothered. Why is that?'

  She looked at me coldly and said, 'Your threats are useless. I spit on them.'

  'Why did you kill him?'

  'Who?'

  'Iolo Davies — the Museum curator.'

  'My orders were to remove him and so I removed him. He meant nothing to me. It was just a job.'

  'Like swabbing the step?'

  'He was just a filthy semen-squirting little toad.'

  'So where's the essay?'

  'Fuck off!'

  'OK,' I smiled.

  I walked to the kitchen and filled the kettle. I was troubled. What if she had been trained to withstand pain? You heard of such things. My resolve would soon give way. I had already shown that with Lovespoon. My gaze wandered round the kitchen and I was struck at how totally she had made the place her own. Four new housecoats hung up, doubtless paid for out of my petty-cash tin. Groceries from Safeway littered the side. There was even a trunk containing her orthopaedic-boot collection. And then it struck me: even Mrs Llantrisant had an Achilles heel.

  I picked up the industrial-size meat mincer which had lain in the corner gathering dust since the time when Mrs Llantrisant and Mrs Abergynolwen had made the sausage rolls for the Eisteddfod. I dragged it into the office and placed it down a few feet in front of Mrs Llantrisant. She looked at me with a look of withering contempt.

  'Gonna mince me leg off, are you now, Mr Knight? Or is it me arm? Mince away for all I care, I shall just laugh at you.'

  'It's not your leg you should be worried about, Mrs Llantrisant.' I bent down and started unlacing her orthopaedic boot. The brash confidence disappeared and a look of naked terror swept into her cold, pitiless eyes. She struggled like a fish on a hook but the TV flex held her firmly bound to the chair. I took off the boot and stuffed it into the top of the mincer where the chopped meat usually goes and grabbed the handle.