Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth an-4

by Malcolm Pryce

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘One of our saints told us, Mrs Llanfihangel. She was ever such a holy lady, so when she died we made her a saint and she turned up one day at a séance and told us all about Heaven. She said for a while she thought the Welsh were the only ones there, until one day someone left the gate in the fence open and she wandered out and met some Amish.’

  We strolled back across the quad towards the car.

  ‘Do you know a girl called Tadpole?’ I asked. ‘She’s a Soldier for Jesus, too.’

  ‘In Aberystwyth, you mean? I’ve heard of her. I wouldn’t say I knew her – I don’t go to Aberystwyth very often, especially at this time of year. It’s such a bother finding a hat to wear.’

  ‘Why do you need a hat to go to Aberystwyth?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Mr Knight, don’t pull my leg.’

  ‘I’m not. Plenty of people don’t wear hats there.’

  ‘Yes, but we’re students, aren’t we? What happens if we see a student from Aberystwyth and we’re not wearing a hat? We won’t have anything to doff.’

  ‘You need to doff your hat when you see a student from Aber?’

  ‘Of course. It’s a college rule: we must always take off our hats when see a fellow scholar.’

  I pulled a face and she continued, burning with conviction, ‘Oh, come on, Mr Knight. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen someone doff a cap before.’

  ‘I’m familiar with the custom, but not in this context. The normal way to make a man remove his hat in that town is to punch him on the jaw.’

  We arrived at a construction like a medieval well; it had a bell hanging beneath the little roof.

  ‘This bell is from Patagonia,’ Eleri explained with evident pride. ‘It was rescued from the Mission House, and presented to us. It’s one of our most treasured possessions.’

  ‘What happened out there?’ I asked. ‘I hear things didn’t go quite according to plan.’

  Eleri looked sad. ‘Oh. The Soldiers for Jesus had quite a difficult time of it, I’m afraid. The Indians had a vision of Heaven that featured orgies and human sacrifice and lots of cocaine. It was very hard to make them see that ours was better. Besides, their language didn’t contain a word for gift shop.’

  ‘Your version does sound a bit austere.’

  ‘It’s not really. Our Heavenly Father loves us, of course, but He also likes us to do what we’re told. We step out of line and we get smote.

  Oh God of remorse

  In your heaven of gorse

  Who sent Noah a boat

  While the rest got smote.

  ‘That’s our best prayer.’

  ‘And the Indians didn’t like it?’

  ‘They were strange heathens. They said, “In our heaven we’ve got Tequila and cocoa leaves and we have sex all day. And we eat people. What have you got in yours?”

  ‘And we said, “Well, we get to sing hymns all day – what could be nicer than that?” But they just sneered, so the schoolmarm showed them a picture of Blaenau Ffestiniog. Of course, she tried to point out it was like that without the train but they wouldn’t listen. They all pointed at the little steam train and said, “What’s that?” And she said, “It’s a puffing billy,” and they looked at her blankly so she asked for a Welsh–Spanish dictionary and translated. “El gran tren del choo-choo,” she said, and they all fell about laughing. Apparently, choo-choo is a very bad word in their language. After that news spread like wildfire: in the Welsh gringo heaven they have a big choo-choo. They used to come for miles just to laugh. The schoolmarm fainted when she found out what it meant.’ She stopped and looked slightly embarrassed at the failure.

  We tut-tutted sympathetically. At least, I did.

  ‘I heard the chaplain went nuts,’ said Calamity.

  Eleri blinked in surprise. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘We heard something terrible happened and the priest went bananas.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite—’

  ‘Lost his marbles,’ she explained. ‘Cuckoo. We heard the priest went mad. Is that true?’

  ‘I . . . I’m afraid I’m not allowed to discuss military matters.’ Eleri had lost some of her composure and stammered slightly. ‘But I’m sure that couldn’t have happened. You must be careful about some of the things you hear. A lot of people are jealous of us and try to undermine our reputation with calumnious remarks.’

  I changed the subject. ‘Tell us about your studies at Jezebel College.’

  ‘What’s there to tell? It’s really boring. We don’t get cadavers to dissect or anything, like the guys on the undertaking course. It’s just the usual stuff, mostly theory.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Oh, you know, about the differences between a trollop, a tart, a slattern, a flibbertigibbet . . . that sort of thing. It’s very boring. Mostly textbook.’

  ‘So why did Emily call us?’

  ‘She did some work for the Santa Claus who got murdered in Chinatown. He went to see her and she helped him with some stuff, trying to trace a child born out of wedlock a long time ago. Emily was good at that sort of thing – she understood about all these forensic techniques and things – but me, I never had the patience. She was into Kierkegaard as well – well, we all are of course – but Emily was nuts about the guy. The woman was called Etta Place and the baby born out of wedlock was christened Laura.’

  ‘Etta Place was the girlfriend of the Sundance Kid,’ said Calamity.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know, the Hole-in-the-Wall gang, the famous outlaws.’

  ‘No I’m not familiar . . .’

  ‘The movie – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.’

  Oh, we don’t watch movies. We have to study. Except Clip, of course. We all want to see that. Oh, but I’m forgetting my manners. You’ve come all this way, you must be waiting to see Emily.’

  ‘We thought she was dead.’

  ‘She is.’

  We declined the opportunity to see the cadaver, and made our way back to the car.

  Eleri held out a hand to shake and said, ‘You really mustn’t pay any attention to the bad things people say about the Soldiers for Jesus. It’s just the idle tittle-tattle of gossips. You see, Mr Knight, we do a lot of good work here: we give the girls a chance that normally they just wouldn’t get. For many of them Sunday School is the only way out of the ghetto.’

  ‘One other thing,’ I said before closing the car door. ‘If you qualify for a reward for the help you’ve given us, do you want the Lego?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Lego. You know what that is, I take it.’

  Eleri looked slightly hurt. ‘Don’t be silly. Of course I do. It’s Latin for “I build”, isn’t it?’

  Chapter 11

  THE OLD MAN Elijah was waiting in the office. He was sitting peacefully in the client’s chair with the serene air of a Buddhist monk or a man for whom waiting calmly is a skill honed during a lifetime’s practice. The Cambrian News was on the desk in front of him, folded to display the story covering Emily’s murder.

  I took off my coat and slung it on the hatstand. I glanced at the newspaper and said, ‘You predicted it and you were right. Now what do you want? We’re fresh out of medals.’

  ‘You know what I want. You found it in that alley.’

  ‘Finders keepers.’

  He smiled thinly. ‘Yes, but isn’t there also something in that ditty about weepers?’

  ‘Suppose you tell me who killed her?’

  He took a slow deliberate breath. ‘You killed her.’

  ‘I’d never even met her.’

  ‘You need to be introduced first to kill a person?’

  ‘Spare me the wisdom.’

  ‘I see her name on your incident board, and yet you say you do not know her?’

  ‘I said I’d never met her, and it’s true. I could put up the name of the mayor of Gotham City, it wouldn’t mean we were acquainted.’

  ‘Then maybe he, too,
would die.’

  I sat in my chair and laced my fingers behind my head. ‘Talk plainly or get out.’

  ‘It is my belief that a parasite has taken up residence in your neighbourhood.’

  ‘You mean like rats in the attic?’

  ‘I do not refer to that, although I don’t deny the possibility that you have them, too.’

  ‘A parasite?’

  ‘It is known as a Pieman.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘You have a Pieman.’

  ‘I have a Pieman?’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘This comes as quite a shock.’

  ‘It normally does. Naturally, you will say you do not know what a Pieman is.’

  ‘Why bother to such a sharp guy like you? Feigning ignorance of a Pieman is a difficult stratagem to master.’

  ‘That’s for sure.’

  ‘We have a guy across the road who eats a lot of pies,’ said Calamity.

  ‘Ah yes, you joke. Of course you have a guy across the road who eats pies. He is the Pieman. Or one of them.’

  ‘You mean he’s killing these people?’

  ‘Not personally. He supplies the names of the victims, and those he gets from you, from your incident board. If I am not mistaken you will find the Pieman resides across the road in one of the top-floor flats—don’t look!’ His face flushed with fury. ‘Don’t look, you fools!’

  Calamity and I both arrested the movements of our heads with a strange air of guilt.

  ‘Louie watched him being winched in,’ said Calamity, making a great pretence of not looking out of the window.

  ‘If you were to visit him you would find a lot of pies and a thirty-five-millimetre camera with a long-focus lens trained on this room. On his wall will be a replica of your incident board. The moment you put a lead on your board he takes a snap, develops it in a tray next to the camera, and twenty minutes later pins up the gleaming wet black-and-white photo. From this he harvests the names, which are smuggled out to the assassin in the empty pie boxes.’

  ‘That’s absurd.’

  Elijah smiled. ‘On the contrary, it is a most wonderful development. For the first time in perhaps twenty years Hoffmann has made a mistake. He has exposed himself. I cannot tell you how excited this makes me.’

  ‘You mean Hoffmann is behind the Pieman?’

  ‘Who else? Who else would go to such lengths to protect himself? And yet, paradoxically, in choosing to protect himself in this manner he may have fatally compromised himself. It is a wonderful development.’

  ‘But why would anyone do such a crazy thing?’ said Calamity.

  ‘It is a venerable and ancient assassination technique, developed many years ago by Welsh Intelligence. The beauty of it – and this is partly why the Welsh thought it up, because their espionage budget has always been severely limited – the beauty of it is its cost-effectiveness. The Pieman, you see, is a crude although effective form of custodian, a keeper of secrets, a protector or gate-keeper, if you will. He is enlisted to eliminate people who pose a threat to whatever needs to be protected. And the great thing is, he is very cheap because he rides piggyback on someone else’s investigation – in this case, yours. You do the legwork while he sits on his arse all day and eats pies. Hence the Pieman. Ingenious, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yeah, we’re overwhelmed by his cleverness,’ I said.

  ‘That’s if we believe you,’ added Calamity.

  ‘Trust me, I have better things to do with my time than make up stories like this.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘I guess we’ll just have to go round and speak to the Pieman,’ I said.

  ‘That is what you must on no account do. Categorically not.’

  ‘Why?’ I sneered. ‘Because we’d find nothing there except a guy who likes to eat pies, and no camera?’

  ‘You really are very stupid, aren’t you?’

  ‘So you keep telling me. I’m getting quite tired of it, to tell the truth.’

  ‘Just suppose for the sake of argument that I am not lying. What will happen if you go up there? You will find the Pieman and he will close down his operation. And what will you have gained? You will have killed the parasite. But what of Hoffmann? What of him? He will be long gone, and perhaps it will be another twenty years before he is heard from again. Perhaps it will never happen again. This one occasion is all we are given, this one chance, this unique moment in the annals of espionage. And you threaten it with your intemperate curiosity.’

  ‘All right, I’ve supposed that. Now you suppose this. Just suppose for the sake of argument there is no such thing as the Pieman. We walk around all day taking ridiculous care not to look up at the window across the street and not putting things on the incident board, and all for what?’

  ‘Exactly! All for what? What possible reason could I have for inventing such a story? It would make you look stupid, for sure. It would make your lives more difficult to a very slight degree; but neither of those two goals is of the slightest interest to me. Why would I care?’ He paused, then added thoughtfully: ‘Tell me, did a tradesman come round a few days ago selling AGC?’

  ‘What’s AGC?’ I said.

  ‘Anti-glare coating for your incident board.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said just as Calamity stammered ‘No.’

  She and I exchanged glances. Elijah smiled and looked at the incident board. It was as if the gods had been waiting for this moment: the clouds parted and a blade of fierce sunlight stabbed the gloom in the office and bathed the incident board in bright golden light. And yet, glare-free, not a single detail was obscured. Whatever the salesman’s motives, you couldn’t help but admire the quality of his AGC.

  ‘It is a common m.o. for a Pieman to employ,’ said Elijah with studied nonchalance.

  ‘So what do we do, then?’ I asked, hating myself for being sucked into his absurd charade, but unable to resist. What if he was telling the truth? What if there really was a Hoffmann and, by compromising the Pieman, I blew the only chance to catch him that had presented itself in twenty years?

  ‘What you do,’ continued Elijah, ‘is absolutely nothing. You carry on as normal – sticking your leads up on the board and doing nothing to indicate that the Pieman’s cover has been blown.’

  ‘But what if more people die?’

  ‘Certainly more people will die. Do you think this is a game? More people will die, many of them innocent. But their deaths are of no consequence when set against the greater prize, Hoffmann.’

  ‘We can’t do nothing.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Can’t do nothing? Of course you can. Doing nothing is one activity that falls within the power of just about anybody. Even a nincompoop like you can do nothing. If I asked you to undertake some strenuous or difficult mission you might be justified in complaining, but here I am asking you to do nothing and you act as if it were an endeavour entirely beyond the wit of mortal man. You can certainly do nothing, and that is precisely what you must do. In the meantime I will speak to my organisation and seek instruction. A Pieman is a difficult infestation to deal with. It demands patience, and guile, and, above all, subtlety.’

  ‘Can’t we just follow the boy who delivers the pies?’ asked Calamity.

  ‘You think he won’t be waiting for that? You think the Pieman is a fool?’

  ‘Aren’t you worried?’ asked Calamity.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘If a name goes up on the incident board, the person gets whacked, right?’

  ‘That in broad outline is the essence of a Pieman manoeuvre, yes.’

  ‘What if we put your name on the incident board?’

  He paused. A look of mild panic discomposed his features and his skin drained of colour. He swallowed. ‘Little girl, I must ask you not to joke about such a thing. That would be tantamount to murder. You would be assassinating me.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like such a bad idea,’ I said. ‘Tell me who Hoffmann is, and maybe we won’t do it.’

>   ‘You joke.’

  ‘No. It seems an excellent idea.’

  Elijah opened the desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of Captain Morgan.

  ‘Help yourself,’ I said.

  He unscrewed the cap, took a drink straight from the bottle and said, ‘Hoffmann is a man who once stole a coat.’

  The old man stared at the bottle, swirled the rum arond, deep in thought. We waited. Nothing happened. A lorry passed by in the road outside, making the windows rattle.

  ‘Is that it?’ I asked.

  ‘Was it a nice coat?’ said Calamity.

  ‘In terms of tailoring I think it was undistinguished. At least, as far as I recall, neither the cut nor the quality of the cloth has ever been a feature of this case.’

  We nodded. Calamity wrote down in her notebook, ‘Not the quality.’

  We waited for a minute or so but there was no more.

  I said, ‘Your name is Elijah, right?’

  ‘Yes, you may call me that.’

  I pulled out an index card and began to write. ‘That’s good. I’d hate to kill the wrong man.’

  ‘W-what are you doing?’

  ‘What does it look like? I’m putting your name on the board. See? Elijah, brackets, infuriating jerk. That’s you, Pumpernickel, you in the silly hat.’

  He slammed his hand down on top of mine. ‘No, please. Please, you mustn’t.’

  ‘Start talking, then. A bit faster this time. And forget the Talmudic mystery tour.’

  He took a gulp of rum and began again.

  ‘The coat belonged to a man called Caleb Penpegws. It was stolen from him as he lay on a stretcher in the infirmary recovering from his wounds after the Mission House siege in Patagonia. You are familiar with that terrible conflict?’