Aberystwyth Mon Amour
( Aberystwyth Noir - 1 )
Malcolm Pryce
Schoolboys are disappearing all over Aberystwyth and nobody knows why. Louie Knight, the town's private investigator, soon realises that it is going to take more than a double ripple from Sospan, the philosopher cum ice-cream seller, to help find out what is happening to these boys and whether or not Lovespoon, the Welsh teacher, Grand Wizard of the Druids and controller of the town, is more than just a sinister bully. And just who was Gwenno Guevara?
Aberystwyth Mon Amour
Malcolm Pryce
Copyright © 2001 by Malcolm Pryce
For Mum and Dad, Andy and Pepys
LET'S BE CLEAR about it then: Aberystwyth in the Eighties was no Babylon. Even when the flood came there was nothing Biblical about the matter, despite what some fools are saying now. I spent the years before the deluge operating out of an office on Canticle Street, above the Orthopaedic Boot shop. And you know what that means: take two lefts outside the door and you were on the Old Prom. That was where it all happened: the bars, the dives, the gambling dens, the 24-hour Whelk Stall, and Sospan's ice-cream kiosk. That's where the tea-cosy shops were, the ones that never sold tea cosies; and the toffee-apple dens, the ones that never sold toffee. And that was where those latter day Canutes, the ladies from the Sweet Jesus League, had their stall. I saw a lot of things along that part of the Prom, but I don't remember seeing any hanging gardens. Just those round concrete tubs of hydrangeas the Council put out so the drunks would have something to throw up in. I also spent a lot of my time at the Druid-run Moulin Club in Patriarch Street and I'm well aware of what the girls got up to there. Sure, you can call it harlotry if it makes you feel better, but I was there the night Bianca died and I'm just as happy with the word prostitution. And as for idolatry, well, if you ask me, the only thing men worshipped on a regular basis in the days before the flood was money. That, and the singer down at the Moulin, Myfanwy Montez. And I know that for certain, because although I never had any money in my office in those days, I did once have Myfanwy Montez ...
Chapter 1
I can't afford friends in this town, I lose too many working days attending the funerals
Sospan, the ice-cream seller
THE THING I remember most about it was walking the entire length of the Prom that morning and not seeing a Druid. Normally when I made my stroll shortly before 9am I would see a few hanging around at Sospan's ice-cream stall, preening themselves in their sharp Swansea suits and teardrop aviator shades. Or they would be standing outside Dai the Custard Pie's joke shop, waiting for him to open so they could buy some more of that soap that makes a person's face go black. But on that day in June there wasn't a bard in sight. It was as if nature had forgotten one of the ingredients of the day and was carrying on in the hope that no one would notice. Looking back, it's hard for people who weren't there to appreciate how strange it felt. In those days, everything in town was controlled by the Druids. Sure, the Bronzinis controlled the ice cream, the tailoring and the haircuts; and the Llewellyns controlled the crazy golf, the toffee apples and the bingo. But we all know who controlled the Bronzinis and the Llewellyns. And, of course, the police got to push a few poets around now and again; but that was just for show. Like those little fish that are allowed to swim around inside the shark's jaw to clean his teeth.
When I arrived at Canticle Street Mrs Llantrisant was already there swabbing the step. She did this every morning as well as tidying up in my office and doing a number of other things, all of which I had forbidden her to do. But she took no notice. Her mother had swabbed this step and so had her mother and her mother before that. There had probably been a Mrs Llantrisant covered in woad soaping the menhirs in the iron-age hill fort south of the town. You just had to accept the fact that she came with the premises like the electricity supply.
'Bore da, Mr Knight!'
'Bore da, Mrs Llantrisant! Lovely day?'
'Oh isn't it just!'
At this point the usual formula was for us to spend a few minutes pinning down exactly how lovely a day it was. We did this by cross-referencing it with its counterparts in previous years, the records of which Mrs Llantrisant kept in her head like those people who know all the FA Cup goal-scorers since 1909. But on this occasion she was distracted by an impatient excitement which made her bob up and down on the spot like a toddler aching to divulge a secret. She placed a white bony finger on my forearm.
'You'll never guess what!' she said excitedly.
'What?' I said.
'You've got a customer!'
Though rare, this wasn't quite the novelty that her excitement suggested.
'You'll never guess in a million years who it is!'
'Well, I'd better go and see then, hadn't I?'
I stepped over the gleaming slate doorstep, but Mrs Llantrisant held on to my arm, her finger digging in like a talon. She glanced furtively up and down the street and then lowered her voice, as if there was a danger someone would steal the client if word got out.
'It's Myfanwy Montez,' she hissed. 'The famous singer!'
Bonfires of excitement burned in her eyes; you'd never guess that Mrs Llantrisant spent three nights a week outside the night club where Myfanwy Montez worked, handing out pamphlets and calling the singer a strumpet.
My office was divided into an outer waiting area and the inner office. But Mrs Llantrisant usually let clients straight into the main room even though I had told her not to. Miss Montez was already sitting in the client's chair with her back to the door; she jumped when I entered then half stood up and half turned round.
'I hope you don't mind, the cleaning lady told me to come in.'
'I know, she does that.'
She looked across to the coat stand in the corner of the room; there was a wide-brimmed straw hat hanging from it.
'I used your hat stand.'
'Did you take a ticket?'
'No.'
'Always insist on a ticket, Miss Montez — it could get confusing if another client turns up.'
She peered at me for a second puzzled, and then giggled.
'Mrs Llantrisant said you would tease me!'
I sat down in the chair opposite her. 'What else did she say when she should have been swabbing my step?'
'Are you angry with her?'
'Who?'
'Mrs Llantrisant.'
I shook my head. 'No point. It doesn't work.'
'How did you know my name?'
'You know as well as I do it's fly-posted on every spare wall between here and the station.'
She smiled at the compliment, if indeed it was one, and leaned forward with her hands placed palms down underneath her thighs. Her luxuriant hair cascaded forward and had the colour and sheen of conkers fresh out of the shell. Yes, I would have recognised her anywhere. Her features were a lot softer than the harsh black and white advertising images that were pasted around town, but there was one thing which marked her out instantly as Aberystwyth's celebrated night-club singer: the mole which sat at the exact point where her lip ended and the cheek began. She was facing the window and squinting so I walked over and closed the blinds. The view looked out across the slate roofs of downtown Aberystwyth towards the iron-age hill fort on Pen Dinas; and beyond that to the four chimneys of the rock factory, now belching out pink smoke.
It didn't usually take long for a client to lay the goods on the table, but Myfanwy seemed in no hurry. She sat in the seat like a child and looked wonderingly around the room. There was not much to look at: a battered chesterfield sofa, a mono record player, and a nineteenth-century sea chest. The connecting door to the outer office had a top half of frosted glass upon which were stencil
led the words 'Knight Errant Investigations' and the name 'Louie Knight' in smaller letters. When I set up the practice a few years ago the name had struck me as a clever conceit, but now it made me wince every time I saw it. On the desk there was a pre-war fan with Bakelite knobs; a desk lamp from the Fifties; a modern phone and an answering machine . . . people thought the styling was deliberate and ironic but actually the whole office had been rented from the library and the furniture came as part of the deal; along with Mrs Llantrisant. The bathroom door still had the lock on the outside from the days when the room had been used to house sensitive items like the anatomy books and the Colour Atlas of Eye Surgery. There were two photos on the desk, in cheap stand-up frames. A black and white snap of my mother and father on a windswept promenade in 1950s Llandudno. My father, fresh-faced and Brylcreemed, leaning into the wind and shielding his new wife; and my mother the eternal bride with a smile that held no inkling that she'd be dead in a year. The other picture was a blurred Kodakolor image of Marty, my school friend who was sent on a cross-country run in a blizzard and never came back. The only other photo in the room hung next to the door: great-great-uncle Noel Bartholomew — the Victorian eccentric and romantic whose rogue gene for undertaking daft crusades had been passed on to me. On the walls either side of the door, facing each other and flanking uncle Noel, were two maps: one of Aberystwyth and environs; one of Borneo.
'I've never been in a private detective's office before.'
'Don't expect too much.'
'What's in the trunk?'
'Some charts of the South China Sea, a Burmese tribal headdress and a shrunken head.'
She gasped. 'Really?'
'Really.'
'Is that Caldy Island?' she asked pointing at the map of Borneo.
'No, it's Borneo.'
She paused, bit her lip and said, 'I expect you're wondering why I'm here.'
'It had crossed my mind.'
'They say you're the best private detective in town.'
'Did they tell you about the others?'
'What about them?'
'There aren't any.'
She smiled. 'That must make you the best then. Anyway, I want to hire you.'
'Have you got any job in mind, or do you just want to take me for a walk?'
'I want you to find a missing person.'
I nodded thoughtfully. 'Anyone I know?'
'Evans the Boot.'
I didn't say anything, just raised my eyebrows. Very high. I could have whistled as well, but I decided to stick with the eyebrows.
'Evans the Boot?'
Myfanwy looked at me and fidgeted awkwardly.
'Is he a friend of yours?'
'He's my cousin.'
'And he's gone missing?'
'About a week now.'
'Are you sure you want to find him?'
She sighed. 'Yes, I know he's a bad lad, but his mother doesn't see it that way.'
'That's the great thing about mothers.' I leaned back and folded my arms behind my head. 'Have you been to the police?'
'Yes.'
'What did they say?'
'They said it was the best news they'd had all week.'
I laughed but stopped myself as soon as I noticed her glaring at me.
'It's not funny!'
'No, sorry. I suppose not.'
'Will you help me?'
What was I supposed to say? That she was better off going to the police, who would have the resources and the connections? That with missing persons you need a lot of patience because quite often they don't want to be found? That Evans the Boot was almost certainly dead? Instead I said, 'I don't like Evans the Boot.'
'I'm not asking you to like him, just find him.'
'And I don't like the sort of people he goes round with. If I go poking my nose into their affairs I could go missing too.'
'I see, so you're scared.'
'No, I'm not scared!'
'Sounds like it to me.'
'Well I'm not.'
She shrugged. We glared at each other for a while.
'I'll admit that looking for Evans the Boot is not a healthy way to earn a living,' I said, looking away, unable to hold her stare.
'Fair enough.' Her tone suggested I was a failure.
'I mean, I'm sorry and all that.'
'Don't bother, I know what the real reason is.' She stood up and walked over to the door.
'What is that supposed to mean?'
She picked up her hat. 'You just don't want a girl like me as a client.'
I opened my mouth to speak but she carried on.
'It's OK, you don't need to explain,' she said breezily. 'I'm used to it.'
I scooted across the room to the door. 'What are you talking about?'
She flashed a look of scorn. 'Moulin girls!'
'Moulin girls?'
'That's it, isn't it? You despise us.'
'No I don't!'
'You wouldn't want to be seen with me when you're playing golf with the Grand Wizard.'
'Hey hold on!' I cried. 'You think I play golf with the Druids?'
She stopped at the map of Borneo on her way out and said, as if her previous remarks had been about the weather, 'What do the little red dots mean?'
'Sorry?' I said, still reeling.
'These little red dots on the map?'
'It's the route taken by my great-great-uncle Noel on his expedition.'
'What was he doing?'
'He was looking for an Englishwoman rumoured to be lost in the jungle.'
'Did he fancy her?'
'No, he'd never met her; he'd just read about the case and it fascinated him.'
She traced her finger along the route — up the Rajang river and across the Bungan rapids, covering in two seconds what took Noel six months.
'Where is this place?' she said to the map.
'It's near Australia.'
'He went all the way to Australia to help a woman?'
'Yes. I suppose you could say that.'
She looked up at me and said slyly, 'Are you sure he was your uncle?'
Before I could answer she had skipped through the doorway and was off down the stairs. I ran out and leaned over the balcony to toss a comment down, but I couldn't think of anything to say. The front door slammed.
I walked back, put my feet up on the desk and contemplated the morning. As usual clients were thin on the ground and I had just turned down one whose cheques would probably be honoured by the bank. The framed sepia image of Noel Bartholomew stared down and chided me with an expression that many have described as enigmatic but which has always struck me as supercilious. Starched tropical whites, pith helmet, a dead tiger at his feet and jungle behind him. Even in 1870 the camera was busy lying: the tiger was stuffed, the jungle ferns picked in Danycoed wood and the whole scene composed in a studio before he left Town. I gave a wan smile and thought about Evans the Boot. I knew him of course. An opportunistic thief with an eye for a climbable drainpipe or an easily opened back door. Still in school but broad-shouldered and bearded. Capable of seducing the wives of his school masters and then boasting to them of it afterwards. A violent thug who invoked a tingling, visceral fear. That same fear you feel when in a strange town you enter an underpass and hear from up ahead the primaeval, ritual chanting of football hooligans. Yes, I knew him, we were both creatures of the same nocturnal landscape. But our paths seldom crossed. His evenings would be mapped out by the various intricate routes from pub to pub that characterised the night out in town. While I would be sitting in cold cars, clammy with breath and condensation, watching bedroom curtains. A professional snoop in a world where most people did it as a hobby. I looked again at Noel. It was obvious now what I should have shouted down the stairs to Myfanwy: uncle Noel never came back alive. That's where misplaced chivalry gets you. But the thought didn't comfort me; the morning's peace had been disturbed, and there was only one place to re-establish it.
*
Et in Arcadia ego. The fibreglass ice-cream c
one was five feet high and the Latin motto curved around the base in copperplate neon. Sitting on top of Sospan's stall, and visible to the sun-parched fisherman from ten miles out to sea, it was as much an Aberystwyth icon as the Cliff Railway or Myfanwy's mole. I too was in Arcady. I knew what it meant because I had once looked it up at the library; but if you asked Sospan he would shrug and say he found it in a book and thought it had something to do with the amusement arcade. That was his story and he stuck to it. But he knew better than anyone what strange demons brought the troubled souls to his counter.
'Morning, Mr Knight! Usual is it?' 'Make it a double with extra ripple.'
He tut-tutted. 'And not even ten o'clock! Heavy night was it?' 'No, just something on my mind.' 'Well you've come to the right place.'
His hands fluttered like seagull wings at the dispenser while he stared back over his shoulder at me, inscrutable behind that rictus of smarm the ice man calls a smile. A lot of people claimed to find in his face a resemblance to the notorious Nazi Angel of Death, Josef Mengele, but I struggled to see it myself. Although there was about him an air of moral neutrality that could on occasion be quite unnerving. He placed the ice cream down on the counter in front of me and stared edgily at the troubled expression on my face. For some reason the interview in my office had upset me.
'You get that inside you, it'll make you feel a lot better."
'What's it all about, then, Sospan?' I asked as I picked up the cone.
'Search me.'
'Don't you ever think about things?'
'What sort of things would that be then?' he asked guardedly.
'Oh I don't know. What it all means. This town. The things that go on ...'
He sucked in his breath, starting to get alarmed at the way the conversation was heading. I struggled to find the right words.
'Moral things, Sospan, you know! Good and bad and the role you play in it. The sense that by doing nothing, or not enough, you might be a ... a ... I don't know ... an accomplice or something ...'
'I don't have a lot of time for thinking about things,' he said with a defensive edge creeping into his tone. 'I just scatter my hundreds and thousands before the public. Philosophy I leave to the drunks.'
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