IT WOULD BE naïve to say Aberystwyth ever had much innocence left to lose, but the death of the Amazing Mr Marmalade struck many people as a watershed. Old man kicked to death on the Prom, they said, never thought I’d live to see that. Perhaps it was all those fresh graves on the side of Pen Dinas dug in the wake of the flood that contributed to the mood, or maybe just the casual brutality of the attack. Or perhaps it was the recognition that the optimism that many people felt after the flood had deceived us. As a town we had stared death in the face and prided ourselves on the fact that death had blinked first. But the murder of Mr Marmalade confirmed what we secretly suspected all along: it was all at best a reprieve, a stay of execution. The optimism was snake oil.
Walking home after the attack, I kept thinking about what a senseless act it was, and how easily it could have been avoided. What was an old man like Marmalade doing there at that time of night? Where did he think he was going? It didn’t make sense. When I got home I found the answer. It turned out he had been going to see me. There was a note from him saying he had called and that he had information. And I had to wonder, was this a coincidence, a motiveless attack of the sort that could happen to anyone? Or did it have something to do with me? As far as I knew, the police didn’t know about his visit but they soon would, and once that happened they’d haul me in for questioning. The smart thing to do was tell them before they found out, that way they would know I wasn’t holding out on them. Trouble was, holding out on them was what I did for a living. It was part of the unwritten code: protecting the client’s privacy. But I could only go so far and murder was definitely beyond the line in the sand. Not that the new broom at the police station would be much for fine distinctions anyway. His type were always itching to revoke your licence. And they generally had a preferred technique for doing it: making it fall out from your pocket as you tumbled down the police station steps.
I let Ionawr take my bed and I took the sofa. And then I put Myfanwy’s LP on the turntable, unscrewed the cap on my friend Captain Morgan, and tried to beat back the louche imaginings that all men feel in the presence of a girl who sells herself for a living. The look of reproach in her eyes didn’t help. That sweet, sharp pang and slight surprise that you maybe don’t find her attractive … ah if only she knew! As if any man would not ache and burn inside for such a lovely girl. But you cannot say it, because the act of protecting her has no meaning if you say the words. I’d love to but … it’s not that I don’t want to but … But what? Your sister died in my arms once? To speak the words is to ask to be absolved. To disavow your cake on moral grounds and then eat it anyway. Bianca’s sister, probably not much more than eighteen. The same age as Bianca when she walked into my life and almost immediately out of her own. A waif from the Moulin who, they said, never did anything from a pure motive, but who tried to help me on a case without any motive at all other than kindness. A quality so rare in those days most people didn’t recognise it when they saw it. I couldn’t save her – had to watch helplessly instead as they ran her over down at the harbour. And of all the cars in town they could have chosen to kill her with, they chose mine. So sleep alone, Ionawr, and don’t ask why; in case the answer you get is the simplest one: that three years ago I shared the same pillow with your sister. Captain Morgan stared at me. I didn’t know who he was but I could guess what he would be doing right now in my shoes. He winked and I turned the bottle round and forced my thoughts elsewhere, far away from Aberystwyth Prom, to Myfanwy, stuck with the creep Brainbocs in some cockroach-infested cantina in Patagonia. Singing those bittersweet ballads of love and loss to the half-Welsh half-Indian mestizos. On the front of the record cover, for no apparent reason, the characters were spaced out: M.Y.F.A.N.W.Y. Seven scarlet letters running through the seaside rock of my heart.
*
Next morning I put a call through to Gretel’s hall of residence. It was a bit early to expect students to be up but they were made of different mettle in Lampeter and the porter told me she was out giving alms. I left a message for her to call me before evensong at the latest. Then I made some coffee and called Meirion, the crime reporter at the Gazette. He’d heard about the attack on Marmalade but no one knew what the story was. The police were just treating it as routine. He promised to let me know if he heard anything. I asked him about the man in the Peacocks’ coat. Did it ring any bells? He chuckled. We both knew that on matters like this he had a whole cathedral belfry at his disposal.
‘I seem to remember some sort of incident out at Ysbyty Ystwyth a while back,’ he said. ‘Something to do with the military, called the Ysbyty Ystwyth Experiment or something. Apparently some civilians saw something they shouldn’t have and afterwards they got a visit from someone dressed the way you describe. I didn’t cover the story so I don’t know much but I’ll dig up what I can.’
I thanked him and went downstairs to fetch the post. There was a card from Mrs Llantrisant. If ever there was a demonstration of the fact that we never really know anyone, she was it. Ten years swabbing my step and general cleaning and all along she had been planning to blow up the dam at Nant-y-moch. She’d been on Saint Madoc’s Rock for eighteen months now, standing, they said, all day long on the cliff-top like a statue from Easter Island, staring out towards Aberystwyth. On fine days you could charter a boat from the harbour and look at her through binoculars. She must have earned some privileges through good behaviour to be allowed to send mail. This was the second in four months.
A pair of puffins have taken up residence in the eaves of the old wool shed. I have called them Gertie and Bertie. They dote on each other madly. Their cooing and billing fills me with joy in the gleam of the morning sun. But when evening falls and a gentle melancholy descends upon their preening a fear creeps into my heart and I have to close the shutters and banish them. Ah yes! love, that beautiful demon that devours us all in the end. I think of you and all that has passed between us and I forgive you freely with my heart because only love – for that harlot whose name I will not utter – could have made you betray me the way you did. Banished from the hearths of those I love and confronted daily with the rubble of my life, this is the truth I publish abroad: love will corrupt us more assuredly than sin.
Yours Gertrude Ophelia Llantrisant
I dropped the card on to the table and said to the empty room, ‘Wow!’ Despite all that had happened I found no hatred in my heart for her. Only pity. Was her middle name really Ophelia? I put on my hat and coat, left Ionawr sleeping, and walked out.
It was a grey, damp morning and the light on the end of the harbour jetty winked sleepily. I walked to the very end of the Prom and then doubled back, my steps taking me unwittingly, or perhaps because they knew better than me where they wanted to go, to the place on Harbour Row where Bianca had died: the stigmatic stain in the tarmac that commemorated the short blasted life of an Aberystwyth harlot. The mark had faded now but the faith that her outline would return was strong among the pilgrims. The nearby guest-houses were already booked out for the week of the anniversary next summer and it didn’t matter how much Domestos the ladies from the Sweet Jesus League poured on the tarmac. There was a man standing at the spot, staring down and deep in thought. It was Father Seamus. He bent down and picked up a wreath, one of the donation from the Abergavenny Rotary Club, and put it in the bin. He looked slightly embarrassed to find himself observed.
‘Best place for it,’ he said lamely.
‘You think so?’
‘We could do without this sort of nonsense.’
I nodded. ‘You’re a sceptic, then?’
‘Don’t tell me you’re not, Louie?’
I shrugged. ‘I am, of course, but it really did look like her, you know. And this is the exact spot where it happened.’
‘It’s just a stain. You could probably find one on your toilet floor that reminded you of someone if you screwed up your eyes and stared long enough. And had enough to drink.’
‘True, but no one has been murdered on my toilet floor.’
Father Seamus took my arm and led me away. ‘This sort of thing doesn’t help, Louie. I really don’t think so. These people have very pressing needs, real problems of squalor and sickness and hunger and overcrowding. Dickensian problems even …’ We walked along towards the Seaman’s Mission, Father Seamus still holding my arm, although I didn’t feel comfortable with him doing it.
‘These people need concrete solutions. Looking to ghosts for their deliverance won’t help them.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, Father.’
‘I know it’s hard, but sometimes we have to face facts, no matter how unpalatable.’
‘But what are the facts, Father?’
He raised his hand and put it on my shoulder and leaned in, faking a look of deep, pained seriousness. ‘Sometimes when a prostitute dies in brutal tragic circumstances, it doesn’t make her a Mary Magdalene, it just makes her a dead whore.’
I winced and in that moment I hated Father Seamus. No one who knew Bianca could have used words like that about her. But I said nothing because forcing a smile on to a face that sees little reason to smile and getting on with it is all part of the job.
After Father Seamus disappeared from view I walked down the alley between the two buildings to the Rock Wholesaler fronting the harbour. The door was ajar and I entered, my nostrils filling instantly with an intense suffocating sweetness. It was an Aladdin’s Cave of confectionery: millions of pink crystalline rods, neatly stacked and rising to the ceiling like alabaster columns in a mosque. The light had a soft pink translucency, almost hypnotic, like you get from staring at the bright sun through an eyelid, spidery red veins showing through like the scarlet letters a.b.e.r.y.s.t.w.y.t.h.
After the flood the stockpile had been replenished with the same urgency that they rebuild stocks of coal at a power station following a strike. And now, all around, men scurried like ants with sugar, toiling to keep it topped up. I passed through another door into an antechamber where I came upon the same scene except for a minor difference. A door was open at the back and men were lifting crates on to a lorry. Off to one side, with a Biro stuck behind her ear, Calamity was sitting on an upturned crate, punching numbers into an adding machine.
‘What do I do with the Blackpool, Miss Calamity?’ said a warehouseman.
‘Stack it behind the rainbow-coloured ones,’ she said without looking up.
I took a step forward, my shadow falling across her gaze.
‘Oh hi, Louie! How’s it going?’
‘What’s this, contraband seaside rock?’
‘Just skimming off some surplus production.’
‘Didn’t I tell you to stop all this wheeling and dealing?’
She sighed. ‘I know, you did, Louie, but it’s just not that simple.’
‘Where’s the hard part?’
‘You can’t roll an empire up overnight. I’ve got people relying on me.’
‘One of these days you’ll get into trouble.’
‘Everyone’s paid off, don’t worry. They’re all looking the other way.’
‘And what’s all this about Smokey G. Jones and some placebo?’
‘I’m trying to cut her down – she’s getting through three bottles a week.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
She shrugged. ‘You know how it is. She took part in a trial at the hospital for some new drug and they gave her the placebo. She said it worked a treat. Placebos are the –’
‘I know what they are.’
‘Faith can move mountains, Louie.’
‘But you can’t go round prescribing drugs.’
‘It’s only vitamin C. And anyway, she’s hooked now, I can’t stop it.’
The sound of a man unconvincingly barking like a dog cut through the air. The noise set off a frenzy of activity. The men stopped unloading and scurried hither and thither, slamming doors and flinging tarpaulins over crates. Shouts of ‘police’ and ‘stop’ came from the other room. Calamity grabbed her stuff and fled to the far side of the hall. In less than two seconds I was alone. Calamity rushed back, grabbed my arm and dragged me to the cupboards where they stored the protective clothing and pulled me inside.
* * *
We stood in the dark cupboard and held our breath, listening intently to the sounds from outside. Footsteps approached. Stopped. The door was pushed slightly, teasingly. And then opened. It was Llunos. He made a soft gulping sound as he recognised us, his eyes jumping in their orbits. We smiled. He closed the door. Five minutes later, a piece of paper was slipped through. It said, ‘Not you as well!’