‘Assuming the farmer can be believed. My guess is, he dreamed the whole thing up.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘I don’t know. We’ll ask him. Get his address.’
‘Already have. He lives out at Ynys Greigiog.’
I filled the teapot with hot water and carried the tray over to where we once had a desk. ‘We’ll go and see him.’
‘Sure, but we also do the ad.’ She picked up a sheet of paper torn from an exercise book and read. ‘For Sale. Secondhand 1947 Buick, black. One careful lady owner, 27,000 miles on the clock. Must be seen to be believed.’ She looked up grinning. ‘I’ve already placed it.’
I put my hat on.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to see the mayor and ask for the address of his soothsayer.’
It was raining on the Prom but not heavily – a drizzle. Dark rags of cloud scudded across the blue sky and turned the world to silver and anthracite. The pale blue wooden benches misted over; the charcoal grit that passed for sand on the beach darkened; there were no bathers to disturb, just dog-walkers who didn’t care, and a few students defiantly sitting on the pebbles, dressed in that strange amalgam of charity shop and high street, a sort of Dickensian-New Aquarian oddness. It probably wasn’t a good idea to see the mayor, but that was often the trouble with being a private eye: most of the good ideas were simultaneously bad ones.
I cut through the public shelter to South Road. The town hall was up ahead on the left; the mayor held an afternoon surgery every Wednesday. I entered a small anteroom and approached a counter. I gave my name and told the clerk I wished to speak to the mayor about the arrest of Iestyn Probert in 1965. Then I took a seat. There was one other person waiting. He was staring at me with a venomous intensity. It was Meici Jones.
‘I thought it was you,’ he said.
Meici was a spinning-wheel salesman I had encountered on a previous case. He was one of life’s mistfits who had lived with his mum till the age of thirty-five and still wore short trousers on her orders. As a consequence of that case – indirectly, although I was sure he didn’t see it that way – his mum had been sent to jail for murder. At the time of the trial I had wondered how he would cope on his own, and the image that presented itself to me in the mayor’s anteroom suggested not all that well. He was wearing long trousers now, but they were ragged and crumpled. His white shirt was grey and blotched, though he had managed to wear a tie. His hair was badly in need of a cut.
‘Hi Meici.’
‘I saw you come in. I was here first.’
‘How have you been keeping?’
‘To tell you the truth, Lou, things have been pretty difficult. I’m on my own, did you know that?’
‘Yes, I . . . assumed . . . at the trial I –’
‘I wash my own clothes and stuff now, and I get my own food. Mum used to be quite hard sometimes, but . . . it’s funny . . . now she’s not there . . . no one’s there . . .’ He didn’t finish the sentence, but shook his head disconsolately. People like Meici have something painful about them. An earnest, bovine simplicity, a gaucheness and the air of a soul not at home in the world and easily wounded. These traits constitute the cheese in the jaws of a psychological mousetrap that snaps shut the moment you begin to feel sympathy.
‘That’s tough,’ I said. ‘Living alone isn’t easy if you aren’t used to it.’
‘She got fifteen years, did you know that? She doesn’t find it easy either, Lou.’
I prickled with shame.
‘I died, did you hear about it?’
I turned to give him a puzzled look.
‘When they sentenced her, I was in court. I collapsed and my heart stopped beating. They put me in an ambulance. I had one of those near-death experiences, have you heard about them?’
‘No, Meici.’
‘I was in a tunnel of light, Lou, climbing towards a really bright light, like the sun. I could hear singing up ahead and then there was a gate and an angel with a clipboard. He said, “Meici Jones, you’re not due today.” I looked over his shoulder and I saw Esau – you remember me telling you about my little brother Esau who died when I was five?’
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘He was sitting in an orchard and he waved. I was going to say something but the angel said, “You have to go back, your task is not completed.” Then I felt a sucking force behind me, dragging me back. It got stronger and stronger, and I felt myself being pulled back and back, down the tunnel, and the light dimmed. I opened my eyes and found myself in the ambulance staring up at the medic. He was playing cards on my chest. He looked quite shocked and said, “Oh, sorry mate.” ’ Meici turned to me and gave me an intense gaze. ‘He made me promise not to tell anyone he had been playing cards on me. What do you think of that?’
‘That’s a pretty amazing story, Meici.’
‘My task isn’t finished, Lou. I’ve always sort of known I was put on this earth for a reason. That’s partly why I am here today. I’m applying for the human cannonball, I hear there’s a vacancy.’ He opened his fist and revealed a crumpled newspaper advert, roughly torn out. ‘It’s for the election, Ercwleff is looking for . . . for . . .’
I peered at the advertisement. ‘A surrogate?’
‘Yes. I could do that.’
‘What happened to the other guy?’
‘He hit a wall.’
‘Doesn’t that put you off?’
‘I’m ready for it. Marathon runners get the same problem, don’t they? Something to do with carbohydrates. You have to eat spaghetti. I love spaghetti hoops.’
Soon after that he was called in and I didn’t see him again that afternoon. There must have been another way out. I was next in the mayor’s private office. He had a client’s chair, like mine only grander and made from mahogany treble clefs. It was the sort of client’s chair Queen Anne used to favour before she got out of the gumshoe business. The desk was also mahogany with a glass top on which were arranged a telephone blotter and a pen holder, both even cornier than the chairs. I sat down and smiled.
The mayor removed a cigar from a box on the desk, took pains not to offer me one and spent a long time retrieving a device from the inside breast pocket of his jacket. With this he sliced off the end of the cigar. Then he belaboured the ritual of lighting it and taking the first draw, still affecting not to notice me. I made a few half- hearted snoring noises. Finally, once his cigar was satisfactorily alight, he positioned it in his cocked index finger, across the top of his other four knuckles, and aimed it at me.
‘Where have I seen you before?’ he asked.
‘Damned if I know.’
‘I’m usually pretty good with faces.’
‘You mean rearranging them.’
‘Wisecracker, eh?’
‘It was a clue to my profession. I thought it might help you place me.’
He nodded slowly. ‘In my experience, only two professions are distinguished by a predisposition for the wisecrack. Cops and peepers. You’re not a cop.’
‘This is where you do the phoney act of dawning realisation. But you can spare me that one; not even the mayor of Aberystwyth is so busy he can’t remember the face of a man whose desk he chopped up two days ago.’
‘I must admit I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon.’
‘I’ve come about the human-cannonball job.’
‘You’re too tall. You would stick out too far from the end of the barrel.’
‘Why do you need a surrogate anyway? I thought the candidates were supposed to do it themselves.’
‘Delegation. The ability to find the right man for the right job. It’s an essential requirement in a mayor. You are not the right man, I’m afraid. We’re looking for someone with a better knowledge of semiotics. That’s the study of signs and meaning.’
‘I know what it is.’
