‘Where did you get the gun?’
‘It used to belong to my father.’
‘What did he need it for?’
She smiled. ‘He was an outlaw like you.’
‘What sort of outlaw?’
‘His name was Iestyn Probert.’
I looked at her in astonishment, mouth agape in the dark. ‘Well, I’ll be . . . all this time you . . . you’ve been . . . I don’t know what to say.’
‘I’m so sorry. I hated lying to you. I’m just a little kid, Louie. I don’t think I’d be strong enough to stand on that battlement.’
I took her face in my hands and kissed her. ‘You would, trust me.’
‘Iestyn spent a week on the run before they caught him. My mother hid him in her cottage. Nine months later I was born.’
‘And now you are looking for him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even though they hanged him.’
‘A lot of people say he’s alive.’
She carried the two mugs of cocoa over to the table. I followed and sat down. She topped them up with Jack Daniels.
‘And you are here in Aber now because you think he will come back because of the flying-saucer reports?’
‘Yes. It’s worth trying, isn’t it? I want to see him. Wouldn’t you want to see your father?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘I’m sure he would come if he could.’
‘Do you know why Raspiwtin is here?’
‘He’s looking for Iestyn, too. He thinks I know where he is, so he watches me. But I don’t. He’s watching and waiting. What are you going to do now?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve run out of ideas.’
‘You need to rest.’
Stupefied with tiredness, I followed her across the caravan to the bed. I slumped down and said, ‘I’ll be gone early tomorrow. I have something to do.’
‘You said you’d run out of ideas.’
‘I’m going to see Sauerkopp. Two days after Mrs Lewis was murdered he turned up in my office with a Polaroid of her body. His people must have been following me the night she was murdered. He must know who did it. He pretends he doesn’t, but he must do. I’ll ask him. If it was the mayor, I can use that to get him to make Meici drop the accusation against me. If it was Doc Digwyl, then that must have something to do with the mayor.’
‘What makes you think he will help you?’
‘I’ll make him. I need to borrow the gun.’
She kissed me and said, ‘OK.’
I watched through the obscuring gauze of my drooping eyelashes as she gently undressed me. Girl on the battlement; angel in pyjamas; her hands were cool and soothing like the apse of a church on a summer’s day.
Chapter 16
I rose at first light, dragged from the depths of sleep by the first barely perceptible lightening of the curtains. It was damp outside and a sodden parcel lay on the metal step, addressed to me. It was from Chastity. Inside was a piece of wedding cake wrapped in a red napkin. Next to it, a letter written on lilac Basildon Bond notepaper that was almost certainly kept by her aunt in a zip-up leather case along with matching envelopes. Matching your letter paper and envelopes is like polishing the heels and toes of your shoes with equal dedication: not many people do it nowadays, but those who do would continue to do so even in the event of a nuclear war. The letter was neatly written in a childish variant of Victorian copperplate that hinted at many hours spent practising beneath the unflinching gaze of her aunt:
I fetched a coffee from the vending machine outside Reception and ate a makeshift breakfast of wedding cake and coffee as I drove east, towards Ystumtuen. The gun in my pocket felt as cold against my thigh as a linoleum floor in winter. Three wasps woke from their slumbers and buzzed repeatedly against the windscreen, seemingly looking back in dismay as Maelor Gawr caravan park receded in the distance. Once fully awake they transferred their energies to the cake. I drove one-handed and waved the cake erratically in a vain bid to fend them off. They ducked and weaved like First World War biplanes, darting in and out almost as if they were attached to my hand by elastic.
I wanted to call Sauerkopp but not from just anywhere. It needed to be a place with a telephone kiosk, place to park the car and a derelict house nearby. Iestyn’s ruined house would do just fine. It began to rain and the drops whipped across the windscreen, overwhelming the feeble wipers to form a bleary and uniform opalescence. The gloom thickened; I drove in a trance.
The red telephone kiosk was situated at the junction of the main road and the lane that led up to Iestyn’s old house. I parked the car in the lay-by further up and walked to the phone. The door squeaked like a frightened mouse; inside it smelled of urine and sheep dung; cold wind blew through a broken pane in the door. I called the number, hung up and returned to the car. Half an hour later a car arrived and parked opposite the kiosk. Sauerkopp spent some time looking round the telephone kiosk and then walked towards my car. He saw me, bent down to the window and found himself facing the gun. I got out, told him to turn around and put his hands on the roof of the car the way the cops did. He grinned as if it were the best joke he’d heard all week. I hit him over the back of the head with the gun, and he crumpled against the car, then slid to the ground.
When he regained consciousness fifteen minutes later, he was sitting against a wall in the abandoned croft, trussed up with gaffer tape. Staring at the gun. It took him a while to grasp all the details of the scene, but once he had he smiled and said, ‘You’ve done well. I knew my faith in you wasn’t misplaced.’
‘Sorry I had to hit you.’
‘It’s OK, I’m used to it. If you’re going to threaten to shoot me, I might as well tell you now, I won’t believe you.’
‘I’m not going to shoot you.’ I eased the safety catch on and slipped the gun into my pocket. ‘I just want to chat.’
‘My door is always open.’
‘I’m in trouble.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m wanted for murder; the only witness is Meici Jones, but he’s lying. I think the mayor put him up to it. I don’t know why, maybe because I poked my nose into his business and he didn’t like it. It’s something about this famous kid in the silver suit.’
‘How can I help?’
‘You told me at the hospital it was your job to look after people who worked for the Aviary.’
‘I can’t get them off a murder charge.’
‘I didn’t do it and you know it.’
