was sharp and stank of dried fish. Midway along the route, I turned a corner and then stepped into a doorway and waited. A figure in a trench coat and trilby appeared walking quietly and furtively. I stepped out and stood in his path without saying anything.
He froze, and then turned to run just as I lunged forwards and grabbed the front of his coat. We struggled and fell against a pile of fish-smelling cages. In the tussle the man's beard came off. It was a cheap joke-shop one held on with plastic spectacle frames which hooked over the ears. I looked into his face in astonishment. It was a woman. The surprise was enough to give her the split-second she needed. Out of a pocket came a can which she sprayed into my face. Pepper spray. My spine arched backwards with a vicious kick as I struggled to escape the stinging needles of the gas. At the same time, the woman struggled free and ran off, leaving me holding a false beard and the button off the front of her coat.
I couldn't take Calamity into the pub so I gave her some money for fish and chips and told her to make herself scarce. Then I entered the front bar. It had a pleasant careworn air about it, the round wooden tables were ingrained with years of spilled beer and cigarette stains and the plain wooden chairs were worn smooth. It was tricked out with sailors' hats and maritime odds and ends and behind the bar there was a ship's wheel that looked like it had come off a real ship. It was a plain old-fashioned boozer populated by plain old-fashioned people.
I asked the landlord about the Punch and Judy show and he interrupted his polishing of a gleaming pint glass to gesture at a set of double doors leading on to a yard at the back. If it had been slightly less scruffy you could have got away with calling it a terrace. Rows of chairs had already been set and gulls hopped among the seats.
'Should be quite a show,' the landlord said, observing my interest.
I nodded.
'Oh yes, if you like that sort of thing, you should find it most edifying. Very interesting slant it is.'
I raised my eyebrows.
'Oh no, don't get me wrong, sir. It's very traditional. All the old favourites. Nothing too avant-garde. Regulars wouldn't stand for those — what do they call them? — 'contemporary interpretations' like you get in Swansea.'
I grimaced politely. 'You can't beat the old way of doing things.'
'I see you're a man after my own heart, sir.'
'When they throw the baby out of the window I expect a visit from the policeman, not the social services.'
'And that's exactly what you'll get here. Although,' he added, 'Mr Davies is no dinosaur either. He does make one or two interpretations of his own, but not in such a way as to ram it down your throat, if you'll pardon the expression.'
I picked up my pint. 'I think I'll go and make sure of a good seat.'
'Very wise. It'll be standing room only in another quarter of an hour.'
As I started to walk away he called me back and leaned conspiratorially across the counter and took hold of my lapel. 'Seeing as you're a bit of sportsman, sir, you might like to know...' He pulled my ear closer to his mouth and whispered, 'We've got a bit of a game going on upstairs afterwards. 'Mr Chunky'.'
'Mr what?'
'Chunky. Mr Chunky says Parsnip — the drinking game.'
I nodded. 'Ah!'
He looked cautiously from side to side and added, 'Llanfihangel-y-Creuddyn rules: vomit once to join the table and twice to leave.'
By 8.15 there were three people in the audience including me. The other two were an old couple, silver- haired and wrinkled and shaking like jelly. The bar man had been lying, of course, but I had known that all along. It was obvious from the state of Davies's clothes that he wasn't packing them in every night. Even in Swansea no one ever got rich on the Punch and Judy circuit. The dream of seeing your name in big red type on the wall of the bandstand was just that — a dream from the same tattered rag-bag of empty hopes that had been filling the second-class railway compartments to Shrewsbury for more than a hundred years.
* * *
Davies came on just after 8.30. He made a quick glance at the empty seats, put on a defiant look and went behind the stripey canvas booth. Seconds later the squeaky voices started. I wondered about his life. I wasn't familiar with 'Mr Chunky says Parsnip', but I knew plenty of games like it, and I knew what they did to people. After about ten minutes of the performance the old couple left, Iolo carried on gamely for another fifteen minutes before winding up. It was a very ordinary performance but not as hopeless as it could have been; he had some skill at least. Towards the end he had even indulged in some experimental interpretation with a scene I hadn't seen before where the policeman plants a piece of trumped-up evidence on Mr Punch. The echoes of Iolo's own fate were clear if pathetically pointless.
When the show ended I clapped slowly and deliberately. It took Iolo Davies five minutes to gather his things together, put away the puppets, and emerge from behind the booth. I carried on clapping and he looked over at me.
'You taking the piss?'
'My name's Louie.'
'Did I ask?'
'I thought you might like to know.'
'What do you want?'
'Information about Dai Brainbocs.'
He stopped and looked round. 'Just leave me alone.'
'It won't take long.'
'What do you want to ask about him for? He's dead isn't he?'
'I want to know why.'
He looked at me through narrowed eyes.
'Who are you?'
'I'm a relative of Brainbocs.'
'No you're not.'
'I'm a private detective investigating his death.'
He turned to leave again.
'Look!' I said hurriedly. 'It would only take a few minutes, and I might be able to help you.'
He snorted. 'You're out of your depth.'
I tried a final gambit. 'You think it was right what happened to you?'
He laughed bitterly. 'Does it matter?'
'All I want is a few minutes.'
Iolo Davies put the last chip in his mouth, scrunched the wrapping paper up and threw it out of the car window. Then he turned to me, the light from the street lamp silvering the edge of his face.
'How much do you know?'
'I know Brainbocs was working on Cantref-y-Gwaelod; I know he disappeared shortly after handing his essay in; I know the kids say he stumbled on to something big, something the Welsh teacher didn't like. I know Lovespoon is planning to reclaim the land of Cantref-y-Gwaelod and take a group of pilgrims there in an Ark. I know three other kids working on the same essay are dead and one is missing. I presume they were killed because they copied Brainbocs's homework and found out whatever it was he found out. I know you lost your job about the same time as well. And it's my guess you were punished for helping Brainbocs.'
The old Museum curator wiped his greasy fingers down the thighs of his trousers and shook his head gently in admiration as he recalled Brainbocs's scholarship. His voice took on a sad and distant quality.
'The Cantref-y-Gwaelod stuff was genius. No other word for it. He did it all, you know. This whole Exodus project to build the Ark and settle the land — it was all Brainbocs's idea. He was down the Museum a lot, usually in the archives. He wanted to do things with the school essay that people didn't even dream could be done. He had this idea that you could somehow shake the world with one. I mean, partly it was some sort of compensation for the bad leg. But still, it was more than that. He once said he could wrestle with destiny and force her to her knees.' He laughed without mirth. 'I know, it sounds a load of crap when I say it, but when you listened to him . . . you just
