Last Tango in Aberystwyth

more shady than Aunt Minnie in the foreground. Just out of focus because she hadn't mastered the depth of field. It wasn't surprising she'd given up. I was about to do the same. And then my gaze lingered on the picture taken in the railway station. I blinked, snatched it up and peered at it. My heart lurched.

It was a snap of a family leaving for a walking-holiday, four of them, two adults and two kids, all wearing hiking boots with rucksacks on the dusty platform floor. And in the background there was a woman standing and looking as if she had just stepped off the train; at her feet a suitcase. Out-of-focus, indistinct, the colour washed out; but even so you could tell she was beautiful. And, more to the point, I knew who it was.

'Oh my God!' I groaned. 'It's Myfanwy.'

I looked at the date under the photo. It had been taken six months ago.

*

The gale shrieked like a ghoul, sweeping roof-tiles like leaves into the night sky. Against the base of the Prom the waves crashed and tore out blocks of stone the size of steamer trunks, spitting them on to the road. We drove along the Prom, dodging the debris, the rocks and stones, the matchwood that earlier had been a bandstand. The hotels were dolls' houses tonight, the seaside railings broken and bent like pipe cleaners. I remembered the tales from the South Seas I read as a kid, about the typhoons in which the coral islanders lashed themselves to the coconut trees to avoid being swept out to sea. The booming and pounding of the sea was relentless, as sustained and regular as the artillery barrage that preceded the assault on the Somme. And with each fresh wave, spray soared high into the sky, rising like a geyser above the rooftops and then remaining suspended at the acme, for breathless seconds, like poplar trees of milk glittering in the streetlights.

Eeyore's stables were down by the harbour on the Pen Dinas side, next to the oast houses. We found him knee-deep in straw, running a gentle, calming hand along the flanks of the frightened beasts. They were fearful and restless, flinching at the sound of every crash of the wind against the door and staring with terror in their lake eyes. The girl from the Chinese was also there in Wellingtons, pouring the contents of a bucket into a manger.

'What is it?' I asked.

'Chop-suey!'

'They eat that?'

'They love it, it's a treat for when they are frightened. It's mostly grass anyway, isn't it?'

We went into the kitchen and sat at the unstained oak table listening to the fury of the storm. I told Eeyore about Calamity and asked what he thought I should do and he said he didn't know.

'The note isn't necessarily bad,' he said at length. 'It doesn't mean they've got her.'

'But she's going looking for them, it's what they want. Obviously Custard Pie set her up.'

'It still doesn't mean they've got her yet. There's still time.'

I could feel his eyes on me, watching me, secretly willing me to be strong.

'Anyway,' he said, 'wherever she is, I hope she's not out in this.' He stood up and walked to the rain-blasted windows. 'You could die in a storm like this. We forget how puny we are. Everything we do in life conspires to hide from us this simple truth. And because every day we escape to live another day, the world deceives us ... makes us believe there is some force protecting us ... that says it can't happen ... When it does, we feel almost ashamed at the stupidity of it, embarrassed that we ever thought for a moment that we were immortal

He stopped speaking and rested his chin thoughtfully on the top of his thumb, as if there was a part missing from his story but he wasn't quite sure what it was. After a while, just as I began to think he was drifting off, he looked up and said, 'Did you see that film A Night to Remember? About the Titanic?' 'Yes a couple of times, only on TV.'

'It was on at the cinema about the time I joined the Force. I went to see it with your mum when we first started courting. Marvellous film.' The faint trace of a smile tugged at the corners of his eyes. 'Of course we were kids then in the back row so we missed a lot of it, but ... but ... Stormy nights always make me think of it.

'Women and children first,' said the girl from the take-away. 'I said you lot were sentimental. On a Chinese ship the order given would have been, Men first, children second, women last. It makes perfect economic sense.'

Eeyore chuckled and then became thoughtful again. 'It was just a tiny bump they said. It's always haunted me, that bit. All those people drinking and dancing and partying late into the night, their lives so glittering and full of promise. And then a strange noise, a little bump — almost perceptible — and yet the shard of ice had opened up the ship like a tin-opener.'

He turned to me, and said, 'I know you're scared, son, everyone gets scared. It's what comes next that matters.'

'But I don't know what comes next.'

'No, perhaps not yet. But you will. You just need to go beyond your medicine line.'

I smiled softly. 'Sitting Bull again.'

'It's like I was saying, you see. Most of the time we live like the sheriff's posse, penned in by the medicine line. Never going beyond. But there are times when it disappears. Something happens and we just pass right through it like Sitting Bull and his braves. Such a moment, I believe, took place on the ice-strewn deck of the Titanic, In that precise instant when the men saw that they were doomed the code that bound them disappeared. For the first time in their lives, it didn't matter what they did or how they conducted themselves. It didn't make a difference any more what society thought of them. Each man stood there naked. That's when you perceive the existence of the other code. The one that lies hidden all your life like the iceberg beneath the sea. That's when you find out what you're really made of. We know that many men became little better than snarling dogs. They panicked, and screamed, and lost their wits. But not everyone did. There were men there who ...' He stopped and thought for a second, struggling to find a suitable term to sum them up, these men who had made such a lasting impression on him. 'There was some retired military chap there, for example, who stood before the lifeboats and fought those wild dogs back with an iron bar.' Eeyore paused and smiled in admiration, perhaps imagining himself standing there too, his iron bar gleaming palely in the Newfoundland starlight.

'It must have been an amazing scene,' he continued, 'but the one that has always haunted me took place elsewhere on the ship, away from the turmoil. It was about the time the water entered the engine room and hundreds of stokers were scalded to death; and the rest surged up on deck armed with shovels with which to beat their way to the lifeboats.

'At this moment, Ben Guggenheim, the millionaire, walked into the first-class lounge with his servant. They were both dressed for dinner. The room was deserted now, the floor listing crazily, and an eerie silence prevailed, perhaps the only sound the distant strains of the band on deck playing 'Autumn'. The ship's officers pleaded with them to return to the deck and to a lifeboat, because it went without saying that such important passengers would get a place in a boat. But Ben Guggenheim said no. There he stood: the whole pre-war world of luxury, privilege and impossible splendour laid out at his feet... the savour of life could not have been sweeter for any man alive in the world that night. And he was being offered a place in a lifeboat. But Ben Guggenheim refused to go. Instead he calmly ordered a brandy and said, 'Never let it be said that a woman or child died on this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward.''

Eeyore paused for a second and nodded to himself as if making sure he had got that right. 'It doesn't mean anything, son, I know, it's just a story ...' He turned and smiled at the girl from the take-away. 'And if it had been a Chinese ship we probably never would have heard of him. But so often when I see you, Louie, doing what you do here in Aberystwyth, risking your life and getting knocked on the bonce once a week by some piece of dirt who's not fit to wipe your shoes ... well I see it and you know what I think? And you'll laugh, I know, because it's daft, but I don't care. I see it and I think to myself, there goes Ben Guggenheim!

He walked over and put a tired old hand on my shoulder, a hand that had fingered the collars of multitudes of villains in its time. 'I don't know what you are going to do about Calamity, son,' he said. 'But I know you'll think of something ... Because my son has never let anyone down yet.'

Chapter 20

The next morning the storm had passed, leaving the town damp and steaming and fanned by the dregs of the gale. Llunos was already waiting for me when I got back to the office. One of his men had hauled Harries in that morning, or whoever it was pretending to be him. He was waiting down at the station. I didn't bother to wash or shave, just made coffee and picked up the Colt 45. I took out the cartridges, fetched a Ziploc bag from the kitchen and gave it all to Llunos.

Harri Harries was in Llunos's office, with a policeman standing watch outside. As he opened the door, Llunos