‘You’re like that woman, Typhoid Mary. You should be in quarantine.’
I groaned again. He stuck a shovel into a pile of white rocks and threw them into the cauldron of tea. The god Thor lent him a spare hammer and he slammed it against the porcelain anvil.
‘Oh yes, you are a voodoo man. For ten or fifteen or I forget exactly how many years you and I have been working this town, every so often I find a dead man who is somehow connected to you. Don’t you find that strange?’
I groaned.
‘Oh yes, Louie Knight, the undertaker’s friend. It’s one of your best features. But the one I really like is the way you lie; particularly to that body of people whom good citizens are required to tell the truth to, the police. You remember the police?’
I groaned.
‘Course you do. Those suckers you can always ask if you want to know the time.’
He pulled out a quarter bottle of rum from his jacket pocket. My hand flew to my mouth as the urge to retch flooded over me. He laughed again and brought over two tumblers from the draining board. He filled them to the brim and slid one across to me. ‘Cheers!’ I looked at him in despair. ‘Drink it,’ he said. I picked up the glass, my hand trembling so violently the rum spilled over the rim. He took a drink, I took a drink. He took a drink, I took a drink. He took one more, I took one more. I felt better. Much better. I smiled at Llunos. He was my friend who had come to make me feel well. ‘Drink,’ he said. ‘It will wake you up; today is an important day; we are going to see some dead men.’
I sat up straight in my chair and said . . . my face hit the table and I passed out.
I regained consciousness briefly in Llunos’s car somewhere near Rhydypennau, and then once again as we drove down Penglais Hill. There was a bacon sandwich on my lap and a Styrofoam cup of tea wedged between the seat and the handbrake. It was the kindest thing Llunos had ever done for me. Probably the kindest thing anyone had ever done since I was a child. We drove along the Prom, and turned left after the castle to enter the bed & breakfast ghetto – a warren of crooked narrow streets where every second house was a Shangri-la. An ambulance and a cop car were parked outside one of the houses, with a few cops keeping the gawkers back. The cop on the door stood aside to let us through and the gawkers looked on enviously. Inside the front door it was the usual cheap seaside guest house arrangement: an occasional table with a phone and an assortment of framed photos; a vase of bulrushes stained lurid colours; framed views of Norman castles lining the corridor leading to the kitchen. Stairs led up to a landing, sheathed in russet, apricot and umber floral-pattern carpet.
At the top of the stairs, men in white paper suits were photographing and putting invisible things with tweezers into sandwich bags. A young man was sitting in a straight-backed chair next to the window, with a look of great surprise on his face, an expression enhanced by his hair which was standing up in comic-book fashion. The surprise on his face looked terminal.
‘Know this kid?’ asked Llunos.
‘I think it’s one of the students we saw painting watercolours the day we found Gethsemane.’
‘Funny, you didn’t tell me about the students.’
‘Didn’t I?’
‘Must have slipped your mind.’
‘Maybe I didn’t think it was important.’
He made a grunt that said he would be the judge of what was important. ‘His mate is in the next room looking pretty much the same. The third hasn’t returned home.’
‘He doesn’t look very alive.’
‘Died last night around midnight; the door downstairs at the back was forced. No one heard anything.’
‘What did he die of?’
‘Fright. Or something like it. That’s what the doctor thinks. His teeth are all broken.’
A woman in a housecoat, a head scarf, spectacles with blue translucent plastic frames, and a permanent expression of martyrdom appeared on the landing. A landlady straight from central casting.
‘They haven’t paid this month’s rent,’ she said.
‘It’s more serious than I thought,’ said Llunos. ‘I thought it was just a double murder.’
‘It would be different if it was your house.’
‘That’s right, the first thing I would think about would be the rent. You’re a saint, Mrs Crogau.’
‘I was banking on that money. Where will I get it from now?’
‘I’ll have a word with the coroner. Maybe we can let you have the pennies from their eyes.’
Mrs Crogau folded her arms under her bosom. ‘I was just observing that the rent was due. There’s no law against it.’
‘No, but there is one against going through the pockets of dead students and stealing.’
‘Who says I did that?’
‘Nobody yet.’
She sniffed and began to walk downstairs, adding, ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea if I didn’t think you’d plant some cocaine in the sugar bowl.’
Llunos turned his attention to me. ‘How come you forgot to mention the students?’
‘Old age. My memory’s not what it used to be.’
He scowled. It was a stupid thing to say, using sarcasm with Llunos invariably ends in tears and seldom his.
‘What were you doing out there, again?’
‘We just went to see the church spire.’
‘Are you concealing anything?’
‘No.’
‘Would you tell me if you were?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t know why I bothered, of course you are concealing something. It’s habitual. If I asked you the time you’d lie.’
‘What made you fetch me?’
He walked over to a chest of drawers and picked up a sandwich bag from the top. There was a Polaroid photo inside. ‘Looks like they were into photography as well as painting,’ he said. The photo showed me and Calamity dragging the girl from the lake. ‘What was the name of your client again?’
‘What client?’
He turned away. ‘All right, you can go now. Don’t leave town without telling me and don’t walk away with the idea that I believe you.’
Mrs Crogau was standing on the doorstep which fronted directly on to the road. Her arms were folded in a defiant air that suggested Fate sending her two corpses who hadn’t paid the rent was just the latest in a long series of trials. I stopped at the occasional table and looked at the photos. I picked up one that caught my eye. It was a wedding photo.
‘Like weddings, do you?’ she said.
‘This looks like Ffanci Llangollen’s sister, Mrs Mochdre.’
‘That’s right; married the Witchfinder. I was a bridesmaid.’
I considered the scene.
‘Bit of a strange do that was,’ she said.
‘Strange? In what way?’
She pursed her lips. ‘It’s all so long ago now, of course . . . my memory, you see. Very strange it was.’
I took out a pound coin and made it appear and disappear between my fingers the way magicians do. ‘Tough break, that,’ I said. ‘Two kids dying on you just before the rent is due. Guess it will be hard making the bingo payments this month.’
‘I won’t be shooting craps in Las Vegas, that’s for sure,’ said Mrs Crogau.
‘Maybe I can help.’
She looked greedily at the coin. ‘We all need help from time to time.’
‘That’s right. You scratch my back, I give you a shilling for the meter.’ I let the sun’s reflection catch the coin and play over her face.
