some cell-block big shot hammers into your ear.’ I began to shout, ‘Through the ear, Sosostris, so you can hear it going bang bang bang!’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’ said Calamity. ‘Last thing you ever hear: the sound of a Biro being hammered into your brain.’
‘No, no, no! They would never do a thing like that.’
‘Of course they would,’ said Calamity. ‘Why do you think they call it the Pen?’
‘They put them other places too,’ I said. ‘Some of those felons in Shrewsbury gaol are none too refined.’
‘I’ll thank you not to use profanity in my house!’
‘Oh you don’t like profanity, huh? We’d better not send you to prison then. Make a note of that, loo-tenant, the perp. doesn’t like profanity.’
‘Maybe we’ll send you to the Girl Guides’ jamboree instead,’ said Calamity.
‘Play her the tape, loo-tenant.’
‘What tape?’ said Madame Sosostris.
Calamity took the portable cassette player out and banged it down on the table. She punched the play button the way the Feds do in the movies. She said, ‘One of our guys wearing a wire caught this. We think it’s one of your seances. You prove to us it’s not, maybe we can ride you a little easier.’ The tape began to play. ‘Recognise any of this? That demonic laughter, one of yours is it?’
‘No, no, he’s not one of mine.’
‘We think it is,’ I said.
‘I’ve never heard it before. It’s not Astaroth, his voice is deeper, and it’s not Caacrinolaas nor Malacoda; and the Tartaruchi never laugh; it’s not Zelusrous, nor Xitragupten, nor Oulotep, and defintely not Naberius. No, it’s not one of my usual ones. Please don’t send me to the Pen, I don’t want to die like that.’
‘What about the squeals?’ I said. ‘I guess you don’t know anything about them either?’
‘No!’
‘Think about it, Sosostris,’ said Calamity. ‘You’re looking down the barrel of twenty years.’
‘What for? I’ve done nothing wrong.’
Calamity gave a bitter laugh. ‘Nothing wrong? We caught you red-handed!’
‘Doing what?’
‘Money laundering.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
Calamity gave me her cynical, world-weary cop’s scowl. ‘They think once it passes through them pearly gates we can’t trace it.’
‘Or maybe that ten pound won’t even get that far,’ I said. ‘Maybe it will end up in the cashier’s pouch down at the bingo.’
‘No, no, you don’t understand . . . I can explain about the money.’
‘Save your breath,’ I said. ‘We saw that money passed across the table, we caught it on hidden camera.’
‘But it’s not like you think.’
‘It never is,’ said Calamity. ‘Robbing an old guy like that of his pension.’
‘I wasn’t robbing him, he knows it doesn’t really go to the spirits. We have to do it this way, you see. That Mr Williams is a kind man, a very decent man.’
Calamity and I exchanged frowns. We hadn’t been expecting this.
‘Oh, what’s the point?’ sighed Madame Sosostris. ‘You’ve already made up your mind, you don’t care about the truth, you just want to send me to the Pen.’
‘Of course we care about the truth,’ I said, puzzled. ‘Just tell us how it was. We saw you taking that man’s money, but maybe we didn’t see right.’
‘Take your time, ma’am, and tell us in your own words,’ said Calamity.
Madame Sosostris paused as if summoning up the strength to go on. ‘He started coming to my sittings when his wife got sick. She wasn’t what you might call an easy woman, Mrs Williams. No, not easy at all. She was one of those women who liked to organise everything, you see, she liked everything “just so” and woe betide you if it wasn’t. She used to send him here to make the arrangements for when she went to heaven, so it would be just how she wanted.’ Madame Sosostris paused and grimaced slightly as if the next bit was hard to say. ‘I’ve never . . . I’ve never been a very attractive woman, I know that. But Mr Williams didn’t seem to mind. He would stay for tea and, with time, when the weather turned nice and summer was upon us, we would sometimes drink pop – dandelion and burdock and on occasion, why! we might even treat ourselves to a glass of shandy. Mr Williams would take the bottles back for a refund and give the pennies to me, saying it was a little something for the spirits. That’s how it started. It became our little joke. Oh! We would chat so gaily. I suppose it sounds absurd to big city people like you, but I’d never had conversations like that before, not with . . . with someone who liked me. This isn’t easy for me to say but I’m afraid our friendship led us to stray from the path of righteousness. There were consequences. A child. A little girl called Maddy. This was fifteen years ago, Aberaeron was different then – there was no way we could even think of keeping her. Mrs Williams was still alive, you see, and despite having made very elaborate provisions for her accession to heaven she didn’t show any great impatience to finish the job. So we decided to give Maddy to my sister in Gwent who would bring her up as her own.’ Madame Sosostris clenched the tablecloth in her fists. ‘I’ve never been very good with words, so I won’t even try and say how that felt, giving her up, the fruit of the only episode of happiness I had ever known. Such a harmless thing, happiness, and yet we always seem to end up being punished for enjoying it. Mr Williams never saw her after that. I mean he never met her, although I do suspect he goes away sometimes and watches her through his binoculars. He goes on birdwatching trips, you see. But for fifteen years now he has given me anything he can spare for her. This is his way. A little money slipped across the table to be passed on to the spirits. That way the gossips round here will be none the wiser and he goes home happy that his daughter will have the occasional treat.’ A shiny tear fell on to the tablecloth. ‘May the Lord have mercy on us both. We were weak, led astray by laughter and summer days filled with gaiety and shandy, in a life that had always been as dour as the cover of a Bible. Was it such a sin? Life is so hard sometimes, so hard . . . so . . . cruel.’
I pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to Madame Sosostris. She accepted it without looking at me, and squeaked in acknowledgement like a mouse.
‘I think the loo-tenant here might be thinking of making a cup of tea,’ I said.
Calamity stood up. ‘Sure, boss.’
‘Tell the maid,’ said Madame Sosostris. She dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief. ‘I’m sorry for making a scene, I . . . I don’t know what I would do if you sent me to prison. I don’t know how I would cope.’
‘No one’s going to send you to prison,’ I said softly, eaten up with shame. ‘It’s all been a terrible mistake. We were given wrong information. We’re truly sorry, I would like to ask you to forget this meeting ever took place.’
She looked up, eyes glistening, and squeezed my hand. ‘Please don’t worry about it. Policemen are human too.’
Calamity came back with the maid, who carried a tray. As she stirred her tea, Madame Sosostris said, ‘I don’t think that tape you played was made by anyone at a seance. The demonic laughter sounds a bit artificial to me; and that squealing in the background sounds like seagulls; and the other sound, the clattering one with the bell, it reminds me of a tram. If you ask me the recording was made in Aberystwyth, somewhere on the Prom.’
As the bus circled the village green before heading back to Aberystwyth Calamity turned to me and said, ‘That story about Mr Williams, I guess it had to be true?’
I looked at her and said nothing.
Chapter 12
