The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth (3 page)

The girls started to gather in the hall, dark shapes like crows on a telegraph line, whispering and bobbing in excitement until one of the sisters said the next one to talk would be sent back to bed. So then silence fell like a guillotine blade but lasted only a few brief seconds before irresistible whispering broke the surface again. Two girls were sent back to their dormitory. Then they formed into pairs and followed Sister Cunégonde out into the night with their torches, like a phalanx of cinema usherettes lifting the siege of a walled city.

We passed through a door marked ‘Staff Only’ into a garden never normally visited by pupils, past shrubs that they could only appreciate through the window, and on through a door set in a high wall topped with vicious jags of broken glass. Beyond the wall, towards the edge of the estuary, lay the fifteenth-century ruins of the convent that the Sisters of Deiniol had once
occupied. It threw shadows in the night like the broken teeth of a goblin. The chapel of rest was still in use and the candles inside threw a pale gleam that trembled like a reflection on the waters of a brook.

From the car, Myfanwy could have turned right and walked in this direction and perhaps got lost in the salt marsh; or turned left towards the dunes. Or gone straight ahead into the waters of the Dovey estuary. After an hour of searching, one of the girls found a locket on the dunes engraved with the word ‘Myfanwy’.

I returned to the caravan and brewed tea. Then I sat in the darkness and drank, waiting for dawn. All men, if they are honest, are scared of the dark. The arrival of light, even a glimmer under the edge of a door, lifts the spirit in a way that can’t be described, because it dates back to a time before language. Hope returns, night terrors evaporate. You smile at the childishness of it all, the demons who haunted your sleep. It was just a dream. But that morning I had a new companion. Dread. The light under the door was a passing car.

I drove to town and parked by the harbour and walked down towards the elbow where the Prom bent sharply and found Sospan already up and preparing his kiosk for the day. Word had already reached him about Myfanwy and when I asked which was best of all the many exotic flavours and combinations in his medicinal cabinet of ices he said in such a situation there was nothing better, no balm more soothing, than simple vanilla. And so, just like on any other day, I ordered a 99 with plenty of ripple.

I offered him one but it was still too early; and, besides, he said, leaning forward out of the booth to be closer to me in my hour of need, he needed to keep a clear head to help get to the bottom of what had happened and erase this terrible stain on the honour of the ice man’s profession. His sharp mind had already intuited what the forensic scientists would later confirm: the search last night and the more thorough-going one planned for this
morning were pointless. It was clear that the ripple in the ices yesterday had been tampered with and whoever did it, given that I was asleep for at least three hours, had all the time in the world to drive up alongside our car, transfer Myfanwy and drive off without arousing suspicion. The clue, said Sospan, was the
gelati
man.

‘You must try, Mr Knight, try and remember what he was like.’

I shook my head. I couldn’t remember a thing. Whatever chemical had been added to the ripple to take Myfanwy away had also taken with it my memory.

‘Little details that are insignificant to you … you probably don’t think they are worth repeating but you never know …’

‘What’s there to say? He was just an ice man—’

Sospan hissed indignantly. ‘I am surprised to hear you, of all people, utter a sentiment like that. Imagine if I had been mugged by the postman and you asked me to describe him and I said “Oh he was just a postman”, imagine the harsh words you would rightly reproach me with. That’s like saying it was just another Fabergé egg. On the surface, I grant you,
gelati
men may all look alike, but each van and vendor are distinctive. Each vendor has a thousand distinguishing characteristics that contribute to his own personal style. The van will reveal clues to the initiated eye as to who owns it, where he comes from and possibly his philosophy of life.’

‘I honestly can’t remember much, but you are welcome to come down to Ynyslas and have a look. The
gelati
van has gone but you might find something. A Stingray wrapper or something.’

Sospan flinched and gulped as if a bluebottle had flown into his mouth and he had mistakenly swallowed it. A fugitive fear flickered in his eyes.

‘Oh … well … I couldn’t do that, Mr Knight, I … er … I’d love to, you know, but … but …’

I turned away from his look of pain and stared at the Pier,
pretending to find something unusually fascinating in it this morning, and affecting not to notice the grave sin I had just committed. I had just tried to seduce him to an act of heresy. I had asked him to leave his box. How could I have been so tactless? No one could remember having met Sospan outside his box. All our lives he had been but a disembodied upper torso, like Mr Punch, who flapped his arms about exaggeratedly in order to compensate for the guilty secret that maybe there was nothing else of him below the wooden stage that served as his counter. The kiosk represented the limits and essence of his world like the metal body of a Dalek. Tongue and grooved together from planks of wood and gloss-painted in blue and white, it was the carapace from which, if he ever emerged, it was like a hermit crab to scurry about when no one was looking.

‘You see,’ said Sospan, ‘every ice man has his own particular way of doing things, his own style. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is unique like a fingerprint or anything like that, but it can still help identify him. Take the ripple pattern for instance. Can you remember how he applied it?’

I grimaced in frustration. ‘I don’t know! That’s like asking how someone puts salt on their chips.’

A chill edge entered the tone of his voice. ‘That’s where you are wrong if you don’t mind me saying so.’

I shrugged defiantly.

‘Some of the more common trademarks of an ice man’s style include the pattern of the ice-whorl, the handedness of the scoop action and the depth to which he buries the Flakes. Does he stick them up proud as a Priapus or does he sink them like the eye sockets of a snowman? Where does he get his cones from? Every one has the mark of where he bought it, like a gun. But it could have been filed off. Did he have insignia on his breast pocket? All these things you could have noticed and yet you tell me he was just another ice-cream vendor. And we haven’t even got to
the ripple pattern.’ He pulled a thick reference work out from under the counter and opened it to the contents page.

‘Each pattern can be classified according to the broad characteristics and then subdivided into various phyla.’ He turned the book round and pushed it towards me and ran his finger along the contents page.

‘Was it spotted like measles, or blotched like Caesar’s toga? Splattered in the style known as “Chicago barbershop”? Or more like “MacDuff’s counterpane”? Did it perhaps resemble a starfish, or a fairy toadstool? A goblin’s hat, a vampire’s tooth or a school-girl’s nipple?’

‘Schoolgirl’s nipple,’ I said.

Sospan smiled as if that were his favourite and then said, ‘I’ve just had a brilliant idea.’

Today was the first official day of business in the new office and my feet hesitated for a second outside the old one but I forced them on up Canticle Street to take the unfamiliar left at the top into 22/1B Stryd-y-Popty. The street where the Poptys live, whatever they were. Judging by the windows, popty was Welsh for twitching net curtain. As with the old office, I entered through a door at the side and climbed up stairs coated in a carpet thinner than gossamer. There were two flats at the top – 1a and 1b. I hadn’t met the occupier of 1a but judging by the wine bottles in the bin outside it was probably a student. Or the Mayor.

Inside, I found everything set up almost as it had been in the old place. My chair, the desk, the client’s chair, the picture of Noel Bartholomew on the wall. And there was one difference: along one blank windowless wall Calamity had pinned a vertical dividing line and on one side was her name and on the other was mine. There was a tea towel pinned to her side and an index card to mine. I peered to get a better look. The tea towel was a souvenir from Nanteos and bore the words
comes stabuli
in the authentic ghostly handwriting.

‘It’s the incident board,’ said Calamity. ‘It doesn’t mean we don’t work on each other’s cases or anything, it’s just to give us a handle on the bigger picture.’

I walked over to read the card on my side. It said ‘Brainbocs’.

‘It’s the list of suspects for …’

‘Myfanwy.’

‘It’s the only name I could think of. You can take it down if you like.’

‘No, it’s fine. It’s the only name I can think of too.’

She was sitting in the main chair, drinking tea and staring at something on the desk. She poured me a tea. I walked over and stood next to her, one hand resting on her shoulder. Laid out in front of her was a Cluedo set.

‘This is the stable boy,’ she explained pointing to one of the counters, ‘and this is Cranogwen. You have to pretend the board represents the first floor, so I’ve changed some of the room names.’

I pointed to a daffodil in a milk bottle that looked out of place on the desk. ‘Is that the ivy he climbed up?’

‘It’s only symbolic.’

‘Where’s Professor Plum?’

‘I knew you’d say that.’

‘Are you sure this will help?’

‘Of course! All stately home murders conform to a similar paradigm. It’s archetypal, betokening a quintessentially human need to conform.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘I read it in the instructions.’

It didn’t require a lot of sleuthing to put the name of Dai Brainbocs down as a suspect. The man – or boy, it was hard to know – who had competed with me over the years and played ping-pong for her love. Brainbocs, the frail schoolboy genius with the withered leg, who voluntarily stopped growing at the age of fourteen to channel his energy into his research. Once,
more than a thousand years ago, Myfanwy sat in a caravan with me and described the scene when Brainbocs had removed his caliper to go down on one knee and propose. A lot of people in town said it was because of him that she got sick – because of his crazy attempt to win her heart with a love potion. Not something cooked up in a cauldron but in a test tube, based on rock solid scientific credentials and drawing on the latest neuro-physiological and neuropsychological research… Oxytocin and Phenylethylamine instead of the more traditional mandragora, henbane and eye of newt … She seemed all right at the time, but who could really say they understood these things?

‘Brainbocs is in Shrewsbury prison,’ said Calamity.

‘I know. I’ll talk to Meirion, the crime reporter on the
Gazette
.’

‘You got any other leads?’

‘I thought I’d take a look at the
Journals of the Proceedings of the Myfanwy Society
– see if any names spring out, people with an unhealthy interest – you know the sort of thing.’

‘Where you going to get them from?’

‘The library.’

She smirked.

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘You got a ticket?’

‘I thought I’d apply.’

‘You want me to come along?’

‘Not especially; what for?’

‘So I can pick your hat up for you when they throw you out.’

The National Library of Wales has four million books on a variety of subjects but not much on DIY. For that you have to go to the town library. They say it’s the town with the highest ratio of books to people in the world. And the smallest ratio of townspeople who are allowed to read them. The problem was, in order to become a reader you needed to be vouched for by a respectable member of society and that tended to eliminate
most people in Aberystwyth. They had a lot of books there, they just didn’t like to lend them out. In fact they refused to lend them out. That’s what always tripped you up. People who go there are known as readers. Ask for a lender’s ticket and instantly you are marked out as someone who runs his finger under the words.

You could tell you weren’t invited just by looking at the outside of the building, a fabulous white stone edifice like a big wedding cake, perched halfway up Penglais Hill. It managed that rare feat of combining monumental grandeur, the sort Albert Speer used to specialise in, with architectural good taste. They didn’t actually ban normal folk. That was too unsubtle and raised the spectre of elitism. Instead, they did it the subliminal way the smart hotels do – by the glitter and polish of the door and that smile on the face of the doorman that, while appearing to be a genuine smile and employing the same muscle groups of the face, is really a warning and a challenge, one that says: Go on, I dare you. And the tasteful grandeur of the National Library said in the easily apprehended Esperanto of bricks that here was a proper library. One where you don’t borrow books but come and read them and if you don’t know in advance what you want you might as well not turn up. And don’t even think of bringing grease-proof paper to trace the pictures.

Calamity sat on the steps outside and waited for me, safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t be long.

I climbed up and pushed through the revolving door and walked up to the first counter I saw.