Last Tango in Aberystwyth

In short, the experiment had been an astonishing success; or to put it another way, gentlemen, Herod Jenkins had gone from this world, and in his place stood Zsigбcska Melles.' He paused and fought down a half-smile that was twitching the edges of his mouth. 'Er ... those of you who think us scientists are a rather cold-blooded, humourless lot might be amused to learn that Melles is the Magyar term for big-chested.' There was a ripple of chuckling, and he continued, 'It was an epoch-making moment in the annals of neuroscience; until, that is, the morning when the nurse went to his room and found him gone.' The doctor made an apologetic gesture with his hands and walked to the window and spoke to the sea and the sky: 'Since then there have been rumours and the occasional reports of him standing at the edge of the woods at sunset, staring, so they say, with a strange yearning at the rugby on TV in the darkened houses ...'

*

I walked with Llunos down Pier Street and accompanied him to his office. As we strolled he told me about Harri Harries. The two men from the Kamp were currently in protective custody, down at the station.

'They thought it was a trick,' said Llunos. 'And Harries hasn't reported to work. Don't know where he is. I've sent a fax to Cardiff about it.'

'Why did they send him here in the first place?'

'It's because certain people down in Cardiff are not happy with me.'

'I thought you were doing fine.'

His step unconsciously followed time with mine. 'First the flood and now Herod ... black marks against my name ... it all adds up.'

'They surely can't blame you for ... for all this?'

'It happened on my watch. Plus they think I've gone soft. Got old. They say I don't run a tight ship any more, all this aggro between the druids and the Meals on Wheels. They can't see, it's a different world after the flood, all the old certainties have gone ... time was you knew who was bad and who was good, even if you could never prove it you still knew it. But now, life being such a struggle, the line is blurred. And then there's the problem of you.'

'Me?'

'They see me having coffee with you and generally ... fraternising they call it, and they say that proves it. Once upon a time I would have run you out of town every now and again just to keep you on your toes.'

'It's true, you would have.'

'I know. But after a while ...' He stopped at the corner and looked at me. 'I mean, what's the point?'

When we got to his office we sat in contemplative silence. 'We're going to make a posse, if you're interested,' said Llunos after a while. 'The boffins say he'll probably make for some place sacred to him.'

I tried to look hopeful. 'I suppose that's something.'

'Yes,' said Llunos sadly. 'It's something.'

Chapter 15

Marty's mum's house was a two-mile walk off the main road up a country lane. There were no streetlights but the wet drizzly sky gave off a soft luminescence and provided more than enough light for eyes that had got used to the dark. Despite the cold and wet it was strangely pleasant, calm and peaceful so far away from the frenetic activity of Aberystwyth. The only sound was the occasional bark of a distant dog and even that was comforting. You could tell without seeing that these were wholesome well-fed dogs who would run up to you and nuzzle your hand, not the snarling, half-starved packs of curs that slunk through the rubble of town at night. After a while I began to make out the orange light from the house, glowing through the swaying black filigree of the trees.

The door was on a chain, Marty's mum lived alone, and peered at me from inside as a wave of hot firelit air hit me. Air filled with cinnamon and baking smells and that indefinable but not unpleasant aroma that the insides of other people's houses have. Recognition took only a fraction of a second and she let out a gasp before closing the door slightly to release the chain.

Once I was inside she stood facing me looking up and grasped my face in her hands. We didn't speak, she just beamed at me, her old watery eyes sparkling and then her face darkened as a thought occurred to her. 'I knew you'd come when I heard.'

I nodded.

'So it's true then? He's alive?'

'Yes. I came as soon as I could.'

She touched my cheek. 'You're a good man, Louie.' Then she turned and I followed her down the corridor to the kitchen at the back.

'It's funny, I always suspected it. I had a feeling ... they say a mother always knows. Mind you, it's always good to see you, Louie, whatever the occasion.'

The kitchen was filled with warmth and I sat down at the table while Marty's mum stirred some stew on the stove. There was a rifle on the table, half-way through being cleaned. We both looked at it at the same time and then our eyes met.

'It's no good you looking at me like that.'

'Bit late in the year to be hunting rabbits, isn't it?'

'Bit late in life, too, that's what you're thinking, I know.'

'Or perhaps you're hunting something a bit bigger?'

'This one's no bunny rabbit, that's for sure.'

I put my hand on the gleaming oily barrel. 'This isn't the way.'

She stopped stirring and stood motionless at the stove and then said, 'He took my son, Louie. Sent him off on a cross-country run in weather that even the SAS on the Brecon Beacons don't go out in.'

She brought over the stew and I ate hungrily. Through the steam swirling up from the spoon I could see the smiling picture of Marty on the mantelpiece above the fire. It was a washed-out colour snap of him on a beach at some south-coast English resort, seven or eight years old.

'All the same,' I said, 'you should leave it to the experts. I hear there's going to be a posse.'

She scoffed. 'Bank tellers, postmen, ironmongers, filing-clerks ... They'll try and take him alive, the fools.'

'A hunt is no place for you. It's not right.'

'Right or not right, I don't care any more, Louie. I'm getting old now and I've got no one here to comfort me. I lost a good husband to the mines and a good son to the games teacher. It's lime to even the score.'

'You'll be wasting your time, he could be anywhere between here and Welshpool.'

'It's not so difficult if you know where to look. He'll make for somewhere sacred. No different from a wounded fox. Somewhere that means something special to him, from long ago. Some place he cherishes, that he holds dear from a happy time before everything got ruined.'

'Sure, I said. 'But no one knows where that is.'

After supper we talked until late. I told Marty's mum about what I'd seen, about the fall of Valentine, and how the Meals on Wheels had eclipsed the druids. She scoffed and warned me not to pay too much attention to outward appearances. Druids or the Meals on Wheels, underneath they were all the same. Like shoots growing in different parts of a garden that come from the same tree. The one to really watch out for, she said, was Mrs Llantrisant, even though she was still in prison.

At midnight, the clock chimed and Marty's mum looked slightly startled.

'Oh my word!' she said. 'Almost forgot. Come! we must be quick, he usually starts at midnight.'

Ignoring the puzzled look on my face she beckoned to me to follow her. She doused all the lights in the house and switched on a torch and led me up to the attic bedroom, a small garret that looked out over the hills south of Aberystwyth. The night was dark and featureless, even the lights of the scattered cottages having been extinguished, and only the ceaseless blink of the lighthouse beyond Cwmtydu reminding us that there were other people alive tonight.