The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still by Malcolm Pryce Read Free Book Online Page A

laugh.’
    ‘I promise.’
    ‘I want to go on an escalator.’

Chapter 6
     
    The next morning was damp and grey – chilly. On such days, the Prom never looked more forlorn. The only hint of colour was the glossy scarlet tube of the human cannonball they were erecting, pointing like a finger at God. This was how we chose our mayors: on the premise that public men may lie, but you can’t fake flying through the air.
    Calamity was sitting on the floor of the office, amid photocopies of newspaper cuttings, and an OS map of the area spread on her knees like a blanket. She looked up and smiled. I went into the kitchenette, put the kettle on and returned to sink down to the floor opposite her. I did so without the easy grace that Calamity displayed.
    ‘We must get a table,’ she said.
    ‘Yes, the room looks bare without it.’
    ‘I’ve been checking out the Cambrian News archives about the night they raided the Coliseum cinema.’
    ‘Found anything interesting?’
    ‘Loads. There were three perps: two brothers called Richards from Llanfarian, and Iestyn. There was a lot of bad feeling about the case; a cop got run over in the chase. They pinned that on Iestyn. The Richards brothers each got twenty-five. I’m still trying to find out what became of them.’
    ‘What about the hangman? If we are investigating the claim that a hanged man might still be alive, he would be a good place to start.’
    ‘Died ten years ago, but I’ve found the doctor who presided at executions; he lives at the top of town in Laura Place.’
    ‘We’ll have to pay him a visit. Ask him if he might have made a mistake about the hanged man being dead.’
    ‘Stop making fun!’ said Calamity. ‘Here’s something else. The cop who arrested them turns out to be our old friend Preseli Watkins, the mayor.’ She let her gaze linger on me for a second. She knew this was significant.
    ‘So the mayor claims to have a premonition that I will be poking my nose into his business and chops up my desk to teach me a lesson. The very same day a man walks in with a case involving Iestyn and two crooks who robbed a cinema twenty-five years ago. The cop who arrested them just happens to be the mayor. Sounds like he has a good soothsayer. Or he knew Raspiwtin was coming to see us.’
    ‘Isn’t that the same thing?’
    I formed my hand into a mock pistol and shot her. She grinned, then smiled shyly and said in a small voice, ‘There’s something else. Something you . . . you won’t like.’ She placed the palm of her hand down on a cutting and twisted it round. The headline read, ‘MORE STRANGE LIGHTS IN CARDIGANSHIRE SKIES’.
    ‘Don’t get angry.’
    ‘I won’t get angry.’
    ‘It’s the Ystrad Meurig incident – the Welsh Roswell. Just like Raspiwtin said.’
    ‘I told him Roswell was just a crashed weather balloon.’
    ‘That’s ridiculous.’
    ‘It’s what the US Air Force said.’
    Calamity rolled her eyes. ‘What do you expect them to say?’ Her tone suggested that she expected better of me than to fall for the official narrative. ‘They performed autopsies on three aliens; that was some weather balloon.’
    ‘We don’t know that.’
    ‘We do! I’ve seen the footage.’
    ‘So have I – on a documentary once. But I don’t understand – how come the footage is so shaky and grainy?’
    ‘Because they . . . they’re shooting covertly.’
    ‘But the cameraman must have been in the same room as the medics. You can’t hide in an autopsy room, so why not just use a proper camera and a tripod and shoot a proper film?’
    ‘I don’t know . . . loads of reasons.’
    Calamity’s spirits began to sink under the weight of my obtuse refusal to see the dark truths of this world. I backed off.
    ‘Tell me about the Welsh Roswell.’
    ‘It took place the same week as the raid on the Coliseum cinema; it happened in a wood outside Ystrad Meurig. There had been a number of flying-saucer sightings in the days leading up to it, and then, so