A fine mist began to form making the lamps along the track fizz like sparklers and in the distance, somewhere around Llanbadarn, the tail-lights of the train finally winked out. From the street outside came the sound of a car door slamming, followed by the staccato clatter of high heels on concrete. The urgent footfall of someone running for a train that has already gone. I turned and saw a lone girl racing towards me, like someone I once saw running across the dunes at Ynyslas. And then I caught a glimpse of the anguished look on her face and knew she had not come to catch a train but to stop one. ‘Oh Louie!’ she gasped, throwing her arms around me. ‘Louie! Please don’t go!’ I buried my face in the tangled skeins of Myfanwy’s hair and drank the scented darkness as the horn sounded from the distant hills and the night train to Shrewsbury raced eastwards, up that bright, silver ladder of hope.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Malcolm Pryce was born in the UK and has lived and worked abroad since the early nineties. He has held down a variety of jobs including BMW assembly-line worker, hotel washer-up, aluminium salesman, deck hand on a yacht travelling through Polynesia, and advertising copywriter. He currently lives in Bangkok. Last Tango in Aberystwyth is his second novel. His first, Aberystwyth Mon Amour, is also published by Bloomsbury.
THE LOUIE KNIGHT SERIES:
Aberystwyth Mon Amour
Last Tango in Aberystwyth
The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth
Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth
by the same author
ABERYSTWYTH MON AMOUR Malcolm Pryce
£6.99 0 7475 5786 1
‘Original, inventive, ambitious, playful and funny’ Independent
Schoolboys are disappearing all over Aberystwyth and nobody knows why. Louie Knight, the town’s private investigator, soon realises that it is going to take more than a double ripple from Sospan, the philosopher cum ice-cream seller, to help find out what is happening to these boys and whether or not Lovespoon, the Welsh teacher, Grand Wizard of the Druids and controller of the town, is more than just a sinister bully. And just who was Gwenno Guevara? This is the first of Malcolm Pryce’s cult novels uncovering parts of Aberystwyth that you won’t find on any map …
‘Very black and very funny indeed … mixes satire, farce, fantasy and comic strip in a world where the Famous Five meets Raymond Chandler’ Times Literary Supplement
bloomsburypbks
www.bloomsbury.com/malcolmpryce
First published in Great Britain 2003
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney
Copyright © 2003 by Malcolm Pryce
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY
www.bloomsbury.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781408809037
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
A Note On The Author
The Louie Knight Series
By the Same Author
Copyright