I wasn't fussy about which one, no more than you care which one lands on your jam sandwich, but Valentine from the Boutique would have been good. In his smart Crimplene safari suit, Terylene tie and three-tone shoes, the druid style-guru should have been the easiest to spot. But tonight he seemed to have gone to ground, along with the rest of his crew; and during my lonely sweep of the Prom I met no one except a couple of pilgrims who asked directions to the spot where Bianca died.

I pulled up my collar against the wind and turned back, and wandered disconsolately down past the old college and on towards Constitution Hill. In the bed-and-breakfast ghetto the shutters squeaked and banged and a chill low-season wind blew old newspapers down the road. There were vacancy signs glowing in all the windows tonight and here at the season's end, as September turned into October, they would be likely to remain that way for another year. Even the optimists knew better than to try their luck now. In this town the promise of an Indian summer often meant the genuine article: a monsoon.

Misplacing Valentine was no great hardship, but the word on the street said he had tickets to Jubal's party and without a ticket there was only one way in: I would have to use the scrap of paper that lay crumpled up in my coat pocket. I'd bought it half an hour earlier from a streetwalker down by Trefechan Bridge and paid a pound for it. She assured me it would open Jubal's front door faster than a fireman's jemmy; but I somehow doubted it. I'd used tricks like this before and either they didn't work at all and you wasted a pound; or they worked so well you ended up getting a sore head. Which would it be tonight?

Jubal Griffiths was the mayor at the time and also head of casting for the 'What the Butler Saw' movie industry. This was about as close as you could get to being a mogul in Aberystwyth and his house was easy to find: one of those stately Georgian piles on North Road, overlooking the bowling-green with a distant prospect of the pier. They were the sort of houses that had high ceilings and real cornices and a bell next to the fireplace to call the servants. In most of them, too, there was an invalid rotting away upstairs who could still remember a time when you rang and someone answered.

I banged on the door and a Judas window slid open. The sound of music drifted out, along with muffled screams and the aroma of smoky bacon crisps. Two eyes peered at me through the slit and before I had time to wonder what sort of mayor needs a fixture like that in his front door a voice said, 'Sorry, mister, members only.'

I laughed. It didn't even convince me, but on a night like this it was the best I could do. 'Someone tickling you, pal?'

I chuckled some more and said brightly, 'No I was just thinking, normally to get a drink in this town you just need to be a member of the human race.'

'Yeah, well we've had a lot of trouble with that particular organisation.' The little door slid shut.

I walked down the side of the house to the back door, opened the letterbox and shouted, 'Coo-ey!' Carpet slippers slithered down the hall. The door opened slightly, held by a chain. Two old, grey, watery eyes peered at me.

'Yes?'

'I've come for the speakeasy.'

'The what?'

'The speakeasy. I hear it's a good party.'

The old lady knitted her brows together and said with the sort of acting you get at a school play, 'Oh I'm afraid you must have made a mistake, there's nothing like that here.'

She began to close the door and I wedged my foot in and leaned my shoulder against the wood. It opened a few more inches. She would have been about five foot two in her socks and was wearing a dust-coloured shawl over an indigo wool skirt. She had opaque, flesh-coloured stockings the colour of Elastoplast and on her feet were those felt relaxation boots — trimmed with fake fur at the ankle and a zip up the front. The same outfit worn by a thousand other old spinsters in this town. It fooled no one.

'You're the one who's made the mistake, lady, there's a party going on and I'm invited.'

She switched to Welsh. 'Beth ydych chi eisiau? Dydw I ddim yn siarad Saesneg . . .'

I could speak in tongues, too. 'Edrychwch Hombre, agorwch y drws! Por favor!

She tried pushing the door on my foot, switching back to English. 'I can assure you there's nothing like that going on in my house.'

'You must be in the wrong house, then. Just tell Jubal I'm here. Tell him I've got a message...' I peered at the slip of paper in the palm of my hand, 'from Judy Juice.'

At the mention of the name the old lady's demeanour changed. She stopped pushing the door and considered me through narrowed eyes. 'Miss Judy?' I nodded.

'Who shall I say is calling?' I handed her a card. It said, Louie Knight, Gumshoe. She took it and I removed my foot. As she closed the door I bent down and shouted through the letterbox, 'And drop the confused old biddy act, it stinks!'

I waited on the step for a while and thought about the piece of paper. Two words that meant nothing to me but the whole world, apparently, to Jubal. She was, they said, the one girl in town he wanted but couldn't have. And such is the eternal perversity of man's heart that because he couldn't have her he wanted her more than all the others in the world put together. The door opened and two men in rugby shirts with chests the size of wardrobes leered at me. They were the sort of men with no necks, just extra face. They motioned with their heads and we walked down the hall, the sound of the party getting louder.

One of the side-doors burst open and an old man in satyr trousers rushed out pursued by an elderly, giggling woman. I peered into the room: a crush of people standing up, talking and drinking; a buffet on the sideboard with vol-au-vents, crisps and those pineapple cheese things impaled on miniature plastic swords. Girls in stovepipe hats and not much else wandered through with trays of punch. Before I could see any more the two tough guys grabbed me and pulled me along.

© Malcolm Pryce 2003