AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

For earlier Chapters and an explanation of this dreadful story, see blog: The Cardiff Grandma. WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh.
In the previous episode, everyone else leaves the Vice’s office, closing the door behind herself. Now, Samantha Panther, star reporter, flashes back on Uncle Wong, ponders the evils of the illegal rug trade.

The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 27

Dogs and rugs and Geckos
They always come in Twos
Be they lizard wool or Corgis
Be they R_ - -- tali hoe -.

Samantha Panther re-read the crumpled text message from Uncle Wong yet again. What could it mean? She committed it to memory, broke it open and ate the fortune cookie inside.

She didn’t approve of her uncle’s business but his fortune cookies were the best. In fact they were the only thing he produced that she ever really ate. His cooking, contrary to endless stereotypes about Chinese people, was absolutely terrible. Yet somehow he managed to pull it all off. It was lucky for Wong that the pie shop chain was only a facade to hide the façade he had set up to hide his real money-making interests. The Slow Food chain was a front for his unregistered Shop Front business. This was just as well: the pie and kebab shops may have only been a front to the front for his true commercial activities, but his cooking was an affront to the human palate.

His business reputation, though, was a big part of why she’d dropped the family name. Uncle Wong had started rug trafficking as a runner runner, transporting the long narrow rugs destined for cold hallways and creaky stairs. Now he controlled all of the rugs that came into Cardiff. This was known only to the wealthy and the powerful. They were the only ones who could afford the exotic Ali Ganoosh carpets, the hand-knotted Bulgogis, the silken Halavas, the intricate Chimichangas, the deceptively luxurious Shmeirutzas. The university bigwigs, the top echelon pols, the grandmafioso and Uncle Wong, were the only people the heddlu were paid to ignore. Woe betide the lowly wage-earner caught copping a cheap coconut welcome mat to cheer up her dreary doorstep, the aging pensioner found with a forbidden length of sham plush wrapped around his wife’s corpse in the basement. They would be punished to the full extent of the law, enough to wrap up the world like an onion nine times – believe it or not! That’s why Samantha Panther hated the rug trade: it caused the police to prey upon the weaknesses of human nature, upon the desire to brighten up one’s drab grim grinding grey existence. Samantha didn’t understand this urge, she didn’t allow rugs in her home, but she still pitied those drawn to them through a human frailty she did not share. She’d seen good people ruined by rug use. Her old professor, for example, had been a brilliant Cornishman once, but he’d disappeared from the scene inexplicably at some point in the past, and her informants said he was doing rugs -- and not just any rugs, well, ok any rugs, anything he could get. She could hardly believe it. He’d been so mellow, so laid back. so blissed out. Why wasn’t reality enough? Why rugs? Why not antimacassers or ottomans, something legal, if he’d absolutely had to decorate? She felt a twinge of guilt. She’d no idea his existence had been so empty, so devoid of glimmers of happiness, so dismal, so bleak. He’d hidden it well behind his merry peals of hysterical laughter, his gleeful chortling and spinning round and round arms outstretched as if to embrace the universe, his brightly sparkling eyes that seemed to fix on nothing very long but darted about like cucarachas in a fishbowl. Still, she should have known. Surely there had been warning signs. Rugs! How she hated them!

But as a reporter she needed her Uncle Wong. He’d always come through with the inside dope, known simply as Simon, on the movers and shakers of Cardiff. It was her Uncle Wong who’d told her where and how to find the mastermind behind the teacup rumours. Once those rumours got public they were sure to spread like wild flowers, but for now she had the inside edge.

‘He will expect you to flock to China with the rest of the media herd, and will be waiting as if by coincidence to meet you at the Luxembourg layover. You must not show any indication of not being surprised, act sheepish. He will have been longing to meet you for some time. He will be like putty in your hands, be sure to wear gloves. You know what to do’ – he leaned forward and whispered something into her ear. Leaning back, he’d winked at her as if to say, ‘You will learn about more than just some teacups – you may learn something very surprising about the connection between the Vice-chancellor of Welsh University and the Cymru Savings and Loam - leading inevitably to the question you must answer: Where is Professor Erm?’ He stopped winking and frowned. Samantha was looking restless, practically hopping from foot to foot to foot. ‘And now you must go, quickly!’

She’d hurried off across the yard and into the loo. How did he know these things? As she went she thought about his seeming reference to the missing professor. Who gave a damn about that? Just another rug-addled aged hippie.

But now, munching the last of her uncle’s fortune cookie as she pretended to be surprised by the approach of the elderly Bangladeshi, a hardly subtle wrist flexing motion executed at groin level, she felt guilty about her previous ungenerous characterization of her beloved old Prof, always ready with the full compliment and the outstanding marks. Still, she couldn’t imagine what the spineless weakling had to do with all this…this. She mentally reviewed the fact that her uncle had just sent her a cryptic text message, reminding herself to remember that she’d committed it to memory so she could recall it later. How did it go…

Dogs and rugs and Geckos?
They always come in Twos?
Be they lizard wool or Corgis?
Be they R_ - -- tali hoe -?

Yes, she’d decipher it later. Just now, the Bangladeshi was the first order of business here in Luxombourg, Luxumbourgh, so free of fog, so sunlit, so hilly…

She slapped the man’s cheek. ‘You surprise me sir! I don’t know anything about you and I certainly did not expect you to be here making gross gestures at me.’

It wasn’t a lie. Samantha Panther had a rare affliction commonly known as short term short term long term memory loss. This causes sufferers to forget that they were just remembering something. The sudden and complete shift into the present moment typically does not last more than eighteen seconds. Samantha, having slapped the Bangladeshi out of sheer habit, remembered again her uncle’s instructions; slipping on her putty-resistent gloves she caught herself deftly, landed on her feet, and slipping the gloves on her hands she slapped him again, kittenishly. ‘You surprise me sir! I don’t know anything about you and I certainly did not expect you to be here making gross gestures at me – what an unexpected pleasure!’ she bleated. This time, she was lying.

The elderly man smiled. It was all going according to plan…