{"id":1874,"date":"2023-12-11T10:09:12","date_gmt":"2023-12-11T10:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1874"},"modified":"2023-12-11T10:09:17","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T10:09:17","slug":"dial-m-for-mathematics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/dial-m-for-mathematics\/1874\/","title":{"rendered":"Dial M For Mathematics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Find the killer of my daughter.\u2019 Beauleigh Williams\u2019 breath came in more pants than a filly at the Derby. \u2018Where you gonna start?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Motive,\u2019 I replied. \u2018Did she have any enemies?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018She had a boyfriend. He was my<\/em> enemy. The rat wasn\u2019t good<\/p>\n\n\n\n

enough for her. He\u2019s not good enough for a female rodent, come to that.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

            The boyfriend lived in a dive on the Lower East. A dive on the East side of Swansea is about as low as you can get. It\u2019s pretty much in the bay. I  checked him out. He had a twitch like a misfiring engine. The nervous kind. What was on his mind?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I don\u2019t know nothing,\u2019 he said. \u2018And if I did, I wouldn\u2019t tell ya.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The twitch had turned into a shake, and was in danger of becoming a dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Why doesn\u2019t her father like you?\u2019 I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Guy\u2019s oedipal,\u2019 came the reply. Or did he say, \u2018edible\u2019? I asked him the question again. \u2018Search me.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I did. Jacket to shoes. Nothing. I had to get the sap talking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You\u2019re a self-employed gardener, I believe?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Spare me the jokes about raking in the money, or digging for gold.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

             \u2018Well, were you dating Donna Williams for her father\u2019s millions?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u2018I was dating her because she was a nice babe. It was never gonna work out. She\u2019s got brains.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u2018And you haven\u2019t?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u2018When we talked about music or marigolds, we clicked. When she got onto Bertrand Russell\u2019s mathematical set paradox, I felt like a worm brought to the surface when a gardener turns over the sod. Lost and confused. The babe was doing a doctorate in maths. I didn\u2019t even get a GCSE in the subject, man.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I went left field, mainly because I wasn\u2019t in the right field with this dimwit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u2018How\u2019d she get on with her supervisor at the university?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u2018Ynysforgan Morgan? She hated the creep. Kept trying it on with her. Things were so bad, she wanted to pack in her studies. But she didn\u2019t want to let her father down. She wasn\u2019t a happy bunny.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Next morning I was in Morgan\u2019s study. His hair had more grease than a gross of ball-bearings. His jacket and trousers would have fled at the sight of an iron. His face wasn\u2019t worn, it was condemned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u2018Lloyd Morgan,\u2019 I said. \u2018Do you know the sum of the letters in your names, A being 1, B being 2, etc?\u2019 He stared blankly. \u2018Lloyd makes 68, Morgan the same\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u2018What are you imputing?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u2018Her PhD was an algebraic formula, proving that the number 68 didn\u2019t exist. I believe you took that personally. Felt existentially threatened.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u2018You know nothing about numbers!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u2018I know your car registration is LM68Y. Those your car keys?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I went down to the car park, opened up the boot. She was still breathing. A crime of mathematical jealousy had been stopped. Morgan was looking at six years. Maybe eight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The boyfriend lived in a dive on the Lower East. A dive on the East side of Swansea is about as low as you can get. It\u2019s pretty much in the bay. I \u00a0checked him out. He had a twitch like a misfiring engine. The nervous kind. What was on his mind?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[695,1077],"tags":[175,1081,192,1006,991,1080,95,8,7,116,12,14,11,172,1079],"class_list":["post-1874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-695","category-dec-2023-misfortune","tag-about","tag-boyfriend","tag-came","tag-did","tag-get","tag-gonna","tag-had","tag-he","tag-her","tag-like","tag-my","tag-she","tag-was","tag-when","tag-williams"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-ue","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1876,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874\/revisions\/1876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}