Last Tango in Aberystwyth

'Whacked,' said Calamity.

'What!?'

'Whacked. He got whacked. That's what we call it in this business.'

I looked at Calamity who ignored my questioning gaze.

Gretel looked puzzled. 'I don't think he said that, it was something else.'

'What does it matter,' said Calamity. 'Whacked, smacked, topped, zapped, greased, rubbed-out or bought the farm, he's dead and they did it.'

'Who?'

'We don't know.'

Gretel put her fist into her mouth and made a sort of weeping sound. 'Do you think they'll ... they'll ... what was it?'

'Whack him,' said Calamity helpfully. 'Who knows? But don't worry, we know what we're doing.'

Gretel went to the bathroom, and Calamity said simply, 'What a dipstick.'

'And she's paying us money, so be nice.'

'She's definitely holding back on us.'

'You think so?'

'You don't? All this weepy stuff for a professor? It's all fake.'

'How do you know?'

'Whoever heard of someone hiring a private detective to find their teacher?'

'In the real world people do all sorts of things you wouldn't believe.'

'And her body language is all wrong. The crying, that's always a tough one to fake.'

'They looked like real tears to me. Or has she got an onion in her fist?'

'They're real but she's doing them in the wrong places. Textbook stuff. Crying inappropriately and not crying at the appropriate time. It's a giveaway.'

'She just did that?'

The toilet flushed and we stopped and when Gretel came back it was to a silence that fooled no one, even someone as unworldly as her.

'Talking about me, are we?' She sat down. 'I've been thinking, maybe we'd better call off the hunt.'

Calamity went and sat down on the edge of the desk and invaded her personal space like the cops do. 'Getting cold feet? Losing your bottle?'

'B ... b ... but what if they whack him?'

'If they really want to kill him,' I said, 'it's even more reason for us to find him first. Calling us off will just make their job easier.'

'That's if he was telling the truth,' said Calamity.

'What do you mean?' blurted Gretel. 'Of course he's telling the truth. Why wouldn't he?'

Calamity put a mean face on. 'How do I know? Why would anyone ever dream of telling a lie? It beats me. Right from the cradle we're taught to tell the truth, and yet there are all these people out there who don't do it. I don't get it, what about you, eh, Louie?'

I tried again to flash a warning look at her but she deliberately avoided it.

'The Dean never told a lie in his life,' said Gretel.

'Yeah, but what about you?'

'What about me?'

'You haven't exactly been telling us the truth, whole and nothing but, have you?'

'W ... w ... what do you mean?'

I slid down in my chair, trying to get my foot towards Calamity under the table.

'This Bad Girl stuff for instance —'

'I don't talk about her -'

'That's a lie for a start - you never stop!'

I managed to get my foot across and kick Calamity. She jumped slightly and shot me a furious look. Then she eased herself down off the desk and stamped on my foot.

'I ... you ... how dare you?' said Gretel.

'You didn't tell us he made a pass at her one night and tore her blouse, did you?'

'He didn't ... who says ... how did you know?'

'It's my job to know, I'm a detective.' She took out a notebook and read from it. 'She was a hussy and she shouldn't have been there, huh? More interested in drinking and partying than learning about Abraham; and when it came to the Ten Commandments she only knew how to break them. And then there was the incident with the Dean; by rights he was the one who should have been thrown out on his ear but the wives of all the other tutors got together and hey presto! off she goes. Not that she cared of course, it's what she wanted all along ... am I getting warm?'

Gretel stood up angrily. 'I won't stay another second to hear the Dean's good name dragged through the mud like this. Good day to you both.'

After she had slammed the door I held my hand out for the notebook. Calamity snapped it shut and put it in her pocket. I stood up and took a step towards her. She moved round to the other side of the desk. 'Let me see.'

'What for, don't you trust me or something?' 'There's nothing in it, is there? You made it all up.' She shrugged. 'So what if I did? They're in it together, you mark my words.' She walked out.

I took the cowgirl's gun out of my pocket and put it on the table. It was a real beauty. Replica cowboy Colt 45, the 'Peacemaker'. It had been adapted to light cigarettes with a flame that appeared where the hammer hit the pin. Everything worked as on a real one: the chamber spun, the blanks slid in and out, the trigger mechanism worked. You'd need to know a lot about guns to tell it wasn't real. I slid it into my jacket pocket and went out to make my peace with Father Seamus.

The inside of the confessional booth was warm and dark and comforting, like the inside of a womb, and almost as intimate with its air of shared secrets. I leaned my head against the wooden side and said, 'Father I need spiritual guidance.'

'That's why I am here, my son.'

'It's not easy.'

'Take your time.'

'I need to know whether shooting a priest is a mortal or a venial sin.'

The sound of forced, uncertain chuckling came through the grille.

'I suppose it depends which priest,' I added.

'Louie, that's you, isn't it? What are you doing? This is God's house.'

'How come he let you in?'

'This is no place for jokes.'

I stuck the gun through the grille. "Who's joking?'

'My God! Dear Louie, what on earth has got into you?'

'I could ask you the same question.'

'This is about last night, at the club, isn't it?'

'How was the Vimto?'

He forced a laugh.

'Or did you turn it into wine first?'

'Louie, when the Lord calls upon you to do his work, you cannot quibble at the sort of establishment —'

'Of course not. Jesus was never too proud to enter a house of fallen women.'

'That's what I tell myself.'

'Yeah, I bet you do. I don't remember the bit in the Bible where he drank Vimto from their shoes, though. Must have missed that bit. Still,' I said, slowly twisting the gun chamber and letting the sound of the clicks fill the booth, 'you must get thirsty standing on that battlement all night. Eyes smarting in the frost. Denying the soft pleasures of Mrs Bligh-Jones's palliasse.'

'Mrs Bligh-Jones is a very holy woman,' he said coldly. 'Now I must remind you that this is the House of God. If you've come to make a confession —'

'No,' I said, pulling back the trigger. 'I've come to take one.'

He gasped. 'What do you want!?'

'I want the answer to a question. If you choose not to answer or give me one I don't like I'm going to shoot you. If you don't believe me, I'll shoot you. That makes three ways to end up dead and one that doesn't.'

'Have you gone mad?'

'Yes. I have. Now here is the question. Yesterday morning I showed you a picture of a girl. Just the sort of fallen woman you seem to specialise in. You said you'd never seen her before, but you were lying. Now you're going to tell me the truth. Who was she?'

'Would you really shoot?'

'Yes.'

'But why? Over a girl?'

'I'm just an incurable romantic'

He took a breath. 'If I tell you, it's imperative ... you must promise ... this mustn't go any further.'

'Anything you say is automatically protected by the sanctity of the confessional. You should know that. Now tell me.'

'That girl you showed me. It's true I had seen her before. I know her because I worked with her once.'

'Where?'

'In ... in ... a place.'

'What sort of place?'

'Oh, Louie, don't make me say. A terrible place. A wicked, wicked place where a priest has no business being.'

'And where's that, apart from Mrs Bligh-Jones's bedroom?'

He paused and I could hear the sweat droplets breaking out on his forehead. 'Where does someone go in this town when they've reached the bottom and have nowhere left to go?'

'There are lots of places.'

'For you, yes! For you there are the bars and the girls and the toffee and the bingo and the whelks. For you there is a great choice. But for her. Ah! but for her? You cannot imagine what this girl was like. A filthy, lecherous Jezebel. A girl who oozed iniquity from her every pore. Who came out at night and ensnared the hearts of men with her malevolent scent like a carnivorous flower shining in the tropical moonlight ... where would such a dirty bitch go?'

'I don't know but I'd like to!'

'There is only one place where she would end up. The movies.'

I paused for a second. 'Which ones?'

'Those filthy detestable engines of lust.'

'You mean the "What the Butler Saw" machines?'

I could sense his whole being twisting in pain. 'Yes them. And not the ones from the pier. The ones in those private rooms where filth boils over like a cauldron of hot tar, where men come willingly to submit to the mortification of a bridle and other upholstery of the Devil ...'

I started to snigger.

'Oh yes, you can laugh, you can laugh! Jeer away! But be warned, those who begin by mocking the degradation of the human spirit soon end up supping themselves from the cup of vileness!'

'That's a bit rich coming from you, isn't it!? What about supping from the shoe of vileness? Look, Father, you had a little tingle under your cassock and went to see some dirty movies. Big deal!'

The priest banged his fists against the side of the box. 'Oh you fool, you unutterable, execrable mean-spirited fool!' he cried in abyssal anguish. 'You loathsome dolt, you —'

'Hey, who's holding the gun here!'

He exhaled like a schoolmaster finally broken by the lifetime of ignorance from his charges.

'Louie, Louie. I didn't look at these things, you fool! I was in one of them! I was ... was ... the gimp! Oh my God, Louie, what have I done?'

He wailed like a lorry full of sheep when the scent of the approaching abattoir reaches them. And then he added quietly, breathless, as if his spirit was now so crushed it didn't matter what he said, 'The girl is called Judy Juice.'

I withdrew the gun and stood up, adding as I left, 'Say three Hail Marys and give up the Vimto.'

I spent the next three nights, red-eyed and weary, trailing the gossamer thread of rumour that fluttered behind the name Judy Juice. I knew the name, of course, but it was obvious now that the girl in the leopard-skin coat at Jubal's party had not been her. It should have been obvious then, too. How could she have been when the real Judy Juice wouldn't give him the time of day? It was just a clever trap, maybe not even all that clever — one of those gaping manholes Jubal left lying around in his conversation and which I had obligingly walked into. I had to hand it to him: he was a polished operator.

Everyone I spoke to had heard of her, but no one could say where she was at the moment. They said she was bitch, they said she was a babe, they said she was gorgeous and equally they said she was vile; but they didn't say where she lived. Some people said she was slime and others said she was smart, smarter than all the men who longed to paw her; and being a bitch was all really just an act. Some said she put herself about and others said she never went near any man except on screen. They said she was easy but from the resentful looks in their eyes you somehow doubted it. They said she'd been raped as kid and that's why she hated men and others said it wasn't true and why would she need an excuse like that anyway? Some said she was beautiful and all said she was contemptuous. Some said she stayed in the hotels, a different room every night, depending on who was paying and the house Johns at the hotels said they'd never once seen her. Some said she lived on the council estate at Penparcau and others said she was rich and owned a house on Llanbadarn Road. One person said she lived at Borth and someone else said she had a houseboat at the harbour. Another person told me she lived out at the caravan park on the south bank of the Rheidol and the security guard there told me it was true but he hadn't seen her for weeks. In short, after three nights in which I got no sleep and even less joy, the only thing I knew about her for sure was the one fact everyone in town agreed upon. The thing between her and Jubal.

Everyone you talked to said Jubal was a bag of slime, but everyone you talked to smiled and cringed like a beaten dog whenever he appeared. Jubal the movie man with his hunchback and his pea-size head and his glasses thicker than portholes. Hi, Jubal! How's it going, Jubal? Saw the latest flick, Jubal, fantastic! You're looking great, Jubal! It might not be true to say every waitress was an out-of-work actress and every waiter had written a script, but Jubal slept with a lot of waitresses and it was difficult to see what else they found attractive in him. He wasn't scared of a challenge either. They said he'd promised to make Mrs Bligh-Jones a star, but it hadn't happened yet so maybe the job was too big even for him. Yeah, Jubal was the movie man in Aberystwyth, and so vain and girlish were the hearts of the townspeople he could have anything he wanted, any woman and any thing. Except Judy Juice's heart. He tried buying it, he tried bribing, he tried threatening and cajoling. But nothing worked so she got all the parts she wanted; passed the auditions without ever having to disrobe, or even turn up. It was the only thing in Aberystwyth money or influence couldn't buy.

*

After three days of getting nowhere I drove east along Llanbadarn towards the mountains of Pumlumon. I pondered the case and started to wonder, as I sometimes did round about this stage, whether it was really all that it seemed to be. Maybe there was something all a bit too glib about it. Almost rehearsed, this story of a man within whose soul the repressed Bohemian dream breaks free. This plummet from the top of Mount Parnassus via the ventriloquists' ghetto and the Komedy Kamp to the swirling waters of the 'What the Butler Saw' sewer. Even though I hadn't found him, it seemed a bit too easy, a bit phoney. His trail led like the footprints of a man in deep-sea diver's boots across wet concrete. And the fact that, despite all that, I still felt nowhere nearer to finding him only confirmed my suspicions. Maybe he wanted to be trailed, but wasn't ready to be found. Maybe he was playing with me; or someone else was not being straight with me.

Rain had started to spit at the windscreen as I pulled into the lay-by and looked ahead at the sanatorium. Now that I was here I suddenly saw what a forlorn task it was. A twelve-foot perimeter wall, razor-wire on top, guard-dog patrols ... I sighed and stepped out of the car. The air was cold and fresh, the ground sodden. I squelched over the turf and wandered along the wall for a while, looking for entrances. There weren't any. At one corner there was a tower and I could see a guard watching me through binoculars. It was hopeless. I doubted even Llunos could get in. I walked back to the car. I hadn't been away more than five minutes but another car had arrived in the meantime and parked behind mine. Two men had got out and were leaning against my car. One was dressed in a police constable's uniform and the other wore a shabby raincoat. It was Harri Harries.

Chapter 13

We drove south through Ysbyty Ystwyth, towards Pontrhydfendigaid, and then turned off on to a minor road into the hills; driving too fast for any chance of jumping from the moving car.

'Why have you picked me up?' I asked. 'Or is that a stupid question?'

'It's a stupid question.'

I flexed the muscles of my forearm; the cuffs, deliberately on too tight, bit into my flesh.

'This isn't the direction of the police station.'

'Well done, pathfinder. This is not the direction of the police station.' Harri Harries turned in the front seat of the prowl car and said to the driver, 'I told you he was smart.'

He squirmed awkwardly round to face me over the passenger seat. 'You'll like this place better. It's remote and it's quiet. Far from the hurly-burly, and from the madding crowd. It's a place where two men can unwind and get to know each other. And, best of all, it's the sort of place where if you hurt yourself you can die safe in the knowledge that your whimpers won't disturb anybody's peace.'

'And you wouldn't hold the odd whimper against a dying man.'

'Every man has a right to whimper, peeper. Even you. Especially you.'

A few miles down the road we pulled off and drove up a rough dirt track. The car's suspension was not good and we jumped and jerked around like drunken puppets. But the driver seemed not to care and Harri Harries sat up front with a smile on his face that didn't reach his eyes which were cold and intense.

We skidded to a stone-splattering halt outside a building that looked like an electricity substation, surrounded by a chain-wire fence, topped with barbed-wire. The twin gates were chained with thick anchor chain and a padlock the size of a sporran. A mournful electric hum filled the air. We passed through the gate and Harri Harries pointed to the sign that read: 'Danger. Keep Out.' 'Don't say you weren't warned, shamus.'

I decided I'd seen enough and as soon as they pulled me out of the car I made a run for it. But they had been expecting this ... They were both on me within seconds, and with my hands cuffed behind me ruining my balance I was soon sprawling and eating cinders. A blackjack rained down a few times and I was groggily dragged or pushed towards the building. Crudely painted slabs of concrete cemented together to make a wall. Steel-frame window, the panes filthy and broken and replaced with cardboard. Dirty green paint that had all flaked off to reveal the desiccated wooded subframe. Signs showing stick figure people in attitudes of pain being hit with z-shaped electric rays coming down from the sky. A building whose rough brick architecture seemed to be designed solely to make lonely places in which to beat up the innocent. The deputy opened the second door and they shoved me through. The space inside was taken up with piled-up boxes and packing-cases, overflowing files and sacks of paper. There was a cleared space with a workbench and a chair that looked like it had been borrowed from a pre-war dentist's. It had leather restraining straps. There were dark stains of splattered liquid on the cement floor, stains that could have been blood, and over in the corner was a table covered in fancy-dress clothing. A wolf's outfit and a little girl's dress - a dirndl, the sort that Heidi used to wear. They pushed me into the chair and fastened the straps. The nausea of fear began to well up inside from the pit of my stomach, up and up to my throat. I swallowed hard.

'Like the chair? We got it from the sanatorium. They're not allowed to use them any more — illegal.'

I was too scared to answer.

Harri dragged up a chair and sat, legs astride it, facing me from the side. I nodded towards the table in the corner. 'Are we going to have a party?'

He gave a quick glance and said, 'Yeah but you're not on the guest list.'

He took out a pack of cigarettes, gave it a rapid shake, and grabbed a protruding cigarette between his lips. Then he lit it and spoke through clenched lips the way they do in the movies. Why didn't he just take the cigarette out for a minute if he wanted to speak? The same reason he did everything: just one long trailer for a movie I'd seen a hundred times before.

The deputy brought over a canvas bag and dumped it with a loud metal clang on the table. There were a lot of iron things inside and my heart froze. How crazy were they? I had no idea. Harri Harries was new here. Maybe they really did keep law and order like this in Llanelli. Where was the deputy from? He was dressed like a constable but I noticed now the numbers on his arm were all zeros. I'd never seen him before and something told me if I survived this night I probably wouldn't be seeing him again. Not unless Harri Harries needed to do some more special policing.

Harri put his hand inside the bag and performed the pantomime of someone doing a lucky dip. He pulled out a monkey-wrench. Lucky old me. I put a foot on the tabletop. Harri turned the wrench in his hand and then let the flat side fall on to the exposed bone of my shin. Tears of pain filled my eyes. It was just a lazy slap but the message it conveyed was clear: if this is the hors d'oeuvre, just imagine the banquet to come. 'What do you want?' I said though gritted teeth.

He rested his elbow on the back of the chair, rested his chin on the palm of his hand and said simply, 'I want to ask you a few things about Dean Morgan. Principally, where the fuck he is.' He puffed smoke gently out towards the ceiling.

'But I don't know where he is.'

He made a thoughtful face. 'I thought you might say that. That's why you'll notice a slight departure here from formal police-interview procedure. It's not an easy one to spot, quite subtle, but someone with your enormous experience should be able to get it. Any ideas?'

'The fancy dress?'

He glanced again at the clothing in the corner and shook his head. He pulled the pen out of his breast pocket and held it out to me. 'You see? It's this. I'm not taking any notes.'

Again I said nothing, just wished he'd cut the comedy.

'Now there's a good reason for that. My experience with interviewing peepers is that they generally know a good deal of information that would be useful to the police but that they are reluctant to release it, either because they are selfish or because of something that is called protecting client confidentiality. They usually lay great store by this which is an area where they differ greatly from me because I don't give a fuck about it. And that, my friend, is the reason that in contrast to established procedure I'm not taking notes. Because the first ten minutes of any interview is usually bollocks. And then after I have used some of the plumbing tools in the bag here interviewees start to open up a bit. A bit like unblocking a drain.'

The deputy snorted in appreciation.

'You just love to hear yourself talk, don't you?'

'Wrong, peeper. I love to make other people talk; shy retiring people like you.'

'What is it you want to know?' I said.

'I want to know where the Dean is.'

'I've been looking for him for two weeks. I don't know where he is. No one does.'

'You see what I mean? You're just like all the rest. They start off saying they know nothing and by the end of the interview I've got an aching wrist from taking notes.'

'Why are you looking for him?'

A sudden flash of anger seized him and he smacked the wrench against my shin again. 'Don't you fucking start interviewing me! I'm not the one tied to a chair.' He stuck his face up close to mine, so close I could feel the heat of his anger burning on his skin. 'You creepy little snoopers never stop, do you? Always poking your dirty little snouts into where they don't belong, prying and snooping and spying ... isn't that right? You'd just love to put your eye to my keyhole, wouldn't you?'

'I don't need to, Harries. I wouldn't see anything I hadn't seen a thousand times before.'

'Oh is that so!'

'You're just another two-bit Sunday-school teacher that took a wrong turning, Harries; brought up in some quagmire of a valley above Ebbw Vale, in the shadow of the chapel, living in a grey house beneath a dripping grey sky drinking grey spoons of gruel fed to you by your grey mam and singing grey songs of thanks every grey Sunday for the shitty grey life the good grey Lord so kindly gave you. The highlight of your week was getting beaten with a leather strap to make you good and the only girl you ever kissed went "Baaa!" -'

The wrench smashed down again. I gagged like a sobbing child and screwed my eyes up as the tears squelched out of the corners. As I groaned he brought his face up close and hissed in a cloud of nicotine, 'It may help your memory to know that the wrench is the friendliest tool in the bag. Five minutes from now and you'll be begging me to use that nice old wrench. Do you understand?'

I nodded. I was no tough guy. I was ready to tell him anything. The trouble was, I didn't know anything. A few scraps of nothing that would only serve to convince him I was holding out on him and make him madder, because I was sure now that when he got mad like he just did it wasn't an act. Make him madder and introduce me to the whole range of his DIY plumbing skills. He reached into the bag and pulled out an electric sander. The deputy's face lit up and Harri looked around for a plug. He found one on the wall behind the bench.

'Would you 'effin' believe it!' he cursed. 'It's a round-pin.' He held the flex of the sander and let the plug that he couldn't plug in dangle uselessly just to help me realise how close I'd come. He threw the sander back into the bag and did another lucky dip. This time he pulled out a blowtorch. His mood brightened. 'That's better! Old-tech, can't go wrong.' He pumped the plunger to build up the pressure and lit the gas, then adjusted it until he got a perfect spear-blade of hot blue flame. He held it next to his ear. 'They say that the worst part about being burned with one of these is after it stops, when the flesh cooks itself slowly like a leg of lamb in the oven.'

'Please don't do it, I'll tell you anything you want to know.'

He waved the flame at my face. 'OK, so where is he?'

'He's out at the Komedy Kamp. Buried under the floor of chalet 7c,' I said in desperation.

A look of surprise lit up the cop's face. 'You're kidding? How did he get there?'

'It's like this,' I began. 'This Dean acted the part of the big holy monk, you know the type - wouldn't know one end of a woman from another. Holier than thou and all that, but it's all for show. Inside he has a special hobby, something he likes to do, something that he is ashamed to even think about but he still likes to do it ...' I looked at the cop. He had put the blowtorch down and was sitting there drinking up the story. This was easier than he'd expected.

'So what was it then, peeper?'

'Stiffs.'

Cop nodded, trying to look businesslike, as if this what he had suspected all along.

'Of course, he's not the only person around town who likes them a bit cold. It's quite a popular pastime in some quarters, so I'm told. But not many people are in such an excellent position to do something about it. Old men, young girls, you name it, he was into it. And that might have been an end of it. He could have carried on like that and no one would have been any the wiser. But he gets greedy. Maybe he's planning on a retirement and needs a better quality nest egg, or maybe he's just tired of scrimping and saving all his life. Either way he could do with a little extra money. Couldn't we all? He finds himself approached by a couple of guys who want in on the game. They happen to have some clients who also fancy a night of passion in the morgue and they're willing to pay. So these two new guys ask him how about it? Like to share the spoils for a bit of extra cash? And he thinks why not? As long as everyone is discreet about it no one need know and everyone is discreet of course because they are all respectable men in respectable positions. And so it goes on for a while but then the two new guys think of a new angle. A special-request service. You see someone walking around you fancy, have a word with us and we can arrange the death and a subsequent night of passion.'

The cop whistled. This was worse than anything he'd yet encountered. And if he knew the first thing about the underworld he'd know it was pure invention and not very good at that. But he didn't.

'Of course this is way out of the Dean's league. Bonking a few corpses, yes, he didn't have a problem with that, and for a man like him for whom death was a way of life, it wasn't a big deal. But this was something else entirely. Murder to order? No way. The trouble was, the two guys had made a mistake. They'd miscalculated and let him in on the plan; that gave them a problem. So they invite him to town to discuss the matter. And they get persuasive. Very persuasive. The Dean's no fool, he realises they are planning to silence him, silence him for good. He tries to run away and hide out in town. But what does he know about the cloak-and-dagger stuff? He's just a crusty old academic fallen in with a bad lot. It was only a matter of time before they got to him.'

The cop nodded thoughtfully as he took it in. He was deeply disturbed. 'So who are the two guys?'

'I don't know the names, but one of them is the garage mechanic at Kousin Kevin's Kamp, he's the muscle. The other is the security guy there. He's the brains.'

The cop made a determined frown. 'That little jerk — I know him!'

'Of course he'll deny it all,' I said.

Harri Harries picked up the bag of tools. 'We'll see about that.'

It was still early evening and sleet was falling as they padlocked the gates and dropped me off at the bus stop. The sort of bus stop that looked like bus arrivals were charted with a calendar rather than a clock. I hobbled over to the red telephone box. The door squeaked like a seagull and the inside stank of urine. Llunos's voice had the tone of one who really didn't want to get up and answer the phone at 8 pm in the evening, knowing full well it wouldn't be anything good. I looked at the distant row of yellow lights from behind sitting-room curtains and I knew what he meant. But this had to be done. I told him briefly about what had happened and told him to get up from his tea, the newspaper and the TV, put on his coat and go and find the two guys from Kousin Kevin's. He didn't say no, he just sighed and said, 'Why me, Louie?'

'Who else is there?' He knew that was true.

'You're asking me to arrest a couple of guys who've done nothing wrong.'

'Well it wouldn't be the first time, would it?'

'This isn't funny, Louie.'

'Who's laughing? Look at it this way, you'll probably be saving their lives. Or at the least preventing a serious assault taking place. Just keep them banged-up until we can sort this out. If you keep them under your nose they should be safe.'

Sometime after midnight I parked outside the Moulin and walked in. It was quieter tonight than the last time, smoky and slightly sleepy, as if all the moods of all the people there had become synchronised and the flavour of the night was dreamy-mellow. I ordered a drink, listened to the singers and let my gaze wonder sleepily around the room. It came to rest on a girl dancing and my eyes stayed there for a while with my thoughts wandered elsewhere. Then slowly those thoughts returned and my attention focused on her. Suddenly I understood how a rabbit feels when it stares transfixed at the headlight of an oncoming car.

She was tall but not too tall and slim but not skinny. Her figure was voluptuous and statuesque like one of those space-travelling goddesses in newspaper strip-cartoons, the ones whose job it is to save the universe. She wore a tight bodice of soft white lace, partially unbuttoned so that the cups of her brassiere, like the hands of a malevolent dwarf, thrust her breasts forward to taunt the men who watched in awe. The waist-button of her jeans was undone and the button below that too so that the edge of her white panties flashed in the ultraviolet light. Her midriff was bare and taut, and her faded Levi's 501s had been cut off at about the level that her bicycle saddle reached when she was seventeen. A saddle that had, no doubt, been stolen long ago and was now worth ten times more than the bike.

She danced wonderfully and provocatively with a flowing Polynesian languor, her hair glistening like moonlit water. Occasionally the cascading blonde hair would swamp her soft brown shoulder and the strap of her bodice would be washed away in the flood; and when that happened, her breast remained impossibly in position, mocking and taunting, like a puppet that continues to dance after its strings have been cut. Every time I tried to look away my gaze returned of its own accord, like a compass needle pointing north.

The boy she was with was one of the camp, symbolist painters who sold their work to the tourists on the Prom. He was wearing a ruffed shirt and stage make-up and no doubt had left a portfolio with the hat-check girl containing five dreary views of the bandstand with the moon hanging behind it like a rotten fruit. Scarcely eighteen or nineteen, hardly old enough to have made an enemy in this world, and yet in the Moulin tonight this boy was despised by every man there. Because we all knew from the expression on the goddess's face - the truculent, savage aristocratic disdain - that she had chosen him purely to demonstrate her contempt for the rest of us. Chosen this effete, cross-dressing, half-grown milksop to show us how she despised us for being such hopeless fools; for surrendering ourselves so abjectly at the sight of her flesh. She had chosen him not as a dance-partner, but as a scalpel with which to expose like an Aztec priest our hearts to the common view and make us see, even though we already knew, what pathetic and feeble objects they were. Our palpitating flesh as craven as that of a guard dog who allows himself to be bought off with a bone and licks the hand of the man come to kill his master. And though our humiliation was already more than complete, she intensified it further by ordering round after round of exotic drinks — flaming black sambucas and B52s — which they knocked back in one, and which she paid for from a wallet stuck in her back pocket. And after that, eyes smouldering with contempt, she pressed her chest hard against the boy's bony ribcage and slid with lugubrious, side-to-side slithers up into his undeserving, pimply face. I stopped a waitress and asked the name of this girl in the tones of a shepherd asking about that new star in the east. And she told me without even bothering to look, told me with the air of one sick of explaining the obvious to the ignorant. 'It's Judy Juice, the movie star.'

She left shortly after and so I paid for my drink and followed at a discreet distance. By the time I got to the street she was gone, and someone else hailed me from just outside the gateway. It was Calamity, leaning against a lamppost. I looked at my watch - it was gone one and I was about to remonstrate with her for being out so late but then I saw the stricken look in her eyes, her complexion the pallor of cigarette ash.

I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out and she opened hers silently too. Then she collapsed into my arms with the words 'Custard Pie'.

'It's OK,' I said. 'It's OK.'

Then she pulled herself away from me and looked up and told me in one long gushing stream, as if the faster she said it, the less damage it would do.

'He saw the bird seed and begged me for it and I said, "You have to buy it, buster." And so he said, "If you want to find the Dean, ask for the girl called Judy Juice." And so I sneered at him and said, "You expect bird seed for that? I've seen fresher news written on the side of a Babylonian tomb." And then he sort of danced a bit and said I was a cutey and said, "All right, little girl, you want some real news? Tell that smart-arse private eye to stick this in his pipe and smoke it." And then he got all excited and rubbed his hands together and said, "You want to know what the Ysbyty Ystwyth Experiment is all about? What's been going on at the sanatorium? What this 'thing' is that people keep seeing? You want to know that, little girl?" And I said yes and he said, "Give me the seed." So I made a deal. I gave him a quarter of it and said he'd get the rest when he told me about the Ysbyty Ystwyth Experiment. And so he did.' Then she stopped and said, 'I think you need a drink.'

'I've just had one.'

'I think you need another one.'

But before I could drink or she could speak there was a disturbance in the entrance to the club. Judy Juice walked out in a hurry, putting her coat on as she left. Behind her, arms outstretched in supplication, came Jubal. 'But Baby!' he cried. 'But Poppet!'

Judy Juice carried on walking and Jubal ran and caught her sleeve. 'Munchkin!' She shrugged off his hand and swept past us without noticing. He tried to grab her sleeve again, shouting, 'Look here, you bitch!' Calamity put a hand out to stop him. 'Lady doesn't want to talk to you, Mac' Jubal pushed her aside and she grabbed his arm. He shoved her roughly again and she kicked him furiously in the shin. Jubal threw out a backhand slap and in the same instant, before even I had time to react, Judy Juice spun round and shoved Jubal crying, 'Leave the little girl alone, you cockroach!'

Judy Juice was quite a big girl and Jubal fell back in surprise and over into some sacks of refuse left out for the bin men. Calamity made a move towards him but I held her back. He lay there dazed for a second or two as Judy Juice stepped into a taxi, and then he stumbled to his feet, ran towards the car and shouted, 'But Baby I'm sorry! Please, Baby ...' The car sped off and Jubal sank to his knees, shouting 'Baby, I'm sorry, I beg you!' And then, still kneeling, he buried his face in his hands and wept.

Back at the office, once I'd convinced her I'd had enough rum, Calamity told me what Custard Pie had said. Told me the news that made my heart stop for so long that I sat there listening for the beat to start again like a hundred-metre sprinter listening for the gun.

'This "thing" out at the sanatorium,' she said. 'It's Herod Jenkins, your old games teacher. He's still alive.'

Chapter 14

I tossed and turned all night and cried out in that half-asleep, half-awake state in which the night terrors visit us. And maybe an hour before dawn — the darkest hour — I slipped beneath the membrane of sleep and dreamed of a day in late January many years ago when the whole school was kept in during afternoon break. An eerie hush consumes the old school building, a silence so absolute you can hear the footfall of the spiders in the cupboards where the Latin books are stored. Forbidden to move from our desks, or even look at the window, we hold our breath and strain to hear above the deafening drumbeats of our own hearts ... and then there it is, at first so faint as to be almost imperceptible, but growing and growing, getting louder until there can be no mistake: thwump, thwump, thwump! The sound of choppers. Suddenly, in a cacophony of slamming desklids that drowns out the shouting of the teacher, we all dash to the window. Thwump, thwump, thwump! The dying sun has turned the frosty sky amber like a puma's eye; spread beneath it the iced-over games field sparkles like frozen lemonade... thwump, thwump, thwump! From far in the glowing west, growing all the time, getting bigger and bigger, that small speck that grows and slowly resolves itself into the shape of a helicopter, flying in low over the trees. Realities merge in the way they do in dreams, so that the chopper is now silhouetted against an orange tropical sky, like the film poster to Apocalypse Now, advertising a film about a journey upriver in a coracle to a Cambodian temple, in search of a crazy man in a track suit called Kurtz. Thwump, thwump, thwump! 'Get back to your seats this instant!' Mr Kurtz cries. We look out and gasp. Against the burning sky, almost overhead now, the chopper. And slung beneath the fuselage the bier of Marty, the one who never made it back from the cross-country run.

*

Llunos was hunched over a pint in the Castle pub, just inside wooden doors. He looked up, smiled, saw the expression on my face and lost the smile. 'Oh,' he said. 'Looks like you found out. Should have known you would.'

'All I want to hear from you is it's not true.'

'It's true. No one in town wants more than me to say it's not. But that doesn't change a thing. It's true.'

'Didn't we push him out of a plane?'

He nodded glumly. 'I thought we did.'

'How long have you known?'

'Six months or so. At first it was just rumours ...'

'Why didn't you tell me?'

He took a while to speak, as if he knew the answer but had forgotten it. 'What good would it have done?'

'How could this happen? From a plane, for fuck's sake!'

He picked up his pint and brought it to his lips and then stopped. He spoke over the top. 'It's not that rare to fall out of a plane and survive. Read the Guinness Book of Records. And this was over a lake, and we were flying in low for a bombing run. Work it out.'

'Wouldn't the concussion kill him?'

'A normal person, perhaps. But a games teacher ... ?' He stopped and took out a card and wrote an address on the back. 'Look, I can't say any more at the moment. It's better for you to hear the whole story. What you've heard so far is nothing. Meet me tomorrow at this address, at 10 am.'

He handed me the card and stood up to leave. The address was a room in the old college building. 'In the meantime, keep it under your hat. We don't want to start a panic'

*

The old college stretched along the Prom from the pier to the putting-green. With its massive stone walls and conical turrets it looked like a Rhineland castle and had stood up well to the flood. It had originally been built as a hotel and when they found they couldn't make it pay by accommodating folk taking a two-week vacation from the real world they used it instead to house the dons who took one for a lifetime. Inside the main building bronze statues of long-dead and forgotten academics gazed down at me with looks of stern and vague disapproval. An attitude built on the failsafe premise that whatever it was I was doing or thinking they would almost certainly have disapproved of it. The floor squeaked as all floors in buildings devoted to serious study should and the walls were hung with wooden boards gilded with forgotten acts of sporting glory. All from a distant time when athletic prowess for students entailed more than a run from the pie shop to the pub.

The room looked out over the ocean through arched, leaded lights with panes of stained glass. There were seven people waiting in the room when I arrived, seated around a table on which stood a movie projector. Llunos motioned me to take a seat and introduced me to the others. There was professor of some sort from the Clarach Institute. A Tillamook Indian with a face the colour of polished rosewood and wearing a racoon-skin hat. There were also two lab technicians and some men in dark suits who looked like they came from the security services.

'The first thing you need to know about this meeting', Llunos began, 'is it never took place.' The people round the table nodded grimly. 'We never met, we never spoke, and we're not here now.' More nods. 'I don't wish to make this any longer than it has to be, but not everyone is up to speed here and so I will need to fill in some of the background.' He walked to the front and stood in front of a blackboard.

'At first it was just a few rumours. Some of the peasant communities in the hinterlands beyond Nant-y-moch started reporting strange sightings. A manlike creature loping through the forest, usually at dusk, a shy creature that shunned human contact and used the cover of twilight to get about. Such reports were easy enough to dismiss at first — especially by people who didn't want to look too closely. Then there were the odd footprints — big ones, and even the deep wide imprint in the mud of a waterhole of his backside.' Llunos gave a signal to the lab technicians who lifted a plaster-of-Paris cast the size of a small card-table. Llunos continued. 'Farmers also reported losses among their livestock, but of course such things are commonplace.' He turned towards the man in the racoon-skin hat. 'Laughing Bear has experience with the sasquatch of North America, popularly known as Bigfoot. Laughing Bear, I imagine the pattern I'm outlining is familiar to you?' The man nodded gravely and lines appeared in the corners of his eyes.

'As I said, it was easy enough to dismiss at first. But then this happened.' He gave another hand signal and the blackout curtains were drawn. One of the technicians started up the projector and we watched a grainy, ghostly 8mm film of a family horsing around beside a lake at nightfall. They had that awkward jerky movement of people shot with old cine cameras and were laughing and playing tag and pulling faces for the camera the way all families do.

'At the time they saw nothing unusual but when the film came back from the chemist, they saw this.' He pointed his stick at the tree-line behind the family antics. It was a forestry plantation with the characteristic uniform rows of conifers. Where the tree-line stopped there was a wire fence and some fire-beating equipment. And there, moving uncertainly between the trees, was a figure. If it had been any more shadowy it would have been imperceptible. If it had stood still it probably would have never been noticed. But the very act of moving detached it from the background gloom and give it substance.

'The quality's terrible, of course. But anyone can see that this is no fox, or deer, or any of the explanations people normally like to pin on things like this. We had it image-enhanced and analysed and all the usual stuff. The boffins couldn't tell us much, except to say it's definitely a biped.' Llunos paused for a second and pressed his fingertips together as if the next sentence was especially difficult for him. 'Gentlemen, we had reason to suspect, and we soon came to know, that this was Herod Jenkins. And that he had survived his fall from the plane.' No one said anything and the film ran out, filling the silent room with the repeated clack, clack, clack of the revolving celluloid whipping the tabletop.

The man in the racoon-skin hat was invited to take the stand. I half-expected him to speak with the heap-big Hollywood accent used to accuse us of speaking with forked tongue. But he just sounded like any other well-educated Canadian.

'This is the point where I was called in,' he began. 'I spent some weeks in the Nant-y-moch badlands tracking the creature. I found out that although the adults were scared of him, the children knew him well. They called him Mr Dippetty-doo — a helpless happy old fool eating dirt and wearing clothes of woven twigs. In stark contrast to his former persona, about which you are all better informed than me, Dippetty-doo would happily tousle the hair of the village urchins, or pull out pennies from behind their ears ... even the farmyard dogs would no longer bark at his passing but would scamper up and lick his hand ... in short, gentlemen, it became clear to me that the fall from the plane had caused him to lose his memory and no trace of it remained. He was in fact harmless.'

The woodsman sat down and there was a mild ripple of table-rapping in applause, although I didn't see what for.

Llunos stood up and cut the applause with his hand. 'This left us with a serious problem. What guarantee was there that at some point he wouldn't recover his memory? The prospect was alarming and in order to allay our fears we contacted Doctor Pritchard who is an expert on neurophysiology at the Clarach Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience. What he told us hardly put our fears at rest. Doctor.'

The man in the white lab-coat stood up and smiled thinly. 'I'll try and do this in lay terms as far as I am able. No doubt you are all familiar with the TV-soap version of memory loss. The patient lies on a hospital bed and his family sit around him showing him old photos and playing the records that were once his favourites in the hope that some emotionally charged event will somehow turn the key that opens the gates of memory. It's actually not as fanciful as it seems and is a well-proven clinical technique. But have you ever wondered what would happen if the family sitting round the hospital bed were impostors? And the lost memories they patiently tried to coax back were bogus? All those old songs he never sang and the specially doctored photos showing cherished childhood moments that never took place? That in essence was what we did.' There was a subdued gasp round the table at the audacity of what the doctor was telling us. He continued unabashed as if used to such a reception and perhaps slightly proud. 'The project was conducted under the supervision of Doctor Faustus from the sanatorium — a very brilliant and unconventional neuroscientist who has done some pioneering work on false-memory syndrome and who kindly agreed to undertake the mapping of Herod's psyche.'

One of men in dark suits asked a question. 'How did you get him to the sanatorium?'

The scientist smiled in acknowledgment, pleased at being given another opportunity to show off.

'Good question! Actually, it wasn't too difficult, we used a technique suggested to us by our friend here from the Tillamook Indians. Basically the same used for trapping mink. Laughing Bear told us that during his observation of Dippetty-doo he noticed his quarry was secretly engaging in an occasional lover's tryst with a local woman. We approached her and outlined to her out desire to make Herod well again and she was happy to assist us in our efforts by acting as a form of bait. I believe some of you may know this woman, Mrs Bligh-Jones from the Meals on Wheels.'

This was greeted with snorts from around the table of the sort that suggested 'rather you than me, mate'.

There were no further questions so Doctor Pritchard carried on. 'Once we had successfully installed the subject in the sanatorium we invented a new past for him and hired a group of actors to sit round his bedside from dawn till dusk pretending to be his family. They were called the Flying Laszlofis — a troupe of Magyar circus performers. Day by day they sat there drip-feeding him the sweet balm of memory of all those lost tender cherished moments — hunting the black bears of the Carpathian Hills with his grandfather, Vadas; learning to dance the polka in the rustic parlour at the age of six; his old dog Цcsi, and that first sweet kiss with the seventeen-year-old Ninбcscska. It was an audacious undertaking but, amazingly, it started to produce results. Before long Herod took up the violin and soon mastered the rudiments of a number of Hungarian folk songs. He began to express pangs of homesickness for those far-off Carpathian Hills. He refused to eat the hospital food and insisted on goulash and pickled cabbage.

In short, the experiment had been an astonishing success; or to put it another way, gentlemen, Herod Jenkins had gone from this world, and in his place stood Zsigбcska Melles.' He paused and fought down a half-smile that was twitching the edges of his mouth. 'Er ... those of you who think us scientists are a rather cold-blooded, humourless lot might be amused to learn that Melles is the Magyar term for big-chested.' There was a ripple of chuckling, and he continued, 'It was an epoch-making moment in the annals of neuroscience; until, that is, the morning when the nurse went to his room and found him gone.' The doctor made an apologetic gesture with his hands and walked to the window and spoke to the sea and the sky: 'Since then there have been rumours and the occasional reports of him standing at the edge of the woods at sunset, staring, so they say, with a strange yearning at the rugby on TV in the darkened houses ...'

*

I walked with Llunos down Pier Street and accompanied him to his office. As we strolled he told me about Harri Harries. The two men from the Kamp were currently in protective custody, down at the station.

'They thought it was a trick,' said Llunos. 'And Harries hasn't reported to work. Don't know where he is. I've sent a fax to Cardiff about it.'

'Why did they send him here in the first place?'

'It's because certain people down in Cardiff are not happy with me.'

'I thought you were doing fine.'

His step unconsciously followed time with mine. 'First the flood and now Herod ... black marks against my name ... it all adds up.'

'They surely can't blame you for ... for all this?'

'It happened on my watch. Plus they think I've gone soft. Got old. They say I don't run a tight ship any more, all this aggro between the druids and the Meals on Wheels. They can't see, it's a different world after the flood, all the old certainties have gone ... time was you knew who was bad and who was good, even if you could never prove it you still knew it. But now, life being such a struggle, the line is blurred. And then there's the problem of you.'

'Me?'

'They see me having coffee with you and generally ... fraternising they call it, and they say that proves it. Once upon a time I would have run you out of town every now and again just to keep you on your toes.'

'It's true, you would have.'

'I know. But after a while ...' He stopped at the corner and looked at me. 'I mean, what's the point?'

When we got to his office we sat in contemplative silence. 'We're going to make a posse, if you're interested,' said Llunos after a while. 'The boffins say he'll probably make for some place sacred to him.'

I tried to look hopeful. 'I suppose that's something.'

'Yes,' said Llunos sadly. 'It's something.'

Chapter 15

Marty's mum's house was a two-mile walk off the main road up a country lane. There were no streetlights but the wet drizzly sky gave off a soft luminescence and provided more than enough light for eyes that had got used to the dark. Despite the cold and wet it was strangely pleasant, calm and peaceful so far away from the frenetic activity of Aberystwyth. The only sound was the occasional bark of a distant dog and even that was comforting. You could tell without seeing that these were wholesome well-fed dogs who would run up to you and nuzzle your hand, not the snarling, half-starved packs of curs that slunk through the rubble of town at night. After a while I began to make out the orange light from the house, glowing through the swaying black filigree of the trees.

The door was on a chain, Marty's mum lived alone, and peered at me from inside as a wave of hot firelit air hit me. Air filled with cinnamon and baking smells and that indefinable but not unpleasant aroma that the insides of other people's houses have. Recognition took only a fraction of a second and she let out a gasp before closing the door slightly to release the chain.

Once I was inside she stood facing me looking up and grasped my face in her hands. We didn't speak, she just beamed at me, her old watery eyes sparkling and then her face darkened as a thought occurred to her. 'I knew you'd come when I heard.'

I nodded.

'So it's true then? He's alive?'

'Yes. I came as soon as I could.'

She touched my cheek. 'You're a good man, Louie.' Then she turned and I followed her down the corridor to the kitchen at the back.

'It's funny, I always suspected it. I had a feeling ... they say a mother always knows. Mind you, it's always good to see you, Louie, whatever the occasion.'

The kitchen was filled with warmth and I sat down at the table while Marty's mum stirred some stew on the stove. There was a rifle on the table, half-way through being cleaned. We both looked at it at the same time and then our eyes met.

'It's no good you looking at me like that.'

'Bit late in the year to be hunting rabbits, isn't it?'

'Bit late in life, too, that's what you're thinking, I know.'

'Or perhaps you're hunting something a bit bigger?'

'This one's no bunny rabbit, that's for sure.'

I put my hand on the gleaming oily barrel. 'This isn't the way.'

She stopped stirring and stood motionless at the stove and then said, 'He took my son, Louie. Sent him off on a cross-country run in weather that even the SAS on the Brecon Beacons don't go out in.'

She brought over the stew and I ate hungrily. Through the steam swirling up from the spoon I could see the smiling picture of Marty on the mantelpiece above the fire. It was a washed-out colour snap of him on a beach at some south-coast English resort, seven or eight years old.

'All the same,' I said, 'you should leave it to the experts. I hear there's going to be a posse.'

She scoffed. 'Bank tellers, postmen, ironmongers, filing-clerks ... They'll try and take him alive, the fools.'

'A hunt is no place for you. It's not right.'

'Right or not right, I don't care any more, Louie. I'm getting old now and I've got no one here to comfort me. I lost a good husband to the mines and a good son to the games teacher. It's lime to even the score.'

'You'll be wasting your time, he could be anywhere between here and Welshpool.'

'It's not so difficult if you know where to look. He'll make for somewhere sacred. No different from a wounded fox. Somewhere that means something special to him, from long ago. Some place he cherishes, that he holds dear from a happy time before everything got ruined.'

'Sure, I said. 'But no one knows where that is.'

After supper we talked until late. I told Marty's mum about what I'd seen, about the fall of Valentine, and how the Meals on Wheels had eclipsed the druids. She scoffed and warned me not to pay too much attention to outward appearances. Druids or the Meals on Wheels, underneath they were all the same. Like shoots growing in different parts of a garden that come from the same tree. The one to really watch out for, she said, was Mrs Llantrisant, even though she was still in prison.

At midnight, the clock chimed and Marty's mum looked slightly startled.

'Oh my word!' she said. 'Almost forgot. Come! we must be quick, he usually starts at midnight.'

Ignoring the puzzled look on my face she beckoned to me to follow her. She doused all the lights in the house and switched on a torch and led me up to the attic bedroom, a small garret that looked out over the hills south of Aberystwyth. The night was dark and featureless, even the lights of the scattered cottages having been extinguished, and only the ceaseless blink of the lighthouse beyond Cwmtydu reminding us that there were other people alive tonight.

'Wait for it now,' she whispered.

We stared out, holding our breath, waiting and watching for I knew not what, the lighthouse the only point of focus in the darkness. And then it happened.

'Oooh! Here we go,' hissed Marty's mum.

Something happened to the light from the lighthouse. Something that I had seen only once before in my life, that I struggled to find words for, seen once many moons ago at a meeting of children whose purpose was now lost to me. A shadow temporarily obscured the light, like a cloud sliding across the face of the moon. And then it passed and was followed by another smaller shadow. And then a bigger one. Marty's mum nudged me and pointed further to the south where the object that had temporarily eclipsed the sun of the lighthouse threw a shadow, one huge and measured in miles across the face of the darkened hills and all at once I realised in astonishment what it was. It was a bunny.

'It's Mr Cefnmabws,' explained Marty's mum in a hushed voice. 'The lighthouse keeper. He's a dissident.'

The county-sized rabbit waggled its ears across the benighted hamlets above Llanfarian, and for a moment I was transported back to my seventh birthday party where a conjuror had done a similar thing with the shadow of his hand on the kitchen wall.

'What's it all about?' I asked in disbelief, as the rabbit was joined by three others who chased it.

'It's his way of publishing the truth,' she said. 'About the death of Mrs Cefnmabws on Pumlumon.'

A shadow-chase ensued across the hills south towards Llanrhystud.

'He had a printing-press and a radio station but they closed it down. This is his only way.'

The three rabbits caught up with the first and started beating him. Then the shadows disappeared and the light returned to its usual steady blinking.

'That's your lot for tonight, he'll be on again tomorrow. Doesn't do it for long in case someone notices.'

We stayed there staring out into the night even though Mr Cefnmabws's passion play had ended.

'What's he trying to say?'

'He wants an inquiry, doesn't he? He wants them to ask Mrs Bligh-Jones the question, the one they dare not ask.'

*

The caravans were strung out like plastic diamonds on the cheap necklace of the River Rheidol. I sat in the car for a while, listening to the radio, and waited for her to go to whichever caravan she lived in. And then I waited some more and got out.

Dew was forming on the bonnet of the car and the town was asleep. I walked up to her trailer and a man appeared out of the shadows in a way that suggested he had been watching me.

'Do you want something, mate?'

I looked at him. He didn't look the type to be accosting strangers at this time of night. He looked about sixty, with a scared face and old, tired eyes.

'What's it to you?'

'I'm the security. You don't live here, what do you want?'

I walked up to the caravan and knocked. 'Just visiting a friend.'

'Miss Judy doesn't accept visitors after midnight.'

'That's funny, last time I came here you said you hadn't seen her for weeks. Why don't you shove off home before you get hurt.'

The man reached out to grab my coat and I shoved him back viciously. 'Look, old man, whatever they're paying you, it's not worth it.'

The door opened and Judy Juice stood there in a silk dressing-gown.

'What's going on?'

'Someone snooping, Miss Judy.'

I turned to Judy Juice. 'Sorry to trouble you, miss, but I was wondering if I could talk to you about Dean Morgan —'

Her eyes flashed scorn. 'Do you know what time it is?'

'Yes I'm sorry, miss, but it really is important. Someone's life could depend on it ...'

She narrowed her eyes and considered me. 'Cops?'

I shook my head, said, 'Private investigator,' and held out a card.

She took it and read and then looked at me again, this time with a sense of recognition. 'You're the guy with the little girl.'

I nodded.

'It's OK, Lester. Thanks.' Then she pulled open the door and let me in.

The place had a cloying, sour smell of unwashed bedclothes and not enough air and what little air there was had been burned up by the camping-gas stove. The floor was littered with discarded clothes and so many foil take-away trays they were ankle-deep like silver ingots on the floor of a vault. On one wall was a makeshift dressing-table before a mirror with a halo of light bulbs set around it. And at the far end a three-piece suite was angled into the space beneath the big window. She waded through the silver sea of ingots and sat on the sofa and poured herself a gin with a shaking hand and drunk it in one go. She didn't offer me one. I sat down opposite her.

She took a deep drag on a cigarette and screwed up her eyes with what might have been pleasure.

'Was he a friend of yours?'

'No. I've been hired to find him.'

'But you said no cops, right?'

'No cops.'

'I'm sick of cops. They either want to lock you up or fuck you up.'

'Usually both.'

'What makes you come here?'

'The Dean used to have one of your fudge-box tops — he lit a candle to it every night.'

She refilled the gin glass, took a violent swig, and a drag on her cigarette. 'Yeah, he was sweet like that.' She took another life-saving drag. 'Is he dead?'

'Not as far as I know.'

'Well, there's not much I can tell you. I haven't seen him for weeks. Met him at the Heritage Museum. I was spinning and he got the part as the coracle man for a while. But he didn't stay long, they never do. He was different from the others, though. I wondered what he was doing there, and then I realised it was because of me. I meet plenty of guys like that.'

'Anything going on between you two?'

She looked slightly puzzled for a second and then let out a laugh. 'Me and him?! Are you nuts?! What do I want with a man?'

I waited while she refilled the gin glass and then lit another cigarette. Between puffs she asked me, 'Is it true he was a professor?'

'Yes, he was.'

'I'd rustle something up from the fridge for you but they took it away.'

'We could go out, if you're hungry.'

'I haven't got the energy to dress, but thanks anyway.'

'I could get a take-away. Chinese.'

She smiled. 'You worked out I like Chinese food all on your own?'

'It was a hunch.'

I returned to the trailer half an hour later laden with a set meal for two that was so good the girl at the take-away assured me even a real Chinese person might have eaten it. Judy Juice peeled away the lids and threw them on the floor. Then she picked up a knife with a 'Come to Sunny Aberystwyth' handle and used it to scrape the rice on to some plates.

'The girl at the Chinese knows you, says you eat there every day.'

'It's all I eat. You ever been there?'

'The take-away?'

'No, China.'

'Do I look like I can afford to go to China?'

'How would I know how much it costs? Someone told me the other day, when they open this tunnel to France you'll be able to get a train all the way from Aberystwyth to Peking. Is that right?'

'As far as I know.'

She nodded, somehow relieved. 'One day I'll go there; get on that night train to Shrewsbury and never get off. Yes sir!' The bright look faded and she said, 'You know, some other guy came asking about the Dean.'

'Was he wearing a Peacocks' coat?'

'I wouldn't know where he bought it, but it was long and black and he was a bit creepy. He wasn't sweet like you so I told him to sling his hook.'

'What did he want?'

'Oh, you know, asking about the Dean and when I last saw him. And then he said the Dean had taken a case that belonged to him and asked me for it. And I said why would I have it, and he said he knew the Dean had left it here. I said shows you how much you know, buster, and then he said, "Don't give me the runaround, you tart." So I called Lester the guard here and he threw him out. Lester looks out for me because I get quite a few cranks turning up.'

'Did the Dean ever mention this case?'

She sighed at the memory. 'Yeah, he mentioned it. He was always going on about "them", how they were after him because he had something that belonged to them. He once said they would kill him if they caught him. Then one day I got tired of hearing it and I told him to prove it. So he showed me some papers. One of them was official-looking and written in runes. I couldn't understand it, but he could. I said, so what is it? And he said it was an official druid death warrant. And I said, who's it for? And he said, if I told you that, you'd be on it too.'

She reached for the gin bottle again. 'To tell you the truth, it all went in one ear and out the other. He was always full of crap. They all are.'

*

From Judy Juice's I drove down to the harbour and parked by the railings, facing out to sea. The favourite spot for people from the Midlands to eat their chips; people who drive for three hours for this view and never get out of the car to take a closer look. But tonight neither did I. It was raining again and I sat there, the wipers humming, and stared at the light on the end of the jetty, thinking about what Marty's mum had said. About the question the dissident lighthouseman dared to ask, but no one dared answer. About the suspicion that had haunted him every day since that moment when they found his wife preserved in a block of ice, frozen in time like a fly in amber, and Mr Cefnmabws peered into the sarcophagus of ice and saw that expression on her face. Was that terrible frozen snarl on her face simply the agony of her death-mask? The cruel hand of hunger and cold? Or did it hint at a different explanation for her death than the official version? Something else, something altogether darker? Was it a look of horror? The terror of someone who fled down that mountain because she saw something up there no decent person should be forced to witness? The question that Mr Cefnmabws wanted answered was a simple one. They had survived for three months up above the snow-line, alone with the bodies of their dead comrades, stranded in a world where not even the birds could survive. So what did they eat?

Chapter 16

When I opened up shop the next morning, Llunos was standing on the doorstep. He walked straight past me and up the stairs without a word. He threw his hat on the desk and slumped into the client's, chair and said, 'Is the girl here?'

'Calamity? Not yet.'

'What time are you expecting her?'

'Oh I don't know, some time this morning. You know Calamity.'

'Yes,' he said in a voice without warmth or inflexion. 'I know Calamity.'

His tone began to worry me. 'What's up?'

He grimaced. 'They've sprung Custard Pie.'

I jerked back slightly as if he'd held smelling-salts out to me. 'Sprung him, who has?'

He ran tired fingers through his thinning hair. 'I don't know, someone, some people ... I mean, who gives a fuck, he's out!'

'I can't believe it — a Triple-A-category prisoner in a maximum-security dungeon ...'

His face became flushed with anger and he shouted at me in a way I hadn't seen since the old days when we were adversaries.

'Now don't you start on me,' he shouted. 'I'm the one who put him away, remember? How do you think I feel? I'm not the one who's been giving him bird seed.'

'What are you saying?'

'I ought to have your licence for this.'

'You telling me he used the bird seed to escape?'

He picked up his hat and thrashed it down on the tabletop.

'Yes I'm telling you he used the bird seed to escape. The Birdman of Aberystwyth. How stupid can you get? How on earth could you fall for a stupid trick like that?'

'So what did he do, dress up as a seagull and fly away?'

He didn't answer but gave me a cold stare.

I went and fetched some glasses from the draining-board and poured two glasses of cold water.

There was a knock on the door and Llunos shouted, 'Enter.' One of the guards from Custard Pie's prison came in looking pretty much as you'd expect for a man charged with the task of standing guard over a single prisoner who had now escaped. He look hesitantly from Llunos to me and back again.

'Just tell it, officer,' said Llunos.

The guard fidgeted and wrung his hands. 'Well it's not ... I don't know where ... I mean the point ...'

'I said tell it, for Christ's sake!'

'He ... he ...' And then it all came out in a rush. 'He kept asking us to cook his eggs extra runny, said his stomach couldn't take cooked eggs. Every day raw eggs ... I mean, how were we supposed to know?'

Llunos gave him a scowl of thunder.

The guard hopped from foot to foot. He knew he was for the high jump for this.

'Well he was keeping them, wasn't he? You know that horrible stringy bit you get, like an umbilical cord or something, that sticks the yolk to the shell? He was saving them up. And there was the play-acting as well, so we thought he must be mad, like

'What play-acting?' asked Llunos.

'He was rehearsing for a part ... kept learning his lines, Little Red Riding Hood or something, it was.'

Llunos gave me a look of enquiry, wondering whether this meant anything to me, but it didn't.

'Maybe he was just trying to act the nutter. Go on.'

'That's what we thought, but we was wrong, see. It was the birds, you see, I mean we just never noticed. Well you wouldn't, would you?'

'Officer, if you don't get to the end of this story in one minute I'm going to throttle you.'

"Well, there he was like, taming these little sparrows and wrens and chaffinches and things and getting them to perch on his finger and sit on his head — it was really touching, or so we thought. Such gentle creatures, birds. But then we noticed there was something really strange about them. They found their way in all right, but they had terrible difficulty finding their way back out. It was as if they couldn't see the flue any more. And they kept flying into the wall and squawking. But now we know, don't we? All that time he was billing and cooing with them he was gouging their little eyes out and then saving them up in the jar meant for his cod liver oil capsules. Then when he had enough he used the boiled egg strings and the albumen and all the little sparrow eye jelly and made himself a set of those fake gouged eye kits you get from the joke shop. I mean, what a nutter! Anyway, next thing you know we get woken in the middle of the night by this blood-curdling screaming and there's Custard Pie standing with his eyes all bloody and streaming down his cheeks. He screams, "I've done my eyes, I've clone my eyes, get me an ambulance!" That's about it really.'

'That's it!?' I shouted. 'That's it!? You just thought, oh he's done his eyes. We'll call an ambulance. You didn't, like, take a look or anything?' I tried to sound harsh but there was no point. No point whatsoever.

The guard answered, 'I know it sounds daft. But what would you have done at 3 am? Maybe if you was an optician it would have been different but there was us, like, woken up in the middle of the night with this nutter screaming and his whole face gushing sparrow viscera mixed with boiled egg ... So we rang for an ambulance. Anybody would've.'

Llunos turned to me. 'Five minutes after the first ambulance left, a second one turns up. Seems the first was phoney. They found it burned out in Commins Coch this morning.'

*

I asked at the pier and down by the station where the apprentice toughs hang out. And I asked in the burger bars and cafes and amusement arcades. And I asked at the harbour and round Trefechan. But no one had seen Calamity recently. I even rang the school but they just laughed at me, they thought she had left the country. Llunos tried to reassure me, saying she would be fine. Custard Pie couldn't get far because every way out of town was being watched. The railway station, the Cliff Railway, the narrow-gauge railway, the bus station and the harbour. But we both knew Custard Pie was already gone. Probably already with Herod, wherever he was. There was no reason to suppose Calamity was with them, but all the same it didn't smell good to me and when I finally gave up wandering round town asking people if they had seen her, I went back to the office and picked up the keys to the car.

The only thing I remember about the drive to Ynyslas were the looks of horror on the people's faces as they darted out of the way in Bow Street; and then the fists raised in anger in my rear-view mirror. Ten miles and thirty junctions and not once did the accelerator leave the floor. Not once were the brakes engaged until I was driving on sand. And I don't remember the dash across the wide sands of the estuary or through the sharp marram grass. All I remember is the relief that exploded inside me when I finally saw Cadwaladr.

He sat wind-blown on the dune top, a can of Special Brew in his hand. He pondered for a while what I had told him, and then said, 'Are you sure they've got her?'

I took a deep breath and spoke in monotone as if reciting a ghoul's shopping-list. 'Calamity has been visiting Custard Pie. He tricked her into helping him escape. Now Calamity has disappeared and no one can find her. What does it look like to you?'

'It's possible they haven't got her, it could be she's on a damn fool's errand to bring Pie in herself. Maybe she blames herself for him escaping and wants to make amends.'

'I'd love to believe that. But I don't.'

Cadwaladr sipped the beer and considered the situation. 'If Custard Pie has teamed up with Herod it will be tough to catch them,' he said.

'Are they really that good?'

He didn't answer immediately, but stared out to sea, eyes watering in the breeze and focusing on infinity as his thoughts drifted back across the years.

'In Patagonia I fought alongside them for a while — in the early campaigns. I used to watch them go out on night patrol - faces all smeared up with charcoal and paint. When they came back at dawn they'd always have a prisoner with them, some poor terrified conscript, trussed up like a turkey at Christmas. We never asked who he was or where he was from; we just knew if we wanted any peace and quiet that day we'd better stay out of earshot of the interrogation block.' He shook his head sadly. 'I can still remember the cries coming from those cells. They say in all that time there was never a man Custard Pie couldn't break.' He paused and took another sip of beer. 'But if you really want to know what they were like, just look at what happened to Waldo. Remember me telling you about the goalkeeper in the Christmas Day football match?'

I nodded. 'You never finished your story.'

Cadwaladr took a long drink from the can, as if to impart the necessary gravitas to the story of Waldo. Then he started to speak with a slow shake of the head, as if even now he couldn't believe it.

'Waldo was an Everyman. He stood for all of us. Just a little kid thousands of miles from home in a land he'd never heard of, seeing things that were too much for his heart. They say the reason he signed up for this psychological experiment at the sanatorium was he'd heard it was something to do with memory and all his life he'd been trying to lose his — trying to banish the memory of a certain week. Just one week. It didn't seem like a lot to ask. Like a lot of guys he tried to drink it away. But no matter how much he drank, it would still be there in the morning, like his shadow.

'The incident took place right at the end of the war. A few weeks before we were shipped home. Waldo was cut off in the wilds, alone, and pinned down in a ravine by a sniper. That sniper in turn was pinned down by Waldo. It was stalemate, neither could move without getting shot by the other. This went on for a week until finally the other guy's morale collapsed and he made a break for it and Waldo shot him. The bullet got him in the stomach - the wound we all feared most - but it didn't kill him. Waldo spent the next three days listening to his cries of pain coming from behind a rock. At the end of the third day, as the man's moans were getting fainter and fainter, a dispatch rider turned up and told Waldo the armistice had been signed a week ago. Waldo was shocked. All that time they had been trying to kill each other, and yet the war was over; they had been brothers all along. A tremendous burst of love surges through the veins of Waldo and he rushes over to the stricken man and weeps. He takes out his first-aid kit and tries to save him. "My brother," he cries, "my brother! It's late in the day, but do not despair!" Waldo reckons if he can staunch the bleeding, and stabilise him, they can get him back to a hospital, and he might make it. In that instant saving this man becomes the most important undertaking in his whole life. It's as if the sun has burst through the cloud in his heart. Ever since he was a kid he has been confused about who he is and what he was put on this earth for. And now he sees with a rare clarity that for one tiny fragment of time he can perform an act that has meaning, a truly moral act — perhaps the only one he will ever perform in his life. Waldo was not a bookish type, not a thinker, but squatting down in the mud of I hat ravine holding a wound-compress to the bullet holes in the man's stomach he understood it in a way that was deeper than words. This pure human act of salvation that could stand as a bigger symbol: to redeem all the terrible carnage and slaughter of the past three years. Then the dispatch rider comes over and says, "Hey, isn't that the guy who dived in the box?" And by God it was. Suddenly, the piercing sharp clarity of Waldo's vision has fled. The idea of salvation and brotherhood have vanished. Instead lying at his feet is the little jerk who fucked up the Christmas Day game.

'"You dived didn't you!" they shout at him.

'"Save me, my brother," he pleads. "Save me that I might go back to my little farm in the Sierra Machynlleth."

'"Don't change the subject, you're the little rat that dived in the box, aren't you?"

'"Holy Mother of God," he cries. "I swear on all that is holy that I didn't."

'"Yes you bloody well did!"

'"No, it wasn't me. It was someone who looks like me. My cousin Gabriel — he is a bad man, always making trouble, a bastardo!"

"That's it!" they cry. "Turn your comrade in to save your skin."

'"No, my friends, it is not true. Please save me. Think of my wife and daughter Carmencita who is only two and knows nothing of the villainy of this world. Must she grow up an orphan because of Gabriel's treachery?"

'"You should have thought about that before you dived in the box!" Both are incensed now. Not only that he did the terrible deed but that he should lie about it here on his death-bed to the only men in the world with the power to save him.

'So they try to extract a confession. They write it out for him and hold it under his nose. "Go on," they said. "Admit to the dive, and we'll save you."

'"On the bones of the saints, I swear I didn't," he cried, his breath getting weaker and weaker, since Waldo has removed the wound-dressing now and the man's rich crimson gore is staining the bed of that ravine.

'"You Latin footballers are all the same," says Waldo. "You're always diving! This is your last chance to absolve yourself before you go to meet your maker."

'But he refuses. And while he slowly dies, they break open a bottle of tequila and drink to victory and then dip their arms in his blood and laugh. They laugh. Two years ago on the shores of Lake Bala, Waldo would have cried to see a bird hit by a car. And now he laughs. Who can ever fathom the mysteries of the human heart? The enemy soldier went to his grave refusing to accept that it was a dive and left behind a daughter Carmencita and a legacy of knowledge concerning the villainy of the world about which she had known nothing and now knew all.

'When word got out about this incident the men were deeply shocked. "For God's sake, Waldo!" they said. "It was only a game of football! What were you thinking!" You see, peace had brought a new understanding to the men — the insight that the soldier Waldo killed had truly been his brother. It was the brass hats who were the real enemy: those officers who preferred to spend three years watching us get slaughtered rather than admit they'd made a mistake. In that moment the men understood what a terrible crime Waldo had committed. Just as his attempt to save the man had served as a greater symbol of Christ's mercy so the murder acquired a terrible universal significance. And they grew afraid and shunned Waldo. It was as if in spilling his brother's blood he had become the living embodiment of Cain. As if his crime would hang around the necks of all of them like the ancient mariner's albatross. They struggled to think of a way of expiating his sin. Then someone had the idea of organising a collection for the little orphan Carmencita. It was a simple solution but instantly the fear fell away from their hearts. Though no one had much to give, they all gave gladly what they could. Except for Dai the Custard Pie and Mrs Llantrisant. They jeered at the collectors and called Waldo a hero. But Herod did not join in their derision but seemed silent and thoughtful. Later he sought .the men out in the quiet of the evening and said that he had been deeply moved by the story of Carmencita and although he had nothing to give he would regard it as an honour if they would let him deliver the money. At first the men were dubious, but taking the view that the Lord rejoiceth more for one sinner who repents than nine who never strayed they accepted his offer. Two days later the owner of the cantina brought him back to the base in a wheelbarrow and left him snoring and reeking of tequila outside the gates. No one needed to ask what had happened to the money.'

'None of this really helps me find Custard Pie.'

'I'm telling you this because you need to understand what sort of people these are. Know your enemy, Louie, first rule of survival. Custard Pie will be with Herod, he must have a base somewhere, up in the hills. That's where they'll be.'

'But how do I track down Herod?'

'Not easily, that's for sure. Normally you need bait.'

'What sort of bait?'

He looked at me without expression. 'You'd be good.'

'Me?!'

'If it was my mission, I'd be using you.'

'You think he will just come and get me?'

'You did knock him out of an aeroplane. He might have lost his memory but I bet you anything he never forgot that.'

'I don't have the time to sit and hope he comes to me, don't you understand that?'

'In that case you're going to have to outfox him. The only way to do that is to speak to someone who knows him better than he knows himself.'

'Oh really. Do you have any suggestions?'

'Just one, because there is only one person in Wales who knows Herod like that. His old commanding officer, the one who trained him.'

'The man who trained him?'

'Taught him everything he knew.'

'And who's that?'

'Mrs Llantrisant.'

Chapter 17

Would she talk to me? The obvious answer was 'never in a million years'. But maybe today was the million-and-first. Maybe those postcards she had been sending me, babbling on about her little garden and the potatoes and the two puffins signalled a final mellowing in the iron heart of Mrs Llantrisant. Or maybe it was just another cheap attempt to get a ticket out of jail by feigning insanity. But there was only one way to find out and I owed it to Calamity to try, no matter how remote the chances. The only problem was how to get there. Since she was a category Triple-A prisoner, the only way on or off Saint Madoc's Rock was by the police launch. It was a rule strictly enforced and anyone who broke it would risk losing his mariner's permit.

I drove down to the harbour for a scout around. Within seconds I found out just how strictly enforced the prohibition was: Ianto the boatman was sitting on an upturned lobster pot, next to a blackboard on which was scribbled in chalk: 'Trips round the bay, deep-sea fishing, mackerel fishing, trips to Borth, Clarach and to see Mrs Llantrisant.' As I arrived he was drawing a chalk line through the last item. There was a storm heading in, he explained, and best not to go out so far. I pushed ten pounds into his hands and urged him and he agreed so long as we didn't stay more than an hour.

As we chugged out from the harbour, past the bar and on towards a sky that looked ominously dark, Ianto explained about the approaching storm. She wasn't due for a while yet, but she would be a big one, he said. We were approaching the autumn equinox which made the tides unusually high, and the moon was almost full which made them higher still. And the equinoctial storms could be fierce, he said. Add all those together and the town would be in for a battering tonight. He stopped and pointed with his pipe towards the horizon. Saint Madoc's Rock.

It was still more than half a mile away, but we could see Mrs Llantrisant. She stood like a heron on the cliff looking out to sea. Ianto handed me his binoculars and I trained them on her for a while. She remained there buffeted by the fierce wind, unmoving like a grim statue, her face expressionless and impassive, seemingly impervious to the constant beating of the gales off the Atlantic.

Ianto said she stood there every day, from dawn till sunset. And then added, 'I wouldn't like to be on that island tonight.'

Ianto beached the boat on the pebbles and pointed to the path, then took out a flask of tea and his newspaper and prepared to wait. He had no interest in seeing the island. To an old seadog like him, a featureless rock outcrop meant nothing, and to him Mrs Llantrisant was nothing too, just some sad, mad old woman who had somehow managed to start a flood three years ago that washed away his garden shed.

At the top of the cliff I walked towards Mrs Llantrisant. She took no notice of me, even though it was clear she could see me. It was typical of her, by which I meant not the shrivelled old gossip who swabbed my step for all those years but the other one, the secret one who lived inside her and used her charming stupidity as a perfect piece of camouflage. Lieutenant Llantrisant, or Gwenno Guevara as she once was in her freedom-fighting days. She would easily have found the discipline to stand still as stone on a mountain-top if it suited her purpose; would just as easily have had the mental discipline to force her features to betray no surprise at my sudden arrival, to force herself even to pretend I was not there. I shook my head in reluctant admiration and as I did a man appeared at the top of the path, wearing rouge and dressed in a ruffed shirt. He walked up behind Mrs Llantrisant and put his arms round her waist. Then he hoisted her into the air, put her under one arm, and started walking down the path. Still she remained ramrod straight — as stiff and erect as a toy soldier - but as she became outlined against the bright grey of the sky, I could see that instead of feet she had a metal stand like the base of a tailor's dummy. The man who picked her up whistled cheerfully and then stopped about two yards in front of me. His eyes shot open but, to his credit, surprised as he was, he didn't drop Mrs Llantrisant.

'Do you need a hand with that?' I asked cheerily.

'W ... who are you? What are you doing here? This is private property. What do you want?'

I eyed him coldly and said, 'Two men meet for the first time on a cliff-top. One of them is carrying a straw effigy of Mrs Llantrisant. We are in uncharted waters here. All the same, I can't help thinking it's not you who gets to ask the questions.' I smiled and he considered my point. Then having considered it he threw Mrs Llantrisant aside and started running.

I chased him up the path to the top of the island and the disused crofter's cottage that had been Mrs Llantrisant's home. Inside I found him frantically searching round for a weapon but he didn't have one and even if he had he didn't look like he had the guts to use it. It wasn't the same boy I had seen dancing with Judy Juice, but he was from the same mould, hired for the job, no doubt, from the back seat of a blacked-out car somewhere along the south bank of the Rheidol. I made a rush for him and he tried to dart to one side and I caught him. He was a skinny, effete, effeminate youth who looked like he should have been twirling his hanky as an extra in a Shakespeare love comedy. He bit my hand like a girl and I grabbed his hair, pulled his face back and smashed it into the desk-top. Then I let him go and he crawled over into a corner and cowered. I looked at him and he looked at me.

'What do you want?'

I took a step towards him. 'Remember what I said about who asks the questions?'

'I don't know nothing.'

'No of course you don't, you just rented the cottage for two weeks by the sea.'

The desk was covered in scraps of writing and half-finished postcards. I picked up one of the scraps. It was a piece of floral, limping verse. 'This yours?'

He looked at me through eyes bright with suspicion and then said, 'What if it is, there's no law against it.'

'You write it yourself?'

He nodded sullenly.

'It's good.'

'You think so?'

'Yeah, I love it.'

'It's not my best. But it's in the genre. That's how I got this job, you see. I used to be a greeting-card writer.'

'I've seen some of your work before.'

'Yeah, where?'

'In a fucking Christmas cracker.' I took another step and he cringed backwards against the wall.

'Who gave you the job?'

'I don't know his name. He said all I had to do was sit here writing sentimental postcards filled with melancholy and plangent regret.'

'Plus taking Mrs Llantrisant in and out of the rain.'

He shrugged.

'And of course you haven't a clue where Mrs Llantrisant is, have you? In fact, you're going to insist on that until I get the electric bar-fire from the boat, plug it into the generator and tape it to your face. And even then you'll swear you don't know where she is. But then when I switch the fire on, well, I reckon you'll last about four seconds before you remember. What do you think?'

'Honestly, mister, I swear I don't know where she is. Do you think they'd be stupid enough to tell me?'

I started walking to the door. 'No I don't. And anything you told me with or without an electric fire strapped to your face wouldn't be worth birdshit. Which means it's your lucky day. Adiуs.'

As I returned to the boat I stopped for a second by the straw effigy of Mrs Llantrisant. There really was no point questioning the boy. He was just a piece of cheap druid cannon fodder. Whoever arranged all this would have told him nothing or a pack of nonsense designed to send me the wrong way. And to beat him simply for the pleasure of it would just have wasted time. Time I should be spending hunting for my partner, Calamity. I looked down at Mrs Llantrisant, lying like a toppled statue in the thorny grass, her face a blank of straw, a nose sketched in with marker pen, and on top of that the blue translucent frames of her NHS specs. As usual I had managed to underestimate her in a spectacular fashion. But how could you avoid doing that?

I picked up the straw dummy and put it back on its perch at the cliff's edge. As we motored back to Aberystwyth, I sat in the bow and stared at her — a dark sentinel maintaining a vigil over her rock. And meanwhile, the sky behind her turned the colour of basalt and spray flew across our bows, as we butted our way home through the threatening sea.

Judy Juice was sitting in the client's chair when I got back. There was a look of horror on her face and she seemed to have aged ten years since I last saw her.

'I've seen the Dean,' she said, eyes wide with fear.

I slumped down into my chair and reached for the bottle of rum. 'Great,' I said.

'He was in a bad way. Drunk and terrible, and out of his mind ...'

I tried to make myself care but I couldn't. Calamity was missing and there wasn't room in my head for the stupid Dean.

'I had to come and see you, I have to tell you ... have to tell you ...'

I forced my concentration back to Judy Juice.

'Tell me what?'

'About the case ... He had it with him and showed me inside. It wasn't just a death warrant, there were other things as well. There was a red hood in it, and he said the hood is worn by the sacrificial victim. And there was an almanac with the phases of the moon. And there was a movie-script. And there were detailed instructions for the Raven about how to do it — how to perform the execution. They were his orders, you see. For the Raven's eyes only.' She put her hand up to her face and wiped tears away. 'Oh my God.'

I poured her a drink and walked round to her side of the desk and held it under her mouth. She grabbed my hands and drew up the glass and drank. Then she collapsed into me, her head resting against my stomach, and I gently held it there.

'But what does it all mean?'

'They're going to make a movie ... for the "What the Butler Saw" machines. You know what they call those movies where they murder someone ... kill them for real ... ?'

'A snuff movie?'

She nodded.

'They're going to make a snuff "What the Butler Saw" movie?' I asked incredulously. This was altogether too bizarre.

She snivelled and nodded. 'It's a remake of Little Red Riding Hood ...' A series of shivers swept through her and she said, 'They're waiting for the full moon, and they've got a special actor to play the wolf, and the girl who wears ... the girl who wears the red hood

Realisation, like a horse, reared up and kicked both hooves directly into my mouth.

'Dear God!' I gasped. 'Dear God! Oh my God! No!'

One of my knees buckled and I feel heavily against the desk. Judy shot up and grabbed me and hugged me, 'I'm so sorry!' she cried. 'I'm so sorry!'

I pulled myself up, steadied my balance, and walked across the room to the old sea-chest. My face was carved from frozen stone, my heart cold and black like a sea-creature that lives on the ocean floor where the light never penetrates.

'It's all right,' I said. 'Don't worry. It won't happen. No one touches Calamity. As long as there is breath in my body, no one in this town is going to harm a hair on her head. No one. Ever.' I turned the key in the lock and lifted the lid. But, inside, the gun had gone. In its place a scribbled note saying, Sorry, Louie, I need it, I won't keep it for long.

'Fuck!' I said. 'Calamity's taken the heater.'

Chapter 18

The loud sharp 'crack' that rang out over the rooftops of Aberystwyth seemed louder than any electrical discharge. It was as if the sky was made of board and God had furiously stamped his foot through it. It wasn't lightning from a clear sky, it was a rifle shot. And I knew without being able to say how I knew that it was a high-powered assassin's rifle.

What happened next is seared into my memory, and like most people who were there that day I will never forget the sight until the end of my days, even though I wasn't there and never saw it. Mrs Bligh-Jones was sitting in the open-topped Meals on Wheels staff car driving down Great Darkgate Street, fiercely proud, her empty coat-arm pinned to her side and the Sam Browne shining in the shafts of sunlight that pierced the gathering stormclouds. People doing their shopping waved or shouted greetings to the heroine of Pumlumon. And then somewhere at the approach to Woolie's, from the roof of the National Westminster bank, there was that bright flash, that deafening sound, the crack that made all the war veterans dive for cover and the children burst into tears. And then Mrs Bligh-Jones spinning like a ballerina, the grimace of disbelief on her face as a wet crimson starfish spread across her chest.

It's a scene that has become a part of our shared unconscious, along with the endless speculation about the second rifleman, because we have all seen the footage so many times — that shaky home-movie, caught by a tourist, that zoomed in on her expression just as she looked up in agonised realisation to the roof of the bank, and wailed her final two syllables: 'Jubal!' Mrs Bligh-Jones wailing to her demon lover. And then, seconds after, the man emerging from the door of the National Westminster bank, that man with a hump who slipped through the crowds towards the sea having first shouted the words 'I saw him! It was a ventriloquist!' The mob surged up Great Darkgate Street, towards the ghetto, with fury in their hearts. While down on the Prom I ran first down Terrace Road towards the sound, until the crowds told me what had happened. All the while I had been wondering about the identity of the Raven, and now I had my answer. The Raven who like a spider devours his mate, the lover who kills his beloved. It had to be Jubal. When the penny dropped, I spun round in the street and ran the other way, down the Prom, towards the Excelsior Hotel.

He was sitting over in the bay window, the curtains closed, the room in darkness, holding his head in his hands and moaning. The thin blade of light from the gap in the curtains was filled with dancing dust like the beam of a projector and pierced my vision like a sword. I walked gingerly across a sticky carpet and stood before him. Slowly he raised his head and stared at me, his eyes like dark pools in a forest, his unwashed body emitting a thick reek of aftershave and excrement that made my hand fly to my mouth. Somewhere, lost in the gloom of the room, a gramophone played a song, the squeaky, almost Oriental ting-tong sound of a Kurt Weill opera from the thirties. I listened to the high, ethereal notes, 'Oh moon of Alabama, we now must say goodbye.' I flung the curtains brutally back and Jubal recoiled like a vampire before the light. The room was a pigsty. A sea of overflowing cigarette butts flowed out across the tabletops, candles and three-day-old room-service food.

He was wearing a bathrobe but didn't smell like he'd been near a bath in a long time. In his hand he held a book of verse and on his wrists were bandages from which oozed a dark moist fluid the colour of cherries.

Silently he pointed to a chair and I drew it up and sat opposite him in the window.

'I knew you would come,' he whispered.

Oh moon of Alabama, we now must say goodbye ...

'What have you done to your wrists?'

He turned his palms upwards as if showing off a new set of cuff-links.

'I opened the veins about an hour ago.'

We've lost our good old mama, and must have whisky, oh you know why ...

A cold shiver slithered up through my innards. That same shiver all decent people feel when they walk down the street past a doorway where there's been a fight and they see spots of blood or even teeth. Or when you drive past an accident and catch a half-glimpse in the corner of your eye of something red that had once been a man.

'Did you change your mind?' I asked like an idiot. Did he change his mind? What a stupid thing to say.

He shook his head wearily. 'No, it's an old Roman trick, described by Petronius, I think. You open the veins and then you bandage them so you die slowly and peacefully. The custom was for those for whom no hope remained to pre-empt the vengeance of the courts and choose their own time of dying. One last night, a few hours to bid adieu. To dine, to take a last skin of wine, to listen to some poetry and perhaps amuse oneself with the slave boys. Such is the custom for the last night. But alas in Aberystwyth the choice of entertainments is ... is ... well, you can imagine it.'

'Should ... should I call an ambulance?'

'I would be grateful if you didn't.' And then with a slight twist of his head, 'Would you be so kind as to fetch me a drink?'

I went over to the drinks cabinet. And as I did he recited from the book in his hand.

'Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden ...'

Most of the bottles were empty but there was some sherry left. I poured us a couple and handed him one. He took a sip and closed the book. 'You know what he said, don't you?'

'Who?'

'Petronius. "The pleasure of the act of love is gross and brief and brings loathing after it."'

I said, 'You don't look like a Raven.'

'You think they would send a disco-dancer to ensnare Mrs Bligh-Jones? She needs to be wooed like any other woman. Or flattered.'

'Or offered a part in a movie.'

He nodded. 'Yes, that one always works well.' He put the book down by his feet and picked up a discarded shoe. It was a dancing-shoe.

'But it is not the best way ... not the best.' He traced his finger along the contours of the sole and pressed his eyes tightly shut as if stabbed by a shard of memory. When he opened the lids again, they were heavy with wetness. He held the shoe out towards me. 'This is the best, my friend. To dance! Ah! Yes, to dance all night until the skylight fills with the milk rose of dawn ... if you can do it well, with йlan and ... gentillesse, ah! it is ... is ... voodoo itself! I learned this when I was just twenty-one, apprenticed to the Pier Ballroom to partner the rich widows who came on holiday but had no beau. A penny a dance they gave me. Such wonderful times, such deep joy ... I cannot speak now of ... of ... what does the poet say? Glory of youth glowed in his soul: Where is that glory now?'

He paused and gave the shoe in his hand a wan look; then placed it down by his foot as gently as if it were a sleeping infant.

'They closed them, you know. Closed them all, those wonderful glittering ballrooms. The people had no use any more for sophistication, or elegance, or courtly manners. They wanted rock and roll, and television and bingo. I was left with nothing but my shoes. And one other thing, a thing that every man in this world craves, but very few ever truly possess: the knowledge of how to please a lady. The people who recruited me for the Ravens understood this.'

'But you used it to kill Mrs Bligh-Jones.'

His features hardened. 'Spare me the catcalls, Mister Knight. You dishonour my death-bed.'

'I'd like to know why you killed her.'

'Because my orders told me to of course. Because I am a Raven, it is my job. Do you ask the postman why he bears bad news?'

'Yes but why did she have to die?'

'Why do any of us have to die? The important thing is that we all do and the various reasons are of little consequence when set against such an implacable fact.'

'You killed her because of some corny piece of philosophy?'

'No I killed her, if you must know, because her methods had become unsound. Brilliant, but unsound.'

'You mean Pumlumon?'

He nodded.

'So it's true then? My God. My God!'

Jubal threw the book to one side. 'Personally, I do not share the general revulsion. To me what happened on Pumlumon was nothing, just a piece of routine cannibalism —'

I gasped.

'I'm at a loss to understand such fastidiousness in the face of death. In a situation such as this, a matter of survival, such things arc accepted. The literature of nineteenth-century seafarers is full of references to the practice. After sodomy it was the greatest occupational hazard a cabin-boy had to fear. Seafaring folk understand these things, but the city people get jittery. It is the one crime they do not forgive. And thus she had to die; thus once she had embarked on that road, the order, the inevitable order came: Terminate Mrs Bligh-Jones's command -with extreme prejudice.'

'And yet you were her lover?'

'How else does one ensnare the heart of one's victim? Oh I admit that it was not without its pleasurable side. Mrs Bligh-Jones is a fine woman. A feisty woman, with passion and scalding-hot fire in her veins. I found much to admire in her. That clean, sharp purity of vision, that exquisite mixture of beauty and cruelty and ... and ... and certainty. Yes that was what I most admired. A woman of action, a woman unfettered by doubt who could eat her bowling partner of twenty years because she knew there was no other way ...'

'How can a man love a woman he knows he is going to kill?'

'Don't be such an arse! I am a Raven, it is my mission to spring the honey-trap, it would be impossible if I did not enjoy the taste of the honey, even Mrs Bligh-Jones's honey. And now it is my turn to die. I do not complain.'

'But why?'

'Because my work is over.'

'Who do you work for?'

He raised his head slightly and smiled a smile of pure evil. 'Mrs Llantrisant, who else? You see they call me a Raven but really my true nature is different. A soldier ant would be more appropriate. I mate and die. Steadfast in the service of my queen. Her survival is all that matters. Now that I have done my task I am content to make my exit. Although sadly I will miss the final act in Mrs Llantrisant's masterful plan.'

'Calamity.'

'Ah yes, Calamity.'

'This was Mrs Llantrisant's plan?'

'Of course, who else would have the genius to conceive of such a mission? In this respect, brilliant though I am, I am a mere puppet. My job was to eliminate Bligh-Jones, facilitate the escapes of Herod, Custard Pie and Mrs Llantrisant; and then arrange Mrs Llantrisant's piиce de rйsistance, the Little Red Riding Hood murder. Masterly. We have a special agent up from Cardiff to play the wolf. When it is finished Mrs Llantrisant will send you the tape to watch in your long lonely hours of self-hatred.'

'But what has Calamity ever done to Mrs Llantrisant?'

'Nothing at all! Absolutely nothing. That's the beauty of it, don't you see? The pure blinding joyous beauty of it. It's not Calamity she hates, it's you, Louie, for destroying her dream and putting her away on that island. But how can she get back at you? Kill you? Pah! Too feeble! Too altogether paltry an act — a mere spoonful of liquor with which to assuage Mrs Llantrisant's ravening thirst for revenge. No matter how slowly you died it would still be too quick. Whereas the death of Calamity, an innocent who placed her trust in you — whom you love like a daughter — ah! Think of that! No matter how quickly she died, the torment would last for ever. In your own soul, Louie, your own soul! It will burn like quicklime eternally inside you and there will be nothing you can do to undo your folly or soothe the pain. And should you ever try and forget you will always have the little tape to remind you. Oh, Louie, the beauty of it! The sheer spectral beauty of her genius!'

'Except of course that none of this is going to happen. It's fantasy.'

'You think so? I think it will happen tomorrow night.'

'You will tell me where they are. I'll make you.'

'And how will you do that? Threaten to kill me? I've beaten you to it! What possible threat could you wield with any power against a man who has taken his own life?'

I stood up and rushed to the door. 'Then I'll have to save you.'

The phone had been torn from its socket so I ran down four flights of stairs to the desk and called Doc Thomas. He wasn't in so I called an ambulance and as I shouted instructions into the mouthpiece, telling them we needed an urgent blood transfusion, I saw Llunos walking up the steps of the hotel towards me. Together we rushed back to the suite on the top floor, burst through the door and found the room empty. The discarded bandages were lying on top of the TV set. Llunos picked them up and touched the red stain with his fingertip, then dabbed his finger to his tongue. He looked over at me. 'Damson jam.'

Pointlessly we searched the apartment. There was nothing apart from the dirty plates, the sticky glasses and the discarded clothes. Behind the sofa Llunos found the lid of a box and threw it to me. It said: The Essential Mr Kurtz. The Pro Agent's Guide to simulating moral collapse.

'The old Mr Kurtz routine,' said Llunos. 'Haven't seen that one for a while.'

I turned it over and read a list of contents. Digests of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Eliot, Sartre ... Hamlet's soliloquy. Posters of Mao, Guevara, Papa Doc. Recordings of Kurt Weill, Stravinsky, Marlene Dietrich ... A concordance of degenerative diseases of the Self. The Dummies' Guide to Despair. I threw the box at the wall.

Llunos walked into the bedroom.

'They're going to kill Calamity,' I shouted after him. 'Little Red Riding Hood. Tomorrow night at full moon.'

I heard him rooting around in closets and drawers and I walked over to the bay window and looked out over Aberystwyth Prom. Was Proteus the name of the Greek god who came from the sea and could change his shape at will? How many incarnations were there left? Jubal Griffiths, film-maker, and Raven, and black widow spider of the ballroom, and soldier ant ... I picked up the dancing-shoe that was lying on the floor. Inside, the words engraved in silver were still faintly discernible: Property of the Pier Ballroom, 1947.

'He said there's a special agent up from Cardiff to play the wolf,' I shouted.

Llunos reappeared carrying a flesh-coloured, saddle-shaped piece of plastic, with straps.

'What's that about a wolf?'

'A special agent from Cardiff.'

'I think I know who it is. I got a phone call first thing this morning from the Bureau. They fished some chap wearing concrete boots out of Milford Haven harbour last night. He'd been in the water for quite some time so they just got the dental records sent over for an ID.'

'Is it anyone we know?'

'Yes, a man called Harri Harries.'

I stared at him thoughtfully. 'Any chance of a mistake?'

'Not unless he stole Harri Harries's teeth before he went for his swim.'

'So who's our friend with the plumbing-tools?'

'I don't know. But something tells me I'm going to enjoy asking him. You might like to come along.'

He threw me the plastic saddle. It was some sort of medical contraption, a prosthetic.

'What's this?' I asked.

'It's Jubal's hunch.' And he laughed like a morgue attendant. 'Keep it. Every detective needs a hunch.'

Chapter 19

The needle jumped a couple of times with soggy, bass thumps and then through the clicks the crackles and pops the voice of Myfanwy emerged, singing 'Ar Hyd a Nos.' 'All Through the Night', a gentle stream of notes that perfectly captures the objectless longing and confusion of a night that won't end. 'Ar Hyd a Nos,' the mid-point in her act at the old Moulin and the song that would get me through this night with help from my faithful friend, Captain Morgan.

I raised a glass to the photo of Marty and to the picture of Myfanwy on the record cover. And I thought of Calamity. I raised a glass to them all, drained it, refilled it, drained it, refilled it, toasted them all once more and drained it, and finally felt better. I pondered whether I should go out now and get another bottle rather than wait until there was no more left and mild panic set in. My deliberations were interrupted by the sound of footsteps echoing on the wooden stairs; the door banged open and a gale blew in scattering papers around like snow in a giant paperweight. When the door closed, the paper settled to reveal Ionawr holding a brown paper bag. She was drenched and the bag was soggy.

'I baked you some rock cakes,' she said holding the bag up. 'Probably ruined by now. And I found this on the mat.' She handed me a letter.

'Thanks,' I said without enthusiasm.

She looked at me a little uncertainly. 'Having a party?'

'Just a little get-together with all the people I've let down recently.'

The bright spirit slowly drained from her face.

'That's why there's no one here then, isn't it?'

I made a circling gesture with the hand clutching the glass. 'Oh they're all here, Myfanwy and Marty ... sorry to say I don't have a photo of your sister.'

'You didn't let her down, you helped her. She thought the world of you.'

'That just makes it worse.'

'You're talking crap because you're drunk.'

'I'm not drunk yet.'

She took the glass from my hand. 'You're drunk and feeling sorry for yourself. And if Bianca's ghost was here she'd call you a twat for talking like this.'

She put the glass down and I picked it up. She grabbed it again and threw it against the wall. It didn't break, just bounced and landed on the record player. The arm jerked back to the beginning and clicked to a halt.

'You never let Bianca down, it's other people who always let you down.'

'Oh sure! It's sweet of you but you don't need to.'

'But it's true. That girl for instance ...'

'What girl?'

'Oh nothing.'

There was something in her tone that signalled there was more than nothing.

'Go on, you might as well say it.'

'Well ... that Judy Juice, I know it's none of my business ... but I can't help what I hear.'

'And what do you hear?'

'That you and her ... you know ... I mean it's nothing to do with me and I don't care what you do but they say you should be very careful of her ...'

'They, whoever they are, always say the worst things about the best people, surely you should know that.'

'Yes but sometimes they're right, and —'

'If it makes you feel better there was nothing between me and Judy. But I do like her.'

'Of course, all the men do, but what sort of girl would go with Jubal?'

'She hates Jubal.'

'Well that just makes it worse.'

'She wouldn't give him the time of day.'

'She's given him a lot more than that from what I've heard.'

'You must have heard wrong.'

'No I didn't. She was seen with him tonight, kissing him, and cuddling, and then they went off together ...'

I groaned. 'Oh God.'

'I'm sorry, I mean if you liked her and that ...'

'It's not that, it's just I've been such a fool today. I trusted her and it sounds like she was working for Jubal all along. Telling him everything I said ... shit. Such an idiot.'

'No you're not.'

'Oh believe me, I am. All it takes to make a fool of me is a jar of damson jam.'

Ionawr rushed forward and grabbed my head and held it to her. 'Oh come on, Louie!'

I put my arms round her waist and squeezed and then she broke away and said, 'Have a rock cake.' She opened her bag and took one out. 'I baked them myself, just for you.'

'That was nice of you.'

'They're pretty crappy actually. I've never done them before.'

I took a bite. 'You got the rock bit right!'

She grinned.

I put the letter down on the desk and then noticed the writing on it. There was no address, just the name 'Louie' in a childish scrawl. I tore it open and groaned.

Dear Louie,

I have decided to Kwit because I no your going to fire me for screwing

up like a dumbkopf. I cant believe I fell for that stupid bird seed

rootine. Do not worry about me. I am going to bring custard Pie

in on my own. It's the only way. We probably wont meet again

for a while because I'm going to leave Aberystwyth and get a job

in another detective agensy some place where they won't know what

a bungler I am.

Thanks for everything.

I love you,

Calamity Jane

I let out a long deep sigh of despair. And then staring at Calamity's handwriting a thought struck me; a soft tingling hunch that you sometimes get when you least expect it. I stood up and walked over to the bureau in the corner of the office. She had left a file of Aunt Minnies there, gathering dust in the way that often happens when a kid gets a passion for something and then moves on to the next. I took it back to the desk and started leafing through. It was the longest shot in the world, of course, but worth trying. Maybe there was something in them that might help, that might give me a clue to her movements. The photos had been neatly filed according to time of year, time of day and geographical vicinity. Shot after shot taken around town of people chosen only because something was happening behind them. On the Prom, down at the harbour, the camera obscura, outside the Cabin, and one at the railway station. It was clear that, try as she obviously had, the people in the background were no more shady than Aunt Minnie in the foreground. Just out of focus because she hadn't mastered the depth of field. It wasn't surprising she'd given up. I was about to do the same. And then my gaze lingered on the picture taken in the railway station. I blinked, snatched it up and peered at it. My heart lurched.

It was a snap of a family leaving for a walking-holiday, four of them, two adults and two kids, all wearing hiking boots with rucksacks on the dusty platform floor. And in the background there was a woman standing and looking as if she had just stepped off the train; at her feet a suitcase. Out-of-focus, indistinct, the colour washed out; but even so you could tell she was beautiful. And, more to the point, I knew who it was.

'Oh my God!' I groaned. 'It's Myfanwy.'

I looked at the date under the photo. It had been taken six months ago.

*

The gale shrieked like a ghoul, sweeping roof-tiles like leaves into the night sky. Against the base of the Prom the waves crashed and tore out blocks of stone the size of steamer trunks, spitting them on to the road. We drove along the Prom, dodging the debris, the rocks and stones, the matchwood that earlier had been a bandstand. The hotels were dolls' houses tonight, the seaside railings broken and bent like pipe cleaners. I remembered the tales from the South Seas I read as a kid, about the typhoons in which the coral islanders lashed themselves to the coconut trees to avoid being swept out to sea. The booming and pounding of the sea was relentless, as sustained and regular as the artillery barrage that preceded the assault on the Somme. And with each fresh wave, spray soared high into the sky, rising like a geyser above the rooftops and then remaining suspended at the acme, for breathless seconds, like poplar trees of milk glittering in the streetlights.

Eeyore's stables were down by the harbour on the Pen Dinas side, next to the oast houses. We found him knee-deep in straw, running a gentle, calming hand along the flanks of the frightened beasts. They were fearful and restless, flinching at the sound of every crash of the wind against the door and staring with terror in their lake eyes. The girl from the Chinese was also there in Wellingtons, pouring the contents of a bucket into a manger.

'What is it?' I asked.

'Chop-suey!'

'They eat that?'

'They love it, it's a treat for when they are frightened. It's mostly grass anyway, isn't it?'

We went into the kitchen and sat at the unstained oak table listening to the fury of the storm. I told Eeyore about Calamity and asked what he thought I should do and he said he didn't know.

'The note isn't necessarily bad,' he said at length. 'It doesn't mean they've got her.'

'But she's going looking for them, it's what they want. Obviously Custard Pie set her up.'

'It still doesn't mean they've got her yet. There's still time.'

I could feel his eyes on me, watching me, secretly willing me to be strong.

'Anyway,' he said, 'wherever she is, I hope she's not out in this.' He stood up and walked to the rain-blasted windows. 'You could die in a storm like this. We forget how puny we are. Everything we do in life conspires to hide from us this simple truth. And because every day we escape to live another day, the world deceives us ... makes us believe there is some force protecting us ... that says it can't happen ... When it does, we feel almost ashamed at the stupidity of it, embarrassed that we ever thought for a moment that we were immortal

He stopped speaking and rested his chin thoughtfully on the top of his thumb, as if there was a part missing from his story but he wasn't quite sure what it was. After a while, just as I began to think he was drifting off, he looked up and said, 'Did you see that film A Night to Remember? About the Titanic?' 'Yes a couple of times, only on TV.'

'It was on at the cinema about the time I joined the Force. I went to see it with your mum when we first started courting. Marvellous film.' The faint trace of a smile tugged at the corners of his eyes. 'Of course we were kids then in the back row so we missed a lot of it, but ... but ... Stormy nights always make me think of it.

'Women and children first,' said the girl from the take-away. 'I said you lot were sentimental. On a Chinese ship the order given would have been, Men first, children second, women last. It makes perfect economic sense.'

Eeyore chuckled and then became thoughtful again. 'It was just a tiny bump they said. It's always haunted me, that bit. All those people drinking and dancing and partying late into the night, their lives so glittering and full of promise. And then a strange noise, a little bump — almost perceptible — and yet the shard of ice had opened up the ship like a tin-opener.'

He turned to me, and said, 'I know you're scared, son, everyone gets scared. It's what comes next that matters.'

'But I don't know what comes next.'

'No, perhaps not yet. But you will. You just need to go beyond your medicine line.'

I smiled softly. 'Sitting Bull again.'

'It's like I was saying, you see. Most of the time we live like the sheriff's posse, penned in by the medicine line. Never going beyond. But there are times when it disappears. Something happens and we just pass right through it like Sitting Bull and his braves. Such a moment, I believe, took place on the ice-strewn deck of the Titanic, In that precise instant when the men saw that they were doomed the code that bound them disappeared. For the first time in their lives, it didn't matter what they did or how they conducted themselves. It didn't make a difference any more what society thought of them. Each man stood there naked. That's when you perceive the existence of the other code. The one that lies hidden all your life like the iceberg beneath the sea. That's when you find out what you're really made of. We know that many men became little better than snarling dogs. They panicked, and screamed, and lost their wits. But not everyone did. There were men there who ...' He stopped and thought for a second, struggling to find a suitable term to sum them up, these men who had made such a lasting impression on him. 'There was some retired military chap there, for example, who stood before the lifeboats and fought those wild dogs back with an iron bar.' Eeyore paused and smiled in admiration, perhaps imagining himself standing there too, his iron bar gleaming palely in the Newfoundland starlight.

'It must have been an amazing scene,' he continued, 'but the one that has always haunted me took place elsewhere on the ship, away from the turmoil. It was about the time the water entered the engine room and hundreds of stokers were scalded to death; and the rest surged up on deck armed with shovels with which to beat their way to the lifeboats.

'At this moment, Ben Guggenheim, the millionaire, walked into the first-class lounge with his servant. They were both dressed for dinner. The room was deserted now, the floor listing crazily, and an eerie silence prevailed, perhaps the only sound the distant strains of the band on deck playing "Autumn". The ship's officers pleaded with them to return to the deck and to a lifeboat, because it went without saying that such important passengers would get a place in a boat. But Ben Guggenheim said no. There he stood: the whole pre-war world of luxury, privilege and impossible splendour laid out at his feet... the savour of life could not have been sweeter for any man alive in the world that night. And he was being offered a place in a lifeboat. But Ben Guggenheim refused to go. Instead he calmly ordered a brandy and said, "Never let it be said that a woman or child died on this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward."'

Eeyore paused for a second and nodded to himself as if making sure he had got that right. 'It doesn't mean anything, son, I know, it's just a story ...' He turned and smiled at the girl from the take-away. 'And if it had been a Chinese ship we probably never would have heard of him. But so often when I see you, Louie, doing what you do here in Aberystwyth, risking your life and getting knocked on the bonce once a week by some piece of dirt who's not fit to wipe your shoes ... well I see it and you know what I think? And you'll laugh, I know, because it's daft, but I don't care. I see it and I think to myself, there goes Ben Guggenheim!

He walked over and put a tired old hand on my shoulder, a hand that had fingered the collars of multitudes of villains in its time. 'I don't know what you are going to do about Calamity, son,' he said. 'But I know you'll think of something ... Because my son has never let anyone down yet.'

Chapter 20

The next morning the storm had passed, leaving the town damp and steaming and fanned by the dregs of the gale. Llunos was already waiting for me when I got back to the office. One of his men had hauled Harries in that morning, or whoever it was pretending to be him. He was waiting down at the station. I didn't bother to wash or shave, just made coffee and picked up the Colt 45. I took out the cartridges, fetched a Ziploc bag from the kitchen and gave it all to Llunos.

Harri Harries was in Llunos's office, with a policeman standing watch outside. As he opened the door, Llunos put his arm in front of me and barred my way. 'I need five minutes with him alone first.'

I nodded.

He went in and closed the door, saying, 'Teach him to make a monkey out of me on my own patch.'

There followed a couple of minutes of loud banging from the room. The sort you might get if you swung a sack of potatoes from wall to wall. Then the door opened and Llunos ushered me in, mopping a sweaty brow as he did. What little furniture there was in the room was upturned, a notice-board disarranged on the wall; a broken table lamp flashing uncertainly. Harri Harries sat in the chair, blood coming out of his nose and mouth. One eye puffed up. His shirt torn and spattered with bright red berries of blood.

'You've got him, now,' said Llunos. He walked to a cupboard and took out a dusty old scuba gear bag and emptied its contents. A rusty tank, an equaliser, some lead weights, a mask ... all smelling mildly of the ocean floor. He held the bag up.

'Do you think he'll fit in it?'

I gave it an appraising look. 'Well, it's roughly maggot-shaped and about his size.'

Harri Harries looked on with fear and uncertainty. Llunos took out the Ziploc bag and slid it across the desk to me. Inside was the gun.

'It's as cold as they come. No way of tracing it.'

'Thanks.'

'Make sure you wipe it off afterwards.'

I took the cartridges out of my pocket and started wiping them methodically with a handkerchief and then setting them up like toy soldiers in a row along the desk-top.

'Look,' said Harri Harries. 'I know —'

'I haven't asked you anything yet,' I said in a voice colder than ice. 'So shut up.'

When the cartridges were all free of prints I slid one into the chamber and gave it a spin. Llunos walked towards the door. 'I'll be in the next room, use one of the cushions to muffle the sound.'

Then he closed the door and we both looked at each other. I slowly levelled the barrel at his face and said, 'Where is she?'

He took a breath and said, 'You've got to believe —'

The rest of it never came. I rammed the gun forward so the end of the barrel smacked into his mouth and then, as he gasped at the pain, the barrel was in his mouth. I'd seen this done once in a movie and it seemed to work. I don't know what difference it makes really, gun in or gun out, if it fires you're not going to know much about it. But it certainly frightened me to watch it. I pulled the trigger and it clicked on an empty chamber. His whole body stiffened like a cat electrocuted in a cartoon and his face went purple.

'You were lucky.' I took the gun out of his mouth, wiped the blood and spittle off on his shirt and then slid in two more cartridges. Then I pressed it against that other favourite spot, between the eyes, and spun the chamber.

'Where have they taken her?'

He spoke quickly, trying to get as much explanation in before I shot him. 'She didn't turn up, I was supposed to meet her, Custard Pie arranged it, but she never came ... please it's the truth -

'Like fuck it is!' I pulled the trigger. It clicked and this time Harri made the sound of a scream done with the mouth closed. Then he wept. I almost felt sorry for him.

'Please, please, please ...' he gasped. 'I'm telling you the truth

I picked up the remaining bullets and slid them all in. There was no point spinning the chamber now but I did anyway just for effect. 'Full house,' I said and aimed squarely at his face.

'Now where is she?'

'I ... please ... please ...'

I squeezed and the hammer pulled slowly back like a striking snake in slow motion.

His face was the colour of green milk, his eyes bulging and he said, 'I don't know. You must believe me!'

'Make me believe you. Tell me something worth not shooting you for.'

He pressed his eyes tightly shut and pleaded with me. 'Please, I don't know any —'

I pulled the trigger all the way and as I did Llunos slipped quietly back into the room and banged the door the moment the trigger slammed home. Harri Harries screamed and jerked forwards, landing heavily on the floor.

Llunos walked over and hoisted him back into the chair. ' OK, you've had your fun. As far as I can see there are only two possible reasons you haven't told us where she is: either you don't know, or you knew the gun was a replica. And I don't believe you don't know. So we're going to play a little game of mine. It's called Welsh roulette.'

He took out his truncheon and put it down on the desk. 'You can think of it as a variation on blackjack.'

He walked over to a filing-cabinet, took out some keys, and opened a drawer. He brought out two things and put them down in front of Harri Harries. There was a truncheon that had been painted red. And a kid's roulette wheel.

'The rules are simple so you won't have any trouble picking them up. We spin the wheel. If the ball lands on black seven, I hit you seven times with the blackjack. If it lands on red two, I hit you two times with the redjack. The game is over when you tell us where Calamity is.'

He spun the wheel and dropped the ball. Red three. Llunos turned to me. 'You see! I told you he was lucky.' Then he hit him three times with the red truncheon. The next one was black four. He hit him four times. He spun the wheel, dropped the ball. Red thirty-six. 'Bingo!' shouted Llunos and picked up the cosh. I turned away in dread. And Harri Harries confessed.

'OK, OK, OK!' he cried. 'I'll talk, I'll talk. It doesn't matter now anyway. We had a rendezvous arranged last night - Custard Pie set it up. He told the girl if she went there she would find out the identity of the Raven. But of course it was a trap for her. I got there at midnight but no one came. Neither the girl nor Jubal. I waited and waited and finally, at about three, Jubal turns up. But he's out of his mind. Raving and screaming and crying. He was all like dressed as if for a wedding or something, you know a flowery shirt and a suit and tie, and wearing a flower in his buttonhole, but he'd slashed his clothes and covered himself in ashes. And he had a suitcase with him, said he was getting out of town. And I said, why? And he said if they caught him they would kill him, and I said, who? He said, them, Custard Pie or Herod or Mrs Llantrisant. He'd betrayed them. Everything was ruined, he said. And I said, what the hell have you done? And he cried out like ... like ... I don't know ... like ... a ... an elephant giving birth or something, and said he'd been a total idiot and fallen into his own trap. And I said, what about the girl? And he said, she won't come now, you idiot, we're ruined, it's finished, we're all dead ... don't worry about her, save yourself.' He stopped and gasped for breath, 'Honest, it's the truth.'

*

I didn't know what Ben Guggenheim would have done this morning, but one thing was clear from Eeyore's story. He knew how to keep a cool head. The very opposite of what I had done. Chasing out to Mrs Llantrisant's island and torturing Harri Harries and generally running around not thinking. And that was the whole point really. Thinking. All along I had known about the one man who knew where Herod would have his base, the man who had studied his psyche and made a map of it. Dr Faustus, whoever he was. He must know the answer. And now he was going to give it to me.

I took the Llanbadarn Road out towards the mountains of Pumlumon, along the course of the Rheidol for a while. And then cut south at Ponterwyd on the A4120 towards Ysbyty Cynfyn. A sign told me I was taking the Pont Ysbyty Cynfyn over the Nant Ysbyty Cynfyn and that was reassuring to know. Before too long, if my car didn't give out, I would be heading towards Ysbyty Ystwyth. The world was full of Ysbytys today and I wondered what it meant. Not knowing the answer in Lovespoon's classes would have resulted in the board-rubber exploding next to one's ear like flak. Ysbyty Ystwyth — the map gave it a black cross for a place of worship and a black box underneath meaning one with a tower rather than spire, minaret or dome. It also had a little symbol to say there was a public telephone. Compared to Ysbyty Cynfyn, which had none of these, it was Las Vegas. But I wouldn't be able to go and ask what it all meant, Ysbyty Ystwyth would have to wait for a brighter day. At Hafod Wood I turned off.

I pulled up in the lane a quarter of a mile from the perimeter wall and put on my old mac and hat — a standard-issue sleuth traipsing across rain-spattered, mist-smothered soggy Welsh hills. Up ahead was the sanatorium, the soft mist effacing all detail like gentle amnesia. I wasn't sure how I was going to get in. In my pocket I still had the Colt 45. Maybe I would use that. Or maybe I would just go and ask for help. Giving succour to strangers is the job of a philanthropist after all. It was easy. Just go and ring the bell. Hi, I'm looking for my partner, Calamity. She's a detective although you might not think so because she's only sixteen and really should be in school. In fact you might think I'm a louse for letting her get mixed up in all this, and you're probably right. But actually I didn't want her to, but you just can't stop her. You know Calamity, or perhaps you don't. But if you could keep an eye open. We're working on a case ... there's a gang of them — Dai the Custard Pie, Mrs Llantrisant and Herod Jenkins. I think you know Herod Jenkins? You cured him of his lost memory, but somehow a lot of people wish you hadn't. Right now they are holding out somewhere in the hills up by Nant-y-moch. They say there's a sacred place up there, something sacred to Herod. I thought you might know where they were, you being a special friend of Herod and all that. In fact, I understand you've made a map of his psyche. What does it say? 'Here be dragons'?

A dog barked in the distance, and then someone shouted. 'There he is!' A shot rang out and a bullet zipped through the foliage of a nearby tree. I turned round in amazement and heard someone else shout, 'Quick after him!' They were about half a mile away, a group of them. It looked like a hunting-party. I started running as another shot rang out.

Downhill, over the stream and uphill, keeping south of the thin, ruler-straight line of forestry plantation trees and heading for a copse of normal trees. More shots were fired but they were too far away. I ran fast and the hunters didn't manage to gain on me. Maybe they didn't relish the prospect of tackling me close-up. I reached the trees and climbed over the wire fence and jumped and ran on. I came to a clearing, jumped a stream and landed on the other side, and as I did so two metal shark jaws clashed shut on my shin and I leaped forward as if diving off a board and hit a tree with my head. My leg was caught in a mantrap.

I lay there on a floor of moist dead autumnal leaves, the sweet, wet reek of peat filling my nostrils. I panted and twisted in pain and succeeded only in making the teeth bite deeper and the jaws ratchet tighter on my leg. The sharp metal was rusty and had cut through the cloth of my trousers and deep into the flesh. The trap was chained to a tree and was impossible to move. Or break. I started to sweat with cold panic. You could lose a leg like this. And how ridiculous would that be? What if I called out? Would they shoot me in cold blood? What did they want with me anyway? I heard the barking of dogs and suddenly I could hear them scampering through the undergrowth. The barking got closer and now I could hear the louder sound of a man running. Then I heard him cry out in triumph and start sprinting. The dog was on me, licking my face and wagging his tail in joy at the new discovery under the leaves. And then the man appeared. He was wearing a coat that looked like the ones the Beefeaters in the Tower wear, only black instead of red. I'd seen a garment like it a long time ago, a thousand years or so, in Aberystwyth when a man came to buy some Myfanwy memorabilia.

'Oh you poor dear sir,' he said. 'Oh you poor man! What have they done to you! I don't know how many times we've told those farmers about their traps, but they never listen.' He turned and shouted something in Welsh to a man further down the slope. 'We were told to keep a lookout. They say that games teacher is loose in these woods. Some of the men thought it was you. I'm afraid I'll need help to release you from this trap, sir. You might like to take a sip of this to take the edge off the pain.' He produced a hip-flask and poured some Cognac into my mouth. I drank it greedily. The scalding spirit felt good. 'Is that better, sir?' I nodded but strangely the action was proving more difficult than I had expected. My head had become enlarged to the size of a small moon, and moving it was an enormous task. I tried to thank him but my tongue had been replaced with an iguana who refused to budge. My eyelids also seemed to have become alarmingly heavy. I looked up at my benefactor but he was in the sky, and his voice seemed to be coming from the next valley. The scalding spirit had felt good but now I realised there was a sharp metallic edge to the taste, a chemical taste that didn't belong there. I reached out into the sky to grab my benefactor but my hand didn't move and then someone switched the lights off.

Chapter 21

I was in a room. I was wearing a canvas nightshirt. It had a big black number stencilled on the front. 43. My new name. A nurse was folding my trousers over a hanger. The wound on my leg had been dressed with a white bandage. Nice job. But some idiot had left a team of roadmenders with jackhammers behind in the wound. I was going to tell the nurse, but she probably knew. It must have been a road for the dynamite trucks. Something to do with the quarry they were excavating in my head. I had a smart metal belt on to go with my canvas pyjamas. It didn't have a buckle. There was a bulge at one side. It was something electrical. Better not touch. You can get hurt if you don't know what you are doing. Better go back to sleep.

The nurse appeared in my dream. I told her to go away but she didn't seem to understand. I told her to give me my trousers back. It was hard getting through to her because she was on dry land. I was swimming at the bottom of the lake. I spoke to her in a series of soft plopping bubbles but they got lost in translation. I looked around for a fish who could help. And then I realised you need an amphibian for this job. At home on land and in water. I looked for a frog. Typical, there's never one when you need one.

I decided to go to sleep again only this time a different sleep so they couldn't find me.

It worked for a while but then the nurse came along. She was bending down towards the surface of the water and holding my wrist. That was nice. Maybe she wasn't so bad after all. I tried to groan. Nothing too ambitious. They still hadn't done anything about that iguana.

The nurse looked at me and shrugged. 'Dydw I ddim yn siarad Saesneg.'

Oh so that's the problem.

She smiled and shrugged again.

I wasn't sure if I could remember any Welsh, but the iguana did. 'Edrychwch! Dyna'r Archdderwydd!' he said.

The nurse giggled.

Not bad, great the way he got the 'wch' sound. Try another one, pal.

'Rydw I eisiau stafell ddwbwl!'

You're better than I thought. You've even got the 'll' sound. I could never do that. Still I suppose if you can catch flies with your tongue this should be a piece of cake. Try again. The nurse ran out and locked the door.

I lay back for a while and hoped the people would down tools in the quarry. I looked at my watch, almost noon. The lizard had gone. I waited. And after a while, I found I could sit up. And look around. I checked the belt round my waist. It was impossible to remove and had electric solenoids welded to it. I didn't like it. An hour passed and then the door opened and the butler walked in pushing a wheelchair. 'You'll probably be a bit shaky on your feet for a while, sir, so I've brought you this. The master has instructed that you are to take lunch with him. He also asked me, sir, to advise you not to make any attempts at escape until he has had a chance to demonstrate the workings of the belt.'

It all seemed like a good idea. The butler chatted to me as he wheeled me down a long corridor lined with doors. 'This is the old sanatorium, sir, quite a ghoulish place if you ask me. We thought it best to put you here while you recovered. I expect, though, the master will want to move you into the main house as soon as you are strong enough.' We came to some double doors and the butler pushed them open with my feet and wheeled me out into hazy sunshine. We were on a lawn some way from the main house. The cold air blew the clouds out of my head.

The Philanthropist was sitting in an electric wheelchair just inside the half-open French windows observing my progress keenly. Even from fifty yards away I had no trouble in guessing who it was. There was only one person it could be. My old adversary, the locust-sized criminal genius Dai Brainbocs; or as he now preferred to call himself, Dr Faustus. When I arrived he reached out his hand to me excitedly. 'I really am most thrilled to meet you again, dear Louie.' He pumped my hand and I stared at him still groggy but the fog slowly clearing.

The butler wheeled me in through the doors to a wood-panelled dining-room. Brainbocs drove alongside in his electric car. Last time we met he had been able to walk; maybe this was one of those degenerative things even his fancy Florida surgeons couldn't help. We took our places at either end of the long table that was already set for lunch.

'Before we proceed,' said Brainbocs, 'I hope you will understand if I quash any silly ideas that you will inevitably entertain about escape. Rhodri, if you would be so good.'

The butler brought from the mantelpiece another belt identical to mine and laid it down on the tabletop. Then he brought a metal dish of what looked like liver. 'These belts are quite popular with some of the police forces in South America, although this isn't an original, I made it myself out of some electronic camera flashes. It works just the same, though. Do anything to upset me and it delivers an electric shock of ten thousand volts straight to the kidneys. This isn't actually kidney on the plate, it's liver, but I think you will get the idea.' He picked up a remote-control device and pressed. There was a flash from the belt and a crackle and then the room filled with the acrid smell of burning meat. 'Well I think you may start serving us lunch now, Rhodri.'

*

Brainbocs dabbed the thick starched white napkin to his mouth and threw it to the table. In his other hand he clutched a crystal goblet of dessert wine and gulped greedily from it. It was Chateau d'Yquem, the same stuff that God drinks at Christmas. He closed his eyes with delight at the exquisite nectar and then cried as if the word was even sweeter than the wine, 'Love, Louie, Love. Love, love, love oh lovey love, love! That old-fashioned obsession of the poets and dreamers but so rarely the province of the white-coated research scientist.'

'You've been researching love?'

'I was exploring the furthermost frontiers of the human psyche. I was going to change the world.'

'By conducting research into the neurological basis of love?'

'Precisely!'

I was about to ask the obvious question 'why?' But the sight of Rhodri replenishing Brainbocs's glass took me back to that day he appeared in my office asking about the memorabilia and suddenly I knew the answer.

'Myfanwy,' I said.

Brainbocs grinned and then the joy slowly seeped away and became replaced by a wistfulness as he recalled the events of the past three years. 'You see, it never really worked out for us in Patagonia. Myfanwy was happy enough for a while, all that singing and being a star and that, but deep down she was never really content. Deep down, I realised, as things stood she never really could be.' He put down the glass as if its contents were too sweet to accompany this particular memory.

'I did everything for her, gave her whatever she desired. She was always talking about you, you see. Always going on about how she wished she had run away to Shrewsbury with you.'

He paused and stared out of the window, the silence in the room broken only by the soft crackle of the fire in the grate. He said, 'She really was so desperately in love with you, so girlish. She was always trying to write to you and things. Even though I arranged that her letters, which of course were never sent, were returned stamped "Not known at this address". When the newspaper cuttings from the Cambrian Gazette arrived with news of your wedding and later the tragic accident that left you cruelly brain-damaged and imprisoned in an intensive-care unit for the rest of your life, it was still to no avail. The silly girl just blamed herself for driving you away and said it served her right. It was all terribly troublesome.' He stopped and looked up. 'Would you like a cigar? Or a brandy?'

I shook my head. 'The dessert wine is just fine. Tell me about Myfanwy.'

'Of course! Of course ...' He smiled with benign understanding, and continued: 'Galling though the situation was, I realised that my predicament was far from being unique in the annals of human woe, indeed my reading taught me that it was such a common affair as to be virtually the norm. But none of the ancient texts I consulted were able to offer a remedy. And so I set about creating my own remedy. I decided to make a love potion.' He pointed an admonitory finger at me. 'You think the idea absurd, I know, because the words conjure up the image of some simplistic old witch's brew. But I am talking about a love potion with rock-solid scientific credentials, one drawing on the very latest neurophysiological and neuropsychological research. Could such a thing be possible? To the poets love is ineffable, but to the scientist emotions are just physical or chemical states of the brain. Could it be brought about by design?' His voice took on a distant, dreamy quality as if he were not really here but far away in his ivory tower grappling with the philosophical ramifications of his genius. 'I had to be careful, of course. I was only too well aware of the danger posed by the cold and analytical nature of scientific experimentation. My wide-ranging study of the literature on this subject made it clear to me that love was by its very nature a spontaneous thing, a wild horse that would not be caged. How then to balance the demands for scientific control and spontaneity? It was like manoeuvring a tornado, taming the tidal wave. Not just difficult but possibly impossible. For it is a paradox, is it not? By harnessing the maelstrom you exert a form of control that extinguishes precisely that which makes it a maelstrom?' He looked at me and raised his hand. 'I know what you're thinking, Louie. You wish no doubt to object that the propensity to fall in love is predicated on ideals of beauty which we store in our soul since childhood; images which we derive from the earliest memory of the soft, cherished face of our sweet mother. Is that not so? And since these things are set in stone at the very dawn of consciousness, how, you ask, could I alter them? How could I possibly erase what time had written in the foundations of Myfanwy's existence more than twenty-five years ago? It's a good question, Louie, and I'm glad you raised it. I think you will be impressed by my solution.

'I managed it by artificially stimulating that sensation commonly known as dйjа vu. I created mental sensations, coated them with the texture of "pastness" and implanted them in the psyche by suggestion. Although bear in mind this early work was done with prairie voles; it would be quite a while before I was ready to work with Herod, let alone Myfanwy.'

'You used Herod for your experiments?'

'Of course! And prairie voles — charming creatures. Did you know they mate for life? Faithful until they die, never once straying. We could learn a lot from them.'

'This is crazy.'

Brainbocs ignored me. 'I have to say the results were quite unnerving. Any policeman will tell you how unreliable our memories are. Show three people the same scene and they will remember it with wildly differing accounts. This is well-known; all the same, I was quite shocked — even frightened — by just what a cobweb our sense of identity is. Our little worlds are built on eggshell, Louie. Our deepest beliefs and convictions may be entirely false. I started to question the fundamentals of my own existence. Was my recollection of a childhood at my mother's knee in Talybont remotely trustworthy? The squeak of the spinning-wheel on long winter evenings; the faint musk-like odour of her body; the crackle in the fireplace and the tap of wind-blown twigs against the window pane like the ghost hand of a dead child pleading to be let in? Were these really my memories or had some poetic madman implanted them in me along with the ersatz conviction that they were my childhood remembrance? What if someone had done to me what I was about to do to Myfanwy? I couldn't know.

'The rest was just a bit of O level biochemistry. A cocktail of three key hormones. Serotonin, phenylethylamine and oxytocin — which is the one responsible for the bonding between a mother and her baby. With their help I was able to effect the basic re-architecturalisation of the cortical superstructure.'

'So where does Herod fit into all this?'

'He was my experimental model, along with the prairie voles which are also most suitable. You see, in my research at the National Library I came into contact with some of the government scientists who were working on him trying to prevent him regaining his memory. It was just happenstance really that I was working on the neurobiological basis of love at the same time that they were dealing with the problem of Herod's lost memory. Well, you know what scientists are like, we got to talking in the canteen and, realising how this could benefit me, I offered to help. Herod was moved to the sanatorium where he stayed for many weeks. He was perfect for research purposes, you see. A man who had no memory, a tabula rasa, so to speak. The result was a triumph in the annals of bio-engineering. I made him love. Do you understand the full implications of that? I gave him the power to love.'

'And what about Mrs Bligh-Jones?'

'Oh that was simple. Mrs Bligh-Jones was well-known to have hot pants for the gentlemen, especially those of a rugby-playing persuasion. She was a useful means of control. It was their regular trysts here that kept him docile.'

'You thought by teaching Herod to love you could do the same for Myfanwy? Make her love you? It's insane.'

'Not only that, but I also managed to make a few design modifications, to improve on the original. As you know there are a number of things seriously wrong with love. For a start it has a built-in statute of limitations, as evinced by Herod's return to his former self. Any weeping schoolgirl will tell you true love never lasts. It's really a problem with the instability of the oxytocin molecule. But there is a more fundamental flaw, one that is central to love's very essence: fleeting, inconstant and hostage to that cruelly arbitrary quality popularly known as "handsomeness" — mere physical appearance that serves as an indicator of our reproductive potency. Which means, basically, that chaps who look like me never get a look in.' He paused and then added, 'And that's where you come in.'

He signalled to Rhodri to refill the wine glasses.

'You know I haven't a clue what you are talking about.' 'Yes, yes, yes. I know you are impatient to rescue Calamity -'

'You know where she is?'

'Of course. And I'm going to make a deal with you and tell you. But first you have to hear me out, or you won't understand.'

I looked at him in the most profound disbelief.

'When I transferred my research to Myfanwy, I encountered an unexpected obstacle - one most resistant to my attempts to overcome it. In lay terms, I found myself bumping against a brick wall ... a psychical brick wall. It was as if I was tunnelling into her soul ... tunnelling to the deep, dark, hidden cave where she keeps the most powerful, primal, tender feelings and I found the way blocked by some unsuspected edifice so large it scorned all my attempts to remove it or go round it.'

'And what was it?'

'Her love for you.'

This was when I decided I'd heard enough. I jumped out of the chair and raced across the dining-room towards him. It was obvious he had been expecting this reaction at exactly this moment. He calmly raised and pressed the remote control. I jerked backwards, reached up to the heavens with my hands, fingers curled like claws, and screamed. And then vomited. And then fell into a writhing heap on the floor.

Rhodri helped me back into my chair.

'That was just a weeny one, by the way, just in case you get any more silly ideas.'

I sat panting, desperately gasping for air, and staring hate at Brainbocs. He calmly flicked some lint off his blazer.

'You're agitated,' he said, 'that is perhaps understandable.'

'What do you want with me?'

'I told you, I want to make you a deal.'

'A deal?'

'You will help me, and I will tell you what you most want to know in all the world. The whereabouts of Calamity.'

'What do I have to do in return?'

'You will help me extinguish what remains of Myfanwy's love for you.'

'You're mad.'

'You say that only because you still do not believe. And of course I cannot blame you. You need to see with your own eyes. First you need a token of my earnest in this matter. First you need to meet Myfanwy.'

This time I jerked backwards, but there was no electric shock, just the even more powerful stunning effect of Brainbocs's words. 'You mean she's here!?'

'Where did you think she was? Timbuktu?! Now that we have had a chance to talk we will go and see her. I know she has been dying to meet you.' The butler put his hands on the back of my wheelchair, and was about to push when Brainbocs raised his hand. 'One moment, Rhodri.' He turned to me. 'Before we go on there is a question I must ask you, a very important one. And it is this. Do you love Myfanwy like most suitors purely for her physical charms or do you love her like I do for her character ... for who and what she is?'

It was such a strange question but he looked at me with an expression that almost defied description. I remembered the time Myfanwy described the incident when Brainbocs took off his calliper and went down on one knee to propose. The look on his face that she had been unable to describe, but tonight I knew it was the same one. A look of grief and pain of such intensity it suggested nothing that had ever happened to him in his life was as important as my answer.

'You no doubt feel it is none of my business, and you are right - it isn't. All the same I need you to answer.'

'You're asking me whether I love her for her body or her mind?'

'Yes I suppose, crudely put, I am.'

I didn't even bother considering it. 'Her mind.'

'Excellent!' He signalled to the butler and we were wheeled through. The butler opened two double doors at the end of the library and pushed me towards them. Towards Myfanwy whom I hadn't seen for three years, years during which there hadn't been a single day which didn't start and end with me thinking about her. As we passed through the doors Brainbocs grabbed the sleeve of my arm, taking care to keep the remote control beyond my reach and said, 'Please, prepare yourself. The past three years have been very hard for her. She is not like she used to be. Not the way you remember her.'

Chapter 22

The adjoining room was smaller than the dining-room but had the same high ceiling with dusty cornicing. The same oak panels round the walls. There was no furniture. At one end a set of French doors opened on to a rose garden. And at the opposite end was a console of electronic instruments. There were gauges that hummed and lights that flashed different colours, and in the centre, straight out of a second-rate science-fiction movie, there was a large Perspex cylinder containing a pale amber fluid and inside that, with wires attached, a human brain. Behind it on the wall was an enlarged photo of Myfanwy. I stood before it all and gasped. A sequence of lights, which I could only suppose connoted excitement, flashed up and down rods around the photo and a thin metallic voice said, 'Hello Louie!'

I spun round and jumped out of the chair but Brainbocs was expecting this. He was holding the remote control pointed at my chest like a gun and I stopped frozen in my tracks. The memory of the lightning bolt he had sent through my body last time was fresh and filled me with an animal terror that glued my limbs. I sat back in the chair.

'How you doing, Louie!' said the electronic voice.

Nausea overwhelmed me and I looked in utter disbelief at Brainbocs. 'What have you done?'

He shrugged in what appeared to be embarrassment as if his wonderful new scheme had not met with the rapture he was expecting. 'I would have thought that was fairly obvious.'

'But you ... you ... I ...' There were no words.

Brainbocs made an uncomfortable fidgeting movement and said, 'I see it is useless to try and hide the fact from you, I fucked up.'

'You haven't changed a bit, Louie!' warbled the robotic voice of... of... what? Myfanwy? 'How do I look?'

'Answer her!' hissed Brainbocs. 'She's been so looking forward to this. Don't upset her!'

'Oh ... well... you know ...' I forced my mutinying tongue to speak. 'Same old Myfanwy!'

'Very good!' whispered Brainbocs.

'You little liar!' warbled Myfanwy.

'Would you like her to sing for you?

'No.'

'Yes, yes, I'm sure you would. You doubt that she can, eh? I haven't given her full colour vision yet, but she can sing.' He clapped his hands. 'Myfanwy, sing for our guest.'

'What shall I sing?'

'Anything.'

There began a thin warbling rendition of' Una Paloma Blanca! from the speakers. It was hideous but Brainbocs didn't think so. He rested his head in the crook of his thumb and index finger and half-closed his eyes dreamily while his other hand tapped the remote control in time to the music. When she got to the 'I'm just a bird in the sky' bit, I could take it no longer. 'Stop it! I shouted. 'Stop this ... this ... obscenity!'

The music petered out. 'Not so good, huh?' said Myfanwy. 'I know I'm still a bit rusty. I need to be able to move to the beat really.'

Brainbocs looked at me with eyes narrowed to slits and the water between them glittering with fury. 'You shouldn't have done that, Louie. You're a rude bastard, that's what you are.'

'And you're the filthiest, vilest piece of vermin —'

He pointed the remote control at me. 'Go on say it, I dare you!'

I stopped. 'One day I won't just tell you, I'll write it on you with your own blood.'

Brainbocs was angry now. Bubbling over with hate and confusion. 'Don't come the "I'm so pure and noble" bit with me. You're just like all the rest. I knew it but she wouldn't believe me. Just like all the other lecherous old toads down at that filthy club who saw her as a piece of meat.'

'You don't know what you are talking about.'

'Oh yes I do! I'm not a lusting animal like you, I love Myfanwy with —'

'Love!' I shouted. 'You call this love? What, do you know about love?'

'Everything!' he screamed. 'I've read everything there is available on the subject!'

I laughed bitterly. 'You didn't find out the first thing, Brainbocs. Not the first thing. This proves it. A cold inhuman monster such as you doesn't have the capacity to love. You think this is Myfanwy? A brain in a chemistry set? Myfanwy is the girl running along the sand dunes at Ynyslas with the salty wind blowing in her chestnut hair, with firm young limbs of warm flesh and blood, running joyously into the sea ...'

'Oh spare me!' shouted Brainbocs. 'Spare me the pink candy hearts! You'll be telling me next love is a many-splendoured thing!'

'It is!' I cried. 'It fucking well is!'

'Oh sure, the April rose that only grows ... Grow up, Louie Knight!'

'Myfanwy isn't a brain in a petri dish, she was the taste of salt on her skin after swimming in the sea ... the coldness of her salty wet hair and the goosebumps and laughter and ... and ... and ... Jesus, even now you haven't the faintest idea what I'm talking about. Not the faintest. This isn't love what you are doing here. It's just dissection.'

There was a pause. And I could see Brainbocs visibly straining to calm himself. He straightened his tie and twisted his head sharply from side to side as he did so. 'This is absurd. I won't allow you to infuriate me with your cheap gumshoe antics. I know the score. Get me upset and then make an attempt to get the remote control. Well you can forget about that.'

'Oh do stop fighting, you two!' warbled Myfanwy.

'You'll understand after you've had a chance to chat to Myfanwy.'

'She isn't here.'

'You see,' he hissed, his face once more twisting with venom. 'I knew it. I told her but she wouldn't have it. You don't really love her. Just before we came in I asked you whether it was her body or her brain you admired. Well I think we have our answer now, don't we?'

'Are you so blind that you cannot see the one doesn't go without the other?'

'Oh really? Says who? You may not desire her any more but I do.'

'Is she happy?'

His eyes shot open. 'Since when has that been a criterion? Who's happy round here, huh? Nobody as far as I can see. Happy? Happy? I've never been happy a single day in my whole fucking life. Have you?'

'Yes, I have. Almost every day.'

'Well you don't look very happy today!'

'It hasn't ended yet.'

'You throw happiness at me as if it was the touchstone of man's existence whereas statistically it's the very absence of it that seems to define us. Happiness? It's crap.'

'You say you love her and you don't even want to make her happy?'

'I deal in facts and certainties, Louie. Not candy floss. Any rational analysis of the world makes it clear that I cannot promise her happiness. But I can make her happier. You see, despite everything, we still have each other. And now, in her modified form, at least no one will try and take her away from me.'

'Is that so?'

'Yes, Mr Knight, it very much is so. That, if you will forgive me underlining it, is the whole point. Because I know that despite your fine words you no longer want her. While I still do.'

'What makes you so sure?'

'Oh I'm sure,' he said. 'Very sure. In fact, that's why I brought you here. Because I knew once you saw her you would hate her.'

'I don't hate her.'

'Perhaps. But you do not love her.'

'She's not the same girl.'

'Oh you're back-pedalling now, Louie. Back-pedalling. The tragedy for you is, she is the same girl. You could stay here all week and chat to her and you would never be able to deny it. The only thing that is not the same is physical. The tits and the bum — or what was that bollocks again? The cold wet tongues of hair on the goosebumpy skin. That was all you desired and it's gone.'

'It's not true, Brainbocs.'

'Really? Tell her then. Go and tell her that you still love her.'

I paused and my indecision filled him with glee.

'You see! You can't bring yourself to do it.'

'Why the hell should I?'

'To save Calamity, of course.'

I turned to him and stared at the smug self-assurance on his face. Again Brainbocs made efforts to calm himself, breathing deeply and counting the breaths. And then, much cooler, he said. 'You may protest and throw your teddy out of the pram, even call me a load of schoolyard names, but underneath it all you're not stupid. The deal I'm offering you is one you cannot possibly refuse. Tell Myfanwy you don't love her and I will tell you where they have taken Calamity.'

I rushed at him again but again I was too slow. Or Brainbocs was too quick. Another lightning fork flashed inside my ribs, picked me up and threw me to the ground with terrifying force. I convulsed and writhed on the floor, as my heart beat so powerfully I thought my chest would explode. Brainbocs looked on impassively and, once the convulsions had subsided, said, 'You stupid fool.' Rhodri threw a tureen of cold water into my face and I dragged myself wearily back to the chair.

Brainbocs continued, 'I can assure you, Louie, you will get tired of that before I do. But enough of this. Let us seal the deal.'

'What if I don't co-operate?'

'You have no choice. You would be stupid to refuse because it is in your best interests. You love Calamity like a father. You no longer love Myfanwy, despite your brave words. So to give her up will not be so very hard except for the wound it will deal to your honour. And set against the welfare of Calamity, what is that?'

Was he right? His words had twisted me so much that I hardly knew any more what to think.

'Tell me what they have done with Calamity,' I eventually said.

Brainbocs drove his car over to a bureau and fetched a pile of papers. 'I can't tell you exactly where, you have to understand. We're not in this together, if that's what you think. Mrs Llantrisant has no more love for me than she does for you. But I know how to find out.'

'How would I know you are not lying?'

'You wouldn't but when I explain it to you, you will know it to be the truth. You will feel it in your water. And besides, all you have to do is tell Myfanwy you no longer love her. If I double-cross you, you simply say you didn't mean it. You can't lose.'

'So where have they taken her, what does Herod hold sacred?'

He lifted the pile of papers.

'It's not, as you might first imagine, anything to do with rugby or beer, nor even as I had secretly suspected the exciting smell of adolescent boys' fear. It was something more primal than that and dated back to a time shortly after the war in Patagonia. A time when he had all the normal appetites of a healthy young man. A man who could still laugh and love, whose soul had not yet been torn apart by the memory of that terrible conflict. This man had a love affair with someone. Can you guess who?'

I narrowed my eyes and stared in disbelief and hate at the little worm.

'Go on have a go.'

'Mrs Llantrisant?'

'Close. Her sister, Mrs Bligh-Jones.'

I looked startled.

'Ah, you didn't know they were sisters. Oh yes. And bitter love rivals.'

'But Mrs Llantrisant had Bligh-Jones assassinated.'

'Hell hath no fury and all that. Yes, Herod and Mrs Bligh-Jones did what all seventeen-year-olds with the spring sap rising in their green shoots do given half a chance. The record of it is all faithfully transcribed in here.' Brainbocs waved the sheaf of papers. 'Detailed descriptions of Mrs Bligh-Jones groaning and convulsing on the grassy hillside and doing out of wedlock what she spent the rest of her life hurling scorn at other girls for doing. The two of them engendering a child. Yes, Mrs Bligh-Jones and Herod had a love-child. But alas only for a while. For a single day only. A frail little kitten that popped its head out, decided the world was a vale of tears, and went back to wherever it was he had come from. They called him Onan. And Mrs Bligh-Jones gave birth to him in a cow byre because Herod had abandoned her. The only question now is, which cow byre?'

'You mean that's the sacred place?'

'Yes, up on Pumlumon somewhere. You remember all that fuss about the Meals on Wheels expedition that got stuck in the snow up there? That was all Bligh-Jones's doing. She knew he was up there, driven by some terrible, deep-seated instinct to find the place where his son was buried. That's where Herod's hideout is and where, unless you get a move on, they will kill Calamity tonight at moonrise.'

When he finished there was silence for a while. I looked towards the console and then back at Brainbocs. 'I just tell her I don't love her and you tell me where the cow byre is?'

He nodded. And then Myfanwy spoke.

'It's all right, Louie, you can say it. I already know anyway. You don't love me now. You hate me. Go on say it. No don't, please don't, please don't! Oh what does it matter? I know it anyway. Why didn't you write, you pig? I hate you for that ... oh no I don't! Forgive me ... I know this is all my fault. You never really loved me, it was Bianca you really loved, wasn't it? Don't lie to me, I know ... you deserve better than this anyway, it's over for us, we're finished, look at me - just an old lump of brain in a tin of chicken consommй ... that's what it is you know, chicken soup ... just a brain now ... I never was very brainy, was I? My worst feature all that is left of me ... Go on leave me, say you don't love me ... but say you did once ... in Ynyslas, remember? Oh, Louie, remember how we kissed that day ... I was so happy ... Louie, say you did once, say you did once, Louie say you did ...'

Brainbocs picked up a walking-stick and banged the console with it. 'Sometimes the speech circuits can get overloaded.'

And then Myfanwy started to sing in a voice punctuated by sobs.

Once on a high and windy hill

In the morning mist, two lovers kissed,

And the world stood still ...

'It's amazing, isn't it?' said Brainbocs. 'I haven't given her full stereoscopic vision but she can still cry —'

I couldn't take any more. I walked over to the console, looked at Myfanwy and then back at the evil dwarf schoolboy. He was singing, too, now. The thin, out-of-tune, reedy sound of a youth whose voice will for ever remain on the cusp of breaking; singing the descant to Myfanwy's electronic soprano.

Then your fingers touched my silent heart

And taught it how to sing

Yes, true love is a many splendoured thing ...

It was enough. Tears in my eyes, I said into the microphone, 'I love you Myfanwy. I always did. You were a bitch to me sometimes, but it never mattered. I always forgave you. So I hope now you'll forgive me too —'

'No!' screamed Brainbocs as realisation dawned. 'No! You bastard, no!' He rammed the throttle forward and sped his car towards me.

'Hope you'll forgive me —'

'No!' he screamed.

I turned to face Brainbocs as he raised the remote. And I smiled at him, a graveyard smile, as he pressed and I gritted my teeth. The shock shrieked through me in spears of blue and silver fire. I spun round and convulsed, but used the force, the momentum, to carry me forward to the console.

'No!' he cried and pressed the remote once more. But he said he'd made the belt from camera flashes and even I knew you had to wait a few seconds for them to charge up again. I grinned at him and reached for the console. Brainbocs jabbed with impotent fury at the remote and then hurled it aside and raced his electric buggy forward.

'No! No! No! Stop! Please!' And then with bestial ferocity Brainbocs launched himself from his chair, his tiny hands reaching out in wild despair to grab my coat. Like a maniac he fought to clamber up me, to bring his face close to mine in a lethal embrace. He was so close now I could feel his hot breath scalding my ear. I could hear his teeth millimetres away — snapping on empty air like the jaws of a terrier trying to catch a wasp - as he tried to bite through the carotid artery in my neck. 'No! No! No! Stop!' he screamed.

'Forgive me, Myfanwy,' I said, and then pulled the plug out from the wall-socket.

Chapter 23

For maybe a whole minute or so neither of us spoke. Brainbocs lay face-down on the floor at my feet, the remote control a yard away, almost within reach. I kicked it under the sideboard. The console was now in darkness; the lights dead; the electronic hum gone. And with it too whatever it was that Brainbocs said was Myfanwy. Finally he twisted his head on the floor and looked up at me. 'Curious. This funny thing called love. Of all the reactions I had computed, the one thing I didn't expect was that you would kill for it.'

I bent down and scooped the broken-hearted dwarf into my arms and then put him tenderly back in his wheelchair. And then the tiredness swept over me. I could have slept standing up. The lights flickered and went out. Not just in the house but down in the valley too. I slumped into a chair and held my head in my hands. All the reserves of strength seemed to have been drained from my body.

The butler walked in holding a candelabra of lighted candles. 'I

fear we have some problems with the electricity ...' He stopped

as he took in the scene in front of him.

'Yes,' I said. 'There's been a loss of power in here too.' 'So I see,' he said in a thoughtful voice. 'So I jolly well see.' 'I'll be phoning the police in a while, if you ... er ... if

you ...' I was almost too tired to speak. 'Time to go, eh?' he said. 'I think so.' 'Would you permit me, sir, before I leave to straighten Mr Brainbocs's tie for one last time?'

I shrugged. 'Be my guest.'

The butler walked up to Brainbocs and punched him with pure venom full in the face. 'That's better,' he said, and then walked to the door.

A fat bead of blood appeared in Brainbocs's nostril and trickled down his upper lip. Tears welled up in his eyes. I walked over and held out a handkerchief to him. He misinterpreted the gesture and flinched in anticipation of another blow.

The loudspeaker crackled on the wall and a voice, the voice of a dead girl, shouted, 'Go on, Louie, bash him up!'

I twisted round suddenly and the butler pointed at a set of doors to the left of the console and said, 'I think someone had better go and untie Myfanwy, don't you?'

I walked across and swung the doors open and there she was. Tied to a chair, and staring at the proceedings on a TV screen with a microphone in front of her, but seemingly unharmed. Myfanwy. I attacked the cords with fevered hands and soon she was free and in my arms and squeezing me so hard I could feel my ribs crunch. 'Oh, Louie!' she groaned into my chest. 'Oh, Louie!' And I pressed my face against the top of her head and breathed deeply the lost incense of Myfanwy's hair. Finally she pulled back, looked up at me and said, 'You switched me off, you pig!'

*

I called Llunos and he told me Calamity had turned up. She had walked into the police station an hour earlier and turned herself in for the Custard Pie break-out. He was going to send me a car, the fastest one he had, because she was driving everyone mad down there and they were considering arresting her for vagrancy or something, just for some peace and quiet.

We didn't wait for the police car, we borrowed Brainbocs's 1960s era Rover instead.

'Why didn't you warn me,' I asked as we drove through Ponterwyd and west towards town.

'If I gave the game away he was going to kill you. He said he had a power setting on the belt that would kill you instantly; he demonstrated it by electrocuting a pig. The deal was I had to answer all your questions and convince you that you were really talking to me. Then he would make you the deal: renounce me and he would tell you how to find Calamity.'

'What would have happened if I didn't renounce you? Told you I still loved you?'

'He said you would never do it, you would never let Calamity die; but if you did he would let us go. We could be together.'

'Really?'

'He said if you did that, if you sacrificed an innocent child for me, he would be quite impressed and would have to admit that maybe your love was even greater than his.'

I nodded. It sort of made sense.

'Do you think he really would have let us go?' asked Myfanwy.

'I'm not sure. What do you think?'

'I think he was planning to kill us all, including himself.'

We drove on in silence for a while, in a dark world of old leather, polished wood and chrome bezels.

'Anyway, I told him there was no way you would be stupid enough to fall for such a dumb trick. And he said you would.'

'He was right.'

'No he wasn't, you outsmarted him. You thought of something he didn't expect. That was really cool. Although I'm not sure about the bit where you called me a bitch.'

'And don't forget I switched you off.' I squeezed her hand in the dark.

Myfanwy loosened her seat-belt and sidled across, nestling her soft head on my shoulder.

'But to tell the truth,' I added, 'he had me hook, line and sinker. I fell for the whole thing — especially your bit. When you started going on about Ynyslas and then broke down and wept... where on earth did you learn to act like that?'

'I wasn't acting.'

Calamity was sitting on a chair wrapped in a blanket and arguing with an exasperated-looking policewoman.

'For the umpteenth time,' she said, 'I didn't get kidnapped. I used myself as bait to smoke him out ...'

'Look, missie, I've had enough of your tales.'

'And I've had enough of yours!'

'Really? And how would you like a tanned bottom?'

'And how would you like to spend the rest of your career writing speeding tickets?'

She looked up at my approach. 'It's OK Louie, I've got it under control, just briefing the uniformed guys.'

'She thinks she's a detective,' said the policewoman.

'She is a detective,' I said.

There was a loud groan. 'Don't you start as well.'

'Can we get to talk to someone with a bit of seniority around here, we're losing valuable time,' said Calamity.

I took her by the arm and drew her to one side. She started to expostulate about the incompetence surrounding her and I made the gesture known as 'shhhh!' She stopped and looked up at me, slightly sheepishly, and said, 'So, are you OK?' I smiled. 'Seeing you again is the best tonic in the whole world. What about you?' 'Of course!' A slight tremor flashed across her face when she said that and she swallowed something. And swallowed again. 'I'm fine, why not?' Her eyes glittered. 'It's been a bit of a tough one this, but I think I've worked out how to find the sacred ...'

Again I motioned her to be quiet. 'That's not important right now ...'

'Of course it is, if we don't hurry ...'

'No it's not. Right now it doesn't matter whether they escape or whatever, the most important thing is that you are all right.'

'Yes, yes, I'm fine ... I told you, didn't I? This is still a case and ...'

'There will always be more cases and some we'll win and some we'll lose. That's the way it will always be, we'll never change it. But I'll only ever have one Calamity.'

She looked into my face and blinked back tears. 'Boy! I really made a dog's dinner of the Custard Pie job.'

'No,' I said gently. 'You did fine. You found out about Herod. That was an incredible piece of detective work.'

'But I helped Custard Pie escape. How stupid can you get?'

'Trust me, Calamity. I would have done exactly the same.'

'Really?'

'Really. And if it's any help to you, it wasn't you who let him escape it was the idiot on watch that night who didn't check the ambulance.'

Calamity considered that and her face became childishly stern. 'Yeah, we'll have to throw the book at him when this is over.' Another worrying thought intruded, and she peeped reluctantly at me. 'I've been thinking about my letter of resignation ...'

I tried to look unconcerned. 'Oh that! You didn't think I would be fooled by that old trick, did you?'

She looked uncertain. 'You weren't?'

"Course not! I knew straightaway it was the work of an impostor.'

'It was?'

'Sure! Crummiest impersonation I've ever seen. Whoever did it didn't know the first thing about you.'

'Really?'

'For a start, they couldn't spell for toffee.'

She looked at me and then slightly narrowed her eyes as she considered; and then she grinned and punched me. 'Oh you! Does this mean you're not angry with me then?'

I ruffled her hair. 'I'm not angry about the escape. But there is one thing I am very angry about. Taking the gun like that.'

Her eyes flicked wide. 'What gun? I didn't take your gun.'

Llunos walked over clutching a Styrofoam cup, looking tired; his tie skew-whiff, shirt buttons undone over his belly. 'She says she knows where to find Herod's sacred place but won't tell us because it's her collar.'

'It is my collar,' protested Calamity. 'I have to be there.'

'Talk some sense into her,' said Llunos, 'or I'll make her a material witness. I do that and she'll never get a job as a dick in Cardigan for as long as she lives. I don't like it but that's the rules.'

'But it's my collar,' said Calamity.

I crouched down and spoke to her face to face. 'No one is saying it isn't, kid. But you can't come along. You have to stay here and give these people some statements and things. Boring, I know, but that's life as a real detective. But if you tell us where they are, it's your collar. Everyone knows that.' I looked up at Llunos.

"Course it's her collar,' he said. 'Anyone says it isn't will have to explain to me why not.'

Calamity looked to Llunos and then back to me, making up her mind. ' O K. Well I don't know where it is, but I do know how to find out. Just ask Smokey Jones.'

'Who?' Llunos and I asked in unison.

'Smokey G. Jones — the pro Mrs Beynon champ from the sixties. She's bound to know all about Mrs Bligh-Jones getting up the duff out of wedlock ...'

Llunos didn't stay to hear the rest, he was off across the room, barking his orders. 'Put out an APB on Mrs Smokey G. Jones. I want everything she's got on Mrs Bligh-Jones's bastard — times, dates, places. If she won't talk, slap a charge on her; if she still won't talk run her in and make her. You've got half an hour and I want her singing like a canary. Use your truncheons if you have to, and I don't care where you stick them ...'

'If she clams up,' shouted Calamity across the room, 'tell her I've got that large-print edition of Lady Chatterley she was asking about.' She turned to me and smiled. 'We'll get them yet.'

'We sure will. Now tell me how you escaped.'

She broke my gaze and looked down. 'Argh, you know,' she said trying to sound casual. 'Custard Pie arranged for me to rendezvous with one of his confederates, he was going to tell me who the Raven was. Like an idiot I thought I'd nail them on my own. Then when Pie escaped I was so scared at what you would say, so I sort of hung low for a while. I knew you'd be furious.'

'I wasn't furious. You just made a mistake, everyone is allowed to do that.'

'So I went to the rendezvous and, you know, I was too smart for them of course ...'

'Yeah, I know.'

'No way I was going to fall for a dumb trick like that.'

'No way?'

"Course not.'

'OK,' I said. 'That's fantastic. Now tell me the truth.'

She bit her lip. 'Well actually, to tell the truth,' she said reluctantly, 'I was warned.'

'Who by?'

'I don't know. I was going to the meeting-point and this old woman in a black shawl walked past me and told me it was a trap. She didn't hang around, one minute she was there, the next she was gone. Soon as she said it I realised what an idiot I was being.'

Before the half-hour was up Llunos came over and told me to put on my coat. Smokey G. Jones had been happy to talk, although she made the two officers wait while she made a cup of tea. And they had to listen to the antique case-histories of four gymslip pregnancies, two extra-marital affairs and a case of incest before they got to the bit they wanted. The love-child had been born in the hut in the Pilgrim's Pass on Pumlumon. The posse would set out at dawn, but since there was still about half an hour of daylight left ... Llunos didn't need to say any more, we both knew what we were going to do.

I turned to Calamity before I left and said, 'Is that true you didn't take the gun?'

She nodded. 'You told me not to, didn't you? I wouldn't have dared.'

Chapter 24

The pilgrim's hut was the last of the old wayfarers' stations before the pass. It used to be the main way on foot into England but once the snows set in it was often impassable. Llunos drove fast across the rolling badlands of Blaenrheidol as the first flakes of snow fluttered from the sky.

We left the car in a lay-by and followed the National Trust footpath through the valley and up the scree towards the pass. If they were keeping a watch they would see us easily, but then where would they go? In this weather the only safe route was down back into the valley. To our left the sombre waters of Nant-y-moch reservoir lapped the shore with tiny wavelets. It seemed a thousand years since we had both passed this way before; above the clouds in an aeroplane from which Herod Jenkins plunged to what we assumed was his death. We were both deeply aware of the significance of this moment, here above the lake where last time we had failed. We walked without speaking; there was nothing left to say. It was a time for deeds.

Herod was standing outside the hut, his back to us, bent over and skinning a ferret. He was dressed as a man of the woods: home-cured furs wrapping him, with the arms and shoulder bare like a circus strongman. A twig cracked beneath our feet and he spun round, a bloody skinning knife in his hand and on his face that horizontal crease that they once called a smile.

'Well bugger me!' he said. He nodded to Llunos. 'Evening, Llunos, bit parky isn't it?'

'Nos da Mr Jenkins! Looks like we might be in for a bit of snow.'

Herod spoke to me. 'Still playing detectives, are we? You should get yourself a proper job.'

'It is a proper job.'

'Could have fooled me.'

'We've come to take you in,' said Llunos.

'What for?'

'What for!?' I spluttered.

'I've paid my debt to society.'

'Like hell you have!'

'I fell out of a plane, didn't I? Banged my bloody head on the water, lost my memory, lived on berries ...'

'Tell it to the judge, Herod.'

He yanked at his fur vest, pulling it down to reveal a long ugly scar on his chest. 'See this? I sewed it myself with a nail and some thread made from the intestines of a sheep.'

'I thought needlework was for girlies.'

'Give up, Herod,' said Llunos simply.

'To you two? I'm bigger than both of you, what are you going to do?'

'There are more coming, you know that. Men with dogs, and guns. They'll get you. You can't go forward into the pass, you'd be crazy. The only way is back. You want to spend the rest of your life running?'

'I like running. If the little pansy here had done more of it at school instead of moaning like a girl we might have made a man of him.'

'I'm not talking about running round a track. I mean running like a hunted dog all your life. Never lying down at night without worrying if that night they'll come for you. Every day a new town, a new identity, always looking over your shoulder.'

'It doesn't sound any worse than rotting in jail.'

'Who says you'll go to jail? What have you done? It's not a crime to lose your memory and live in the woods. We could probably work something out.'

'I'm in it up to my neck. You said so yourself.'

'No you're not, if you turn Mrs Llantrisant in you'll probably get a deal.'

Herod spat with contempt. 'Oh that's it, is it? Turn my comrade in for an easy sentence. Well you've made a mistake there if that's what you think. I'm not a coward like Louie Knight here who was always too scared to catch the ball.'

'Is that the grave?' I asked pointing to an outcrop of rock above the hut, on which now stood a new cross, crudely fashioned from chopped wood.

Herod turned and peered upwards. The sky was milky grey and filled with tufts of snow falling as gently as a dandelion flower.

'I put it up there myself last week. His spirit can rest in peace now.'