Last Tango in Aberystwyth an-2

by Malcolm Pryce

  '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 tr
ied 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 wa
s 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.