Last Tango in Aberystwyth

'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.