Last Tango in Aberystwyth

by Malcolm Pryce

  ‘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. Adiós.’

  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 fell 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 ther
e 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 élan 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 are accepted. The literature of nineteenth-century seafarers is full of re
ferences 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 pièce de résistance, 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.’