straining at the flex with a power that looked as if it might break the back of the wooden chair.
'That was for killing the Punch and Judy man.'
She spat blood on to the carpet but said nothing.
'Now when you're ready I have some questions I'd like to ask you.'
'Bugumph a dwonba frum ga fum paschtad!'
I screwed up my face 'What!?'
'Ga fhaard bu mon get aggyfun oumpa me ga frunbin pash schtern!'
I picked up the dentures and shoved them back into her mouth.
She started manipulating them furiously with her tongue, making obscene gob-stopper mounds in alternate cheeks. When they were in place she shrieked at me, 'I said you won't get a fucking word out of me, you bastard!'
I kicked her in the knee and she squealed in agony. I spoke to her in a soft bedside manner.
'You know, something puzzles me.' She looked up, interested despite her attempts not to be. 'You're always whingeing to me about the amount of time your friends have to wait at the hospital to get their hips done, and here I am fucking up your knee and you don't seem bothered. Why is that?'
She looked at me coldly and said, 'Your threats are useless. I spit on them.'
'Why did you kill him?'
'Who?'
'Iolo Davies — the Museum curator.'
'My orders were to remove him and so I removed him. He meant nothing to me. It was just a job.'
'Like swabbing the step?'
'He was just a filthy semen-squirting little toad.'
'So where's the essay?'
'Fuck off!'
'OK,' I smiled.
I walked to the kitchen and filled the kettle. I was troubled. What if she had been trained to withstand pain? You heard of such things. My resolve would soon give way. I had already shown that with Lovespoon. My gaze wandered round the kitchen and I was struck at how totally she had made the place her own. Four new housecoats hung up, doubtless paid for out of my petty-cash tin. Groceries from Safeway littered the side. There was even a trunk containing her orthopaedic-boot collection. And then it struck me: even Mrs Llantrisant had an Achilles heel.
I picked up the industrial-size meat mincer which had lain in the corner gathering dust since the time when Mrs Llantrisant and Mrs Abergynolwen had made the sausage rolls for the Eisteddfod. I dragged it into the office and placed it down a few feet in front of Mrs Llantrisant. She looked at me with a look of withering contempt.
'Gonna mince me leg off, are you now, Mr Knight? Or is it me arm? Mince away for all I care, I shall just laugh at you.'
'It's not your leg you should be worried about, Mrs Llantrisant.' I bent down and started unlacing her orthopaedic boot. The brash confidence disappeared and a look of naked terror swept into her cold, pitiless eyes. She struggled like a fish on a hook but the TV flex held her firmly bound to the chair. I took off the boot and stuffed it into the top of the mincer where the chopped meat usually goes and grabbed the handle.
'Better start singing, Mrs Llantrisant, or your boot will be mincemeat.'
'You wouldn't dare! They cost eighty quid they did!'
'You're Gwenno Guevara, aren't you?'
'Fuck off!'
I gave the handle a slight turn. The teeth of the mincing mechanism made contact with the leather. Mrs Llantrisant gasped. I stopped turning the handle and peered to look at the damage to the boot.
'They're just a bit scuffed at the moment; bit of shoe polish would get that off. It's your last chance.'
She started struggling to break free of the flex which bound her to the chair and I gave the handle a full heave. There was a sickening crunching, gristly sort of noise as the spiral teeth cut into the solid wall of the boot. Mrs Llantrisant let out a long, blood-curdling howl, like a tortured wolf.
'You're Gwenno Guevara, aren't you?!' I shouted.
'Yes! Yes! Yes!' she screamed.
'The supreme commander of the ESSJAT?'
'Yes!'
'Is that why Brainbocs came to see you? Why he took your deathbed confession?'
'Yes!'
'Why was he so interested in you?'
She just shook her head sadly and gasped for breath. 'I don't know. I really don't know. All I know is the boy was trying to reunite Lovespoon's bomber crew. Lovespoon, Herod, Dai the Custard Pie . . .'
'And Frobisher?'
'He was dead. He didn't matter. But Brainbocs was trying to track down the remaining survivors from the Rio Caeriog mission. I was the only one he couldn't find.'
'So where's the essay?'
'It's in my handbag on the chair in the kitchen.'
I looked over to the kitchen and then back at her. This was all a bit too easy.
'If you're lying, your boot's fucked.'
She shook her head.
'I mean it! I'll do every single fucking one of them!'
'In my bag, go and see.'
I went to the kitchen and opened her handbag. Inside was a manila envelope. I pulled it out. It was marked on the front in ball-point pen: 'David Brainbocs, spring term assignment, Cantref-y-Gwaelod'. Next to that was a date and the St Luddite's school stamp, initialled by Lovespoon. I tore it open and pulled out the essay. There were about thirty pages of A4 filled with a closely packed schoolboy hand, interspersed here and there with technical- looking diagrams. It was perfect. The essay that half of Aberystwyth had been looking for. There was just one thing wrong. As I leafed through the pages I could hear from the other room a horrible raucous cackling that went straight through me like a graveyard wind. Mrs Llantrisant was laughing. I could mince up every orthopaedic boot in Aberystwyth and it wouldn't make a hap'orth of difference this time. The essay was written in runes.
Chapter 21
WEARILY, I SET off on the half-hour walk across town to the light industrial estate on the site of the old engine sheds. That was where the new Witches' Co-op could be found next to the DIY emporium, the computer superstore and the frozen-food wholesalers. It was a far cry from the cubby hole the shop had formerly occupied in the side of the castle ramparts next to the Coronation Muggery. The shop itself was an uneasy mix of traditional and modern. In front of the warehouse-like building of corrugated iron and sand-coloured brick was a car park in which the parking bays were marked out in whorls and vortices corresponding to the lines of power beneath the tarmac. The staff wore bright cotton overalls covered in half moons and stars like Hallowe'en costumes, but the security guard had a wolf on a leash. The lighting was mainly fluorescent, except for torches burning at the ends of the aisles.
At my approach, the glass double doors opened as if by magic and one of the assistants pointed me in the direction of the R&D facility at the back. The door was marked 'authorised personnel only' but I walked through regardless and found myself in a laboratory. It was empty except for Julian, the cat, who was peering into the eyepiece of a microscope, his paws balancing on the knurled focusing wheel. He looked up and gave me the usual look of disdain and then, intimidated perhaps by the expression of determination on my face, flicked an ear back towards the far side of the room. My gaze followed the direction of his ear to a large glass window set in the wall and through the glass I could see Evans the Boot's Mam sitting on a broomstick in what appeared to be a wind tunnel. Julian returned his gaze to the eyepiece of the microscope. The door to the wind tunnel had a red light above it and, not wishing to compromise the research, I went up to the window and waved. Mrs Evans saw me, signalled to one of the white-coated technicians in the room, and dismounted. She came out carrying the broomstick and took off the helmet which looked like one of those worn by Olympic racing cyclists. Then, struggling to get her breath back, she tossed me the broomstick; it was lighter than a feather.
