thing I saw before losing consciousness, as I looked up, was Herod Jenkins and that horizontal crease in his face they called a smile.
Chapter 22
I OPENED MY eyes in a dark room, my cheek pressed against a cold, gritty concrete floor. Three stripes of light ran down the wall from a barred window and my head and ribs throbbed. I drifted back into unconsciousness. When I woke again the shadow of the bars was fainter as the first pale glimmer of dawn filled the room. I dragged myself to my feet, wincing at the shooting pains from my ribs and shuffled to the window. The view was from the side of Pen Dinas overlooking the harbour towards the station. It was Blaenplwyf prison. I felt the ribs with my fingers — they didn't appear to be broken, but someone had given me a good kicking. From my vantage point I could see Victory Square between the station and the museum and I could see what it was that had so upset Calamity. The Lancaster bomber was gone. Finally, when it was too late to do anything about it, I understood. That dramatic change of course in Brainbocs's research that started all the trouble. It could mean only one thing. All along we had been puzzled how they were going to get the Ark to the sea. And Calamity had worked it out. They were going to take the sea to the Ark. After all, everyone knows you need a deluge to launch an Ark. And Brainbocs's Promethean ego was going to supply one. Brainbocs was going to reunite Lovespoon's old bomber crew, the one that flew the mission over Rio Caeriog, and blow up the dam at Nant-y-moch.
The sounds of a prison slowly coming to life filled the air. Iron doors clanged open and shut, and harsh voices echoed down the hard corridors; keys jangled; men moaned. Calamity had worked it out as well. And it had been too much for her. She didn't need to be a Dai Brainbocs to know what the mountain of water released with the destruction of the dam would do to the town. I had sent her off in search of Llunos in the faint hope that he might have some officers still loyal to him. Maybe they could do something. Stop the plane or devise a plan to get the townspeople to higher ground. If they commandeered the Cliff Railway, it might be possible. But it was all beyond my control now. Shortly before 8am the door opened and a tray with bread and a brown drink in a plastic beaker was placed inside. The drink was sweet and warm but I couldn't tell whether it was coffee or hot chocolate. Maybe it was neither. The beaker had chew marks all along the rim. Some time after that the door opened again and the guard told me my lawyer was here to see me.
I followed the guard down a long corridor through a series of barred doors, until eventually I was shown into another cell at the end, smaller than mine and with a simple wooden desk in the middle. A little man with a boyish face sat at the table. He was smartly dressed in a well-cut three-piece suit and was resting his two small hands, both gloved, on top of a malacca cane. A mauve handkerchief billowed out of his top pocket. He stood up as I entered and pointed to the chair.
'Please, sit down.' His voice was thin and weaselly. 'Smoke?' He took out a packet of cigarettes and held them aloft. I shook my head and he threw the pack down on the table. 'Neither do I; beastly habit. Still didn't quite know what else to take a man in prison. Not much practice at this sort of thing.'
I said nothing, just stared at him. There was something unpleasant, almost otherworldly about him, like those pictures of aliens said to be living in Area 51.
He looked at me and smiled weakly. 'Do you know who I am?'
'I know you're no lawyer.'
He chuckled. 'We've never been introduced, of course.'
The side of my head where I was hit with the shotgun was sore and pounding, but my mind was becoming clear. A suspicion slowly took concrete shape in my mind, a suspicion that had been floating there like fog for some time now. I had no reason to know he was, but I did. It was simple really.
'You're Dai Brainbocs.'
He giggled.
'I suppose it was a spare calliper you threw in the vat at the cheese factory?'
'No. I just made a replacement - out of Meccano — quite an improvement on the original design actually; much better articulation. I might apply for a patent.'
'And the teeth?'
'They were real too; milk teeth. Shows you what a wanker that police pathologist was.'
I nodded as I slowly took it in.
'Why go to all that bother of pretending to be dead?'
'Because Lovespoon was going to kill me.'
He walked over to the window and looked out. 'You should get a good view of his Ark from here, that's one of the reasons I chose this place.'
There was something in his tone that made my skin crawl. A sort of wheedling, taunting, smugness that suggested he had planned everything right down to what shirt I wore this morning.
'Eight cubic kilometres of water. I calculate it will take about twenty minutes to reach Aberystwyth. A very respectable effort for one's first deluge, don't you think?'
'It'll destroy everything.'
'No great loss to architecture.'
'Why are you here?' I said bluntly.
He paused. I knew the answer already: he was here to boast.
He looked at me and tapped the top of his cane.
'I wanted to thank you.'
'What for?'
'For saving my life.'
'I thought you were already dead.'
'Ah! But for how much longer would I have been allowed to rest in peace?'
I shook my head. 'I thought Lovespoon adored you.'
He began talking to the air, as if rehearsing his defence in case St Peter ever asked.
'Herod Jenkins, Custard Pie, Zachariah Lovespoon and Arthur Frobisher. One dead; the other three respectable members of Aberystwyth society. Each one well known. Each one in the phone book. But where was the fifth member of the crew, where was Gwenno?' He turned to face me and wagged his finger. 'If only I hadn't asked that question. If only.'
I said nothing but watched him intently. Impressed despite my disgust that this tiny fragment of humanity, a boy with the physical presence of a grasshopper, could have created such a whirlwind in the affairs of men through brain power alone. I was conscious of despising him, not for the evil that he wrought, but for his pale, sickly decrepitude. I who had automatically taken the side of such people against the steamroller insensitivity of Herod. Was this how Herod felt about me?
Brainbocs continued. The wistful tone in his voice suggesting that he was already addressing posterity rather than me.
'When I found out it was Mrs Llantrisant, I couldn't believe it. It was impossible. That daft, weather- obsessed, step-swabbing moron? The leader of the ESSJAT? How could it be? That's why I devised the poisoned apples and the deathbed confession: I needed to be certain. All I wanted was her to say yes or no. But the silly old bag had other ideas. She was convinced she was going to die and said she had this terrible secret on her conscience which she didn't want to take to the grave. I tried to shut her up but she wouldn't listen. I suppose she saw it as her big moment and wasn't going to be cheated of it.'
'And you found out that Rio Caeriog wasn't a military triumph after all?'
Brainbocs shook his head sadly. 'Oh no, far worse than that. I already knew it was a military disaster. That much I could have come to terms with. No, I found out something far worse. Something that spelled death for the whole project. The land reclamation, the beautiful boat, the whole Exodus — kaput!'
It was as if the air was slowly drained out of him. He leaned forward, put an elbow on the table and placed his chin softly into his cupped hand. The messianic fervour was gone and he looked at me; almost as if he was appealing for help.
'Lovespoon is English.'
I gasped. Brainbocs nodded his head slowly and closed his eyes.
'Imagine how I felt? The man to whom I had devoted my life, for whose glory I had created my masterpiece, the Cantref-y-Gwaelod reclamation scheme, was an impostor. From Slough.'
For a while neither of us spoke. A quiet so absolute filled the room that I could hear the sound of each of us
