I nodded.
'It's OK, Lester. Thanks.' Then she pulled open the door and let me in.
The place had a cloying, sour smell of unwashed bedclothes and not enough air and what little air there was had been burned up by the camping-gas stove. The floor was littered with discarded clothes and so many foil take- away trays they were ankle-deep like silver ingots on the floor of a vault. On one wall was a makeshift dressing- table before a mirror with a halo of light bulbs set around it. And at the far end a three-piece suite was angled into the space beneath the big window. She waded through the silver sea of ingots and sat on the sofa and poured herself a gin with a shaking hand and drunk it in one go. She didn't offer me one. I sat down opposite her.
She took a deep drag on a cigarette and screwed up her eyes with what might have been pleasure.
'Was he a friend of yours?'
'No. I've been hired to find him.'
'But you said no cops, right?'
'No cops.'
'I'm sick of cops. They either want to lock you up or fuck you up.'
'Usually both.'
'What makes you come here?'
'The Dean used to have one of your fudge-box tops — he lit a candle to it every night.'
She refilled the gin glass, took a violent swig, and a drag on her cigarette. 'Yeah, he was sweet like that.' She took another life-saving drag. 'Is he dead?'
'Not as far as I know.'
'Well, there's not much I can tell you. I haven't seen him for weeks. Met him at the Heritage Museum. I was spinning and he got the part as the coracle man for a while. But he didn't stay long, they never do. He was different from the others, though. I wondered what he was doing there, and then I realised it was because of me. I meet plenty of guys like that.'
'Anything going on between you two?'
She looked slightly puzzled for a second and then let out a laugh. 'Me and him?! Are you nuts?! What do I want with a man?'
I waited while she refilled the gin glass and then lit another cigarette. Between puffs she asked me, 'Is it true he was a professor?'
'Yes, he was.'
'I'd rustle something up from the fridge for you but they took it away.'
'We could go out, if you're hungry.'
'I haven't got the energy to dress, but thanks anyway.'
'I could get a take-away. Chinese.'
She smiled. 'You worked out I like Chinese food all on your own?'
'It was a hunch.'
I returned to the trailer half an hour later laden with a set meal for two that was so good the girl at the take-away assured me even a real Chinese person might have eaten it. Judy Juice peeled away the lids and threw them on the floor. Then she picked up a knife with a 'Come to Sunny Aberystwyth' handle and used it to scrape the rice on to some plates.
'The girl at the Chinese knows you, says you eat there every day.'
'It's all I eat. You ever been there?'
'The take-away?'
'No, China.'
'Do I look like I can afford to go to China?'
'How would I know how much it costs? Someone told me the other day, when they open this tunnel to France you'll be able to get a train all the way from Aberystwyth to Peking. Is that right?'
'As far as I know.'
She nodded, somehow relieved. 'One day I'll go there; get on that night train to Shrewsbury and never get off. Yes sir!' The bright look faded and she said, 'You know, some other guy came asking about the Dean.'
'Was he wearing a Peacocks' coat?'
'I wouldn't know where he bought it, but it was long and black and he was a bit creepy. He wasn't sweet like you so I told him to sling his hook.'
'What did he want?'
'Oh, you know, asking about the Dean and when I last saw him. And then he said the Dean had taken a case that belonged to him and asked me for it. And I said why would I have it, and he said he knew the Dean had left it here. I said shows you how much you know, buster, and then he said, 'Don't give me the runaround, you tart.' So I called Lester the guard here and he threw him out. Lester looks out for me because I get quite a few cranks turning up.'
'Did the Dean ever mention this case?'
She sighed at the memory. 'Yeah, he mentioned it. He was always going on about 'them', how they were after him because he had something that belonged to them. He once said they would kill him if they caught him. Then one day I got tired of hearing it and I told him to prove it. So he showed me some papers. One of them was official-looking and written in runes. I couldn't understand it, but he could. I said, so what is it? And he said it was an official druid death warrant. And I said, who's it for? And he said, if I told you that, you'd be on it too.'
She reached for the gin bottle again. 'To tell you the truth, it all went in one ear and out the other. He was always full of crap. They all are.'
*
From Judy Juice's I drove down to the harbour and parked by the railings, facing out to sea. The favourite spot for people from the Midlands to eat their chips; people who drive for three hours for this view and never get out of the car to take a closer look. But tonight neither did I. It was raining again and I sat there, the wipers humming, and stared at the light on the end of the jetty, thinking about what Marty's mum had said. About the question the dissident lighthouseman dared to ask, but no one dared answer. About the suspicion that had haunted him every day since that moment when they found his wife preserved in a block of ice, frozen in time like a fly in amber, and Mr Cefnmabws peered into the sarcophagus of ice and saw that expression on her face. Was that terrible frozen snarl on her face simply the agony of her death-mask? The cruel hand of hunger and cold? Or did it hint at a different explanation for her death than the official version? Something else, something altogether darker? Was it a look of horror? The terror of someone who fled down that mountain because she saw something up there no decent person should be forced to witness? The question that Mr Cefnmabws wanted answered was a simple one. They had survived for three months up above the snow-line, alone with the bodies of their dead comrades, stranded in a world where not even the birds could survive. So what did they eat?
Chapter 16
When I opened up shop the next morning, Llunos was standing on the doorstep. He walked straight past me and up the stairs without a word. He threw his hat on the desk and slumped into the client's, chair and said, 'Is the girl here?'
'Calamity? Not yet.'
'What time are you expecting her?'
'Oh I don't know, some time this morning. You know Calamity.'
'Yes,' he said in a voice without warmth or inflexion. 'I know Calamity.'
His tone began to worry me. 'What's up?'
He grimaced. 'They've sprung Custard Pie.'
I jerked back slightly as if he'd held smelling-salts out to me. 'Sprung him, who has?'
He ran tired fingers through his thinning hair. 'I don't know, someone, some people ... I mean, who gives a fuck, he's out!'
'I can't believe it — a Triple-A-category prisoner in a maximum-security dungeon ...'
His face became flushed with anger and he shouted at me in a way I hadn't seen since the old days when we were adversaries.
'Now don't you start on me,' he shouted. 'I'm the one who put him away, remember? How do you think I feel? I'm not the one who's been giving him bird seed.'
