'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
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,
'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.
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.
'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.'
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.
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
