'Hell hath no fury and all that. Yes, Herod and Mrs Bligh-Jones did what all seventeen-year-olds with the spring sap rising in their green shoots do given half a chance. The record of it is all faithfully transcribed in here.' Brainbocs waved the sheaf of papers. 'Detailed descriptions of Mrs Bligh-Jones groaning and convulsing on the grassy hillside and doing out of wedlock what she spent the rest of her life hurling scorn at other girls for doing. The two of them engendering a child. Yes, Mrs Bligh-Jones and Herod had a love-child. But alas only for a while. For a single day only. A frail little kitten that popped its head out, decided the world was a vale of tears, and went back to wherever it was he had come from. They called him Onan. And Mrs Bligh-Jones gave birth to him in a cow byre because Herod had abandoned her. The only question now is, which cow byre?'
'You mean that's the sacred place?'
'Yes, up on Pumlumon somewhere. You remember all that fuss about the Meals on Wheels expedition that got stuck in the snow up there? That was all Bligh-Jones's doing. She knew he was up there, driven by some terrible, deep-seated instinct to find the place where his son was buried. That's where Herod's hideout is and where, unless you get a move on, they will kill Calamity tonight at moonrise.'
When he finished there was silence for a while. I looked towards the console and then back at Brainbocs. 'I just tell her I don't love her and you tell me where the cow byre is?'
He nodded. And then Myfanwy spoke.
'It's all right, Louie, you can say it. I already know anyway. You don't love me now. You hate me. Go on say it. No don't, please don't, please don't! Oh what does it matter? I know it anyway. Why didn't you write, you pig? I hate you for that ... oh no I don't! Forgive me ... I know this is all my fault. You never really loved me, it was Bianca you really loved, wasn't it? Don't lie to me, I know ... you deserve better than this anyway, it's over for us, we're finished, look at me - just an old lump of brain in a tin of chicken consommй ... that's what it is you know, chicken soup ... just a brain now ... I never was very brainy, was I? My worst feature all that is left of me ... Go on leave me, say you don't love me ... but say you did once ... in Ynyslas, remember? Oh, Louie, remember how we kissed that day ... I was so happy ... Louie, say you did once, say you did once, Louie say you did ...'
Brainbocs picked up a walking-stick and banged the console with it. 'Sometimes the speech circuits can get overloaded.'
And then Myfanwy started to sing in a voice punctuated by sobs.
'It's amazing, isn't it?' said Brainbocs. 'I haven't given her full stereoscopic vision but she can still cry —'
I couldn't take any more. I walked over to the console, looked at Myfanwy and then back at the evil dwarf schoolboy. He was singing, too, now. The thin, out-of-tune, reedy sound of a youth whose voice will for ever remain on the cusp of breaking; singing the descant to Myfanwy's electronic soprano.
It was enough. Tears in my eyes, I said into the microphone, 'I love you Myfanwy. I always did. You were a bitch to me sometimes, but it never mattered. I always forgave you. So I hope now you'll forgive me too —'
'No!' screamed Brainbocs as realisation dawned. 'No! You bastard, no!' He rammed the throttle forward and sped his car towards me.
'Hope you'll forgive me —'
'No!' he screamed.
I turned to face Brainbocs as he raised the remote. And I smiled at him, a graveyard smile, as he pressed and I gritted my teeth. The shock shrieked through me in spears of blue and silver fire. I spun round and convulsed, but used the force, the momentum, to carry me forward to the console.
'No!' he cried and pressed the remote once more. But he said he'd made the belt from camera flashes and even I knew you had to wait a few seconds for them to charge up again. I grinned at him and reached for the console. Brainbocs jabbed with impotent fury at the remote and then hurled it aside and raced his electric buggy forward.
'No! No! No! Stop! Please!' And then with bestial ferocity Brainbocs launched himself from his chair, his tiny hands reaching out in wild despair to grab my coat. Like a maniac he fought to clamber up me, to bring his face close to mine in a lethal embrace. He was so close now I could feel his hot breath scalding my ear. I could hear his teeth millimetres away — snapping on empty air like the jaws of a terrier trying to catch a wasp - as he tried to bite through the carotid artery in my neck. 'No! No! No! Stop!' he screamed.
'Forgive me, Myfanwy,' I said, and then pulled the plug out from the wall-socket.
Chapter 23
For maybe a whole minute or so neither of us spoke. Brainbocs lay face-down on the floor at my feet, the remote control a yard away, almost within reach. I kicked it under the sideboard. The console was now in darkness; the lights dead; the electronic hum gone. And with it too whatever it was that Brainbocs said was Myfanwy. Finally he twisted his head on the floor and looked up at me. 'Curious. This funny thing called love. Of all the reactions I had computed, the one thing I didn't expect was that you would kill for it.'
I bent down and scooped the broken-hearted dwarf into my arms and then put him tenderly back in his wheelchair. And then the tiredness swept over me. I could have slept standing up. The lights flickered and went out. Not just in the house but down in the valley too. I slumped into a chair and held my head in my hands. All the reserves of strength seemed to have been drained from my body.
The butler walked in holding a candelabra of lighted candles. 'I
fear we have some problems with the electricity ...' He stopped
as he took in the scene in front of him.
'Yes,' I said. 'There's been a loss of power in here too.' 'So I see,' he said in a thoughtful voice. 'So I jolly well see.' 'I'll be phoning the police in a while, if you ... er ... if
you ...' I was almost too tired to speak. 'Time to go, eh?' he said. 'I think so.' 'Would you permit me, sir, before I leave to straighten Mr Brainbocs's tie for one last time?'
I shrugged. 'Be my guest.'
The butler walked up to Brainbocs and punched him with pure venom full in the face. 'That's better,' he said, and then walked to the door.
A fat bead of blood appeared in Brainbocs's nostril and trickled down his upper lip. Tears welled up in his eyes. I walked over and held out a handkerchief to him. He misinterpreted the gesture and flinched in anticipation of another blow.
The loudspeaker crackled on the wall and a voice, the voice of a dead girl, shouted, 'Go on, Louie, bash him up!'
I twisted round suddenly and the butler pointed at a set of doors to the left of the console and said, 'I think someone had better go and untie Myfanwy, don't you?'
I walked across and swung the doors open and there she was. Tied to a chair, and staring at the proceedings on a TV screen with a microphone in front of her, but seemingly unharmed. Myfanwy. I attacked the cords with fevered hands and soon she was free and in my arms and squeezing me so hard I could feel my ribs crunch. 'Oh, Louie!' she groaned into my chest. 'Oh, Louie!' And I pressed my face against the top of her head and breathed deeply the lost incense of Myfanwy's hair. Finally she pulled back, looked up at me and said, 'You switched me off, you pig!'
*
I called Llunos and he told me Calamity had turned up. She had walked into the police station an hour earlier and turned herself in for the Custard Pie break-out. He was going to send me a car, the fastest one he had, because she was driving everyone mad down there and they were considering arresting her for vagrancy or something, just for some peace and quiet.
We didn't wait for the police car, we borrowed Brainbocs's 1960s era Rover instead.
'Why didn't you warn me,' I asked as we drove through Ponterwyd and west towards town.
'If I gave the game away he was going to kill you. He said he had a power setting on the belt that would kill you instantly; he demonstrated it by electrocuting a pig. The deal was I had to answer all your questions and convince you that you were really talking to me. Then he would make you the deal: renounce me and he would tell
