Llunos shook his head in wonder and disbelief.
We reached the crest of Penglais Hill and suddenly, as it always did, that familiar sight of Aberystwyth appeared in the valley below like a faithful dog, making the heart glad: skeins of smoke drifting across the slate roofs, the battered old pier and the pointy turrets of the old college, all set against the backdrop of a dove-grey sea.
'I still can't get my head round it all, you know,' said Llunos. 'Brainbocs coming back and all that. Making a love potion.'
'I think it will probably take us all a good few years to get used to that one.'
'I haven't even got my head round the last caper, yet. The flood.'
'Nor me.'
'Where do you want me to drop you?'
'I need to go to Trefechan.' He put his foot down and drove on, past the railway station. I took out the key to my office and put it down next to the gear stick. 'When you get back to the police station, give this to Myfanwy and tell her to go and wait for me at my place. Tell her I'll be about an hour, and I'll explain when I see her.'
Llunos nodded. 'Don't suppose there would be any point asking what's so important that you have to go to Trefechan at this time of night?'
'Nope.'
'Thought not. If it was me, all I would be able to think of right now would be Myfanwy.'
'It's all I've thought about all day. But I've waited three years. I can wait another hour.'
We drove past the station and I cast an anxious glance over at the clock. 11.40. Still time. Just.
'And make sure someone takes Calamity home. Tell her I'll see her at the office tomorrow, business as usual ... This will do fine.'
He nodded and pulled up just before Trefechan Bridge.
I opened the door and Llunos put a gently restraining arm on my forearm. 'Imagine if they did succeed in making a love potion like that,' he said with a strangely troubled look. 'That made you fall in love with someone you didn't like. It would be like rape, really, wouldn't it?' He shook his head slowly, pondering the implications. 'We'd have to make a new law against it.' Then he put out his hand and we shook.
*
I plodded wearily over Trefechan Bridge and along the river bank to the trailer park. The storm had gone completely now and, in its wake, an air of almost supernatural calm lay on the harbour. Even the odd car sounded distant and not quite real; on the silent air the delicate scent of the sea hung faintly, softer than the memory of rose petals.
The caravan was dark and still, and gave off the same fetid reek as last time. The door was ajar and I eased it open and crept furtively in, not knowing what to expect but prepared for anything. I tried the light switch inside the door but it wouldn't work.
'The power's off.' It was a girl's voice, thick with pain and urgency, coming from somewhere in the darkness. 'I suppose the bitch forgot to pay the bill.' My eyes gradually became accustomed to the gloom and I made out the figure of someone standing in the middle of the caravan. It was Gretel. She was wearing something that shimmered even in the dark and enveloped her from knee to shoulder. It seemed to be a dress, perhaps made of taffeta or something.
'I guess I had you fooled all along with my sackcloth and ashes stuff?' She spoke in staccato gasps as if there was a strangler's hands at her throat, or some deep, desperate pain inside her was squeezing out the last droplets of life.
'It's not hard to fool me,' I said. 'All you need is a jar of damson jam.'
Something glinted with a blue white light down by Gretel's wrist. It was my gun, pointing at me. Gretel looked down at it and waggled it slightly.
'Soon teach her to keep her filthy paws off my man.'
I nodded and said in the sort of voice you use to coax a frightened animal, 'Yeah, you sure did that.' I took a half-step towards her. Suddenly the words of Eeyore came back to me, about how death when it comes can often strike us as embarrassing, as stupid, even banal. How cruel, after all this time, now that Myfanwy was waiting for me back at my office, after all the myriad ways I could have died recently, for it to happen now. I put my hand out ever so gently. As if to a cat in a tree. 'Come on,' I said. 'It's all right.'
'Thanks for letting me have the gun.'
'I didn't. You took it.'
'How did you guess it was me?'
'It wasn't hard. That day Calamity asked for a heater, she said it was in the trunk, the key behind the picture. You were standing outside the door.'
She considered for a second, and said, 'I've sent you a cheque.'
'For what?'
'For helping me find her. A deal's a deal.'
'The agreement was to find the Dean not Judy Juice.'
'I guess I should have read the small print.' The voice was getting weaker and hoarser with a hint of a whine in it like a homesick dog.
'I would have got the bitch, too! But the fucking thing jammed.'
She let out a tiny gasp, and swayed slightly like a felled tree about to collapse. The gun slipped out of her hand and clattered to the floor. It was then that I noticed in the corner of her mouth a thin dark trickle oozing and bubbling with her breathing. Transfixed by the sight I let my gaze drop and saw the handle of the 'Come to Sunny Aberystwyth' knife, stuck to her chest, just below where the heart should be. She let out a strange squeak and slid slowly to her knees, slumped against the cooker and stayed there between the cooker and the cupboard, wedged in by her own enormous weight. The blood in the corner of her mouth stopped frothing.
I stepped forward and put my finger under her chin and closed the ugly, gaping mouth. I didn't care so much about her eyes, I couldn't really see them. I could tell now that it was a taffeta gown, and she had a set of pearls and a brooch and various other trashy gewgaws. Only the hat was missing.
There was a rasping sound from the far end of the caravan, the sound of a match on the side of a box. A light hovered pale and gold for a second and then went out, replaced by the steadier flame of a candle. So acute had my senses become now in this near-perfect darkness that I could smell the smoke of the extinguished match. I took out my handkerchief and used it to pick up the gun.
'It's all right, you won't need it,' a man's voice said. I walked up to him, sitting at the far end where I had sat with Judy Juice. The candle gave off a small halo of flickering gold that occasionally touched the edge of his face. It was Lester, the security guard.
'Not much use pointing that at me,' he said. 'It's jammed.'
'It's not jammed,' I said. 'She just didn't know how to shoot.'
'We both know that's nonsense. But it doesn't matter. I don't intend causing any trouble. After I've smoked my cigarette I'll call the police myself, if you like.'
'And tell them what?'
'That I killed that sack of shit down there in the taffeta dress.'
'You did that for Judy?'
'I don't expect you to understand. You didn't know her.'
'Where is she?'
'She's gone. Where you and the other men in Aberystwyth can't hurt her. Gone far from here to a place where she won't be confronted every day by the terrible reminder of her mother's cruel death.'
'I thought she was an orphan.'
'She was. Most of her life. But then she came to Aberystwyth and found a mother. And then saw her gunned down in the street a few months later.'
I gasped in the darkness. 'Mrs Bligh-Jones was Judy Juice's mother?'
'You didn't know? Why did you think she came to Aberystwyth in the first place? To live in this stinking caravan? She came to find her mother and I came because I couldn't bear to be away from her. She got me this job, you know. I'd like to think it was because she needed to have me near. But I know it was just pity. All the same, it saved my life.'
