Candlenight

Chapter XIV

"I know what you're thinking," Giles said.

They were driving inland on roads that became narrower, through countryside that got bleaker. Camouflage country, Berry thought. Weathered farmhouses were hunched into the hillsides; tough, cynical-looking sheep grazed mean fields the colour of worn khaki. And then the forestry began, rank upon regimented rank of uniform conifers, a drab army of occupation.

"But you're wrong." Giles was trying vainly to stretch his legs. Claire had taken the BMW to Norwich while her own car was being serviced, so they'd come in Berry's little old Sprite, lanky Giles wedged awkwardly with his knees around his chin because of the bags and stuff behind his seat.

They were passing a derelict lead mine in a valley, broken grey walls and tin-roofed shacks. A thin river seeped along the valley bottom, tired as a drain.

"Just you wait," Giles promised.

Berry's first time in Wales. They'd driven in from the South-East, which he found pretty much like England, except more of it was rural. Wherever they stopped for a meal or cigarettes everybody seemed to speak English too, in quite intelligible accents.

Then they'd hit the west coast, checking into a hotel in Aberystwyth where quite a lot of the people around them were speaking a language Berry didn't understand. It sounded European, but it had a lilting quality, and the speech of people in the street was flecked with English phrases. They were only a couple hundred miles from London. Weird.

"So this cottage," Berry said. "All comes down to Claire, right?" He was quite enjoying himself. A whole new scene.

They came to a T-junction. A sign pointing right said: Pontmeurig. 5 miles.

"Go left," said Giles. "Yes. What basically happened is that sometime back in the fifties Claire's grandparents split up, and the old man — well, he couldn't have been that old then — he came back to his native Wales. Back to the actual village where he'd been born."

"How Welsh does that make Claire?"

"Not very. Second generation, or is it third generation? Point is, Claire's mother was furious at Granddad, just buggering off like that, so they never had anything to do with him again. But then he dies — and he leaves his house to the granddaughter he never knew. Rather romantic, isn't it?"

"How far now?"

"No more than four. Of course, Claire's kicking herself now, that she never came to see the old chap while he was alive."

"He, ah, had a lot of dough?"

"He was a judge." said Giles. "Qualified as a barrister in England, worked in London and the South East for years then became a circuit judge or a recorder or something — one of those chaps who used to take the old Quarter Sessions in provincial towns, it's all changed now. But yes, he did all right. She's English, of course, his wife, Claire's granny. She did all right, too. out of the settlement. Nobody in the family talks much about why they split up. He'd just retired. Maybe he wanted to come back to Wales and she didn't."

"Kind of a drastic solution."

"Ha. When you see the village, you can imagine people doing pretty drastic things to get back."

"Not if it's like this," said Berry.

There was forestry now on both sides of the road. Berry liked country roads, as did the Sprite. But this route was no less claustrophobic than some concrete canyon in Brooklyn.

"Here?"

The sign said Y Groes, 2. Giles gave a confirmatory grunt.

They turned left. At the entrance to the road another sign had a broad red line across it: dead end. After Y Groes— nothing. For over a mile the forestry stayed close to the road on both sides.

"What's it mean, this place? The name."

"Y Groes?"

"Yeah."

"It means The Cross," said Giles.

"Like in religion?"

"Must be. It has a very impressive church. Look, there it is — see?"

"Oh. yeah. Hey—" Berry's head swivelled. "Where'd the forest go?"

Something lit up underneath Giles's freckles.

"Great, isn't it. the way you come out of the forestry so fast and everything changes. Notice how the trees are all broadleaf now? Look at the variety of wild flowers on the verges, don't see that in many places nowadays. And, look — what about the sun, for Christ's sake!"

"What about the sun?"

"It's come out!"

"Big deal." said Berry.

All the same, he was getting an idea why Giles was so excited. Something in the light, was that it? Maybe it was because the journey across the hills had been through such harsh and hostile country that Y Groes seemed subtly translucent and shimmering like a mirage. Maybe the sun looked suddenly brighter and warmer here because, along the road, its rays had been absorbed by the close-packed conifers. Something like that.

They drove on down, and it got better. Most of the other villages Berry had seen on the way from Aberystwyth had consisted of a single street, with cold-looking houses, a shop and a big grey chapel all strung out like damp clothing on a frayed washing line. Here, chunky, timber-frame cottages were clustered below the old church in a way that seemed somehow organic, like wild mushrooms in a circle. An image came to Berry of the cottages pushing themselves up out of the ground, chimney first each one in its naturally-ordained space.

Weird thought, but kind of charming. And natural — none of that manicured Cotswold gloss. You went behind that ochre Cotswold stone and you were in Hampstead. Here. he didn't know.

For the first time this weekend, he wished Miranda was here. She'd approve, although she hadn't approved when he'd said he would not be seeing her that weekend and explained why. "Morelli," she'd snarled, "as far as I'm concerned you don't ever need to come back. You can bloody well stay out there with the leeks and the seaweed bread and the Bibles." Then things had gotten heavy.

"Looks like a nice old pub too." Berry said, slowing down, wondering where they'd got the stone from because it seemed to have a more softly-luminous quality than the rocks they'd passed. Although the soil here seemed lighter too, so maybe…

"I've never been in the pub." said Giles. "I was sort of saving it." Giles was hunched forward in his bucket seat excited in a proprietorial kind of way, pointing out this feature and that, the natural amphitheatre of hills, the steps leading up behind the inn to the churchyard, the path to the river.

Berry eased the Sprite over the narrow river bridge, the inn directly ahead. Its sign, swinging from a wooden bracket — or it would have been swinging if there'd been any wind — had a fading picture of the same church tower they could see jutting out of the hilltop behind. The inn sign said: Tafarn Y Groesfan.

"Just carry straight on up the hill, as if you're heading for the church."

Two old men with flat caps and sticks leaned against the side of the bridge. Berry gave them a wave and, to his vague surprise, one returned a cheery, gap-toothed smile and the other raised his stick in greeting.

Giles raised a friendly hand to the two old men and grinned delightedly. "You see… absolutely nothing like old Winstone's picture of Wales. God rest his soul. Super people here; everybody you meet has a smile."

Backs to the wall now, the Joneses and the Davieses…

Yesterday Berry had been to Winstone's funeral. The old reporter had gone down into the flames just like he always said he would and all the hacks had gone back to the last halfway decent pub in what used to be Fleet Street and drunk, between them, what Berry figured must have been several gallons of Glenfiddich in memory of one of the Scottish distillery's most faithful supporters. Giles had been unable to attend, having been sent to cover a much-heralded speech by Labour's shadow chancellor at some local government conference in Scarborough. Berry suspected he was glad to have avoided the occasion. Somebody — Firth or Canavan — would have been sure to make some discreet reference to Giles's behaviour on the night of Winstone's death.

Berry could still feel Winstone's hand on his arm. Stop him.

But this village wasn't helping.

He'd been hoping for somewhere grey and grim. Instead, he was charmed. There was a surprising air of contentment about the place.

The Thorpe funeral had been conducted by a retired Fleet Street chaplain, the Reverend Peters who'd known Winstone from way back. In the bar afterwards Berry had bought the old guy a drink, and it had emerged he was Welsh, from the industrial south east of the country. This had been a surprise because the Reverend Peters had seemed seriously English to Berry, hearty and genial and built like Santa Claus with a matching white heard. He'd laughed when Berry had told him of Winstone's gloomy warnings. His part of Wales, he'd said, had the warmest, friendliest folk you could wish to meet.

Up the short street Berry could see just two shops. Three women stood chatting outside one, shopping baskets on their arms. One woman had a cloud of fluffy white hair and wore a white summer dress with big red spots. Berry just knew they were speaking in Welsh. Something about the way they used their hands.

"Hey Giles—" He'd been trying to work out what it was made Y Groes different from anywhere else, even allowing for the absence of tacky modem storefronts among the old buildings.

He realised. "Giles, we're the only car here!"

"That's right. What do the villagers need cars for? Going to drive fifty yards to pick up the groceries?"

"What I'm saying is. village this attractive — how come there're no tourists, 'cept us?"

"Well, it's not on a tourist route." said Giles. "Lots of attractive villages don't get hordes of visitors simply for that reason. I mean, we're in the middle of some pretty rough countryside, the sort that tourists just want to get through quick to get to somewhere else. I suppose they get a few walking enthusiasts and people of that sort, but obviously not enough to be worth catering for — as you can see, no souvenir shops, no cafes, no snack bars. Don't even think the pub does overnight accommodation."

"Shame."

"Not for me," said Giles. "I hate bloody tourists. Pull in here. We'll walk the rest of the way."

A track led between two outsize sycamore trees. It was blocked after about twenty yards by a rusted metal farm gate.

"OK to park here?"

"Private road." said Giles. "Our private road. Or it will be."

They got out and stood looking down on the village in the vivid light of early evening. To the left of them stood the church tower, like a monolith. The church was built on a big hump, around which cottages fitted — or grew, as Berry liked to fantasise — in a semi-circle. The church tower had a short pyramid for a spire with timbers around the belfry. It seemed very old, older than the village. Older than the goddamn sky. Berry thought, for some reason.

"This is not typical, in Wales, right? Like, big churches, stained glass and all?"

"Chapels." Giles said. 'That's what you have mainly in Wales. Ugly Victorian chapels, presided over by hellfire preachers rather than Anglican vicars. Non-conformism — Baptist and Methodists. Puritanism. Fundamentalism — all that just stormed through Wales around the turn of the century. Trampling on history. And it didn't go away. Bit like your Bible Belt. I suppose."

"How come this place escaped?"

"I don't know." Giles said. "But I'm bloody glad it did. There's supposed to have been a Victorian chapel here, but it's obviously gone. One of those little mysteries. Y Groes is full of them."

A palpable silence lay over the scene, like a spell. No dogs barked, no radios played. It was calm and mature and the air was scented. The sycamores framed the view as if they'd been arranged by some eighteenth-century landscape painter.

"Nice." said Berry. "Hey. pal. I apologise. OK? You were right."

"Yes," said Giles.

"This is some place."

"Isn't it."

They stood in silence for almost two whole minutes. Birds sang. Butterflies danced up and down invisible staircases of warm air.

"You really gonna commute?" he asked. "Can you do that?"

"The way I see it," said Giles. "I'm working this four-day week, OK? So, let's say I'm working Monday to Thursday. I get up really early and drive down Monday morning. On Thursday night I drive back. That means I only have to spend three nights in London."

"Lot of travelling, ole buddy."

"I don't care. I just want to spend as much time in this bloody glorious place as I can wangle."

"Sounds good to me." said Berry, wondering if it really did.

He thought, could I go for this, all this rural idyll stuff, four nights out of the rat race? Well, maybe. Maybe, with the right lady. Maybe for a few months. Maybe in the summer.

You put the arm on young Giles. Persuade him to sell the bloody place, soon as he can…

But what would Winstone Thorpe have said if he'd seen this place?

"Tell you what," Giles was saying. "Why don't you come down for a weekend, or even a holiday, when we're settled in? Bring whoever it is you're with these days."

"Miranda," said Berry doubtfully.

"Oh yes, the one who—"

"Thinks I look like Al Pacino. When he was younger, of course."

Giles, face bright with pride, opened the iron gate and carefully closed it when Berry was through. Then he led the way along a track no more than eight feet wide, lined with hawthorn and holly.

They came at last to the house. And that was where, for Berry Morelli, the idyll died.

Chapter XV

The dead, lower branches of the close-packed conifers, pale brown by day, were whitened by the headlights — the only kind of direct light they'd ever known. Berry thought. He was aware of just how narrow a channel the road made between the bristly ranks. Like driving down the middle of a toothbrush. He wondered what it would be like in the frozen days of January.

Berry shivered.

"You thought of that?" he asked, needing to talk.

"Thought of what?" said Giles.

"How it'd be in winter. Like when you have to get up at 6:30 on some freezing dark morning and drive to London on icebound roads and wonder how you're ever gonna make it back if there's snow. You ever think about that?"

"Nothing's without its problems," Giles said. "If you start to dwell on things like that, you never try anything new."

The forestry was thinning out now. Berry braked as a rabbit scooted across the road. How about that, something alive in this place. He shivered again. Pull yourself together, asshole.

It wasn't so dark yet, not when you got through the forestry. When they cleared the next ridge they'd get the benefit of the light coming off the sea. A sign said Pontmeurig 5, Aberystwyth 16. One-horse resort or not, he'd be glad to see Aberystwyth again. Least it had a few bars and a pier with coloured lights and gaming machines. Familiar. tacky things.

"Berry?" Giles said.

"Uh huh?" He turned briefly to look at Giles, saw only a hunched-up shape in a space too small for it and the glow at the end of a cigarette.

Giles said, "Are you trying to put me off?"

"Put you off?"

They came into the valley of the disused lead mine, stony towers black against the western sky. It looked powerfully stark, quite impressive now it was too dark to see all the drab detail. Wales's answer to Monument Valley.

Yeah, he thought, damn right I'm trying to put you off. Berry snapped the headlights on again. This was going to need careful handling.

It had seemed, in all the obvious ways, a good house. Barely fifty yards off the road, but nicely private, screened by laurels and holly and hawthorn, hunched into the hillside and protected from the wind. It had a view of the church hill some 250 yards away. Below that was the village; on winter evenings they'd be able to see the smoke spiralling from the village chimneys, warming the grey sky.

Nice. Cosy.

So the cottage looked, too, from the outside. Its walls were that warm, rusty grey that softened the outlines of the whole village. Its windows, six of them on the front, were small and quartered like in the picture books.

And clean. Somebody had been and cleaned the goddamn windows.

Not only that, they'd taken care of the garden too. It should have been overgrown, yet the small front lawn had been mown, the flowerbeds tended, even the roses deadheaded.

This did not look like the empty house of a man deceased.

Berry had said, "You're sure we got the right place here?"

"No. I just thought we'd poke around somebody else's garden first, to pass the time. Of course it's the right bloody place!"

"Only somebody's taking good care of it for you. Why would they do that?"

"It was the judge's house, Berry. People respected the man." As if to make his own mark on the garden. Giles bent down to a clump of pansies, and pinched off a couple of dead flowers. "Perhaps the gardener and the cleaner wanted to maintain the place as he'd have wanted. Maybe they got a little something in the will."

"I get it." said Berry. "So the lawyer wouldn't give you a key but he gave one to the cleaner so he or she could keep the place like the judge was still around."

Giles clearly hadn't thought of this. Visibly miffed, he turned and walked off round the side of the cottage.

Berry caught him up.

"Hey, don't worry about it, fella. What d'you expect? You're English."

"Now look!" Giles snarled. He spun round and shoved under Berry's nose an elegant English finger. "Just stop trying to wind me up, all right? Me being English doesn't come into it." And then he strode off across the back lawn that would be his lawn, olive-green waxed jacket swinging open to reveal his olive-green army-officer's pullover. An urban man who thought his life would be made suddenly healthier by driving an extra five hundred miles a week.

Berry looked at the cottage, soft-focus through the bushes. It was like most of the others in Y Groes, seemed as if it had grown out of the soil, its timbers forming together, like a developing bone structure.

Inevitably, the thought came to him: Giles might need his house, but the house doesn't need him.

Giles strode back across the lawn. He wore a wry half-smile. "Sorry, mate. I'm touchy, OK? It means a lot to me. To be accepted. To be, you know, part of all this."

"I can buy that." said Berry. "It's a good place to have." Maybe good wasn't quite the word. It was its own place.

They peered through a few windows, but even though the glass was clean and sparkling it was too dark inside to see much. One downstairs room they couldn't see into at all.

"That's the study," Giles said. "Somebody must have drawn the curtains to protect the books from too much light."

"Thoughtful of them." said Berry.

And that should have been it. He should have told Giles how nice the cottage looked and what a lucky man he was and they'd have walked around a while then maybe gone down to the pub, had one drink, then off back to the coast. They would have done just that if, while strolling by the rear of the cottage, he, Berry dumb-ass Morelli, had not spotted a dark line along the edge of a window. Now the late Winstone Thorpe had himself a firm ally.

"Hey Giles — you want to get in here?"

"What d'you mean?"

"See, if I go fetch a screwdriver from the car, I can slip it into this crack, push up the lever and maybe — well, just a thought, ole buddy…"

"Ha," said Giles. "One in the eye for Mr. Goronwy Davies, I think. Well spotted. Berry."

"Who's Mr. Goronwy Davies?"

"The lawyer in Pontmeurig. The chap who won't give us a key until probate's complete."

"Ah, right."

And from then on they'd been like two school kids on an adventure. The goddamn Hardy Boys strike again.

"You did like it. though?"

"Oh. yeah. Sure. It looked in pretty good condition. All things considered."

"That's not what I meant."

"We still on the right road. Giles? It looks different."

"Just getting dark. Bound to look different. You seem a bit nervy tonight. Berry."

"Me? Naw, tired is all. Been a long day."

"I'm not tired. I'm exhilarated. It always seems to renew me, going back there. I feel it's my place. Becoming more like my place all the time. And Claire's of course. I mean—"

"Sure." Berry said.

No, he thought. It's not your place at all. It's somebody else's place. Always be somebody else's place.

Chapter XVI

He'd dropped to the floor and found himself standing next to a sink. An old-fashioned sink of white porcelain sticking out of the wall. No cupboards underneath, just a metal bucket. It was gloomy in here, but there was no smell of damp. Two spiders raced each other along the rim of the sink. Spiders didn't like damp either — where had he read that?

It had been quite a squeeze getting through the window, which was only a quarter pane. It seemed unlikely that Giles would be able to manage it.

"Listen," he'd shouted through the open window, "why don't I come round, open the back door?"

"Good thinking," said Giles. "Only, don't shout, all right? We don't want to advertise ourselves."

Berry threw the screwdriver out to Giles and carefully closed the window.

"Always knew I could've made it in the CIA," he said aloud, and was surprised at how firm his voice sounded in here. You expected an echo in an empty house, but this was acoustically very tight, like a recording studio. He looked up, saw heavy oak beams and more beams sunk into the walls. That was it: timber-framing, low ceilings. A vacuum for sound.

Also, it wasn't an empty house. Much of the furniture, it appeared, was still here.

He looked around. The kitchen, right? It was quite small. Probably all cottage kitchens were small when this place was built back in the — when, 1800s, 1700s… earlier?

Whenever, no dinner parties in those days. Was there going to be room here for the dishwasher, the freezer, the microwave oven and all the other sophisticated stuff he was pretty sure Giles and Claire must possess?

Berry chuckled, which was a very intimate sound in here. He stifled it.

In one corner he could see a big Aga-type stove, the only substantial piece of the twentieth century, if you didn't count the faucets and the electric light, which was just a bulb with a white porcelain shade shaped like a plant pot.

There were two doors. He opened one and found some kind of storeroom or scullery. He hit his knee against a stack of shelves, still loaded with provisions. A packet fell off and he caught it. Paxo sage and onion stuffing. Judge Rhys's concession to haute cuisine?

The other door led him into a dim hallway, low ceiling, beams black and sagging. He could have used some light in here, but the power wouldn't be connected. The passage led straight through to the front of the house and ended at the front door and some narrow stairs. So which way was the back entrance? There were more doors on either side of him. so he tried one and found himself in a room where the light was rationed by drawn curtains. The judge's study.

"Christ." Berry said.

It could have been a homely room: fireplace, book-lined walls, low ceiling with beams. Place where you could come and put your feet up. have a TV dinner, glass or two of beer. Warm your ass by the fire.

Except the fireplace was Victorian, an ugly iron thing, cold and dead, and the black beams seemed to press down like the fingers of a gloved hand.

And the books. Well, as Berry saw it, there were basically two kinds of books. There were warm, friendly books with bright dust-jackets that gave you the come-on, brought a room alive.

And there were books like these.

Thousands of them. The shelves ran floor-to-ceiling, taking up most of two walls, dark oak shelves of dark old books, heavy, black-spined books. The kind of books you felt it would be a breach of protocol to take down without you were wearing a tie.

It was a coldly austere room, this study, like… what? Some old-fashioned classroom? Air of discipline. Severity.

The window, quite small, was set uncommonly high in the wall, faded grey curtains pulled across as if for a passing funeral. Opposite the window was a huge old desk, like a monument; behind it a chair, thronelike, with a tall back and carved spindles. Heavy, dour, forbidding.

No, not a classroom. Berry thought suddenly. A courtroom. It's like a very small courtroom. Is this what happens when old judges retire and have no lowlife scum to send to jail anymore? They have to bring with them that ambience of old-fashioned judicial disdain?

Above the fireplace was a single picture, a framed photograph of what he took, at first, to be a gathering of the Ku Klux Klan, everybody in long white robes. Then underneath he saw the words Eisteddfod Genedlaethol 1963. Ah. the annual Welsh festival of poetry and song and stuff where all the head guys dressed up like Druids. Was Judge Rhys one of the men in white?

Berry stood in the middle of the floor, which was stone-flagged, a single rug beneath his feet, on it a threadbare red dragon spitting faded fire.

He hesitated, then crossed to the shelves and pulled down one obese volume, expecting a small dust storm. It didn't happen. Even the damn books were still being cared for. In case the judge came back from the grave and had nothing to read?

When that thought— a typically trivial, facetious thought— occurred to Berry Morelli, he felt a chill that came and went, like the door of a freezer opening and closing with a hiss. A cold hiss, like the hiss in ice… iiiiiice. Did he hear that, or did he imagine it?

He opened the book, and that hissed too, tissue-thin pages whispering secrets denied to him… because every word was Welsh. He quickly pulled down three more fat, black books at random — and they were all in Welsh too. Hard to imagine so many books being published in a language spoken by so few. But then it was, according to Giles, supposed to be the oldest language in Europe. And these were real old books.

As he returned the book to the shelf, he fell suddenly guilty. And furtive, like a kid who'd left sticky fingermarks on the school Bible. He thought, somebody's watching, and he spun around and there was nobody. But in his mind the freezer door opened and closed again. With a hiss…iiiiice…

It was darker, too, he was sure the air itself had got darker. And yet there was a sunset out there (so why are the damn curtains washed with grey?)

Berry's gaze travelled across the patchy gloom, from the ranked books, to the drab lumps of furniture, to the picture of the procession of men in white. He felt the weight of something old and hallowed.

He didn't care for it.

In the room, and yet beyond the room, he felt kind of a coiled malice. And the air was too thick. How could the air be thick in a room with no dust?

The air came in shifting shades of black and grey and a poisonous off-white, like dirty milk. And it hissed, short gasps, like bellows. He felt, with an astonishing wrench of panic, that if he stayed in here much longer. Judge Thomas Rhys would materialise, fully robed, in the tall gothic chair, his eyes giving off dull heat, a bony finger pointing, trembling with a focused fury.

"Sice!" he'd breathe, the word coming out in a short, hideous rasp, like a cobra rearing to strike.

And the air hissed, the bellows, the freezer door opening and closing. The air said, "SICE!"

"Fuck this," Berry said, suddenly very scared. He stepped back into the hallway and closed the door of the study firmly behind him. then backed off, afraid to look away in case it should open by itself, releasing the air, the wafting hate.

Chapter XVII

The door hung ajar.

Aled Gruffydd stepped back quickly, as if afraid something would reach out and snatch him inside.

"I will not go in there with you," he said. "You do understand?"

The tall man with white hair only smiled.

"Did not happen immediately, see," Aled said. "Quiet it was, for more than three days after Dai took the Englishman's body away."

It was gloomy on the landing, the day closing down.

"We cleaned out the room and stripped the bed," Aled said. Gwenllian said to bum the sheets, but I said no, isn't as if he had anything contagious."

The tall man looked at the opening and did not move. He was very thin and his greasy suit hung like leaves blackened by a sudden overnight frost.

"So she took off the sheets for washing and brought clean ones and put them on the bed. And as she is tucking in the sheets, it flew off the bedside table. The vase. She had sweet peas in it, to sweeten the air, see."

The white-haired man silently put out a forefinger to the door but did not quite touch it.

"Flew off the table, flew within an inch of Gwenllian's head. Smashed into the wall. Gwen came tearing down the stairs, almost falling over herself."

Aled looked over his shoulder, down the stairs. His companion said, "And then?"

"I came back with her and we picked up the pieces of the vase and the flowers. All quiet. No disturbance. I would not doubt her, though. I shut the door and locked it, and we came downstairs and did not go in again until this morning."

With a small coughing sound, the bedroom door moved inwards, revealing a slice of while wall. Aled recoiled.

"There — can you smell it?"

The Reverend Elias ap Siencyn remained motionless. His pale eyes did not blink. His long nose did not twitch at the stench, which included, among other odours, the smell of hot decay.

"We have not been in since." Aled said. "We've left it the way we found it this morning."

"Only this room? He has not come to you in the night? Or to Gwenllian?"

Aled gripped the banister. "Oh, good God." He was shaking at the thought. "No. Nothing like that."

"I doubt if he knows, you see." the rector said. He had a surprisingly high voice, though with a penetrating pitch, like organ pipes. "Sometimes it takes quite some while before they can fully accept their condition."

"I don't want him, Reverend. I don't want him here." Aled tried to make a joke of it. "Not as if he's paying me now, is it?"

The rector had not taken his eyes from the door. "Tell me again. What you found."

"Oh Christ — sorry Reverend. But can't you smell it?"

"Bodily fluids?"

"Shit, Reverend. And the other stuff. Slime. Mucus. All over the sheets. Soaked-in, dried stiff. And splattered on the walls. Like those prisoners in Ireland did to their cells."

"All right, Aled. It's clear this spirit is disturbed and angry and frustrated. The English think they have a right to know everything; lngley is dead and still knows nothing. His spirit is unsatisfied and so it wants, pathetically, to register a protest. But it's frightened, too — more frightened. perhaps, than when it died. It's a week, you say. since he left us?"

"A week ago tonight. Exactly."

"Very well. I may need assistance. Perhaps you could fetch Mrs. Dafis. Or Buddug Morgan from the farm."

"Yes indeed." Aled said, clearly glad to have an excuse to go outside. He went downstairs very rapidly, but at the bottom he turned and shouted back. "I swear to God, I locked the door! I put the key in the glass with the others. In the bar, see. I swear to God, nobody could get in."

"Aled, I believe you."

"So how can it be? He's dead, Rector. Dead and gone. I know there are things the dead can do, but this… How can it be?"

"Because," said the Reverend Elias ap Siencyn, "he cannot adjust. And he cannot contain his fear and his — I don't know, there is something else."

With a single finger he pushed open the door.

"Also," he said quietly, when Aled had gone, "like others of his race, he is vermin. Vermin make a mess."

The rector walked into the bedroom and looked around.

The sheets and the walls were spotless. Whatever Aled had seen was gone. But the stink remained. The stink was obnoxious, and carried a sense of fear and pain and suffering. As well as deep frustration, a helpless rage and a terrible confusion.

"Alien contaminant," he muttered to himself, a fragment of an old verse, "a foul disease now chokes the oakwood."

He stood at the foot of the bed and spoke, with the clarity and resonance of the First words in a sermon.

"You expect my pity?"

He smiled coldly, putting down a scuffed attache case. Then he straightened up and looked at the bed, at a spot just above the pillow.

"You can't stay here," he said. "You are over. The air's too strong for you, the light's too bright."

Chapter XVIII

When they drove at last into Aberystwyth, the coloured lights were on at the entrance to the pier. Green and yellow lights, rippling up and down in a sequence. It wasn't Coney Island, but it made Berry feel a little happier.

"Giles, I— You ever talk to anybody about the house? Anybody local?"

"How d'you mean?"

" — 'bout its history. Anything."

"No, not really. We didn't like to go round asking questions. Nosey newcomers. Why?"

Berry took the first left after the pier and found a parking space in a side street, a block or two away from the hotel. He could see its sign and an illuminated advert for Welsh Bitter. He switched off the engine and lay back in his seat and let out a sharp breath.

"Look, what's up. Berry? You're behaving pretty bloody strangely tonight."

"Giles, you're gonna think I'm crazy—'*

"I always have."

"Listen," Berry said. "You remember old Winstone Thorpe—?"

"Oh no!" Giles snapped. "We're not going into that again."

Berry had come out the way he'd got in, landing this time less easily, on a gravel path, ripping a hole in his jeans and grazing a knee.

Giles had found him on the lawn. He must have looked like hell, but Giles didn't seem to notice.

"Berry, you cretin," he'd said when Berry told him he hadn't been able to open either the front door or the back door. "Why didn't you shout? There's a back door key in the bottom of an old vase in the scullery. I remember seeing the solicitor put it there when he was showing us round. You'll just have to get back in through the window."

Berry was already shaking his head. Uh huh. No way. No time now. Gonna be dark soon. Anyway, had plenty time to look around. Let's go, OK…?

"Well, go on." Giles snapped, "Say it. Say what you've got to say."

His lean, freckled face, lit up by the headlights of a passing car, looked aggressive, affronted and defiant, all at once.

A girl with luminous green hair and a man in a light silver jacket, as worn on the Starship Enterprise, walked past the car, laughing at each other, but probably not because of the jacket and the hair. They went into the hotel.

"C'mon. let's go in." said Berry. "Get a drink."

The hotel bar was quite crowded, but they managed to find a table, one people had avoided because it was next to the men's room. Giles went to get the drinks and Berry leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, letting the voices wash over him, soporific, like surf. He could hear people speaking in English and in Welsh and even, he was sure, in Japanese. University town. Kind of a cosmopolitan town. He liked that. Made him feel secure. Like New York, except if you closed your eyes in a New York bar you'd open them half a minute later to find you'd lost your wallet or your watch or, where applicable, your virginity.

There was a crush of people around the bar; it took Giles a while to get served. Berry sat quietly, half-listening to the multilingual voices and half-hearing his own voice talking to him, saying all the real obvious things.

… you dreamt it, it was your imagination, you're making it up…

No way.

Something had been in there, something heavier than the desk, harder than the oak beams, blacker than the books.

"Here we are," said Giles. He put down two beers. "I know how you like to try local brews, so this is… dammit, I've forgotten the name, but it was in a bottle with a yellow label with a red dragon on it."

Thanks, pal." He hated local brews. "I was just thinking, I could quite get to like this town. Good mix of people here, you know?"

"Yes." said Giles. "But what about Y Groes? What about my cottage?"

"Hell of a place," said Berry. "Hell of a place."

So, OK. he thought, let's work this out rationally, bearing in mind that at the end of the day. this is not your problem. Tomorrow you drive out of here and you don't come back. Let Giles find out for himself. It is his problem.

So you didn't like the cottage. No, get it right, there was nothing so wrong with the cottage, it was the room you didn't like. You didn't like the furniture. You couldn't understand the books. You were inexplicably disturbed by a photograph which, in other circumstances, might have seemed faintly comic, bunch of old men in christening robes.

So how come you were squeezing out that window like some guy breaking jail. Grown man, smooth-talking wiseass reporter, scampering away like a puppy, oh, Jesus, this can't be happening, too bewildered to crank up the mental machinery to attempt to analyse it.

"Berry, are you going to come on like the rest of them. Like Winstone Thorpe— 'But you're an Englishman, old boy, you don't belong there.'"

"No," Berry said uncertainly. "That's not how I—"

"Fuck 'em all, that's what I say." Giles stared into his beer. "I've had it with all these smug London bastards. They're the ones who're out of touch, you know. Had it with Westminster too. And newspapers that try to tell the public what's important in life, what they should be concerned about. This is a place where you can't bargain on London terms. Listen to this — I wasn't going to say anything about this, I thought you'd snigger—"

Giles leaned back, drew in a breath and said.

"R'wyn dysgu Cymraeg."

Berry stared at him, expressionless.

"Means 'l am learning Welsh.'" Been working at it for several weeks now with cassette tapes. When we move in here I'm going to take proper lessons. What d'you think about that?"

"Let me get you another drink." said Berry.

He pushed his way through to the bar and said to the barman. "Gimme a couple of those beers with the dragon on the label."

It was worse than he'd thought.

So Berry said casually. "Listen. Giles, that… study. You didn't feel it was a mite depressing in there, all that heavy furniture, those old books?"

Giles put down his glass and laughed in amazement.

"Depressing? That study has to be absolutely the best part of the house. Super atmosphere. Real old Welsh. Stark, strong—"

"Yeah but, Giles, what it. what if it was, you know… "

He couldn't say it. He just couldn't bring himself to say it. "So you're learning Welsh, huh?' he finished lamely.

"We have these cassettes," Giles said. "We play them in the car. Claire and I try and talk to each other in Welsh, over breakfast. R'wyf i eisiau un siwgwr. I should like one sugar."

"Could be real useful that. Giles, you have to use a teashop making so much money they can refuse to serve people who don't place their order in Welsh. What else can you say? How about, 'Don't spit in my beer. I can't help being English.'"

"You're not into this at all. are you. Berry?"

Berry smiled sadly.

"Cwrw, that's beer. Peint o gwrw. Pint of beer. The C in cwrw mutates to G after a vowel. More or less everything mutates in Welsh; once you grasp that you can start making progress."

Berry lost patience with him.

"OK, then, Giles, ole buddy. You go over lo the bar and order us up a couple half pints of whatever it was, guru, right?"

"I could do it. I expect." Giles said. "If I really had something to prove."

"Ten pounds says you won't go through with it."

Giles, eyes flashing, pushed back his chair and rose decisively to his feet.

"Right." he said. "Put your money on the table."

Berry pulled his wallet out of the hip pocket of his newly torn jeans and placed a ten pound note under the ashtray.

Giles put on his stiff-upper-lip expression. "Right, you listen carefully."

Aw, hell. Berry thought. Can't you ever keep a hold on your mouth, Morelli?

Through his fingers, he watched Giles march to the bar. Two men in front of Giles who'd been conversing in Welsh ordered a pint of lager and a whisky and soda in English. Berry saw Giles stare down his nose at them. When it was his turn he said loudly.

"Hanner peint o gwrw, os gwelwch yn dda."

Lowering his voice and pointing at the bottle with the dragon on it, he added. "Er, make that two."

Berry thought he'd never seen so many wry smiles turned on at once. It was like a chorus of wry smiles. You had to feel sorry for Giles; he was a brave man and a born fall-guy.

He was still cringing on Giles's behalf, when, at the adjacent table, the young man in the Starship Enterprise jacket nodded towards Giles and said laconically to the girl with the luminous green hair.

"Sice."

Berry spilled a lot of beer. He felt himself go pale.

Within a minute Giles was back, red-faced, slamming two glasses on the table and snatching the tenner from beneath the ashtray.

"Bastard." he said.

"I'm sorry, ole buddy. I didn't plan to set you up."

"You're a bastard." said Giles. "I think I'll go to bed."

"What about your beer?"

"You drink it." said Giles. "I'll see you at breakfast."

"Giles, what's 'sice' mean?"

"Piss off," said Giles.

"Come on, Giles, I'm serious, what's it mean?"

"Piss off, you know what it means."

"Aw, for Chrissakes, Giles, if I knew what it meant would be asking you?"

"Sais," Giles hissed. "Sais."

"Yeah, right, sice."

"English," said Giles. "It means English. Often used in a derogatory way, like the Scots say Sassenach. Satisfied now?"

"I don't know," said Berry. "Maybe, I… I don't know."

"I'm going to bed," said Giles. "OK?"