Candlenight

Chapter LIII

They watched each other over the breakfast table, different people now. She wore yesterday's black cowl-neck sweater and the big gold earrings; his sweatshirt still identified him as an American werewolf in London. But they were different people.

The Rhos Tafol's dining room overlooked the estuary, shining cobalt in the chill morning, there were perhaps twenty tables in the room, all stripped bare except for the one where they sat, by the window.

December.

"We could just walk away from it." Berry spread marmalade on dry toast. Bethan looked down into her boiled egg. He loved the fall of her eyelids; it was what put him in mind of the women in Renaissance paintings.

"Or not," Berry said.

They'd lain and talked about it until the dawn streaked the Dyfi. She'd told him about Claire in the river Meurig, washing away the English. And about Claire's photos; the tree that vanished, whatever that meant.

He'd told her about old Winstone — whatever that meant.

Also about Miranda. Who was funny and diverting but belonged to the person he used to be before last night.

"So." Crunching toast.

Bethan said, "When I came back from Swansea to be head teacher — less than six months ago, I can't believe it — I thought I was going to change everything. Let some light into the place. It was pretty hard to do coming back."

"I don't know how you could."

"The way I rationalised it, it was going to be a kind of memorial to Robin. Modernising the school, changing the outlook of the children. It was a mission. But—"

" — You didn't realise what you were taking on."

"I was very determined. Nothing left to lose. Ready to fight centuries of tradition. And Buddug."

"Buddug's this other teacher?"

"The name Buddug," Bethan said, stirring the tea in the pot lo make it blacker, "is Welsh for Boudicca, or Boadicea."

"The hard-nosed broad who took on the Romans," he remembered. "Drove this chariot with long knives sticking out the wheels, relieving whole legions of their genitalia."

"I had never thought of it quite like that, but the way you depict it, it does seem horrifyingly plausible, yes."

"She's like that, this Buddug?"

"She's worse." Bethan said.

"And what you're saying is you think you might accomplish now what you couldn't when you came back from Swansea?"

"I am not alone this time," Bethan said, and his heart took off.

"C'mon, honey," She turned over, coughed. "One more time for Berry." She turned over again, caught.

"She is very old," Bethan said.

"We don't discuss her age. It upsets her. When I'm in London, this guy checks her over every few weeks. You can still get the parts, if you know where to look."

He followed the estuary back towards Machynlleth. "I like it here. I like feeling close to the sea. You wouldn't care to stay another night, think about things some more?"

"I told you last night, I should like to stay here a very long time." She sighed. "Keep driving, Morelli."

"One point," Berry said, pushing the Sprite into the town, towards the Gothic clock tower. "You're a nationalist, right? Guto's a nationalist. This Buddug and all the people in Y Groes, they're nationalists too."

"Why, then, did Guto go down like the proverbial lead balloon?"

"Precisely."

"You have to live in Wales a long time to work it out," Bethan said. "And just when you think you've understood the way it is…"

She ran the fingers of both hands through her hair, as if to untangle her thoughts.

"You see… There are different kinds of Welsh nationalism. There is Plaid Cymru, which envisages a self-governing Wales with its own economic structure — an independent, bilingual state within the European Community. And there is another sort which you might compare with the National Front, the Ku Klux Klan, yes?"

"Extreme right wing."

"Except they would not think of themselves like that. They are protecting their heritage, they feel the same things we all feel from time to time, but—" She sighed again. "I'm afraid there are some people for whom being Welsh is more important than being human."

"And — let me guess here — this type of person sees Plaid as a half-baked outfit which no longer represents the views of the real old Welsh nation, right?"

"Yes. Exactly. Da iawn."

"Huh?"

"Very good. In moments of exultation, I revert to my first language."

"So that's what it was," Berry said, remembering moments of last night.

Driving south in worsening weather, Berry wondered why neither of them had put a name to what they were up against. Six deaths. Accident, suicide and natural causes. All English people, no other connecting factor. They couldn't be talking murder. Not as the law saw it

"Bethan," he said. "Can we discuss what happened to Giles?"

Sparse sleet stung the screen.

"Listen to me now," she said, as if this had been building up inside for some while. "There is one thing I haven't told you."

Above the whine of the wind in the Sprite's soft top, she revealed to him the truth about Giles's "fall" in the castle carpark in Pont. Why they'd kept quiet about it.

"Giles himself was particularly anxious people should believe it was a fall. I think he was embarrassed. Does that make sense to you?"

"I guess it does. Say the two guys are arrested, there's a court case. And then everybody working with Giles in London knows he got beat up on. In his beloved Wales. Yeah, I can buy that. No way would he want that out, the poor sucker."

Bethan squeezed his hand on the wheel. "I am so relieved. I was worried you would think we covered it up to protect ourselves."

"Guto, yes. You, no. So who were they, these guys?"

"Just yobs. Troublemakers. Guto threw one in the castle ditch. I would know them again. We all would."

"If it came out," Berry wondered, "is there any way we could use it to turn the heat on this thing? This guy, Inspector Jones—"

"Gwyn Arthur."

"Yeah. Seemed approachable."

"He is a nice man. But Giles did not die as a result of the attack. What could Gwyn Arthur really do now?"

"If only there'd been an inquest…"

"But what would it reveal? The medical evidence says he had an enormous tumour. What I would ask is, why did he develop the tumour? Why did Robin develop leukaemia?

Why did the hiker hang himself by the river? Why did the professor…? It's not something an inquest can go into, is it?"

"Paranoid delusions, Beth. Bethan. Listen, this may seem a distinctly American way of looking at things, and I apologise in advance, but is there anybody we could beat the truth out of?"

"Not my style," Bethan said.

"Naw, me neither."

"I am glad to hear it. But, look, there are still people we can talk to. I know… Why don't you stop at the next phone box."

"We aren't gonna see any dead people, are we?" Berry was uncomfortable. He hated these places.

"Don't be a wimp. They cannot harm you."

He shuddered. "Bad enough seeing those pictures of Giles."

"I know," Bethan said quietly. "I was there when they were taken."

"Jesus, I'm sorry." He kissed the top of her head. "Forgive me?"

"I shall think about it." she said.

"Bethan, is that you?"

"Hello, Dai. Where are you?"

"In the embalming room, come on through."

Berry felt his legs giving way.

"Only kidding," the bald man said, pushing through the purple curtains. "Oh, I'm sorry, Bethan. I thought you had Guto with you. Bugger won't go within a mile of the embalming room, see." He chuckled.

Bethan said, "This is Berry Morelli. He and Guto have a similar attitude to death."

Dai shook hands with Berry. The undertaker's hand was mercifully dry, no traces of embalming fluid. "Morelli. Italian, is it? You want to go to that pizza place next door, show the buggers how to do it properly."

Berry shook his head. "No way you can teach an Englishman to make a pizza."

"This could be true." Dai said. "The trouble with an Englishman, however, is he doesn't believe there is anything he cannot do. Come through to the office."

The office looked out over a cleanly swept, white-walled yard. Over the top of the end wall they could see a segment of Pontmeurig castle.

There were four hard chairs with purple velvet seats and a desk. It had a phone on it and a diary, four brass coffin handles and a thickset man with crinkly grey hair.

Bethan said, "Berry, this is Idwal Pugh. He is the mayor of Pontmeurig."

"Hi, Mayor." Berry said, shaking Idwal's hand. "Berry Morelli. Don't get up."

"I can never quite bring myself to sit on a chair in here," Idwal Pugh said, short legs dangling over the side of the desk. "Don't want to feel I'm here on business, see."

"One day," said Dai, "we'll bring you in feet first, you bugger. Now, Bethan…"

"This is difficult." Bethan said. "And in confidence, please."

"Of course," Dai said. "Sit down. I have told Big Gladys to make some tea."

"Idwal, you remember that night at the Drovers… Well, of course you do."

"Oh that night," Idwal said. "I told you, we should have gone to—" He looked at Berry in alarm. "Not police, this chap, is he?"

"He's a friend of Giles," Bethan said. And of mine. No, he's not police."

"Only, I thought, with this, you know—"

"Idwal, relax." Dai said. "I am not so short of work that I want you to have a stroke."

"And we were talking," Bethan said, "that night, before the trouble, about Y Groes, if you remember. Dai was annoyed that Giles Freeman had managed to secure a house there when he could not. And you said—"

"I suppose I said I would not want to live there myself."

"Correct," Bethan said. "You said I think, that it was ungodly. Why did you say that?"

"What are you getting at here. Bethan?"

"Just tell me why you said that."

"Well, I suppose… I'm a chapel man, see. Always been a chapel man."

"Yes, and the only chapel in Y Groes is Dilwyn Dafis's garage before it was converted."

"Well, see, it isn't just that…" Idwal began to fill his pipe. "This is only my own thoughts, Bethan."

"Yes, fine. Go on."

"Well, this is a non-conformist area. Every village has at least one chapel."

"At least," Bethan said.

"But I remember, when I was a youngster, my dad telling me how they almost had to have a missionary expedition to take the Chapel to Y Groes. Known as Y Groesfan then, the crossing place. And the only village without a chapel. Only the other side of the Nearly Mountains, but it might have been some pagan place in Africa, the way they campaigned and raised the money."

"Who campaigned?" Berry asked.

"Ah, well, see, this is the point. There was a farmer — I forget his name — who moved up towards Eglwys Fawr for a bigger farm and became a convert to the Chapel. And he still kept a field in Y Groesfan, on the edge of the village there. And he said, I will give this field for a chapel to be built there, and everybody began to raise money, in Eglwys, in Pont, in chapels down as far as Lampeter and Cardigan. It became a… how do you say it in English…?"

"Cause célèbre?" said Berry.

"Exactly. A cause célèbre. Everybody gave money for the new chapel in Y Groesfan. And I am asking myself why. What was there in the history of this village that everybody should instinctively put their hands in their pockets to raise the money for a chapel, when there was no demand from the inhabitants. No demand whatsoever, even though many doors were knocked upon and Bibles proffered."

"But surely, it's a church village?"

"Pah!" said Idwal, puffing contemptuously on his pipe.

"So they raised the money and they built the chapel." Bethan said. "What happened then?"

"Oh, it went very well for a time. Like, as I say, a missionary conquest of some pagan place in Africa. People travelled from miles around to attend services at the new chapel. Like a pilgrimage, see. The first motor coach outings from Pont were to Y Groes — they'd got the name changed now, as well, to reflect its new status. The Cross. Oh, it was wonderful, for a while."

"And what happened?" said Berry.

Idwal shrugged. "Some say it was the war. Or that it was like everything that burns so bright. Soon extinguished. But myself, I think there is something in that place that needs to be cleaned out before the Lord can enter in. It seems to me…"

There was a loud tap on the office door, and it was shouldered open by a large girl whose hair was streaked in gold and purple like the curtains in the chapel of rest. She was carrying a tea tray.

"Thank you, Gladys," Dai said.

"Will you be going over to Y Groes, Mr. Williams, because you've another appointment at twelve. Do you want me to put them off?"

"I'm not going anywhere, girl. Why would you think that?"

"Well, no, I just thought, with the murder. Put it down here, shall I? If Mr. Pugh will move his legs."

"Murder?" Berry said.

"Oh hell, Gladys," Dai said. "Murder is a different thing altogether. Police do their own fetching and carrying with a murder."

"Only they've found something else now, Jane was telling me from the café. More police cars gone chasing up the Nearly Mountains."

"Bloody tragic," Dai said, and it was not clear whether he was talking about the death or the fact that, because it was murder, he had not been called in to remove the body.

"Poor girl," Idwal said. "First she loses her husband, and now…" He shook his head.

"No," Bethan whispered. "Oh, please, no-"

"Oh, Christ," Dai said. "I thought you knew — I thought that was why you were asking all this?"

Chapter LIV

The police car pulled in behind Gwyn Arthur's Fiesta. Detective Sergeant Neil Probert got out and looked down to where his chief was standing, at the bottom of a steep bank, about twenty yards from the road.

Probert, the Divisional natty dresser, was clearly hoping Gwyn Arthur would climb up and join him at the roadside. But when the Chief stood his ground, Probert wove a delicate path down the bank, hitching up his smart trousers at the waist.

"Thinking of joining the Masons, are we, Neil?" inquired Gwyn Arthur. "Come on, man, the mud's all frozen!"

"Except for that bit," he added with malicious relish as Probert squelched to a halt in a patch of boggy ground, where all the ice had been melted by the heat from the Volvo's engine.

The big blue car had gone down the bank and into a tangle of thorn bushes. Three police officers were cutting and tearing the bushes away for the benefit of a female Home Office pathologist who was rather attractive — certainly the best thing they could hope to encounter on a December morning in the Nearly Mountains.

"I spoke to the garage, sir," Probert said, squeezing the brackish water from the bottoms of his trousers. "He picked up his car at just after nine-thirty. Appeared quiet and preoccupied but not otherwise agitated. Inquired at the garage about a hardware shop and they directed him to Theo Davies, where he bought twenty feet of rubber pipe."

"Not dissimilar, I take it," said Gwyn Arthur, "to the hose we see here affixed to the exhaust pipe."

"Indeed, sir," Probert said.

"In that case, Neil, it looks like a wrap."

"Yes, sir."

"Would you like to have a look at him, in case anything occurs to you?"

"No thank you, sir."

"He doesn't look bad. Pink and healthy. Kind it is, to a corpse, carbon monoxide."

"So I understand, sir."

Gwyn Arthur nodded. "All that remains, it seems to me, is for Mollie to furnish forensic with a few traces of blood of the appropriate group."

"Hang on, Gwyn. I'm not even in the bloody car yet," the pathologist called across, and Gwyn Arthur smiled at her.

"Just a point, Neil. Did anyone see him arrive at the garage?"

"Yes, sir. He was in a blue Land-Rover driven by a young female. Assumed to be his daughter."

Gwyn Arthur nodded. Shortly after the discovery of her mother's body, the back of its head a mess, he'd spent ten minutes talking to Mrs. Claire Freeman. Obviously in shock, but remarkably coherent, Mrs. Freeman had told of picking up her father, as pre-arranged, at eight-fifteen and driving him to Pontmeurig. It had been agreed that Mr. Hardy would return with the car to collect his wife. His manner, as described by his daughter, was in no way suspicious. Indeed, he had several times expressed the hope that the car would be ready to collect so that he could take Mrs. Hardy home.

"If you find a pen, Mollie—"

"I know, I know…"

In a plastic sack at Gwyn Arthur's feet was an AA book, found on the passenger seat, partly under the dead man's head. Across the yellow cover of the book had been scrawled,

I'm so sorry. I do not know why it happened. I loved her really.

That poor girl.

In thirty years of police work, Gwyn Arthur had several times encountered people around whom tragedies grew like black flowers. This was definitely the worst case — compounded by her being stranded in a remote village in a strange country.

He thought fleetingly of the death of Giles Freeman, of the American who had come to the station with his undisclosed suspicions. Undoubtedly, there was more to this than any of them realised, but the details were likely to be deeply private, and what good would come of digging it over now? It was a wrap. He had a result. Murder and suicide, a common-or-garden domestic. Leave it be.

Chief Inspector Gwyn Arthur Jones: firm believer in compassionate policing.

"Oh, and BBC Wales have been on, sir. I think they might be sending a crew across from Carmarthen."

"Get back to Mike from the car, tell him to phone and tell them they'll get more excitement out of the by-election."

Gwyn Arthur jammed his hat over his ears, picked up the plastic bag containing the AA book and followed Probert up the bank.

"Tell him to give them a quote from me," he said. "Say we aren't looking for anyone else in connection with the incident at this time."

Within the hour, reporters and crews from both BBC Wales and its independent counterpart arrived in Y Groes. Neither attempted to interview Claire. They had no luck with any of the villagers either, in that all those approached refused to give an interview through the medium of English. The licensee of Tafarn Y Groes, Aled Gruffydd, sounding very tired and nervous, said a few words to the reporter from Radio Cymru, the BBC's Welsh language radio station.

Translated, it came down to, "This is a terrible tragedy, and we do not want to make things any worse. Just let it go, will you?"

Max Canavan, of the Sun, was the only reporter who attempted to talk to the woman who had lost her husband and her parents in separate tragedies within a week. The door of the judge's house was opened to him by a huge, bearded man who informed the reporter in a conversational tone that if he did not leave the village immediately he would not leave it with his arms unbroken.

Deprived thus of a story which might have opened with "Tragic widow Claire Freeman spoke last night of her grief and horror. " the national newspapers ignored what was, after all, only a domestic incident.

Chapter LV

So overgrown were the walls of the house with some sort of evergreen creeper that its gabled attic windows looked like the eyes of a hairy sheepdog under pointed ears.

Frightfully Gothic. Even when they retired, she thought, some clergymen just had to find a typical vicarage to hole up in.

She parked the Porsche proudly in the driveway. It was only a secondhand one, with two substantial dents on its left haunch which she'd refused to let them repair. But it looked even better for that. Miranda liked her cars — and her men, come to that — to convey an impression of having been around.

This Canon Peters clearly had been around. He wore a crumpled cream suit, and his clerical collar, if indeed he was wearing one, was hidden behind a beard like those supplied with the more superior Father Christmas outfits.

"My dear," he said, flinging back the door. He had to be over eighty and yet he was looking at her, Miranda noticed, with the eyes of a man who thought that if he played his cards right he might be in with a chance here.

"Ex-lover, eh?" Canon Peters said. "What can the boy be thinking of? And a Porsche too! Two visions to break an old man's heart. Come through, my dear."

Phew—! He hadn't been like this on the phone.

Miranda followed the old clergyman along a dim hall and then into a big warmly toned room, its walls painted the creamy colour of his suit.

"Drove Triumph Spitfires for years," he was saying. "Now the sods have taken away my license. Bloody eyesight test."

"Didn't seem to me that your eyes were terribly deficient," Miranda said.

"Fiddled the test, if you ask me. Thought I was too old for a sports car. Bloody bureaucrats. Like a drink?"

"Perhaps not," said Miranda who had once had her own license taken away, as a result of a mere couple of double gins. Well, perhaps three.

"Suppose I'd think twice too, if I had a Porsche. Coppers love a Porsche."

"They do indeed. Now. Canon Peters—"

"Alex, please. Sit down, my dear." He brought himself a whisky and sat next to her on the chintzy sofa, an arm flung across its back behind her. "I didn't really expect you to come."

Miranda was surprised too. When the Canon had phoned, she'd been lying on Morelli's bed watching morning television — some awful ex-MP who thought he was God's gift — and feeling somewhat at a loose end. She'd traded in her Golf for the Porsche the previous day, the result of a particularly gratifying bank statement, and was trying to think of somewhere moderately exciting to exercise it.

But Wales?

Alex was saying, "l can see you're hooked on this thing already." On a coffee table he had a six-speaker ghetto-blaster of the most overt kind.

"Let me play you what I recorded from the radio. I listen to Radio Wales every morning, sentimental old sod."

He pressed the "play" key. "Missed the first bit. I'm afraid. By the time I realised it was significant, damn thing was half over."

… was found brutally beaten to death in a bedroom at the village inn. Mr. and Mrs. Hardy had been forced to spend the night at the inn after their car broke down. The couple, who were from Gloucestershire, were in the area to attend the funeral of their son-in-law, who died suddenly last week. Mr. Hardy, who was sixty-four, was found dead later this morning in his car in a remote area about three miles from the village. Police said they were not looking for a third person in connection with the incident.

"There," said Alex, switching off the ghetto-blaster. "I think we can take it, don't you, that these two people were Giles Freeman's in-laws?"

"It certainly looks that way. Gosh."

"Did you try to contact your friend Morelli?"

"Oh yes," Miranda said. "In fact that's partly why I'm here."

After the Canon's call she'd rung American Newsnet to inquire if they had a number for Berry Morelli in Wales and been told that Berry Morelli, as of this morning, was no longer working for the agency.

"What?"

"He fired himself," Addison Walls had said.

"Is he still in Wales?"

"Your guess is good as… No, hell, he's there all right, the weirdo bastard."

"But what's he doing there?

"Listen, lady, if I knew that…"

So, in the end, what had really done it for Miranda was the thought that she might be missing something.

That what Morelli had been rambling on about was not, in fact, the purest load of old whatsit, but something rather extraordinary—and she wasn't part of it.

This, and having no actual work in prospect for at least a month.

And owning a Porsche for the first time in her life and having nothing exciting to do with it.

Miranda's plan was to milk the Canon and drive across to Wales with whatever goodies he had to offer — and a lot of tyre-squealing on the bends.

"Martin," she said. "You mentioned somebody called Martin. Who died."

"Poor Martin, yes. Super chap in his way."

"So what happened to him?"

"Sure you won't have a drink?"

"After you tell me what happened to this Martin."

"You're a hard woman," Alex said, and he recalled how he'd met Martin Coulson some time after his retirement, while doing a spot of part-time lecturing at a Welsh theological college.

Coulson had been a student there, an Englishman, though you wouldn't have thought it, Alex said, to hear the boy speak Welsh.

"I'm no expert, mind. I was brought up in the Rhondda and left there at seventeen. My own Welsh is rudimentary to say the least. But my colleagues were enormously impressed by this young man's dedication. Actually, what it was was an obsession which lasted throughout his time at college. And his achievement was publicly recognised when he was declared Welsh Learner of the Year at the National Eisteddfod."

"What an accolade," Miranda said dryly.

"And after he was ordained he was keen to work in a Welsh-speaking parish. So the bishop decided it was time Y Groes had a curate. I think, actually, he was getting rather worried about Ellis Jenkins, the vicar there. Jenkins had been very well known as a poet, writing in English and then increasingly in Welsh and getting his work published under the name Elias ap Siencyn — ap Siencyn being the Welsh version of Jenkins. Anyway, the reason they were worried about him was that his work was becoming… shall I say, a little esoteric. And yet somehow strident. Rather extreme in an anti-English way."

"Loony Welsh Nationalist vicar?"

"Lots of them about, my dear. Never read R.S. Thomas?"

"I've never even read Dylan Thomas," said Miranda shamelessly.

Alex Peters made no comment on this. Miranda had taken note that the author's name which seemed to occur more often than any other on his own bookshelves was Ed McBain.

"Of course. Ellis Jenkins didn't want a curate, but he had no choice in the matter. So Martin, all enthusiasm, fluent in Welsh goes off to Y Groes, and within three months…he's dead."

Miranda waited while Canon Alex Peters filtered whisky through his beard.

"The inquest returned a verdict of misadventure, although I was not convinced."

"You thought he'd been murdered?"

"Oh, good Lord no. I thought he'd committed suicide."

"Oh," said Miranda, disappointed.

"He came to see me. Must have been about three weeks after going to Y Groes to take up his curacy. In a terrible state. Thin, hollow-eyed. Obviously hadn't been eating properly, or sleeping much, I would have said. We had a long discussion. I wanted him to stay the night but he refused. You might think, my dear, that we're all bumbling, stoical chaps, but I can tell you, a clergyman in the throes of emotional crisis is a dreadful sight to behold."

"Was he a poof?" asked Miranda, this being the only emotional problem she could imagine the average clergyman having to come to terms with.

"Oh, nothing like that. Nothing sexual. No, quite simply, the much-lauded Welsh Learner of the Year had got up in the pulpit for the first time, about to deliver his maiden sermon to the assembled villagers of Y Groes — and believe me that parish is one of the few left in Britain that still pulls 'em in on a Sunday. So there he is in the pulpit, fully prepared, rehearsed — and he can't do it. Won't come out."

"How d'you mean?"

Alex Peters threw up his arms.

"He finds he simply can't preach in Welsh!"

"I don't understand." said Miranda.

"Neither did he. This man was good. I mean very good — one chap at the college told me he sometimes thought Martin Coulson's Welsh was more correct than his own, and he'd lived all his life in Lampeter. And yet whenever he got up in the pulpit at Y Groes, he was completely tongue-tied. And not only that, he found he was increasingly unable to speak Welsh to the villagers he met socially or in the street. I'll always remember what he said to me that afternoon. He said. 'You know Alex, when I'm in Y Groes — as soon as I get out of the car — I feel like a damned Englishman again.'"

Miranda thought to herself that Martin Coulson must merely have come to his senses after wasting all that time learning a language that was about as much use in the civilised world as Egyptian hieroglyphics. The best thing he could have done was get on the first available train to London.

"I didn't know how to advise him," Alex Peters said. "I wondered whether Ellis Jenkins was intimidating him in some way. I suggested he take a few days' holiday and think things over, but he insisted on going back. It's always been a source of great regret to me that I didn't go with him for a day or two — how much help I'd have been, with no Welsh to speak of, is debatable. But, as one gets older, these things prey on one's mind."

"I gather he went back then."

"Afraid so. I phoned him once or twice to find out how he was getting on. 'Fine.' he said. 'What about the Welsh?' I said. 'Done any preaching?' 'Not yet,' he said, 'but I'm working up to it.'

"So what happens next is Jenkins abruptly decides to take a holiday. Never been known before. So, off he goes to North Wales on the Saturday, and the following day Martin ascends the steps of the pulpit, looks out over the congregation, opens his mouth to deliver the opening words he's presumably spent all night preparing — and has the most appalling nosebleed. I leave you to imagine the scene. Blood all over the pulpit. Martin backing off down the steps and rushing out. Service abandoned in disarray. All this came out at the inquest''

"How horrid," Miranda said.

"Next day they find the boy unconscious on the floor of the church. Cracked open his head on the pointed corner of some tomb. Rushed to hospital. Five days in a coma, then gone."

"Why did they decide it was an accident?"

"Well, he'd had quite a lot to drink, apparently, and he wasn't used to it. There was evidence that he was very depressed. That from me, of course — Jenkins was away at the time of the Martin's death, and he was being rather vague and bland about the whole business. And there was no suicide note, and so the feeling was that he must simply have had too much to drink, wandered into the church in the dark, tripped and bashed his head on the tomb. The idea of somebody deliberately smashing his head into the stone didn't appeal."

"But you thought—" Miranda was finding this rather distressing now. No fun any more.

"I suppose I had the idea of him kneeling there and being suddenly overcome with despair and throwing back his head and — crunch. Sorry, my dear, but you did ask. Now can I get you a drink?"

"Yes please." she said. "Just a tiny one. Lots of soda."

Forty minutes later she was roaring westwards — though very much in two minds now about the whole thing.

Thinking seriously about all this, what you had was not an intriguing mystery but something really rather squalid: the story of a grim, unpleasant place where people couldn't settle down and had become unhinged and killed themselves or each other out of sheer depression.

When she'd pressed him, Canon Peters had shrugged and said he just felt there were certain places you ought to avoid if you possibly could.

"Yes, but why…?"

"Oh, I don't know, my dear. Why do some places, some people seem to attract tragedy? Is it isolation? In-breeding? Perhaps it's something endemic to the whole area. Why was Winstone Thorpe so bothered about Giles Freeman moving up there? I don't think we'll ever reach any kind of conclusion. But I had it on my conscience that I might have fobbed off young Morelli. And well, you know, after failing to save Martin…"

Miranda had been vaguely intrigued by this vicar person, this Jenkins.

"Ah." The Canon had looked sort of wry. "I did meet him once, at a conference in Lampeter. Spindly chap, staring eyes. And the stories, of course."

"What stories?"

"His obsession with the old Celtic church — back at the dawn of Christianity in Britain. And what came before it."

"And what did come before it?"

"Oh, Druids and things. All tied in with his preoccupation with being Welsh and the Eisteddfod and the Bardic tradition."

"Tedious," Miranda said.

"Very, my dear."

Miranda had graciously declined another drink and whatever else Canon Alex Peters might have had in mind. She hadn't even stopped for lunch at any of the rather-inviting

Oxfordshire pubs. The tang of adventure in the air seemed to have dissipated, leaving her quite moody and almost oblivious of the fact that she was driving an actual Porsche.

Morelli was arguably the most uptight, paranoid, insecure person she'd ever been close to. Was he really the right person to be paddling about in this grotty little pool of death and misery?

Miranda prodded the Porsche, and it took the hint and whizzed her off towards the Welsh border.

Chapter LVI

Berry found it disturbing the way his whole life had been dramatically condensed in just two days, his horizon reduced to a shadow.

Was this how it happened? Was this what it did to you? Drew you in, and before you knew it there was no place else to go, and the sky was slowly falling?

He was walking from the little square behind the castle, through the back streets to Guto's place to pick up his stuff, pay his bill, thank Mrs. Evans.

And then what?

Not yet noon, but it was like the day had given up on Pontmeurig; the atmosphere had the fuzzy texture of dusk.

He thought about Giles, who, once he'd seen Y Groes, was sunk. Nothing else mattered but to escape to the place — a place where the future, for him, was an illusion.

He thought about the Hardy couple, how desperate she'd been to hightail it out of here and how everything had pushed them back in until, different people by now — they had to be different people — they'd destroyed each other.

Different people.

He'd come here two days ago just to clear his own mind, settle his obligations. Now — he could hardly believe how quickly and simply this had happened—he had no reason to go back. The link with London and, through London, with the States had been neatly severed.

And there was Bethan.

Looking at it objectively, he had to face this — Bethan was part of the trap.

Maybe they were part of each other's traps.

Through the front window he could see Mrs. Evans inside, dusting plates — a job which, in this house, must be like painting the Brooklyn Bridge. And she saw him and put down her duster and rushed to the door.

"Oh. Mr. Morelli—" she wailed.

"Hey, listen. I'm real sorry about last night, only I got detained and—"

"You haven't seen Guto. have you?"

No he hadn't, thank God.

"Only he's gone off in a terrible mood again. Came home last night moaning about being betrayed and giving it all up, his — you know — the candidate's job. He doesn't mean it, mind, but he's terrible offended about somebody."

A somebody with black hair and big gold earrings and eyelids you could die over.

"How, ah, how's his campaign going?"

"Oh dear, you haven't seen the paper?"

On the hallstand, among about a dozen plates, was a copy of that morning's Western Mail, folded around a story in which Conservative candidate Simon Gallier was suggesting that support for Plaid Cymru was rapidly falling away. He had based his conclusion on a Plaid public meeting in the totally Welsh-speaking community of Y Groes which, he claimed, had been attended by fewer than a dozen people.

" — And when he saw that, on top of everything, well—"

"I can imagine."

He could also imagine how Bethan was going to feel about this. What a fucking mess.

"Can I pay you, Mrs. Evans?"

"You aren't leaving, are you?" She looked disconsolate.

"I, ah, think it's for the best. That's three nights, yeah? One hundred and—"

"You only stayed two nights!"

"I shoulda been here last night too."

"Go away with you, boy. Two nights, that's eighteen pounds exactly."

He didn't want to screw things up further for Guto by telling Mrs. Evans that even two nights, at the rates quoted by her son. would come out at seventy pounds. He made her take fifty, assuring her that all Americans had big expense accounts. Then he went to his room, shaved, changed out of the American Werewolf sweatshirt and into a thick fisherman's sweater because it wasn't getting any warmer out there.

Then he carried his bag downstairs, thanked Mrs. Evans again, assuring her (oh, boy…) that things would surely work out for Guto, and took his stuff to the Sprite on the castle parking lot.

Loaded the bag into the boot, keeping an eye open for the Hard Man of the Nationalists. Guto was a guy with a lot to take out on somebody, and he sure as hell wasn't going to hit Simon Gallier if Berry Morelli was available.

He got into the car and sat there watching the alley next to Hampton's Bookshop over the road, waiting for Bethan to emerge.

They'd parted outside the funeral parlour, he to pay Mrs. Evans, she to go home and change. They had said not one word to each other about Elinor and George Hardy.

After half an hour it was very cold in the car and he started the engine and the heater. She knew where he was. She'd come.

What if she didn't?

He looked across at the flat above the bookshop but could detect no movement. And yet she couldn't have gone anywhere because her Peugeot was right there, not fifteen yards away.

But what if she had gone away? What would he do if he never saw her again? If that part of the trap were suddenly to spring open?

He couldn't face it. He needed to be here now not for Winstone or Giles, who were beyond any help, but for Bethan. Accepting now that this was why he'd let his job slide away. This was how his life had condensed — around her. There was no way he could leave here without her. But there was no way she was going to leave until—

A blink of white in the alleyway, and she came out and walked quickly across the street to the car.

Berry closed his eyes and breathed out hard.

Bethan got into the car and slammed the door and they looked at each other.

And he said. "I know. Drive, Morelli."

The village had been called Y Groesfan, and this had interested Dr. Thomas Ingley.

Y Groesfan meant "the crossing place," suggesting a crossroads. And yet no roads crossed in the village; it was a dead end.

What other kind of crossing could there be?

The origins of the village were unknown, but the church was the oldest in this part of Wales, and its site, the mound on which it was built, was prehistoric.

Most of the graves in the churchyard dated back no further than the 1700s, but the tomb of Sir Robert Meredydd in a small chapel to the left of the altar was late medieval.

Around the time of Owain Glyndwr. It was recorded that Glyndwr, as a young man, had been to Y Groesfan in the late summer of 1400 to "pay homage." This was only weeks before he was declared Prince of Wales following a meeting of his family and close friends at his house Glyndyfrdwy in northeast Wales.

All this Bethan had learned from the red notebook found under a floorboard by the late George Hardy.

"But why does it have to be relevant'.'" Berry asked.

They were heading cast from the town now, towards Rhayader, close to the very centre of Wales, where the executive council of Plaid Cymru had met to decide on a candidate for the Glanmeurig by-election.

"The last two people to hold this notebook are dead," Bethan said, the red book on her lap.

"That scare you?"

"Left here," Bethan said. She pointed out of her window.

"That church is Ysbyty Cynfyn. See the big stones in the wall? They are prehistoric. The church is built inside a Neolithic stone circle. It used to be a pagan place of worship; now it's Christian."

"Like Y Groes?"

Probably."

"You want to stop?"

"No. Can we go to England, Berry?"

"We sure can," he said, surprised. "Any particular part? Hull? Truro?"

"Not far over the border. Herefordshire."

"Any special reason for this?"

Bethan opened the red book. 'There's an address here.

Near Monnington-on-Wye. Do you know the significance of Monnington? Did you get that far in Guto's book?"

"Uh-huh." Berry shook his head.

"You can look out from there and see the hills of Wales."

"I think I understand," Berry said.

Chapter LVII

He liked less and less having to go into the oak woods, particularly in winter. Without their foliage, the trees could look at you.

And into your soul.

He did not look at them, could not face them. As he walked, he stared at the ground. But he could see their roots like splayed hands, sometimes had to step over individual knobbled fingers.

Remembering being introduced to the woods as a boy, as they all had been. Taught honour and respect for the trees, fathers of the village itself. And once, aged eighteen or thereabouts, bringing a girl into the woods one night in May and feeling afraid at the inferno of their passion.

Gwenllian. His wife now.

He told himself he was doing this for her. Ill she was now, most of the time. Did not want to cook, would go into no bedroom but their own, wept quietly in the afternoons.

Looking only at the ground, he almost bumped into the oaken gate.

Rheithordy.

Looked up then, and into the face of the rector.

Cried out, stifled it, embarrassed.

Ap Siencyn, in his cassock, standing at the gate, motionless, like one of the winter trees.

"Rector," Aled said weakly.

Only the rector's hair moved. Even whiter than Aled's and longer, much longer, it streamed out on either side, unravelled by a little whingeing wind which the oaks had let through as a favour.

The rector spoke, his voice riding the wind like a bird.

"You are a coward, are you then, Aled?"

"Yes," Aled confessed in shame. "I am a coward."

There was a long silence then, the wind cowed too.

"We shall have to leave, I know." Aled said.

"Indeed?"

"We… I… There used to be this exhilaration. A delight in every day. Contentment, see. That was how it was.

"And you do not think we have to justify it? Nothing to pay, Aled?"

"But why upon me? Me and Gwenllian, all the time?"

"Perhaps it is a test. A test which you appear to be on the point of failing."

"But when there's no contentment left, only a dread—"

"It's winter, Aled. In winter, the bones are revealed. In winter we know where we are and what we are."

Aled said, "Death himself walked from these woods last night, and across the bridge and to the door of the inn." The pitch of his voice rose. "We heard him knocking, with his claw, a thin knocking…"

The rector said mildly, "You've known such things before."

"It's changed," Aled said. "There is… something sick here now."

The rector did not move yet seemed to rise a full two feet, and his white hair streamed out, although there was no wind now.

"How dare you!"

Aled shook his head and backed off, looking at the ground.

"You puny little man." He was pointing at Aled now, with a thin black twig, like a wand.

"I'm sorry."

"If you go from here you must go soon," the rector said.

"Yes. There are relatives we can stay with. Over at Aber."

"You must get out of our country."

"Leave Wales?"

"And never return."

"But what will we do?"

"No harm will come to you, I don't suppose," the rector said. "Unless you try to come back here."

Meaningfully, he snapped the twig in half and tossed the pieces over the gate so that they landed at Aled's feet.

"It's building again, you see," ap Siencyn said, deceptively gently. "You must be aware of that. You must surely feel it growing beneath us and all around us."

Oh yes, he could feel it. Almost see it sometimes, like forked lightning from the tip of the church tower.

"It's like the rising sun on a cloudless day," the rector said. "Always brighter in the winter. Rising clear. And those who do not rise with it, those not protected, will be blinded by the radiance."

Aled thought, this man talks all the time in a kind of poetry. Perhaps it is a symptom of his madness.

But the parish owned the inn and many of the cottages and so he, in effect, was ap Siencyn's tenant. And in other ways, Aled knew, ap Siencyn had the power to do good and to do harm. He looked down at the two pieces of the twig at his feet and saw where his choice lay.

"Don't leave it too long, will you. Aled? Make your decision."

"Yes," Aled said. He walked back through the woods towards the road, and the oak trees watched him go.

Chapter LVIII

I felt it was right, see," Guto said. "Meant to happen. All my life, the disappointments, the frustrations — all foundations for it I mean, Christ. I needed this."

Dai Death said, "Oh, come on, man. Not over yet, is it?"

"It is for me. I'll tell you when it ended… that meeting in Y Groes. I just can't convey to you, Dai, what it was like. Thinking, you know, have I come to the wrong bloody hall, or what? Another pint, is it?"

"Not for me. And not for you either. Finish that one and get a sandwich down you."

"Bloody mother hen." Guto grumbled.

Well, all right, he was drinking too much, he knew it. And in public. The party's General Secretary, Alun, had warned him about this—"half the votes are women, never forget that" — as they drove across to Aber for a lunchtime conference with two other Plaid MPs. The other MPs had been encouraging. You could not really get an idea until the final week, they said. But Guto had followed campaigns where a candidate who'd been strongly tipped initially had dropped clean off the chart in the first few days.

By the weekend the results of the first opinion polls would be out. If they were half as bad as he expected, he'd be placed at least third…

"Bethan it is, though, really," Dai said. "Admit it."

Guto glared resentfully at the undertaker through his pint glass. Then he put the glass down, fished out a cigarette, the anger blown over now, leaving him subdued.

"Aye, well, that too."

And that also would have been so right, both of them gasping for fresh air — her with the trouble at school, him badly needing a legitimate outlet for frustrations which were threatening to turn destructive. Westminster, the bright lights — and what was so wrong with bright lights'? He'd convinced himself — well, Christ, politics weren't everything — that when he won the election she would go with him.

When he won…

He could have bloody wept.

"Who is this Morelli?" Dai asked. "Who is he really?"

"More to the point." Guto said, "where is he?"

This was also what the girl in the Porsche wanted to know.

"Seen you on the telly, isn't it?" Mrs. Evans said at once, having watched the car pulling up outside the house and this exotic creature unwinding.

"Well, it's possible," Miranda admitted modestly.

"It's the red hair. Wasn't you in… Oh. what's it called now, that detective thing on a Sunday night…?"

"Oh well, you know. I pop up here and there." Miranda was hardly going to remind this little woman that her best-known television persona was the girl accosted in a back street by a leather-clad thug impressed by her shampoo. "Anyway, I'm awfully sorry to bother you. but a journalist told me Berry Morelli was staying here."

"Oh, Mr. Morelli. Him you're looking for?"

"I am indeed."

"Well, he left, not two hours ago."

"Do you know where he's gone?"

"Well. I never asked him, not wanting to pry, Miss—"

"Moore-Lacey. Miranda Moore-Lacey."

"Oh, lovely. He'll be terrible sorry to have missed you. Let me see now… I wonder if my son… Perhaps he can tell you where Mr. Morelli is. Do you know my son?"

"I'm afraid I don't know a soul here."

"Well you can't miss Guto. Very distinctive, he is. Black beard and a big green rosette. Can't be far away, he's a meeting to do in town tonight. He'll be at the Memorial Hall by seven. Do you know where that is?"

"I'll find it." Miranda said. 'Thank you very much."

As she slid into the car, the first snowflakes landed on its bonnet and instantly evaporated. Within ten minutes there were rather more of them and they were not evaporating quite so rapidly.

When they found Bryan Mortlake, he was splitting logs outside his house, a former lodge next to the main road. He did not stop splitting logs when they spoke to him, and he did not invite them in.

"Ingley," he said, raising the axe. "Nutcase," he said, bringing it down.

The axe hit the log dead-centre and the two halves fell from the block. One rolled over Bethan's shoe.

"Safer to stand further back," Mortlake said, looking and talking more like a retired colonel than a retired academic. Except retired colonels, in Berry's experience, were more polite.

He set up another log. "Not still hanging around, is he?"

"He's dead." Berry said.

"Oh? Well, he was still a nutcase."

"You have many dealings with him?"

"Not when I could help it. Would you mind moving out of my light. Snow's forecast for tomorrow, did you know that?"

"Dr. Mortlake," Bethan said. "Would you tell us what Dr. Ingley came to see you about?"

Mortlake brought down the axe. There was a knot in the log, and it jammed. He looked at Bethan as if it was her fault then hit the axe handle with the flat of his hand to free it. Both log and axe tumbled off the block and Mortlake looked furious.

"Look, what's all this about?"

"We found your name and address in this," Bethan pulled the red book from her raincoat. "I am a schoolteacher in a village in West Wales, where Dr. Ingley was doing some research. When he died, his notes were passed on to me. I'm writing a history of the village and I thought—"

Mortlake snatched the book and thumbed through it for about half a minute before handing it back with what Berry assumed to be a superior, academic sneer.

"Bilge." Mortlake said.

"What's bilge?" Berry said. "What's he saying here? That's all we want to know."

"You a Welsh schoolteacher too?"

"I'm a friend of Mrs. McQueen. You have a problem with that?"

"Look," Mortlake hefted the axe and the log onto the chopping block and stood back panting. "Did you ever meet the man?"

Berry put a foot on the log, hit the axe handle, freed it and gave it to Mortlake.

"No," he said.

"He had a crackpot theory about Glyndwr. Who, you may remember, was supposed to have ended his days a few miles from here, at Monnington."

"We are going there next." Bethan said.

"Can't see what good that will do you. None of its proven. There's an unmarked stone in the churchyard there, which they say is Glyndwr's grave. I doubt that."

Berry said, "What was the crackpot theory?"

Mortlake threw down the axe. "You know, half the foolish myths in British history begin like this. In my view, when someone cobbles together a lot of patent rubbish and then dies without publishing it, we should all be damned thankful and let it lie."

"Dr. Mortlake." Bethan said. This is only a little village project. What harm can that do?"

"What d'you say the village is called?"

"Y Groes."

"Never heard of it."

"It's near Pontmeurig."

"Oh, the by-election place." Mortlake gave in. "All right, there's a legend — I mean, when you're talking about Glyndwr, half of its legend — and the story goes that some years after his death— No. actually, there are two different stories, one says it was after his death, the other says it was when he was dying. Both come to the same conclusion— that four patriotic Welshmen couldn't stand the thought of the old hero dying in exile, came across the border and took him home. Or carted his remains home, whichever version you prefer."

Berry sensed Bethan's excitement.

"Ingley was convinced this was true," Mortlake said. "He maintained there was a place in Wales where all the heroes went to die or whatever, according to some ancient tradition. You see, it's complete nonsense — man was bonkers."

"Did he say where the place was?" Bethan asked.

"Wouldn't tell me. Big secret. As if I really wanted to know."

"What evidence did he have?"

"Oh, he claimed to have discovered the names of the four Welshmen who came for Glyndwr. He suspected there may have been some collaboration here with John Skydmore, of Monnington Court, who was Glyndwr's son-in-law. Which was why he came to me."

"You helped him?"

"He left me the names. I said I'd look into it. Didn't bother, to be quite honest. I can tell a crank from fifty paces. And don't ask me for the list because I've probably thrown it away."

"Well, thanks," Berry said. "We'll leave you to your logs."

"Very good memory, though, as it happens."

"I'm sorry?"

"My memory. Very good. If it's any use for your… village project… the four men were a farmer, a lawyer, a coachman and… a carpenter, yes. He was said to have made an ornate coffin, fit for a prince, as they say. And their names, d'you want their names? Very well.

He leaned on his axe, pursed his lips. "Vaughan — John Vaughan. Robert Morgan. William, or Gwilym Davies and—"

Mortlake paused triumphantly. He'd plucked all four straight out of his head.

" — Thomas Rhys."

He beamed.

"Don't tell me," Berry said. "He was the lawyer."

Mortlake, in a better temper now, picked up a big log with both hands and set it on the block, 'You know more than I do, sir," he said.

Dusk now. A pair of black swans glided across the pond behind the church. It was cold and utterly still.

"He was right." Berry said. "Gonna snow."

The sky was taut and shiny, like a well-beaten drum.

"Snow is for the Christmas cards." Bethan said. "You won't find a country person who likes it."

"This is a wonderful place." Berry said, putting an arm around her.

Like Y Groes, Monnington was a dead end. Like the immediate environs of Y Groes, the surrounding land was soft and peaceful. But although the church was in a secret place, approachable only by foot along a shaded green lane, the landscape around was opened out, mostly flat, the hills serene in the distance.

They found one small, unmarked stone close to the entrance of the church. There was nobody around to ask if this was the supposed grave of Owain Glyndwr.

"This is totally England." Berry said. "You know, this is more like the real old England than any place I ever went to. No cars, no ice-cream stalls, no parking lots, no information bureaux."

"I wish I could interpret what we've learned." Bethan said, pulling away and going back to the stone which might or might not be Glyndwr's.

"Did I gather by your reaction that the families of these four patriotic Welsh guys still live in Y Groes?"

"I can't be sure. Yes, there's a Dewi Vaughan. F — O — N, he spells it, the Welsh way — how they spell it now, rather than then, I should imagine. And yes, he's a carpenter. Like his father before him. Davies — Dafis. Several of those. Thomas Rhys, well—"

"Very weird," Berry said. "Judge Rhys feels he has to return to preserve the family tradition. He leaves his house to his granddaughter, his chosen heiress. She changes her name to Rhys. Her husband, who is irrelevant to all this—"

His voice dropped. " — dies."

"And she's possibly pregnant, don't forget."

"So Giles has served his purpose," Berry said. "Jesus, I hate the thought of all this. Sorry, what'd you say then?"

"I said, if it is Giles's baby"

"Hey, what—?"

"I don't know," Bethan said desperately. Snatching up the hood of her raincoat so that he couldn't see her expression, she moved quickly away through the graveyard, a ghostly white lady in the dusk.

Chapter LIX

He almost didn't wear a tie.

In fact, if the Plaid Cymru president had not been lined up to speak he thought he would have had difficulty persuading himself to go at all.

At seven o'clock he entered the Memorial Hall through the back door and peeped into the main hall from behind the stage, convinced he'd be looking at half-a-dozen people and about three hundred empty chairs.

To his surprise, there must have been over two hundred in the audience already.

A big turn-out for the humiliated hard-man.

He was still feeling depressed and cynical when he climbed on to the platform at the Memorial Hall and took his seat next to the party president, who was going through a patch of unprecedented popularity.

Celebrity night.

By the time they were ready to begin, there must have been nearly five hundred crammed in. and a full complement of Press. He got an encouraging smile from the plump lady from BBC Radio, who seemed to fancy him. But all the rest, he was sure, had come to watch the official public funeral of Guto Evans's election hopes.

Since the report in the Western Mail, he was convinced, people had actually been avoiding him in the street, out of embarrassment.

Fuck 'cm, he thought. You've got nothing left to lose, boy, so fuck 'em all.

And he did.

He came to his feet feeling like one of those athletes on steroids. Full up with something anyway, and it wasn't the drink, thanks to Dai Death.

Somebody asked him the old question about where he stood on Welsh terrorism, petrol bombs and the burning down of property to deter immigration. To his surprise, he didn't give the careful, strategic answer he'd spent hours working out. Instead, he lost his temper and heard himself saying how much the great Glyndwr would have despised the kind of pathetic little wankers who could only come out at night with paraffin cans.

Politics, he roared, was a game for adults, not spotty adolescents.

Aware that this must sound pretty heavy coming from a man who looked like a sawn-off version of Conan the Barbarian, he felt a surge of pure adrenalin, like red mercury racing up a thermometer. Or one of those fairground things you slammed with a mallet and, if you were strong enough, it rang the bell. For the first time since the London banker had performed the knocking over of the chair right on cue, Guto Evans, fuelled by rage and bitterness, was ringing bells.

For over forty-five minutes, he fended off hostile questioners with the ease of a nightclub bouncer ejecting tired drunks. He didn't care any more what he said to any of the bastards.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the Plaid president, looking shell-shocked, said when Guto finally sat down. "I think you have seen tonight an example of precisely why we selected Guto Evans to fight this by-election. And why Guto Evans, without any doubt, is going to be the next MP for Glanmeurig!"

And up in Eglwys Fawr, Guto thought cynically, as the audience responded with vigour, the Tories will be saying exactly the same thing about Simon Gallier.

On his way out, men he didn't know patted him on the shoulder, and three women kissed him.

Groupies, by God.

Unfortunately, not that young, the three women — in fact, not much younger than his mam, really.

But, bloody hell, this one was…

She had definitely come to the wrong place, dressed like that.

"Mr. Evans. I wonder if I might have a word."

"The night is yet young, darling." Guto said, his system still flooded with that desperate, high-octane, who-gives-a- flying-fart-anyway adrenalin. "Have as many as you like."

They spent the night in a glossy new hotel on the edge of Hereford. Country inns were out as far as Bethan was concerned. No oak beams, no creaking floorboards, no "character."

This room was done out in calm and neutral pastel shades. And that included the telephone, the TV with video and satellite receiver, the bedside lamps with dimmer switches and all the envelopes and containers of stuff which nobody ever opened but which showed the management really cared.

Towel-swathed, Bethan came out of the shower into this hermetically-sealed haven, where Berry Morelli was sprawled across the pastel bed, trying to screw up the colour-coordination with his bright orange undershorts.

"Sooner or later," he told the ceiling, "you're gonna have to tell me whatever it is you haven't told me."

She didn't look at him, went over to the dressing table and began to untangle her hair.

Facing his image in the mirror, she said. "Did you read the same thing as me into those notes about the church and the tomb?"

Goddamn red book again.

"Could be," he said. "Sir Robert Meredydd. Died 1421. That would be within maybe a year or two of Owain Glyndwr. You're saying this Meredydd actually is Glyndwr? That these guys brought him back to Y Groes and secretly entombed him under a false name?"

"Well, there we are. Possible, isn't it? I have also thought of something else. Dewi Fon, the carpenter. Davies, the coachman? Dilwyn Dafis runs the garage at Y Groes.

Repairs vehicles, does a bit of haulage. It's a very old business. I didn't realise quite how old."

"That's wild," said Berry. "I mean, that is wild. You're suggesting this guy Dilwyn's ancestor built some kind of special funeral cart or horse-drawn bier or whatever they had in those days to fetch Glyndwr home. And five centuries later the family's still in the transport business. Who's the fourth man, the farmer?"

"Morgan. There is only one Morgan family in Y Groes, and Buddug is married to the head of the tribe."

"The ball-slasher?"

Bethan nodded into the mirror, unsmiling. "The Morgans have farmed there since… who can say?"

Berry said. "Are we imagining all this?"

She said sharply. "You mean am I imagining all this?"

He went over and put his hands on her shoulders, didn't try to dislodge the towel. She carried on combing out her hair as if his hands weren't there.

"Bethan, I'm taking a deep breath, OK? What makes you think that if Claire is pregnant we may not be talking about Giles's baby?"

She did not reply, went on combing her hair, although the tangles were long gone.

Through the mirror, he saw what looked like old tears burning to come out. She blinked them away.

He fell suddenly angry but said nothing — where was the use in pressurising her?

But then, abruptly, she put down the comb, wiped her hands on a pastel tissue and told his reflection, without preamble, why she'd gone to Swansea after Robin's death.

When she'd finished talking, he went over to the window and looked down to where sporadic night traffic was circumventing the construction site for some new road.

He really wanted to believe her.

But how much of this could you take? Things getting weirder by the minute.

"Stupid of me," she said. "I did not want to tell you, but you pushed."

He turned back and started towards her.

"No," she said.

He sat down on the bed. put his hands over his face and rubbed his eyes in slow circular movements.

He said, "And it really couldn't have been his, Robin's?"

"No."

"Bethan. I don't only want to believe you. I need to believe you."

"That is not good enough." she said. sice… sice… sice… the air said. Tissue-thin-pages whispering.

Bethan tossed her head back, stared at the ceiling. The chasm between them was about a hundred miles wide.

You and me, the Gypsy said, we in same shit. One day you find out.

What Bethan had told him was that approximately three weeks after Robin's death, she had discovered she was expecting a baby. Because she knew in her own mind that this could not be Robin's child, she had moved to Swansea where no one knew her. And where the pregnancy had been terminated.

"I did not kill my baby." she emphasised quite calmly. "I killed its baby."

"It?"

'The village. Y Groes."

Oh, Christ.

He had no idea how to follow this up. Either she'd tell him or she wouldn't. His lips kept forming questions, but the questions never made it. Only one.

"How could you go back?" he asked. He'd asked her that before.

"How could I not go back?" she replied.

"And do you work with Morelli?" the Bearded Welsh Extremist asked. Every few seconds somebody on the way out would slap him on the back and say something jolly in Welsh.

"You have got to be joking." said Miranda.

"Well what do you want him for?"

"I don't actually want him." Miranda said frankly — no point in trying to bullshit a politician; they were all far too good at it not to spot it coming from someone else. "I just want to pass on some information which might help him."

"I see," said the BWE, whose name she couldn't remember, except that it sounded vaguely insulting. "Well, I don't know where Morelli has gone but I do know who he is with." His eyes were smouldering, she thought, in rather a dark and brooding way, like some sort of Celtic Heathcliff. "Tell me," he said, "have you anywhere to stay?"

"Well, I have." Miranda told him. "But it isn't much of a place."

"Oh, well, good accommodation is hard to find with this election on."

"You're telling me. I wound up at some faded Victorian dive called the Plas something or other."

His eyes stopped in mid-smoulder and widened. "The Plas Meurig? You managed to get a room at the Plas Meurig?"

"I realise there's got to be, a better hotel somewhere, but I was in rather a hurry."

He appeared to be regarding her with a certain respect, on top of the usual naked lust. But before she could capitalise on this, an efficient-looking man with tinted glasses and a clipboard slid between them. "Guto," he said. "Problems, I'm afraid. Tomorrow night's meeting with the farmers' unions. Bit of a mix-up over the hall at Cefn Mynach. liberal Democrats have got it, so I'm afraid… Look, I did try for an alternative venue to Y Groes, but it's central for the farmers."

"No way, Alun," snarled Guto. "I wouldn't go back there if the alternative was a bloody sheep-shed in the Nearly Mountains."

Miranda thought, Y Groes…

Lowering his voice, this Alun said. "Come on. Guto. We should see it as a challenge. We can build on tonight's success, regain our position. You're acquiring an enviable reputation for turning the tables."

"Aye, and the Press will show up in force when they find out," said Guto. "No, forget it, postpone it."

"We can't postpone it. We'll come across as unreliable, look, I shall make sure there's a good crowd this time. We can even take most of one with us. Come on man, you did well tonight."

"Alun," the Extremist said. "I am getting a bad feeling about this."

Oh my God, Miranda thought. Not another one.

Chapter LX

Berry Morelli slept uneasily. Bethan did not sleep at all.

Outside, even in Herefordshire now, it was snowing lightly but consistently.

They had not touched one another.

The room had caught an amber glow from the road-construction site below. And in this false warmth Bethan was remembering a close summer evening, a bitter argument with Robin, who was always tired and fractious but insisted it was nothing physical. She remembered storming out, nerves like bare wires, and being soothed at once as the air settled around her, as comforting as soft arms.

It did this sometimes, the village. Was absorbed through the skin like some exotic balm. The soporific scents of wild flowers on a breeze like a kiss. Your churning emotions massaged as you walked down the deserted street, past the Tafarn, the church tower soaring from its grassy mound, venerably beneficent.

Robin raging alone inside their terraced cottage at the top of the street, while Bethan was wafted away on the silky, cushioned wings of the evening.

She remembered the air lifting her gently over the stile to the meadow that sloped to the river, trees making a last shadow-lattice on the deepening green.

Remembered yielding her body gratefully to the soft grass, letting the breezes play in the folds of her summer dress. There seemed to be several breezes, all of them warm, making subtle ripples and swirls and eddies.

And she had fallen asleep and dreamed a child's dream of the Tylwyth Teg, the beautiful fairy folk.

Awoken in the moistness of the night, the dampness of the grass, the cold wetness between her legs, the bittersweet tang of betrayal, a lingering faraway regret.

And no memory at all of what had happened.

Of what.

Or who.

"Guto," she said. "Git-toe. It really is a super name."

"Thank you," Guto said dubiously. He was trying not to be charmed by this creature who, only minutes earlier, had been chanting git-toe, git-toe through clenched teeth, in concert with the rhythm of her loins.

What also filled him with a certain perverse delight was the thought that, in order to bonk this terribly English Englishwoman, he had actually infiltrated Simon Gallier's fortress, the Plas Meurig, and was about to spend a night within the hallowed portals free of charge.

Whatever the result, it had certainly been an experience, this by-election.

"You might as well tell me," he said. "How the hell did you manage to persuade them to let you have a room? And not just any room, for heaven's sake…"

He was looking up suspiciously at an ornate Victorian ceiling across which misshapen plaster cherubs frolicked amid gross moulded foliage.

"Isn't it so utterly tasteless?" said Miranda and giggled, a sound which reminded Guto of the tinkling door chimes in Pontmeurig's new health food shop which he'd entered for the first time during this afternoon's canvassing.

"It might be tasteless," he said. "But it's probably the best room they've got."

An awful thought had crept up on him. They wouldn't, would they?

"Hah!" Miranda sprang up in the bed, wobbling deliciously. "I know what you're worried about!"

"What am I worried about?"

"You think I've been planted, don't you? You think I'm an expensive bimbo hired by the opposition to discredit you. You think any second now the door's going to fly open and chaps will crowd in with popping flashbulbs. You do, don't you? Admit it!"

"Was a thought," Guto mumbled gruffly.

"Hah!" Miranda shrieked and rolled about laughing. "Oh, how utterly wonderful that would be!"

"Shut up, woman," Guto hissed. "Everybody'll know you've got somebody in here."

"Oh, I love it when you call me 'woman'."

"Well, come on, enlighten me. How did you get into a hotel that's been claiming to've been hooked up solid for weeks?"

"I'm not going to tell. I have my methods."

"Now look. I'll…"

"Will you, Guto? Will you really? Do you think you still have the strength? Well, in that case I'll tell you just a little, it all comes down to judicious use of that famous phrase. Do you know who I am?" which never works with the police these days but still tends to put hoteliers in the most awful tizz, especially in small-town snobby dumps like this. So don't worry any more, OK?"

"Who said I was worried?"

Miranda dug into the bedclothes. "Oh dear, he's utterly flaked out, isn't he, poor little Welsh thing. All right, I'll give him half an hour to recover. And you can use the time to tell me all about this dreadful village where people go to die."

"Y Groes?" Guto fell back into the pillows. "I suppose I died there myself, in a metaphorical way. In the theatrical sense of presenting your famous one-man show and no bugger applauds."

"Did you know a chap called Martin Coulson?"

"Met him the once. Briefly, like."

"I was talking to this old vicar who believes Coulson committed suicide because he was brilliant at speaking Welsh but he couldn't get a word of it out in the pulpit. Does that make any sense to you?"

"Aye, I remember now — he spoke Welsh to me. I switched over to English pretty smartly, mind, when I realised how good he was."

"Typical."

"Well, I was brought up in the Valleys. Welsh is only my second language, see. You don't like to be put to shame in your own country by an Englishman."

"Good heavens, no."

"And you say this vicar thought he topped himself because he couldn't turn it on in the church?"

That was what he said."

"Sounds highly unlikely to me," Guto said. "Red hot, he was. And it's not an easy language to learn. This is what you wanted to tell Morelli?"

"More or less." She told him how Berry Morelli had gone to Y Groes with Giles Freeman and returned feeling very funny, disturbed over some son of dubious psychic experience. "And when Freeman snuffed it suddenly, he got very upset. And now these other two people. Giles's in-laws…Well, gosh, it's even made me think. It's a lot of deaths, isn't it?"

"Probably more than you know," Guto said. "But it's all explained and, after all, they were—"

He'd been about to say they were all English, but stopped himself on the grounds that she could do a man a lot of damage, this one.

"Well, I'm going there tomorrow night," he said.

"I heard."

"So if you want to tag along, it'll be one more in the audience."

"Super," Miranda said. "I look forward to it. Where do you think Morelli's gone? Will he be there tomorrow?"

"How should I know?"

"It's snowing again." Miranda said, switching out the bedside light so they could see the white blobs buffeting the long window. "Quite hard, too."

"Berry, wake up. Please."

He turned his head into the steam from a white cup of black tea.

"What's the time, Beth?"

"Nearly four-thirty. I'm sorry to wake you, but my thoughts are killing me."

He sat up, took the cup. Waking wasn't so hard.

"Please can we talk. About everything."

"We can try, kid," Berry said. He'd called her Beth and he'd called her kid, and she hadn't reacted. She must be serious about this.

"OK," he said. "So what are we into here? One sentence. One word. Say it."

Bethan said, "Magic."

"That's the word," Berry said. 'That's the word we've been walking all around and poking at with the end of a stick on account of we don't like to touch it."

"Perhaps there are two words," Bethan said.

"And the other one," Berry said, taking her hand, "is black. Right?"

They sat on the edge of the bed in the overheated hotel room, holding hands and drinking tea and watching the snow fall, feeling more afraid now the word had escaped.

Chapter LXI

Hotel staff had cleared most of the snow from the carpark, but Berry had to dig out the Sprite, which coughed like hell and turned the air blue with acrid smoke.

"Could be pneumonia," he said anxiously, driving into the centre of Hereford, where the early morning streets had a first-fall purity that would last maybe until the shops opened.

The snow had stopped soon after dawn, but the bloated sky suggested this was only an interim gesture of goodwill.

The city library was almost opposite the cathedral and at this hour they had no problem parking right outside. Waiting for the library to open, they wandered the cathedral grounds, an ancient island cut off from the city by a soft white sea.

Bethan said, "If it snows again we may not make it back for days. We'll have problems anyway; it could be a lot worse in Wales."

Berry thought it would be no bad thing if they didn't get back for weeks, but he said nothing.

On the way here, they'd talked about the baby.

He said it was the most insidious case of rape he'd ever heard of. "Some bastard has to pay."

Bethan thought this was unlikely. "I'm sure, you see," she told him. "that when I was offered the head teacher's post — at the express request of the school governors, I've since discovered — it was expected that I would return very pregnant. And of course the baby would be looked after while I was at the school — very caring people in Y Groes. And the child would grow up like all the rest."

"What would that mean?"

"I can't explain it very easily. They are children of Y Groes. Steeped in the Welsh traditions — traditions which no longer apply anywhere else, not to this extent anyway.

Although the community is… clings, if you like, to its church, this church is different. There's an element in the religion of the village which is almost pre-Christian. It accepts all the eerie, psychic things — the toili and the cannwyll gorff and the bird of death — as part of life's fabric. All right, that's not unusual in itself, rural west Wales is riddled with superstition, but here it's a way of life."

"But the church is Anglican." Berry said now, under the massive spireless tower of Hereford Cathedral. "Like this place."

"Not so simple." Bethan was wearing her pink woolly hat and a red scarf wound twice around her neck. 'The old Celtic church was the earliest form of Christianity in Britain and it probably absorbed many elements of paganism. Nobody knows for sure what its rituals were, or its dogma. I suppose we can say the two earliest known religious influences in Wales were the Celtic church and… what remained of Druidism, I imagine. Intermingled."

"It says in Guto's book that it used to be suggested Owain Glyndwr had been trained in Druidic magic. Like, he was some kind of sorcerer who could alter the weather and—"

" — Call spirits from the Vasty Deep," said Bethan. "Yes. Obviously. Guto is deeply dismissive of all this. He wants Glyndwr to have been some sort of pragmatic early socialist with a deep commitment to democracy and the classless society."

"What do you think?"

"I think Glyndwr was probably fumbling in the dark like the rest of us." Bethan said, taking his arm. "You need a thicker coat, Berry, you must be freezing."

In the library they paused to glance through the morning papers. Over Ray Wheeler's story in the Mirror was the headline:

W — KERS!

GUTO BLASTS THE BOMBERS.

Bethan shook her head wryly. "The things an election campaign can do to a person. Not three weeks ago he was saying that while he deplored the methods, he could fully understand the motives of anti-English terrorism."

They went up some stairs, and Berry said to the guy in the reference section. "We're interested in aspects of Welsh folklore. The, ah—"

"Gorsedd Ddu" Bethan said.

"I don't think I've heard of that," the guy said, and Bethan assured him this was not so surprising.

They spent more than an hour bent over a table, exploring maybe twenty books. At one stage Berry went down and moved the Sprite to avoid collecting a parking ticket. When he returned, Bethan announced that she was satisfied there was nothing to be learned here.

"This mean there's nothing actually documented on the, ah… "

"Gorsedd Ddu. Probably not."

Before they left the hotel Bethan had given him a very brief history of the Welsh bardic tradition. Of the Dark Age poets, of whom the best known was Taliesyn. And how, in the nineteenth century Edward Williams, who called himself Iolo Morgannwg — Iolo of Glamorgan — had identified himself as the Last Druid in Wales and set about singlehandedly restoring the tradition. It was Iolo, an inventive antiquarian scholar not averse to forging ancient verse to prove his point, who established what was to become the National Eisteddfod of Wales — the annual gathering of poets and singers and cultural leaders honoured as "bards".

The inner circle of which was the Gorsedd—whose members appeared in white ceremonial costumes such as the Druids were believed to have worn.

"You mean it's all crap?" Berry had said, astonished. "The great Welsh bardic tradition was dreamed up by this guy, bridging a cultural gap between the nineteenth century and the Dark Ages? It's all bullshit?"

"Well, let us say, ninety per cent bullshit. But it did fulfil a need in the Welsh people to… exalt their heritage, I suppose. It gave them this annual showcase for the language and the poetry. The Welsh love to show off."

"And they conveniently forgot about the antisocial side of the Druids — like human sacrifices in the oak groves under the full moon, all that heavy ritual stuff?"

"Ah, now, some Celtic scholars say the Druids did not sacrifice people or even animals — that was just stories put about by the Romans. We only have people like Julius Caesar to rely on for concrete information about Druidism. But, yes, the organisers of the eisteddfodau have even forgotten that the Druids were pagan. It has always been a very God-fearing festival."

They collected all the books together and took them back to the man in charge of the department.

"Nothing"?" he said. "Are you sure you've got it right about this Gorsedd, er—"

"Ddu," Bethan said. "It means black. The Black Gorsedd. Yes, but don't worry, there is nothing wrong with your books."

"Oh, we do know that." he said.

They sat a while in the car with the engine running, for heat. "Where's that leave us?" Berry said.

No more snow had fallen and last night's was already being trampled into slush.

Bethan said. "They talk about the Gorsedd Ddu in some places like you talk of bogeymen, to frighten the children. Eat your greens or the black bards will get you. Or the Gwrach y rhibyn"

"What's that?"

"The Gwrach? A sort of Welsh death-hag. A monstrous woman with black teeth and leathery wings who's supposed to scare people to death and then steal away their immortal souls. She's a vengeful demon who preys on those who have sinned."

"Jeez, what a country. What do the black bards do?"

"Well, the inference is that while the white bards—"

" — as invented by this Iolo guy—"

"I wish I hadn't told you that. now. Yes, the white bards, while they are amiable pacifists, the Gorsedd Ddu are supposed to have very real magical powers. They are stern and cold and… perhaps vindictive."

"Question is." Berry said, "do they exist? This is the bottom line. And if they do, do they have any more of a solid foundation than the old guys at the eisteddfod or are we just looking at a bunch of fruitcakes?"

"And if they have—" Bethan leaned back in the ruptured bucket seat, the side windows and the screen all misted, blurred ghosts of people walking past. "If they have foundation… powers… what can we do about it anyway?"

"Magic's not illegal any more. Not even black magic."

"Killing people is."

"How can we say that? Natural causes, accidents, suicide and, OK, a murder now. But it's solved."

"Yes, it sounds silly. Utterly."

"We're saying there's a — an atmosphere, whatever, generated here. Which causes outsiders — say, people not protected by the village or by this aura of Welshness, whatever that means — either to lose the will to live, to fail in what they most want to do—"

"Like Giles failing to learn Welsh — to be a part of something he so much admired—"

"Right. Or have their negative emotions take over. Lose their normal resistance to unacceptable or downright brutal behaviour. Like ole George Hardy. Suburban solicitor beats wife to death. In short, go nuts."

"Or," Bethan said, "if we try to explain the deaths from natural causes, to get into such a state that even their bodies stop fighting."

"OK, Like the immune system breaks down or something of that order. My knowledge of these things is no more than the average hypochondriac. So they're exposed to diseases, tumours form that never would've, heart diseases worsen and, well, yeah—"

"I've always found it bitterly ironic." Bethan said, bleakly, "that Robin, who was so opposed to nuclear power, should die of a condition so often said to be induced by radiation escaping from nuclear installations." She shook her head sadly. "Radiation."

"Was he happy in Y Groes? Was it like he'd imagined?"

"He — Oh, what does it matter now…" Bethan was twisting her scarf. "The truth is we never really had much of marriage in Y Groes. Almost as soon as we moved in, he began to be tired and irritable. The stress of the move and the travelling and having to search for nuclear dump-sites — that was what he put it down to. We used to go for walks together, along the river bank, up to the woods, and he would go so far and he just became… bone-tired, you know?' She turned away, stared hard at the people-shapes passing the misted car window. "l'm going to cry."

"Let's get outta here." Berry flung the Sprite into gear, rubbing the windscreen clear, moving into a line of traffic in the one-way system out of town.

"We really are insane, aren't we?" Bethan was shouting at him. 'Tell me we're insane! Tell me we're imagining it all, fabricating something out of thin air to account for a lot of people's bad luck. Look, for God's sake, take me home, Morelli! Don't you have a job to go to?"

"No," he said. "And you don't want to go home. You know where we have to go."

"No…" Bethan was shaking. That is, she was sitting here very still, but he knew she really was shaking inside. We can't."

"How else?" He also was shouting now, against the ear-threshing of a big delivery van alongside them. "How else we gonna find out one way or the other? How else, without we go in there and start kicking asses till we get some answers?"

"You don't know what it's like!" Bethan screamed.

A lorry's brakes hissed… ssssssssssssssssssiiiice!

He turned into a stream of traffic crossing a wide bridge over the Wye.

"You came back, Beth. Nobody said you had to take that job. You'd killed its baby and you came back."

Bethan wept, biting hard into her lower lip until blood came.

Chapter LXII

Tin- radio had described the road over the Nearly Mountains as "passable with care."

On the way to Pont, with his wife Gwenllian in the passenger seat, Aled had driven with considerable concentration, knowing of old what this road could do with a coat of snow on its back. On the return journey, alone now, his driving had been sloppy, his mind on other things, and he'd taken a corner too fast and ploughed the van into a snowdrift.

Digging himself out with the shovel he always kept in the back from November until May, Aled could see the tip of Y Groes's church tower, a light haze around it, wispy blue.

While the sky above him, as he shovelled snow from around the van wheels, was thick as pastry.

He was going back. He had put Gwenllian, who did not understand these things, on the bus to Aber where her sister lived. But he was going back.

What alternative was there? He was the keeper, like his dad before him, of the most beautiful inn in the most beautiful place you would find anywhere. This was what he told himself.

He threw the spade in the back of the van. All around him the Nearly Mountains were tundra, no visible blade of grass. The slender creature about two hundred feet away was a fox, ears pricked, loping off when it saw him, black against the snow. Everything in black and white from up here, except the sky over Y Groes.

By the time he arrived back in the village — not yet ten o'clock — the sky had deepened to a lurid mauve, the colour pouring in from a circle in the clouds like a hole sawn in a sea of ice for Eskimos to fish. It was as if the church tower had stabbed out the hole.

In the village, the light scattering of snow had already melted. For the first time Aled did not like the fact that there was so little snow here while so much lay on the lower ground of Pontmeurig. For the first time it seemed less than healthy. The ochre and grey stone shone with moisture, like film of sweat. The whitewashed buildings had a mauvish glow that made him think of the glow in the faces of people on radium treatment.

It's gone too far, Aled thought.

Going to snow again, though," Guto observed hopefully. Why don't we call it off now?"

He wasn't inclined to risk any journey which might so delay his return to Pontmeurig that it would be difficult to slip unseen up the stairs at the Plas Meurig and into Suite 2, where the woman at the centre of all his finest fantasies would be waiting in exquisitely expensive French knickers.

There had been a few amazing moments last night when the result of the Glanmeurig by-election had seemed a matter of little consequence.

"No way," the General Secretary of Plaid Cymru pronounced. He glared at the sky through his tinted glasses — permanently rose-coloured, Guto thought — and then consulted his personal organiser. "Saturday tomorrow, OK? Big day. And you have meetings scheduled all next week. This is a crucial one. We can't be seen to be avoiding discussions with the farming organisations. If they want to call it off, fine, but we cannot."

"But, Alun, nobody will come! It'll be just like last time, and where does that leave us?"

Alun spread his hands. "We're not dependent on the villagers, this time. It just happens to be a central venue. Farmers, this is, Guto. And tell me, what does every farmer have?"

"A bloody big chip on his shoulder." said Guto.

"A four-wheel drive vehicle," Alun said patiently. "Enabling him to get to places otherwise inaccessible. Which is why they won't call it off. Deliberately — to see what you're made of. Fortunately, we also have two Land-Rovers at our disposal, one for you and me and one for Dai and Idwal and the boys from rent-a-supporter, so you will not be lonely this time. Anyway, it isn't going to snow that hard, according to the forecast. And you will come across as tough and dynamic and totally reliable."

"Piss off," said Guto.

"Will you be staying another night. Miss Moore-Lacey?"

Miranda was an inch or two taller than the proprietor of the Plas Meurig, but the way she looked at him made it seem like a couple of feet.

"Possibly," she said.

His thin smile was barely perceptible on his plump face. "Would it be possible for you to let us know by lunchtime, do you think?" Slightly less deference than yesterday, she thought. Might have to deal with that.

"I'll see," she said airily and walked briskly through the hotel foyer to the front door, slinging her bag over her shoulder as a gesture of dismissal.

Outside the door she giggled, feeling almost light hearted. Wondering how many points one was entitled to for a Neanderthal Welsh nationalist Having woken her up a some ungodly hour for the purpose of giving her one for the road. Guto had slipped away before eight, confident of passing relatively unnoticed among all the Tories and Liberals milling around waiting for an early breakfast.

As she walked out to the Porsche, a man with one of those motorised things on his camera look about half-a-dozen photographs of her. Miranda waved gaily to him. Famous actress spotted in Wales. Hah!

All the main roads had been cleared of snow; the by-roads were not to be trusted, the radio said.

"We shall be all right then." Bethan said, "at least as far as Pontmeurig."

Ahead of them, the mountains were pure white and flat as a child's collage.

"You ever break into a tomb?" Berry asked. "Any idea how it's done? Jemmy? Jackhammer?"

Bethan began to worry about him. She wished she had not told him about the baby. He was unshaven, the blue-jawed tough-guy now, hair as black as her own falling over his forehead as he spun the wheel to ease his car between a snow-drift and the hedge of a steep incline. But there was a gleam of something unstable in his eyes. Something to prove — to himself, to his father. And to her now. Which she did not want.

"I'm not crazy." Berry said.

Bethan said nothing.

"Just I hate secrets. Hate cover-ups."

"So I've gathered." Bethan said.

"Way I see it, if the big secret of that place is that Owain Glyndwr's body is there, and people somehow are dying so that secret can stay a secret, then it's time the whole thing was blown open. What we have to do is finish Ingley's work for him."

"Ingley died," Bethan said. They had come the roundabout way because of the snow and were entering the valley of the lead mine.

"We gotta blow it wide open. Let the historians and archaeologists in there. Be a find of national importance, right? Bring in the tourists. Let in some air."

This morning the abandoned lead mine was bleakly beautiful, its jagged walls like some medieval fortress — the dereliction, all the scrappy bits, under humps of snow. In a place like this it would survive for ever, Bethan thought. Until its stones and the rocks were fused into one in the way the snow had united them today.

Wales has no future, the poet R. S. Thomas had written. No present. Only a past.

A past guarded with vengeful fury.

Somewhere around her stomach, Bethan felt a sense of insidious foreboding. Berry Morelli, like Ingley, like Giles in his way, had become ensnared.

"Berry," she said. "Please. Turn round. Let's go to an expert. Go to the University. Find some help."

"No way," Berry' said. "Academics don't take one look at a little red notebook and say, wow, let's get over there. They take years. Go to committees. Seek funding to establish official research projects. Only time they move fast is when it's clear that, if they don't, all the evidence is gonna disappear. I guess that is the kind of action we have to precipitate."

"It won't let you, Berry."

"It? It won't let me? Jesus." The road widened out and he ground his foot and the accelerator into the floor.

"Listen," Bethan said. "How are we going to do this alone? Just two ordinary people. Two ordinary scared people."

"All my life," Berry said, "it seems like I've been a scared person. Neurotic, wimpish." Un-American, he thought. 'This is where it ends."

Or you end, Bethan thought.