Candlenight (12 page)

   
"No. no," Aled said,
opening the door wider. "Come in. I want to talk to you."

   
Aled made him coffee in the
bar. There was no sign of Gwenllian. But then, in Dai's experience, there
rarely was; she kept to herself to the kitchen and served infrequently in the
bar.

   
"Another body then."
Dai said.
   
"What?" Aled dropped a
saucer.
   
"A body. Up by the woods. Hiker.
Strung himself up, poor bugger."

   
"Oh." Aled was staring
at the broken saucer as if someone else had dropped it. He began to pick up the
pieces.

   
Dai drank his coffee in silence,
burning his mouth in his haste to be away. There was clearly something wrong
here, more than a bad throat.

   
Aled said, a bit hoarsely,
"How did you get on with Dr. Ingley?"

   
"The Prof? Shipped back
to—where was it now? Basingstoke."
   
"Gone?"
   
"Gone," said Dai.
   
"Where did you keep him?"
   
There was an odd question.
   
"How do you mean?"
   
"Where did you put the
body?"
   
"Well, chapel of rest,"
   
"No ... no problems?"
   
What the hell did that mean?

   
"I was asked to embalm
him. Usual thing. Why do you ask?"

   
"No reason," Aled
said. Though it was not quite dark yet, he moved to the switches on the wall
and put all the lights on.

   
Blinking in the sudden glare,
Dai thought at first he must be seeing things when he noticed how badly the
landlord's hand was shaking.

SICE

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."