Candlenight (58 page)

   
He stood up. "That is the
finish. You have had enough from me."

   
Bethan was too shocked to
speak.

   
Aled picked up the candle and
they followed him out of the dining room and through to the bar, where he
unbolted the oak front door.

   
"Opening time soon,"
he said. "And you won't want to see the Morgans, will you?"

   
"One more thing,"
Berry said in the doorway.

   
"No. No more things."

   
"You have a flashlight I
could borrow?"

   
Aled did not reply but went
behind the bar and fumbled about and then presented a long black torch to
Berry.

   
"Rubber," he said
morosely. "Bounces, see."

The crescent moon was curling from the tower like a candle flame. A
huge, symbolic corpse candle, Bethan thought.

   
The smell in the December air
was a little like the summer night smell of wild flowers, but heavier, sweet
with decay, as though the flowers had sprouted unnaturally from the dead earth,
like bodies in rotting shrouds thrusting their hands through the grave dirt.
The ground, with its thin veneer of snow, had a blueish, sometimes purplish
tint, like the cheeks of the newly-dead.

   
Bethan felt sick. She felt Y
Groes closing around her. Bloated with blood, greasy with human fat.

   
"I want to leave,"
she said. "Now."

   
"Not till we take a look
at the church."

   
"I will not go in
there."

   
"I'll go in then."

   
"Did you realise what he
was saying just now? About sacrifices?"

   
"I'll think about it
later. Right now, I need to see that tomb."

   
Bethan cried out, "What
good will it do now?"

   
She stood at the top of the deserted
street, her back to the bridge, white raincoat drawing in the unnatural
incandescence of the night so that it turned mauve.

   
Irradiated, Berry thought. He
felt love and fear, and he almost gave in, hurried her back over the bridge to
the cars.
   
Foot down, out of here.

   
Then they heard voices from the
other side of the bridge and he took her arm and pulled her into the alley
between the
Tafarn
and the
electricity sub-station which tonight had no electricity to dispense.

   
Laughter.

   
". . . hey Shirl, you
can't be cold now."

   
"No, but it's awfully
dark—Whoops!"

   
"Shit," Berry
whispered. "What the hell are
they
doing here?"

   
"Guto," Bethan
whispered back. "I can hear Guto's voice, and isn't that— ?"

   
"Christ," Berry said.
"It's Miranda."

   
The bunch of people crossed the
bridge and they heard a banging on the pub door and Dai's voice. "Come on
then, Aled. It's gone seven."

   
"And don't tell us the
beer pumps don't work," shouted an English voice. "Won't affect the
Optics."

   
The snow in the street seemed
to sweat, and there was a kind of liquid hum in the air, as if the dead
sub-station was a church organ and there was a hidden choir somewhere poised to
sing out into the night.

   
Voice thick with growing
nausea, Berry said, "What's the Welsh for
fee fi fo fum
?"

Chapter LXVI

Aled did not like this.
   
Every Friday night was more or less
the same, summer or winter. By seven-fifteen, Glyn Harri would have come in, or
maybe Dilwyn. Morgan, with or without Buddug, around eight.

   
These were the constants.

   
Others were regulars, not bound
to a time: Dewi Morus, Mair and Idris Huws. Meirion. Dr. Wyn. And then the occasionals,
who included the rector.

   
Tonight, gone eight now, and
none of them had arrived.

   
There was no precedent for
this.

   
Nearly a dozen people in the
bar, but none of them locals and half of them English. Reporters. Loud people,
practised drinkers.

   
"What's that stuff?"

   
Man in an expensive suit,
well-cut to hide his beer-gut. Late forties, going unconcernedly to seed,
leaning over the bar by the spluttering Tilley lamp, pointing to the bottle of Welsh
Chwisgi.

   
"Whisky." Aled said.
"Like any other. Blended over in Brecon."

   
"Welsh whisky? You're
bloody joking."
   
"Try some." Aled said
neutrally.
   
"Is it cheap? It should be."

   
"Cheaper than some. Dearer
than others. There is also the Prince of Wales twelve-year-old malt. What you
might call Wales's answer to Chivas Regal."

   
"Stone me. Better just
give us a single then, Alec. No soda. Got to savour this one. Bloody Welsh
whisky, Ray! One for you? Make it two then, Alec."

   
"We'll have the
bottle," Alun, of Plaid, said generously. Put it on my tab."

   
Aled brought the bottle of
Prince of Wales twelve-year old malt over to the cluster of tables. A brass
oil-lamp hung from a great brown beam above them. A log fire blazed.

   
"Isn't this cosy?" a
woman said. The chubby one, not the glamorous red-haired one.

   
Shirley Gillies had had two gin
and limes very rapidly.

   
"Yeh, if you like the
rustic bit," Gary Willis said, looking uncomfortable. "Not very into
the primitive, personally."

   
"Trouble with you, Gary,
is you have no soul." Shirley said. "A nice body, but no soul. I think
it's rather wonderful, all the power lines down, the mobile phones
useless."

   
"And in a pub!" said
Ray Wheeler.

   
"I told you," Alun
whispered to Guto. "I told you it would be an adventure for them."

   
"You know," Ray said.
"This reminds me in a way of poor old Winstone Thorpe."

   
"Winstone's Welsh
Experience," said Charlie Firth. "Miserable landlady, every bugger
speaking Welsh, all the pubs closed 'cause it's Sunday, and only Jack Beddall
to talk to."

   
Bill Sykes leaned into the
lamplight. "You know I really think it's time I scotched this one for
good."

   
"Belter than Welshing
it." said Charlie Firth. "Although actually, this stuff's not bad. I
reckon what it is, somebody bought a case of Glenfiddich and switched the
labels."

   
"Sod off,
Englishman." Guto said. "One of my mates, it is, makes this. But I
shall pass on the compliment."

   
"Go on, Bill." Ray
Wheeler topped up Sykes's glass with twelve-year-old Welsh malt. "Winstone
Thorpe."

   
"Well ... I suppose he
told you he'd been sent out on a story about two Welsh farmers who'd been shot
by their housekeeper."

   
"Back in the sixties,"
said Ray.

   
"Definitely not in the
sixties, old boy. Long, long before that. And he only had Jack Beddall on the
story because Beddall's been dead twenty years."

   
"Oh, wonderful!"
Shirley Gillies finished her drink. "A mystery story. Can I have one of
those?"

   
"On top of gin,
Shirley?" Gary passed over the Prince of Wales bottle, two-thirds empty
already.

   
"It
did
happen. The shooting. One of those peculiar rural ménage-a-trois
situations. The housekeeper was an English girl who innocently answered an
advert and found herself sharing a bed with two hairy yokels smelling of
sheepshit. Most distasteful."

   
"Oh, I don't know . .
Shirley giggled and looked across at Guto, who had an arm discreetly around
Miranda's waist. Shirley spotted the arm and looked disappointed.

   
"Anyway, the girl
inevitably got pregnant and the farmers, being unable to decide which of them
was the father, resolved the argument by throwing her out."

   
"Typical," Charlie
Firth said.

   
"Only, when she left, she
took their shotgun with her and returned that night and re-plastered the
bedroom wall with the pair of them."

   
"Heavy," said Gary
Willis.

   
"Quite a controversial
court case in its day," said Bill Sykes. "She got off very lightly,
perhaps because of the baby. I can't remember whether Winstone was actually born
in the prison hospital or whether she was out by then, but he certainly—"

   
"You're joking!" Ray
Wheeler put down his glass in astonishment.

   
"Hated the Welsh all his
life," said Sykes. "Had it instilled into him at his mother's knee that
no self-respecting English person should ever venture over Offa's Dyke. Been recycling
the story as a sort of parable ever since."

   
"Just a minute,"
Miranda said. "Where exactly did all this happen?"

   
"Oh, somewhere up North.
Snowdonia way. I imagine. I think I was the only one he ever told, but he
didn't go into details, even with me."

   
"You mean this Winstone
never actually came around here?"

   
"He never went to Wales in
his life," said Sykes. "And he warned everyone else to stay out as
well. Very fond of his mother, Winstone was. So now you know. I was sworn to silence,
but it can't do any harm now, can it?"

   
"I can hardly believe
it," Miranda said in a low voice to Guto. "Just wait till I tell
Morelli. The only reason he got dragged into all this was old Winstone and his
Cassandra routine."

   
"I'm confused," Guto
said. "And I think I would prefer to stay confused."

Dai Death, who had no interest in any of this, was at the bar quizzing
Aled about Bethan.

   
"I don't know where they
went," Aled said. "But if you find them, get her out of here. This is
no joke."

   
"I don't know whether I should
be asking you this, Aled but why would they want to go up to the church with
two crowbars and a hydraulic jack?"

   
Aled was silent, but Dai could
tell this had cut him like splinters from a suddenly shattered bottle.

   
Eventually, Aled said slowly.
"I shall have to tell them. If they don't already know."

   
"Tell who? What?"

   
"But I will not."

   
Unseasonal sweat shining on his
head, rivulets rolling into his silver sideburns. Dai said, "I am finding
it hard to work out who is mad here."

   
"Assume that everyone you
meet is mad," Aled said.

Shirley had taken off her ski-jacket and unbuttoned her blouse to a
dangerous extent. Charlie and Ray were taking an interest, but it was clear
Shirley wanted Gary Willis.

   
It was very hot in the bar, the
log fire superfluous in its inglenook. "Alec," Charlie Firth called
out. "We'll have another bottle of that Welsh Scotch."

   
Aled brought the whisky and
went over to the window, high in the wall behind the journalists.

   
Where were they?

   
There were few lights visible
in the cottages across the street, but there was a glow about the cottages themselves,
and a milky layer in the air. Premature snowdrops poked out of a tub under the
window. He was sure they had not been there this morning.

   
"Can we move the table
back from the fire?" the plump woman was saying. Half stripped, she was.
"Too hot even for me."

   
He wanted to tell them to drink
up and go.

   
In fact---realisation flared
around him, underfired with a simmering fear---he wanted to go with them.

   
But if they did not go, he knew
he could not stay and watch it happen, as he knew it must.