Candlenight (11 page)

   
Bethan stopped walking.

   
"Sometimes." Sali
said, walking on then turning round on the path, "she asks me if I can see
people in their heavenly bodies."

   
Dear God.

   
"But I can't," Sali
said. "Well, I don't think I can.
Nain
says that is because my mam was English. She says the English haven't got the
gift."

   
Lucky them, thought Bethan.
They were following the path deep into the wood. It would soon be strewn with acorns.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and nature rambles and autumn leaves to
press. Once, autumn had excited Bethan—the scent of burning
 
leaves, logs gathered for the fire, newly made
toast. Someone to eat it with. She thought, that's right, burst into tears in
front of the child.

   
Instead she sat down on a big
tree stump and pulled Sali towards her, gripping the girl's arms. "Sali,
look at me."

   
Sali gazed into Bethan's face.
Disturbingly, she was reminded of the way Buddug had looked at her that morning.
Condescending.

   
"Sali, some . . . some
people don't want to let the dead go. Do you remember last year . . . my
husband died."

   
The child stood stiffly between
Bethan's hands. She did not seem interested.

   
"I was very sad."
Bethan said. "I didn't want him to be dead. I used to think about him all
the time. I still—"
   
"He was only English." Sali
said
   
"I—what did you say?"
   
Sali pulled quickly away and ran off.
   
"Sali! Come here!"

   
The child had vanished, as if
the woods had absorbed her. Alone now in this sombre place Bethan thought, I've
blown it. We're on different sides of some invisible barrier. She's
gone to Buddug and Mrs. Bronwen Dafis.

   
"Sali, come back now, we
have to go home."

   
The child had disappeared.

   
"Sali, where are
you?"

   
The wood was heavy with age and
stillness. No birds fluttered in the undergrowth. Overhead the branches formed a
great canopy of darkest green, no breath of Autumn yet among the foliage.

   
"Sali! This instant!"

   
Bethan had risen to her feet,
feeling cold now in her white cotton dress. She stepped off the path and a
bramble ensnared her shoe, pulling it off.

   
"Damn you. Sali—"

   
She tore her shoe away from the
spiny tendril, scratching her hand, drawing blood. What was she bothering
about? The kid probably knew every inch of these woods, and there were no
marauding paedophiles in Y Groes.

   
"I'm going home now, Sali.
If you want to stay here all night, that's up to you."

   
What if she'd fallen somewhere?
Pushing on through the bushes. Bethan suddenly became aware of the sound of rushing
water

   
What if she'd fallen in the
river?
   
"Sali! Shout if you can hear
me!"

 
 
She
saw where some of the undergrowth had recently been flattened, and she moved
towards it. Overhead, the sky had darkened and mingled with the interwoven
leaves. There was a harsh spattering of rain. She could hear it but couldn't
feel it yet.

   
"Shout, Sali!"

   
She prised her way through the
bushes towards the sound of water and felt her dress tear at the hem.
   
"Damn you. Sali, if you're—"

   
A blackberry had been squashed
against her hip and she looked down and saw bubbles of juice like dark blood.
Then she slipped and fell down the river bank, rolling over and over.

The crows had taken his eyes.
   
That was the first thing she saw.

   
She was winded by the fall and
lay on her back, a few yards from the water. Pain rippled up her left leg:
ankle twisted.

   
A muddy boot swung gently about
a yard above her head. She must have caught it as she rolled past. The boot
made a sort of click as it swung against the other boot.

   
Bethan retched.

   
"I said, didn't I. Miss
Sion?"

   
Sali Dafis was standing at the
edge of the river looking proudly up at where he hung, nylon climber's rope
under his chin, knotted around the branch, his tongue out, black now.

Chapter XIII

Pontmeurig was eight miles from Y Groes, on the other side of the Nearly
Mountains. A slow, messy drive, especially for a hearse.

 
It was an untidy town, mottled
grey and brown, something that had rolled down from the hills in the Middle
Ages and was still rolling, new housing estates and factories spilling over the
old boundaries on either side of the river.

   
Still puzzled by the attitude
of Aled Gruffydd, Dai Death drove the corpse into town past the cattle mart and
the new car park and past what was left of the medieval castle, looming grey in
the dusk. Sometime in the early fifteenth century the castle had been burned
down by Owain Glyndwr, it was said, in retribution for something, and had never
been rebuilt because nobody could remember why the hell they'd ever needed a
castle in Pontmeurig anyway.

   
In a street squashed behind the
ruins, almost opposite one of the town's three chapels, was an offensive new
fast-food take-away. The Welsh Pizza House, owned, of course, by English
people. Next to it was a small yard with a sign that said: V. W. Williams and Sons,
Funeral Directors. Dai was parking the hearse under the sign when the police
car drew up alongside and a constable wound down his window.

   
"You've done it again,
Dai. He's not yours yet, he's ours."

   
"Oh, bloody hell."
said Dai. "I'm sorry, Paul. Automatic pilot I'm on today. You back into
the entry and I'll turn around."

   
"Daft bugger, Williams,"
he told himself, switching his lights on, then putting the hearse into reverse.
Understandable, though: it had been a year since the Dyfed-Powys police had last
used him as a meat wagon.

   
He pulled out into the main
street and drove past the police station to the cottage hospital at the bottom
of the town. The forecourt wasn't very big and was packed with cars, because it
was visiting time, so he had to park on the pavement outside. He got out,
hoping the police would find him a space. He didn't like having a fibreglass
shell seen in public; people would think he specialised in cheap coffins.

   
A thirtyish couple walked past
in identical outsize lumberjack shirts and baggy corduroy trousers with turn-ups.
The man had a baby strapped into a sort of sling around his chest. "Pity,
really.'" he was saying. "Super view. I thought." The voice
carried across the quiet street.

   
"Look at that." Guto Evans
said, walking up behind them on his way to the Drovers. "The Ethnic Look.
Designer working clothes. And of course they have to pretend they can't afford
a bloody pram. Evening, Dai."

   
"What do they call those
things?" Dai asked him.
   
"Something Red Indian."

   
"Papoose." said Guto
in disgust. "The day you show me a Welshman with a papoose around his neck
is the day I emigrate to Patagonia" He peered into the back of the hearse.
"Who have you got in there?" His black beard split into a wide,
carnivorous grin. "Burnham-Lloyd himself is it?"

   
Dai did not find this funny.
He'd had a vague hope that he, the local man, would have been chosen to handle
the Burnham-Lloyd funeral, but the more he thought about it the less likely it
seemed.

   
"Let me tell you something,
Guto." he said. "Even if, through some insane aberration, they were
to make you the candidate, I don't even think your mother would vote for you.
It's a hiker."

   
"What is?"

   
"Him. In the back. They
found him in the woods by Y Groes."
   
"English?"
   
"Probably."

   
"Second one in just a few
days. Bloody hell, Dai, might as well be working for the council, the times
they send for you to cart away the rubbish."

   
"Anybody can tell, Guto,
that you are a natural politician. That sense of fair play, of diplomacy, the
way you choose your words so as not to cause offence." Dai opened up the tailgate
of the hearse so fast that Guto jumped back. "How would you like to help
me carry him in?"

   
"Me? Carry a coffin? An
Englishman's coffin?"

   
"Don't like the thought of
death, do you, Guto?"

   
"Get lost," said
Guto.

   
Dai nodded knowingly. Most
people were made instantly uncomfortable by the arrival of himself and his
hearse. Except for those in professions touching on the death business—doctors,
nurses, solicitors, monumental masons.
And the police.

By the time Dai had arrived the body had been cut down and lay on the
river bank in the manner of a determined sunbather, vainly stretching out his
head to catch what remained of the light.

   
Then Dai saw the rope still
dangling from the branch and realised what this was all about.

   
"Oh dear," he had
said to Chief Inspector Gwyn Arthur Jones, and the policeman nodded.

   
"I've never understood why
they come out here to do it," Gwyn Arthur said, taking out his pipe.
"Three or four a year, I reckon. If it's not here it's the Elan Valley. If
it's not a rope over a tree it's a rubber pipe from the exhaust."

   
Dai did not mention that it was
his personal ambition to die here too in case the Chief Inspector got the wrong
idea.
   
"Well, they come here for
holidays. Happy memories, isn't it. Want to go out where they were
happiest."

   
"Bottle of pills and a
photo album would save us all a lot of mess," said Gwyn Arthur.

   
The corpse looked to be in his
mid-forties and quite a seasoned hiker, judging by his clothing and well-worn boots.

   
"Who found him?"

   
"What's her name—the
teacher. Pretty girl."
   
"Bethan? Oh God."

   
"Well, one of the kids it was
originally. Anyway, Dai, we want to have a little poke around the woods, just
to make sure he was alone. Then you can cart him up to the hospital mortuary.
Why don't you go and bang on the
Tafarn
door and get Aled to give you a pint. If you leave your casket on the bank, by
there, my boys will have filled it up for you by the time you get back."

   
Dai made his way back to the
hearse. He'd managed to squeeze it into a bit of a clearing by the roadside so
it wasn't very far to carry the coffin down to the river—not as far, anyway, as
it would seem to the coppers carrying it back.

   
It was less than a quarter of a
mile to the village, so he walked, feeling the air—so much lighter, somehow,
than the air in Pontmeurig. He strolled across the bridge to Tafarn y Groes. It
was just gone six. Aled rarely opened before seven-fifteen. Dai rapped briskly
on the pub door. Forgetting, until the pain stung his knuckles, what a solid
oak door this was.

   
For a long time there was no
response.

   
Dai was about to knock again
when the door opened slowly and unwillingly, and in the gap he saw Aled's worried
face. His white hair was uncombed: he had a hunted look about him.

   
"Coffee. Aled?"

   
"What?"

   
"Coffee. I won't ask you
for a pint, but I wouldn't mind a coffee."

   
"What are you doing
here?"

   
Dai was thrown by this. All
right, he was early and some landlords could be expected to be inhospitable.
But not Aled. Aled was flexible.

   
"Something wrong, is
there?"

   
"No . . . Well. Gwenllian's
not so good. Bad throat. Awake half last night. Got a bit behind, we
have."

   
"Oh. I'm sorry. In that
case I won't bother you."