Candlenight

safely over. We're talking November at least.'

Claire realised then that this by-election could be quite a good thing after all. It would give them a trial period to see if life in Wales really suited them. Trying to get the cottage into some kind of shape and cover an election campaign at the same time would be quite a testing experience. And if they realised they were making a big mistake they could always come back here and either sell the place or keep it as a holiday home — and feel grateful they hadn't burned their boats.

'I'll tell you one thing, though,' Giles said, leaning against the remoulded plaster of the fireplace. 'Those bastards tonight, my so-called colleagues. It's made me realise how badly I want to get out of all this. It's a phoney life, a facade, just a garish backcloth we think we can perform against. Not real at all. I mean, I can't get on with those guys any more. Even Winstone — Christ, I thought he was a friend.' He shook his head with his mouth tight. Then he loosened up and flashed Claire a grin. 'What have you got on under there?' He tossed the phone into an armchair, threw off his jacket and plunged at the sofa.

Claire let him pull the dressing gown off her shoulders and suddenly quivered.

Nothing to do with Giles. Something her mother had said was replaying itself. She hadn't realised at the time, hadn't seen the significance… left his awful hovel to you. He only ever saw you once…

When? Claire didn't remember ever seeing her grandfather. She'd always understood there'd been no contact whatsoever since the day. two years before she was born, when Judge Thomas Rhys had gravely announced that he would be returning to the place of his birth, but his family would not be accompanying him. So when?

Excitement and dread combined to make Claire shiver.

Giles moaned, lips tracking down her bare shoulder. 'Darling…' he breathed.

Chapter IX

Look,' Miranda said. 'I just don't see it. Why don't you come back to bed?'

The sun had emerged, and Miranda looked rosy and warm and inviting.

'I didn't expect you would.' Berry said, standing by the window, turning to look into the street three storeys down.

'What counts is how I see it.' He gazed out towards the Thames. This building did not itself overlook the Thames but you could see some other buildings which did.

'Well it certainly isn't my idea of a dying wish or a last request or whatever,' Miranda said. 'To make a last request you have to know you're dying. And from what you say. he didn't.'

At the hospital, the tired-eyed young doctor on night-duty, jeans under the white coat, had said it looked like a small stroke followed by a second, massive stroke. Happened like an earthquake, or maybe an earthquake in reverse, a mild foreshock and then the big one. Bip. bam! Good a way to go as any, better than most. And he'd had a minor one before, had he? Say no more. Later, the cops had gone through the motions, because of the way it happened.

'I'm gonna call Giles,' Berry said. 'Maybe we can organise lunch.'

… Look, you put the arm on young Giles. Persuade him to get the bloody place sold. Soon as he can.

'You were going to have lunch with me, remember, if you were in town.' Miranda pulled the duvet over her breasts and went into a pout.

Shit, how was he supposed to get this across?

'See, it's just… when I first came over here I didn't know England from a hole in the ocean and ole Winstone, he kind of initiated me.'

'Is England so complicated?'

'Minefield.' Berry said. He'd taken the job with the agency, American Newsnet, without thinking, in his haste to get out. Mario Morelli's son guilty of unAmerican behaviour.

'The English National Press, they were a club I didn't know how to join.' he said. 'I walked in this bar one night and sat down and all these guys stared at me like I'd thrown up on the table. After a while one leaned over and said out of the corner of his mouth, 'You do know you're sitting in Winstone's chair.''

'I think I've seen that film,' Miranda said.

'So I apologised to Winstone.'

'As you would.'

'And he became the first one of them I really talked to, you know? I asked him a whole bunch of those questions I didn't dare ask anyone else. By closing time he'd explained how Parliament worked and all those British niceties. Why it isn't done to talk to the Queen without she talks to you first, or label a guy a killer after he's charged and like that. No big deal, but he saved my ass a few times, while certain people stood around waiting for me to fall on it. He was always there, anything I needed to know. He drank like prohibition was starting tomorrow, but it didn't matter to him that I didn't join him.'

'So long as you paid for his I shouldn't imagine it would bother him in the slightest,' said Miranda. 'You're endearingly naive sometimes, Morelli.'

'The only other guy ever spared the time to help me along was Giles,' said Berry.

Stop him. I mean it.

'Morelli,' Miranda said. 'You're overreacting. If Freeman is loopy enough to want to throw up his career to go and live in wildest Wales it's his decision. None of your business. And if you think old-what's-his-name is going to come back and haunt you, you must be even simpler than most of your race. Now come back to bed. I warn you — last chance.'

We're really not meant to be there, you know, the English.

'How much of a generalisation is it, that stuff about rugby and the Bible?'

'Wales? Who cares? It's still an awfully long way from Harrods.'

'You're a big help. Miranda.'

'Oh, you are a pain, Morelli. Look. I haven't been very often. It's got lovely mountains and nice beaches here and there. And in the south there used to be a lot of coal mines, and Cardiff's fairly civilised these days but terribly bland…But, from what you say, your friend is off to one of the primitive bits, about which I'm really not qualified to comment. You know me and the primitive. Admittedly, there are times for being primitive.

Miranda put on her most lascivious smile which, Berry had to admit, was pretty damn lascivious.

'Yeah, OK,' he said. 'Maybe I'll call Giles later.'

Chapter X

WALES

It was the third headline on the BBC Radio Wales news at 8 a.m.

'… and Sir Maurice Burnham-Lloyd, Conservative MP for Glanmeurig for more than thirty years, is dead.'

Guto Evans felt unexpectedly nervous. He lay in bed and waited for the full report. By the time it came on, he'd convinced himself that he definitely wasn't going to get the Plaid nomination. Dai Death had been right: no chance.

The whole report lasted just over one minute. After a summary of the high points of Burnham-Lloyd's career (Guto wondered how they'd managed to pad it out to twenty seconds) there was a short clip of the Secretary of State for Wales speaking over the telephone to the studio.

'… but most of all.' crackled the Secretary of State, 'Maurice was a constituency man, a farmer among farmers. He was always deeply concerned that people in London and in Brussels should be aware of exactly how their policies would affect a sheep farmer in the heart of Glanmeurig.'

Guto groaned, snapped off the radio and pushed back the covers. 'Mam!' he shouted, hearing the clatter of a