Candlenight

Berry drank his tea, not quite knowing where to start. He detected mild amusement in Miranda's green eyes. How could it be really serious if he'd strolled in afterwards and screwed her, however perfunctory that had been?

'I ever tell you about this guy I know, Giles Freeman?'

'The political reporter? I met him. if you remember, that time at Verity's. Very dashing and sporty, but terribly earnest. Quiet little wife, a bit hamsterish.'

Berry admired the way Miranda took in the essence of people she'd met only in passing. Ought to have been a much better actress than she was — maybe she just found it hard to let her own outrageous personality be submerged by lesser ones.

'You're saying Giles Freeman is dead?'

'Huh? No, shit. Giles is fine. That is…' He put the empty cup on the tea-tray and set it down on the carpet. And then he asked her, because this really was the bottom line. 'You ever get to Wales?'

'Wales?' Miranda patted around the duvet for her cigarettes. 'What's Wales got to do with it?'

'You ever go there?'

'Morelli.' she said, 'do I look like the kind of person who has Welsh connections? Like someone who reads the Bible all the time, plays rugby and eats seaweed?'

Berry thought about this. 'Maybe not.' he conceded. He found her cigarettes in a fold of the duvet, lit two and passed her one. 'Folks do that in Wales? They eat seaweed?'

'So it is said. They make some kind of bread from it. I went there once, but it was depressing. It rained.'

Miranda. If she visited the Taj Mahal during a monsoon it would forever be depressing.

'But this is Britain, right?' Berry said. 'This is Wales, England? Same island. What I mean… Welsh folks live in England. English folks live in Wales.'

'If they're desperate enough. Or they've been offered some terribly lucrative job out there, and there can't be many of those. Why do you ask?'

'OK.' Berry said. 'Hypothetical, right? If you had friends aiming to move to Wales, what would you say to them?'

Miranda's mouth twitched impatiently. 'I'd probably say au revoir rather than goodbye because most of my friends wouldn't even survive in Dorking. Morelli, what is all this about?'

Berry sighed. 'Listen, forget the hypothetical shit. What it's about is there's this guy moving to Wales and I find myself in the position of having to try and prevent that. I mean, Christ. I never went there, I don't plan to go there, but I got to talk this guy out of it. Guy who wants to make his home there more than anywhere else in the world, however bizarre that sounds to you. That's it. That's the situation.'

Under the duvet Miranda ran a hand across his thigh and back again. 'Nothing doing, then?' she said, affecting a squeaky East End accent.

'Gimme a break.'

'Morelli, I'm sure there's an awfully interesting story behind all this but I don't somehow think I want to go into it after all. It sounds frightfully complicated, and' — she reached over to her teacup on the bedside cabinet and tipped her cigarette into it half-smoked—'quite honestly, I find the whole subject of Wales the most awful turn- off.'

Miranda snuggled down, poking her bottom into Berry's right thigh and within a minute was asleep, leaving him to switch off the light and stare uncertainly into the blotchy dark, trying to figure out how this situation came about.

Chapter VI

That evening, seeing Winstone Thorpe flick open his ancient hooded eyes, Berry had thought of an old tomcat on a back-porch alerted by the flutter of wings.

'Where's that then?' Winstone had asked in that tired, diffident way he had.'

'It's a smallish country sort of welded onto the side of England, Winstone,' Giles Freeman explained, and he giggled drunkenly. 'It's where the M4 peters out. They've got mountains there. Play rugby. Sing a lot.'

'Oh…' old Winstone Thorpe chuckled and his chins wobbled. 'You mean Wales. Sorry old boy, must've misheard.'

Sure you did, you old bastard. Berry thought affectionately. He looked at Winstone across the pub table. Then he looked at Giles, who was clearly too drunk to realise he was being set up. Several of the other journalists, who knew Winstone of old, glanced up from their drinks and grinned.

'Wales, eh?' Winstone said. 'Oh dear.'

There he goes. Berry thought.

'All right,' Giles Freeman said testily. 'What's that supposed to mean?' Giles had drunk maybe five pints of beer, and he wasn't used to it. His fair hair was in disarray and his long face was hot and shiny, freckles aglow. He was too drunk to realise how bored they all were with hearing about his incredible piece of luck — well, Claire's actually, her inheritance. But an utterly amazing old place, splendid countryside, absolutely terrific atmosphere. Just being there made you realise how totally cardboard and artificial your urban environment was.

So Giles had fallen heavily for some backwoods shack.

And now old Winstone Thorpe, who had retired that day after more than half a lifetime on the Daily Telegraph, was blinking lazily beneath eyebrows like thatched eaves and saying 'Oh dear.'

'Well, come on, Winstone,' Giles was leaning aggressively across the table now. Berry had never seen him like this before; somebody had hit a nerve. 'If you've got something to say, just bloody say it.'

'But. dear chap…' Winstone put down his empty whisky glass and looked around vaguely until Ray Wheeler of the Mirror slipped him a replacement. 'Ah, a fellow Christian. Thank you. No, you see — am I stating the obvious here? You're an Englishman, old boy.' Somewhere a clock chimed. It was eleven o'clock, and there was a momentary silence in the battered Edwardian bar of what old Winstone Thorpe maintained was the last halfway decent pub in what used to be Fleet Street.

Berry found himself nodding. Aside, perhaps, from old Winstone himself, Giles Freeman was just about the most English guy he'd ever met. even here in England.

'Now look, Winstone.' Giles took an angry gulp of his beer. 'That is just incredibly simplistic. I mean, have you ever even been to Wales? Come on now. tell the truth?'

Wrong question, Giles, thought Berry. You just walked into it. He leaned back and waited for Winstone Thorpe's story, knowing there had to be one.

'Well, since you ask…' The venerable reporter unbuttoned his weighty tweed jacket and lifted his whisky glass onto his knee. 'Matter of fact. I was in Wales once.'

'No kidding.' Berry said and then shut up because there were guys here who still had him down as a no- talent asshole on the run. Things had changed since his last time here, as a student in the seventies. People had gotten tighter, more suspicious — even journalists. They were coming across like Americans imagined the English to be — stiff, superior. And they were suspicious of him because he wasn't like Americans were supposed to be — didn't drink a lot, never ate burgers. They weren't programmed for a vegetarian American hack who'd come up from the Underground press and dumped on his distinguished dad. Berry looked around the three tables pushed together and saw complacent smiles on prematurely-florid faces. These were mainly Parliamentary reporters like Giles. In this job, after a while, after long hours in the Westminster bars, journalists began to look like MPs.

'Early sixties, must've been.' Winstone said. His face had long gone beyond merely florid to the colour and texture of an overripe plum. 'Sixty-two? Sixty-three? Anyway, we were dragged out to Wales on a Sunday on the son of story that sounds as if it's going to be better than it actually turns out. Somebody'd shot this old fanner and his son, twelve-bore job, brains all over the wall. Lived miles from anywhere, up this God-forsaken mountain. Turned out the housekeeper did it, sordid domestic stuff, only worth a couple of pars. But that's beside the point.'

Berry glanced over at Giles who was trying to look bored. Giles caught the glance and rolled his eyes