Candlenight

'Guto,' she said. 'Git-toe. It really is a super name.'

'Thank you,' Guto said dubiously. He was trying not to be charmed by this creature who, only minutes earlier, had been chanting git-toe, git-toe through clenched teeth, in concert with the rhythm of her loins.

What also filled him with a certain perverse delight was the thought that, in order to bonk this terribly English Englishwoman, he had actually infiltrated Simon Gallier's fortress, the Plas Meurig, and was about to spend a night within the hallowed portals free of charge.

Whatever the result, it had certainly been an experience, this by-election.

'You might as well tell me,' he said. 'How the hell did you manage to persuade them to let you have a room? And not just any room, for heaven's sake…'

He was looking up suspiciously at an ornate Victorian ceiling across which misshapen plaster cherubs frolicked amid gross moulded foliage.

'Isn't it so utterly tasteless?' said Miranda and giggled, a sound which reminded Guto of the tinkling door chimes in Pontmeurig's new health food shop which he'd entered for the first time during this afternoon's canvassing.

'It might be tasteless,' he said. 'But it's probably the best room they've got.'

An awful thought had crept up on him. They wouldn't, would they?

'Hah!' Miranda sprang up in the bed, wobbling deliciously. 'I know what you're worried about!'

'What am I worried about?'

'You think I've been planted, don't you? You think I'm an expensive bimbo hired by the opposition to discredit you. You think any second now the door's going to fly open and chaps will crowd in with popping flashbulbs. You do, don't you? Admit it!'

'Was a thought,' Guto mumbled gruffly.

'Hah!' Miranda shrieked and rolled about laughing. 'Oh, how utterly wonderful that would be!'

'Shut up, woman,' Guto hissed. 'Everybody'll know you've got somebody in here.'

'Oh, I love it when you call me 'woman'.'

'Well, come on, enlighten me. How did you get into a hotel that's been claiming to've been hooked up solid for weeks?'

'I'm not going to tell. I have my methods.'

'Now look. I'll…'

'Will you, Guto? Will you really? Do you think you still have the strength? Well, in that case I'll tell you just a little, it all comes down to judicious use of that famous phrase. Do you know who I am?' which never works with the police these days but still tends to put hoteliers in the most awful tizz, especially in small-town snobby dumps like this. So don't worry any more, OK?'

'Who said I was worried?'

Miranda dug into the bedclothes. 'Oh dear, he's utterly flaked out, isn't he, poor little Welsh thing. All right, I'll give him half an hour to recover. And you can use the time to tell me all about this dreadful village where people go to die.'

'Y Groes?' Guto fell back into the pillows. 'I suppose I died there myself, in a metaphorical way. In the theatrical sense of presenting your famous one-man show and no bugger applauds.'

'Did you know a chap called Martin Coulson?'

'Met him the once. Briefly, like.'

'I was talking to this old vicar who believes Coulson committed suicide because he was brilliant at speaking Welsh but he couldn't get a word of it out in the pulpit. Does that make any sense to you?'

'Aye, I remember now — he spoke Welsh to me. I switched over to English pretty smartly, mind, when I realised how good he was.'

'Typical.'

'Well, I was brought up in the Valleys. Welsh is only my second language, see. You don't like to be put to shame in your own country by an Englishman.'

'Good heavens, no.'

'And you say this vicar thought he topped himself because he couldn't turn it on in the church?'

That was what he said.'

'Sounds highly unlikely to me,' Guto said. 'Red hot, he was. And it's not an easy language to learn. This is what you wanted to tell Morelli?'

'More or less.' She told him how Berry Morelli had gone to Y Groes with Giles Freeman and returned feeling very funny, disturbed over some son of dubious psychic experience. 'And when Freeman snuffed it suddenly, he got very upset. And now these other two people. Giles's in-laws…Well, gosh, it's even made me think. It's a lot of deaths, isn't it?'

'Probably more than you know,' Guto said. 'But it's all explained and, after all, they were—'

He'd been about to say they were all English, but stopped himself on the grounds that she could do a man a lot of damage, this one.

'Well, I'm going there tomorrow night,' he said.

'I heard.'

'So if you want to tag along, it'll be one more in the audience.'

'Super,' Miranda said. 'I look forward to it. Where do you think Morelli's gone? Will he be there tomorrow?'

'How should I know?'

'It's snowing again.' Miranda said, switching out the bedside light so they could see the white blobs buffeting the long window. 'Quite hard, too.'

'Berry, wake up. Please.'

He turned his head into the steam from a white cup of black tea.

'What's the time, Beth?'

'Nearly four-thirty. I'm sorry to wake you, but my thoughts are killing me.'

He sat up, took the cup. Waking wasn't so hard.

'Please can we talk. About everything.'

'We can try, kid,' Berry said. He'd called her Beth and he'd called her kid, and she hadn't reacted. She must be serious about this.

'OK,' he said. 'So what are we into here? One sentence. One word. Say it.'

Bethan said, 'Magic.'

'That's the word,' Berry said. 'That's the word we've been walking all around and poking at with the end of a stick on account of we don't like to touch it.'

'Perhaps there are two words,' Bethan said.

'And the other one,' Berry said, taking her hand, 'is black. Right?'

They sat on the edge of the bed in the overheated hotel room, holding hands and drinking tea and watching the snow fall, feeling more afraid now the word had escaped.

Chapter LXI

Hotel staff had cleared most of the snow from the carpark, but Berry had to dig out the Sprite, which coughed like hell and turned the air blue with acrid smoke.

'Could be pneumonia,' he said anxiously, driving into the centre of Hereford, where the early morning streets had a first-fall purity that would last maybe until the shops opened.

The snow had stopped soon after dawn, but the bloated sky suggested this was only an interim gesture of goodwill.

The city library was almost opposite the cathedral and at this hour they had no problem parking right outside. Waiting for the library to open, they wandered the cathedral grounds, an ancient island cut off from the city by a soft white sea.

Bethan said, 'If it snows again we may not make it back for days. We'll have problems anyway; it could be a