Candlenight

'Right. Or have their negative emotions take over. Lose their normal resistance to unacceptable or downright brutal behaviour. Like ole George Hardy. Suburban solicitor beats wife to death. In short, go nuts.'

'Or,' Bethan said, 'if we try to explain the deaths from natural causes, to get into such a state that even their bodies stop fighting.'

'OK, Like the immune system breaks down or something of that order. My knowledge of these things is no more than the average hypochondriac. So they're exposed to diseases, tumours form that never would've, heart diseases worsen and, well, yeah—'

'I've always found it bitterly ironic.' Bethan said, bleakly, 'that Robin, who was so opposed to nuclear power, should die of a condition so often said to be induced by radiation escaping from nuclear installations.' She shook her head sadly. 'Radiation.'

'Was he happy in Y Groes? Was it like he'd imagined?'

'He — Oh, what does it matter now…' Bethan was twisting her scarf. 'The truth is we never really had much of marriage in Y Groes. Almost as soon as we moved in, he began to be tired and irritable. The stress of the move and the travelling and having to search for nuclear dump-sites — that was what he put it down to. We used to go for walks together, along the river bank, up to the woods, and he would go so far and he just became… bone-tired, you know?' She turned away, stared hard at the people-shapes passing the misted car window. 'l'm going to cry.'

'Let's get outta here.' Berry flung the Sprite into gear, rubbing the windscreen clear, moving into a line of traffic in the one-way system out of town.

'We really are insane, aren't we?' Bethan was shouting at him. 'Tell me we're insane! Tell me we're imagining it all, fabricating something out of thin air to account for a lot of people's bad luck. Look, for God's sake, take me home, Morelli! Don't you have a job to go to?'

'No,' he said. 'And you don't want to go home. You know where we have to go.'

'No…' Bethan was shaking. That is, she was sitting here very still, but he knew she really was shaking inside. We can't.'

'How else?' He also was shouting now, against the ear-threshing of a big delivery van alongside them. 'How else we gonna find out one way or the other? How else, without we go in there and start kicking asses till we get some answers?'

'You don't know what it's like!' Bethan screamed.

A lorry's brakes hissed… ssssssssssssssssssiiiice!

He turned into a stream of traffic crossing a wide bridge over the Wye.

'You came back, Beth. Nobody said you had to take that job. You'd killed its baby and you came back.'

Bethan wept, biting hard into her lower lip until blood came.

Chapter LXII

Tin- radio had described the road over the Nearly Mountains as 'passable with care.'

On the way to Pont, with his wife Gwenllian in the passenger seat, Aled had driven with considerable concentration, knowing of old what this road could do with a coat of snow on its back. On the return journey, alone now, his driving had been sloppy, his mind on other things, and he'd taken a corner too fast and ploughed the van into a snowdrift.

Digging himself out with the shovel he always kept in the back from November until May, Aled could see the tip of Y Groes's church tower, a light haze around it, wispy blue.

While the sky above him, as he shovelled snow from around the van wheels, was thick as pastry.

He was going back. He had put Gwenllian, who did not understand these things, on the bus to Aber where her sister lived. But he was going back.

What alternative was there? He was the keeper, like his dad before him, of the most beautiful inn in the most beautiful place you would find anywhere. This was what he told himself.

He threw the spade in the back of the van. All around him the Nearly Mountains were tundra, no visible blade of grass. The slender creature about two hundred feet away was a fox, ears pricked, loping off when it saw him, black against the snow. Everything in black and white from up here, except the sky over Y Groes.

By the time he arrived back in the village — not yet ten o'clock — the sky had deepened to a lurid mauve, the colour pouring in from a circle in the clouds like a hole sawn in a sea of ice for Eskimos to fish. It was as if the church tower had stabbed out the hole.

In the village, the light scattering of snow had already melted. For the first time Aled did not like the fact that there was so little snow here while so much lay on the lower ground of Pontmeurig. For the first time it seemed less than healthy. The ochre and grey stone shone with moisture, like film of sweat. The whitewashed buildings had a mauvish glow that made him think of the glow in the faces of people on radium treatment.

It's gone too far, Aled thought.

Going to snow again, though,' Guto observed hopefully. Why don't we call it off now?'

He wasn't inclined to risk any journey which might so delay his return to Pontmeurig that it would be difficult to slip unseen up the stairs at the Plas Meurig and into Suite 2, where the woman at the centre of all his finest fantasies would be waiting in exquisitely expensive French knickers.

There had been a few amazing moments last night when the result of the Glanmeurig by-election had seemed a matter of little consequence.

'No way,' the General Secretary of Plaid Cymru pronounced. He glared at the sky through his tinted glasses — permanently rose-coloured, Guto thought — and then consulted his personal organiser. 'Saturday tomorrow, OK? Big day. And you have meetings scheduled all next week. This is a crucial one. We can't be seen to be avoiding discussions with the farming organisations. If they want to call it off, fine, but we cannot.'

'But, Alun, nobody will come! It'll be just like last time, and where does that leave us?'

Alun spread his hands. 'We're not dependent on the villagers, this time. It just happens to be a central venue. Farmers, this is, Guto. And tell me, what does every farmer have?'

'A bloody big chip on his shoulder.' said Guto.

'A four-wheel drive vehicle,' Alun said patiently. 'Enabling him to get to places otherwise inaccessible. Which is why they won't call it off. Deliberately — to see what you're made of. Fortunately, we also have two Land-Rovers at our disposal, one for you and me and one for Dai and Idwal and the boys from rent-a- supporter, so you will not be lonely this time. Anyway, it isn't going to snow that hard, according to the forecast. And you will come across as tough and dynamic and totally reliable.'

'Piss off,' said Guto.

'Will you be staying another night. Miss Moore-Lacey?'

Miranda was an inch or two taller than the proprietor of the Plas Meurig, but the way she looked at him made it seem like a couple of feet.

'Possibly,' she said.

His thin smile was barely perceptible on his plump face. 'Would it be possible for you to let us know by lunchtime, do you think?' Slightly less deference than yesterday, she thought. Might have to deal with that.

'I'll see,' she said airily and walked briskly through the hotel foyer to the front door, slinging her bag over her shoulder as a gesture of dismissal.

Outside the door she giggled, feeling almost light hearted. Wondering how many points one was entitled to for a Neanderthal Welsh nationalist Having woken her up a some ungodly hour for the purpose of giving her one for the road. Guto had slipped away before eight, confident of passing relatively unnoticed among all the Tories and Liberals milling around waiting for an early breakfast.

As she walked out to the Porsche, a man with one of those motorised things on his camera look about half- a-dozen photographs of her. Miranda waved gaily to him. Famous actress spotted in Wales. Hah!

All the main roads had been cleared of snow; the by-roads were not to be trusted, the radio said.

'We shall be all right then.' Bethan said, 'at least as far as Pontmeurig.'

Ahead of them, the mountains were pure white and flat as a child's collage.