Crybbe aka Curfew

Without the wood, the town would be at his feet.

And everything – the gateway, the road, the church – was in a dead straight line.

He'd seen this view before.

In fact, if he turned and looked over his shoulder…

He did turn and looked only into blackness.

But if he could see through the walls of the house, what he would see behind him, following the same dead straight line… would be the Tump.

'Is this opening as old as the house?'

'I presume so,' Rachel said. 'Spectacular, isn't it?'

'Which means Wort had it built. Maybe this is why John Dee came here, nothing to do with the bloody hangings. Rachel, have you ever actually seen a ley-line?'

'This?'

'It's textbook. In fact…' He leaned across the iron bar, not pushing it because it didn't look too steady. This is the strongest evidence I've seen that the ley system was recognized in Elizabethan times. We know that John Dee occasionally came back to his old home and during those times he studied dowsing and investigated old churches and castle sites. He called it, in his records and his letters, treasure hunting. But what kind of treasure, Rachel? You know, what I think..

He stopped. There were the voices again.

'Humble,' Rachel said. 'And somebody else.'

Powys's stomach contracted painfully.

'I don't think Humble actually got round to apologizing to you, did he?' said Rachel.

'l owe him one.'

'Don't even contemplate it. He's a very nasty person. Ah, they were waiting for Max.'

The black Ferrari hit the gravel with an emphatic crunch. Humble stepped out and opened the driver's door. Andy Boulton-Trow was with him.

'I don't like the company he keeps either,' Powys said.

'Humble? Or Boulton-Trow?'

'Either.'

Rachel said, 'Is there something I don't know about you and Boulton-Trow?'

Joey goes round the Bottle Stone,

The Bottle Stone, the Bottle Stone,

Joey goes round the Bottle Stone,

Ana he goes round…

'Hold it!'

They all look at Andy.

'It's widdershins,' he says.

'What?' says Ben.

'Widdershins. Anticlockwise. You're going round the wrong way, Joe.'

'Why?'

'Because that's what you have to do. I was watching a bunch of kids. It's traditional. Widdershins, OK?'

You shrug, but you aren't entirely happy about this. Old Henry Kettle gets up, turns his back and walks off, down towards the river.

'OK,' Ben says. 'Start again.'

Sod it. Only a game You start to tramp slowly around the stone. There's a smile on your face because what you're thinking about is how much you love Rose and how glad you are that they managed to get her name on the cover.

And he goes round… ONCE.

When Guy came to the door, Fay simply pretended there was nobody in, knowing it had to be her ex-husband calling in on the way to his lunch date with Max Goff and his cohorts.

Knowing, also, that if Guy was in the mood he was arrogant enough to have lined her up as today's emergency standby leg-over. Fay, hi! (Long time, no bonk!)

Behind the bathroom door she clenched her fists.

There was a second ring.

Fay sat on the lavatory with the lid down. The lid was still topped by one of Grace's dinky little light-green candlewick loo-mats.

Grace. Her dad thought that Grace Legge, dead, had smashed the Revox. Somehow. It was insane. And there was no way they could talk about it.

There was no third ring.

Arnold sat at Fay's feet and wagged his tail. He never reacted to the doorbell.

Only the curfew bell.

'Arnold,' Fay said, 'do you want to talk about this?' Arnold looked at her with sorrowful eyes. Even when his tail was wagging his eyes were sorrowful.

She held his muzzle between her hands. She couldn't remember ever feeling so confused, so helpless. So completely wiped out.

The phone rang in the office. Fay drifted down to answer it, not in any hurry. She wished she'd put on the answering machine, but the thing had been disabled so many times by power cuts that she'd almost abandoned it.

'Hello.'

There was a hollow silence at the other end.

'Mrs Morrison?' A local accent. Male.

'Yes. Who's that?'

'Mrs Morrison, you been told.'

'Have I? Told what?'

'So this is your last warning, Mrs Morrison. You 'ave till weekend.'

'To do what?'

But, of course, she knew.

'And what if I don't?' Fay said grimly. 'What if I say I have no intention of even considering getting rid of the dog? Especially as nobody seems prepared to explain what the hell this is all about?'

'You been told,' the voice said. 'And that's it.'

Chapter III

Gomer Parry did plant hire.

He operated from an old wartime aircraft hangar up the valley, outside the village where he lived. In this hangar he had two lorries, the heaviest tractor in the county, a big JCB, a small JCB and these two bulldozers.

You didn't hire the equipment; what you hired was Gomer Parry, a tough little bloke with mad, grey hair and wire-rimmed glasses.

Been a farmer for nearly twenty years before the magic of plant hire had changed his life. sold most of his land to buy the old hangar and the machinery. Gomer Parry: sixty-four now, and he never looked back.

Gomer could knock buildings down and make new roads through the forestry. He could dig you a new septic tank and a soakaway that soaked away even in Radnorshire clay. And during bad winters the highways authority always hired him as a snow-plough.