Crybbe aka Curfew

'For God's sake, be careful. Preece, Jonathon Preece.'

'Right. You stay there, Mrs Seagrove. Get ready to phone.' Jesus, he thought, realizing he was trembling, what kind of place is this?

Guy Morrison was about to tear his hair. This was a two-camera job and he only had one. How was he supposed to shoot Goff and the destruction of the wall with one camera?

What this needed was a shot of the bulldozer crashing through, with a shower of stone, and a cut-back to Goff's triumphant face as he savoured the moment from his eyrie on the Tump. It would be a meaningful sequence, close to the top of the first programme, maybe even under the titles.

But now was ne supposed to get that with one crew? If he'd known about this beforehand, he'd have hired a local news cameraman as back-up – Griggs, for instance. But he didn't know about it in advance because this arrogant, fat bastard was playing his cards too close to his chest.

At least the delay was a breathing space.

'Which you want to go for, then?' the cameraman, Larry Ember, asked him, pulling his tripod out of the mud close to the summit of the mound.

Guy pushed angry, stiffened fingers through his blond hair. 'Whichever we go for, it'll be wrong,' he said uncharacteristically. 'Look, if we set up next to Goff, how much of the bulldozer stuff do you reckon you can shoot from here?'

'Useless,' Larry Ember said. 'You're shooting a wall collapsing, you got to be under the thing, like it's tumbling towards you. Even then, with one camera, you're not going to get much.'

'Maybe we can fake it afterwards. Get the chap to knock down another section of wall round the back or something. We've got no choice, I need to get his reactions.'

'Could always ask him to fake it afterwards.'

'Perhaps not,' said Guy.

'Fucking cold up here,' Larry said. 'What kind of summer is this?'

A swirling breeze – well, more than a breeze – had set the trees rattling around them.

'Going to rain, too, in a minute.' Larry Ember looked up at a sky like the inside of a rotten potato. 'We should have had lights up here. I told you we needed a sparks, as well. You can't cut costs on a job like this.'

'I didn't know it was going to happen,' Guy hissed. 'Did I? I thought it was going to be a couple of talking heads and a few GVs'

Goff lurched over, white jacket flapping in the wind. 'Some flaming cock-up here. Switch that damn thing off for now, Guy, will you?'

'You the producer, or is he?' the cameraman wondered provocatively.

'Go along with him. For now.' Guy had gone red. His dumpy, serious-faced assistant, Catrin Jones, squeezed his arm encouragingly. Guy knew she'd been in love with him for some time.

Below them, the speakers on the van began to crackle. Goff's voice came out fractured. '… et… chel Wade…up here. Get Rach… ade… up here NOW.'

Catrin zipped up her fleecy body-warmer, 'It's a funny thing…'

'Nothing,' snapped Guy, 'about this is funny.'

'No, I mean it's so cold and windy up here and down there… nothing.' She waved a hand towards the crowd below – some people drifting away now. 'No wind at all, nobody's hair is blowing or anything.'

'OK.' Guy prodded Larry Ember's left shoulder, bellowed down his ear. 'Executive decision. Let's get down there. Take a chance, shoot it from below.'

'… ucking sticks gonna blow over.' Larry clutched his camera as the wind buffeted the tripod. The wind seemed to be coming from underneath. Catrin's clipboard was suddenly snatched from her hands and wafted upwards with a wild scattering of white paper, like a bird disturbed.

She squealed. 'Oh no!' Clawing frantically at the air.

'Leave it!' Guy said.

'It's the shot-list!'

'Just let it go!'

Five yards away, Goff was shrieking into the microphone, to no effect. The sound had gone completely.

'… king weird, this set-up.' Larry's words snatched into the swirling wind.

'One more shot!' Guy screaming down the cameraman's car again. 'Get Goff. Get him now!'

Goff's arms were flailing, the wide lapels of his white jacket whipped across his chin, the trees roaring around him, the sky black. He was out of control.

Guy wanted this.

Powys edged round the field, concealed – he hoped – by gorse-bushes and broom, then crossed it diagonally, approaching the man, Jonathon Preece, from behind, as quietly as he could. Feeling himself quivering: outrage and apprehension. He could see the woman lying not quite flat, spread across the dog, looking up now at Preece.

Heard her harsh whisper. '… done, you bastard?'

'I'm allowed,' Preece said with, Powys thought, surprising belligerence, the shotgun under his arm, barrel unbroken, if a dog's threatening sheep…'

'There are no bloody sheep!'

'There is in that next field,' he insisted. 'Up there, 'e was. I seen 'im before. We 'ad four lambs killed up there t'other week.'

'You're lying! This dog wasn't even here last week.'

'If a farmer got reason to think…' Waving his arms for emphasis, the gun moving about under one.

'You going to shoot me now?'

Jonathon Preece looked down at the gun under his arm and stepped back a pace or two. Powys froze, only three or four yards behind him now. Preece bent down, watching the woman all the time, and laid the shotgun on the grass to one side,.

'See. I put 'im down now, the ole gun. You go 'ome. Nothing you can do.' A bit defensive now. 'I'm within my legal rights, you ask Wynford Wiley. Can't be 'elped. No place for dogs, sheep country.'

The woman didn't move. Powys saw a tumble of tawny hair over a blue nylon cagoule.

A curious thing happened then. Although it was way past 9 p.m. and the sky was deep grey – no trace of sunlight for hours – a shadow fell across the field like an iron bar.

And down it, like a gust of breath through a blowpipe, came a harsh wind.

'What's he doing? What is he doing?'

Rachel couldn't believe it. Max was lumping up and down on the summit of the mound, his white jacket swirling around him, his white trousers flapping, as if he was trying to keep his balance, struggling to stay on his feet.

'Looks like 'e's been caught in a hurricane,' Gomer Parry observed.

But there was no wind. The trees behind Goff on the Tump appeared quite motionless, while Goff himself was dancing like a marionette with a hyperactive child wielding the strings.

He's just angry, Rachel thought. Out of his mind with rage because the wall isn't collapsing and the PA system's broken down. Teach him to hire local firms for a job like this.

She was aware, on the edge of her vision, of Andy Boulton-Trow in his white shirt and his tight, black jeans looking up at the dancing bear on the mound. Andy's beard-shadowed face was solemn and watchful, then it split into a grin and he started shaking his head.

He saw Jonathon Preece look up in sudden alarm as the shaft of wind made a channel of black water across the river, from bank to bank.

There was a strangled yelp from the woman or the dog or both, but he couldn't hear either of them clearly because of the wind.

It came like a hard gasp of breath.

Bad breath.

The wind smelled foul. And as Powys, choking, reeled away from it, his senses rebelled and the whole scene