REGINALD HILL
SINGING THE SADNESS

A Joe Sixsmith novel

Copyright

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1999

Copyright © Reginald Hill 1999

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007334834

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2015 ISBN: 9780007389179

Version: 2015-07-27

Dedication

For POLLY without whose contribution this book would have been finished a great deal sooner

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Keep Reading

About Reginald Hill

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

The Boyling Corner Chapel Choir sped across the heart of England like a nest of singing birds and as they crossed the Welsh border there was a spontaneous outburst of ‘We’ll Keep a Welcome in the Hillsides’. Not even when the coach ground to a halt an hour or so later in a puff of smoke dark enough to hide a demon king did their spirits sink.

Not at first anyway.

‘No sweat,’ assured their driver, Merv Golightly, whose broad smile and cheerful manner had been honed at the wheel of a Luton taxi. ‘We’re only half an hour away and I’ll fix this in a jiffy.’

Several jiffies later, Joe Sixsmith got out and strolled round to join Merv at the open bonnet. The two of them had been workmates at Robco Engineering of Luton till the economic miracle workers of the sick eighties had told them to take up their P45s and walk. Joe’s years of working at a lathe and on a much-loved, much-regretted Morris Oxford, had left him with a high degree of mechanical expertise, but Merv’s years of driving a fork-lift truck had never taken him beyond the bang-it-with-a-spanner school of repair.

The spanner was in Merv’s hand now, the same outsize length of metal nicknamed Percy which he kept beneath his taxi seat for those situations which neither his cheerful manner nor broad smile could defuse.

‘Hang about, Merv,’ said Joe, seeing the spanner poised menacingly. ‘Let the dog see the rabbit.’

It didn’t take long and it wasn’t a rabbit but a dead donkey.

‘Oil pump’s gone,’ he said. ‘Merv, where’d you buy this heap of junk? At a Transport Museum boot sale?’

‘Hey, I’ve got all the safety certs and such, you seen them,’ said Merv, hurt.

This was true. Joe had insisted on seeing them soon as he heard Merv had not only extended his personal transport service to include coach hire but had put in the lowest bid for the Boyling Corner expedition to Wales. It was Rev. Pot, pastor and choirmaster, who made the final choice, but many of the choristers, led by Joe’s Aunt Mirabelle, were convinced Joe had put in a fix.

‘Can you patch it up?’ asked Merv hopefully.

His hope was mirrored on the faces of Rev. Pot and others who’d also congregated round the bonnet.

‘No way,’ said Joe dolefully. ‘Needs a new pump. At least. Which means it needs a garage.’

All eyes turned to the empty road ahead. There were fewer signs of life there than in Westminster on a Friday, and they’d passed no human habitation for at least ten miles.

Then Joe, with a politician’s timing, let a broad smile dawn on his face and said, ‘So, no problem. I’ll just call up help,’ and produced his mobile phone.

The effect was slightly spoilt when he couldn’t get it to work till Beryl Boddington took it gently out of his hand and switched it on.

Five minutes later he was able to announce that a mechanic was on the way with the necessary part.

Aunt Mirabelle gave him a don’t-think-that’s-going-to-change-my-mind glower. She still regarded his post-lathe career in private investigation as a symptom of stress-induced brain fever which marriage to a good woman, plus regular attendance at chapel and the job centre, would soon cure. She’d reacted to the news that Joe had bought a mobile like a Sally Army captain catching a reformed drunk coming out of an off-licence with a brown paper parcel.

‘What you need that thing for?’ she’d demanded.

‘For my work,’ Joe explained.

‘For your work? For the devil’s work, you mean!’

‘No, Auntie,’ Joe had retorted with a rare flash of open rebellion. ‘So’s I can keep in touch with my clients. Not everyone in our family’s got such big ears they can hear other folks’ private business twenty miles off just by flapping them!’

But now she confined herself to the glower, then set about distributing the sandwiches which she’d packed, on the grounds that when you visited a foreign country, there was no telling how long before you’d be able to find something a Christian soul could eat.

It was a mild late-spring afternoon and soon the choristers were sprawled out along the rock-strewn banks of the fast-flowing stream which ran parallel to the road. Joe lay next to Beryl Boddington, who was high among the runners in his aunt’s nuptial stakes. But Joe had long since come to realize that Beryl ran under no colours but her own, and now it came into his mind how very much he was enjoying his present situation. Only way it could be improved was by beaming the rest of the choir out of sight somewhere. Or failing that, moving himself and Beryl somewhere a little more private.

He sat upright and said casually, ‘Thought I might take a little stroll and stretch my legs. You fancy a bit of exercise?’

She didn’t answer but lay there looking up at him and smiling broadly.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Joe Sixsmith,’ she said. ‘I recall you telling me you were a through and through city boy, couldn’t get on with country life. Now I see why.’

‘Yeah? Why?’

‘It’s all this fresh air, turns you into some kind of wild animal. Like a werewolf.’

‘Shoot, all I said was, let’s take a walk.’

‘And that’s all you want, Joe? A walk?’

She pouted as if disappointed and, emboldened, he said, ‘That’ll do for starters. So, what you say?’

‘Well, I’m tempted, Joe. Only …’

‘Yeah?’

‘Hadn’t you better be around when the breakdown truck arrives to see Merv don’t get ripped off?’

Joe followed her gaze. About a mile ahead along the road a van was approaching. Who’d have thought they’d be so quick out here in the sticks? Then he glanced at his watch and saw that more than an hour had passed since he rang. He’d never make a Don Juan. A real operator would have got to work at least forty-five minutes ago.

On the other hand, a real operator probably wouldn’t have enjoyed simply lying alongside Beryl in the warm sunshine the way he did.

He smiled at her and she smiled back.

‘We’ve got all this countryside for the next three days, Joe. Plenty of time to be stretching our muscles.’

That sounded like a promise. Jauntily he made his way back to the coach.

The van bore the single word BREAKDOWN like a command, and its engine coughed asthmatically as if eager to obey.

Merv scowled and said, ‘Listen to that. And he’s coming to mend my machine.’

‘Not to worry,’ said Joe. ‘Best barbers always have the worst haircuts.’

‘Oh yeah?’ said Merv. ‘Well, if he draws in his breath sharply when he sees my engine, I’m going to hit him with Percy.’

‘You’ll need to aim low,’ said Joe as the van halted and the driver slid out.

He was square-shaped, about five by five, with no visible neck, so that his head sat on his shoulders like a traitor’s displayed on a city wall. Joe was reminded of Starbright Jones, another Welshman he’d met on a recent case, who’d been carved out of the same rough granite. The memory made him smile – he’d grown quite fond of Starbright – and the smile won an indifferent nod, or maybe it was directed at Merv’s scowl, and without other greeting the man went straight to the bonnet.

There was no sharp intake of breath but there was a note of incredulity as he said, ‘Just the oil pump you want me to sort out, is it?’ like the Good Samaritan told that half an aspirin and a Band-aid would do.

Percy twitched and Joe said quickly, ‘What else you got in mind?’

The man said, ‘In alphabetical order …’ and listed half a dozen areas of trouble or potential trouble. His alphabet was erratic but his diagnosis confirmed many of Joe’s own fears.

‘Better take a look then,’ he said, interposing his body between Merv and the Welshman. ‘Want a hand?’

He got a pro sneer in reply, which might have annoyed a more self-regarding man, but Joe took it in his stride and after ten minutes, when his assistance had demonstrated he was no know-it-all amateur, the man thawed a little and let it be known his name was Nye.

‘Nye Garage they call me, from the job, see? Round here knowing what people do is important.’

This might have been a lure but Joe ignored it. Professionally he’d spent a lot of time experimenting with subtle techniques for getting people to talk and the sum total of his wisdom was, if a man wants to know something, best way usually is to ask.

Eventually Nye got round to it.

‘Trippers, is it?’ he said, glancing at the lounging choristers. ‘Going to the seaside?’

‘Look like trippers, do we?’ said Joe grinning.

‘Don’t look like mountain climbers,’ said Nye.

There was no gainsaying this, and Joe replied, ‘We’re singers. A choir. We’re on our way to the Llanffugiol Choral Festival.’

He spoke with modest pride, confident of making some kind of impression. After all, this was the land of song where a good voice vied with the ability to run very fast with a pointed ball as the gift most desired from your fairy godmother.

He was disappointed. Nye looked at him blankly for a long moment. Perhaps he was deaf, thought Joe. Or tone deaf. Or maybe it was his own poor pronunciation.

‘The Llanffugiol Choral Festival,’ he said carefully, blowing out the double-L sound with a singer’s breath.

‘Never heard of it,’ said the Welshman indifferently. ‘Pass me that wrench, will you, boyo?’

Boyo, Joe had learned from Starbright, wasn’t a racist put-down but a term of familiarity in Welsh-speak. He passed the wrench and would have liked to discover whether it was just the festival or Llanffugiol itself Nye hadn’t heard of, which would be odd as Merv had assured them they were only half an hour’s drive away. But Merv was lurking menacingly and an enquiry could have sounded like a vote of no confidence in his navigation, so Joe held his peace.

It took almost an hour for Nye to finish and another ten minutes to tot up his bill. Merv looked at it and indulged in an intake of breath so sharp that in another it would have merited a very severe whipping from Percy.

A full and frank discussion followed with Joe as arbiter. Finally forced to admit the justice of the claims, Merv produced his clincher.

‘Don’t carry that kind of cash,’ he said, producing his wallet to demonstrate its leanness. ‘Joe, we’ll need a whip-round.’

Joe, imagining Aunt Mirabelle’s reaction if he went to her with a collection plate, shook his head firmly.

‘It’s your coach, Merv,’ he said.

‘It’s your choir,’ retorted Merv.

For a moment, deadlock. Then Nye broke it by reaching forward to pluck a credit card from the open wallet.

‘Plastic’s fine,’ he said.

On the passenger seat of his van was a credit-card machine and a camera. As Merv with ill grace signed the counterfoil, Nye snapped him, then again full face as he looked up, and finally he took a couple of the coach after cleaning the dust from the numberplate.

‘Souvenirs,’ he said. ‘I like to remember my customers.’

‘Hope that card’s good, Merv,’ said Joe, as they watched the van hiccup into the distance.

‘Makes no matter,’ said Merv evilly. “Cos I’m going to run that squat little bastard off the road when I overtake him. Everyone aboard! Let’s get this wagon train a’rolling.’

It was now early evening with the sun lipping the western hills and curls of mist patterning the surface of the stream.

‘How far to go, Mr Golightly?’ enquired Rev. Pot as he climbed aboard.

‘Fifteen, twenty miles, maybe a little more,’ said Merv vaguely.

The Reverend Percy Potemkin had not spent half a lifetime curing souls without developing a sharp ear for human vaguenesses. But he was not a man to rush to judgement. His gaze met Joe’s and asked for confirmation that this lack of precision was merely a form of speech. Joe loyally gave an optimistic smile. But he knew that if his friend had a fault, it was his reluctance to admit the possibility of anything being wrong till the trout came belly up in the milk churn.

At least the engine had a sweeter sound now. Someone started a chorus of ‘To Bea Pilgrim’, but their hearts weren’t in it and after a while most of the travellers settled down to inner contemplation or sleep.

Joe studied his information sheet. Llanffugiol, it told him, was a substantial village which in recent years had become the focal point of musical life in this area of rural Wales. This was its very first Choral Festival so there was no list of previous winners, but there was an impressive roll-call of top choirs which had been invited to take part. It was a bit less impressive if you studied the small print and worked out those which had actually accepted at the time the info sheet was sent out, but it still contained enough first-class opposition, like the German Guttenberg Singverein, to make this a tough competition. But Boyling Corner’s triumph three years in a row at the Bed and Bucks Choriad had clearly given the chapel choir the beginnings of a national reputation which they were determined to live up to. As Rev. Pot said, ‘We sing for the Lord not for glory, but if the Lord fancies a bit of glory thrown in, who are we to argue?’

Their accommodation was in the dormitories of Branddreth College, a boys’ boarding school a couple of miles out of Llanffugiol. There was a sketch map showing the relation of the college to the village, but nothing to relate the area to the outside world. Written directions had been sent and these were now in Merv’s possession, so all should have been straightforward, but Joe’s heart misgave him when he recalled Merv’s cavalier attitude to route-finding in his taxi. During daylight hours he used the sun, at night the stars, and when the weather was overcast, he fell back on instinct. ‘Salmon and swallows do it every year,’ he said. ‘And if man’s no better than fish or fowl, he’s got no right to be organizing the World Cup.’

Well, it would be instinct tonight, thought Joe, glancing out of the window.

Darkness was falling fast, accelerated by the mist which had long since escaped from the river and was now printing its bloomy patterns on the outside of the glass.

Merv’s threat to the wellbeing of Nye Garage had proved empty as, despite the apparent debility of his van, they hadn’t overtaken it. Indeed, they hadn’t seen anybody to overtake or be overtaken by for over an hour, which was just as well as the roads seemed to be getting narrower and narrower.

Suddenly the coach halted. In the headlights through the mist it was just possible to see a triple parting of the ways. There was a signpost, and Joe’s heart, always a buoyant organ, rose sharply as he made out the letters Llan. Merv got out with his flashlight to take a closer look and Joe joined him. It was crash-dive time again. True, each of the three arms pointed to somewhere beginning with Llan but none of them was Llanffugiol.

‘Merv, don’t you think it’s time to look at a map?’

‘Been looking at a sodding map for the past half-hour,’ said Merv, like an atheist admitting to prayer. ‘Trouble is, none of the funny names on the sodding map match any of the funny names on these sodding signposts!’

‘What you going to do then?’

‘Take the middle one till we reach the place mentioned then consult the natives,’ he said. Then, his irrepressible optimism returning, he added, ‘Maybe there’ll be a pub!’

He climbed back in the coach and called, ‘Not long now, folks.’

‘So he knows where we are?’ said Beryl as Joe returned to his seat.

‘Don’t think so,’ said Joe.

‘Don’t think so? Joe, isn’t it time you got on that phone of yours and rang someone to ask for directions?’

‘Yeah, maybe. Only you can’t ask for directions less’n you know where you are. Soon as we reach this village we’re heading for, I’ll give it a go.’

But no village appeared. The coach was now full of anxious and mutinous muttering. Rev. Pot went up the aisle and started talking to Merv. Joe knew it was strictly none of his business, but an accusatory glance from Aunt Mirabelle sent him to join the debate, which was getting so heated that Merv brought the bus to a halt in order to bring both arms to the discussion.

‘Well, whose fault is it, then?’ Rev. Pot was demanding. ‘You’re the driver.’

‘That’s right, I’m the driver. I just follow directions. You know so much, why don’t you tell me where to go, Reverend?’

‘If I wasn’t a man of the cloth, I might just do that, brother,’ thundered Rev. Pot.

Out of the corner of his eye, Joe thought he glimpsed a light moving way to his left. He blinked. Yes, there it was. Looked like a single headlight. On a tractor maybe. Some farmer out working late. Maybe some crops were best gathered at night. Joe was a little vague on matters agricultural.

Joe turned to the disputants and said, ‘Why don’t we ask that guy?’

‘What guy?’

‘That guy … where’s he gone?’

The light had vanished.

‘You seeing things now, Joe?’ said Merv sceptically.

‘No, I’m not. I’ll go talk to him.’

He grabbed the flashlight Merv carried under the dash and got out of the coach. It was so dark and alien out there, he felt like he’d just been beamed down from the Enterprise. Hastily he switched on his light. That was better. Still alien but not so dark. There was a gate into the field where he’d seen the light. He unlatched it and stepped into what felt like a bog. Did the Welsh grow rice? He shone the torch down and saw it was a pungent mixture of mud and cow dung.

‘Oh shoot,’ he said. But he wasn’t going to retreat. He reasoned all the farmer had done was switch off his light and engine till the coach went on its way. Reason? Maybe he was shy.

He aimed the beam forward and squinted along it. Nothing but its light reflected from the drifting mist wraiths. Then his straining eyes glimpsed something more solid. A shape. A sort of vehicle shape. He’d been right.

He began to move forward. As he got nearer he saw that it wasn’t a tractor after all, but one of those farm buggies with the big tyres. But before he could take in any detail, the headlight blossomed again, full in his face, dazzling.

‘Hi there,’ he called, shielding his eyes. ‘Sorry to trouble you but we’re a bit lost. Wondered if you could give us some directions.’

Silence. Then a muffled voice said, ‘Where to?’

‘Place called Llanffugiol,’ said Joe. ‘Where the Choir Festival is.’

More silence.

‘Never heard of it,’ said the voice.

The buggy’s engine burst into life and it started moving forward. For a second, Joe thought it was going to go straight over him, then it swung away in a semicircle and bounced off into the mist.

He raised his flashlight and for a second caught the driver’s back full in its beam. Long narrow body in a black fleecy jacket. Matching narrow head, bald or close-shaven, could have passed for that guy who played the King of Siam in the old musical. Maybe I should’ve tried singing ‘Getting to Know You’, thought Joe.

Then the mist closed behind him.

Joe returned to the coach. He tried to clean his shoes on the grass verge, but the smell of the countryside came in with him and he didn’t have any good news to compensate.

Merv rolled his eyes heavenwards as if the farmer’s response was Joe’s fault, engaged gear noisily and set the coach rolling forward along the narrow road once more.

Even Rev. Pot seemed to have forgotten his duty of Christian charity.

‘Now that’s real helpful, Joe,’ he said sarcastically. ‘So what’s your guess? I mean, just how many miles away do you think we are if folk round here haven’t even heard of the place?’

‘Half a mile’s a long way in the country,’ said Joe, his anti-rural prejudices now in full cry. ‘These natives probably never been out of their own village.’

Rev. Pot gave him a glance which had he been in the exorcism business would have cast Joe back into the outer darkness, no problem.

Then Merv said, ‘Hang about. Look, that has to be civilization.’

He was looking ahead. The mist was of the ground-clinging variety which occasionally permitted glimpses of treetops while their bases were hidden at ten paces. Joe saw what had caught Merv’s eye. There was a distinct glow in the sky, the kind of light which could only come from a substantial settlement.

The road ahead rose steeply and as the coach laboured up it, the mist began to fall away behind and the glow increased. Then they reached the crest and saw its source was much closer than they’d imagined.

Far from being a substantial settlement, it was a solitary house. And the reason it was casting such light was it was on fire.

Merv ran the coach through an open gate and came to a halt some thirty yards from the building. Joe got out. Even from this distance he could feel the heat.

The others crowded round him.

It wasn’t his charisma that attracted them, it was his phone.

‘Better ring for help,’ said Beryl.

He pulled out the mobile. Someone said, ‘You see that?’ and pointed.

On the side of a small outbuilding someone had sprayed the words, ENGLISH GO HOME!

‘This the welcome they keep in the hillside?’ said Merv.

Joe stabbed 999.

‘Shoot,’ he said. ‘Not getting anything.’

‘Wouldn’t say that,’ said Merv. ‘Best service I’ve ever seen.’

A car had come up behind the bus at speed and a uniformed police sergeant got out and came running to join them. Had a look of that Welsh movie actor who kept on getting married to Liz Taylor, thought Joe. The voice too.

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ he demanded.

Merv, never one to miss the chance of sending up a copper, said, ‘Could be a millennium bonfire, got the dates wrong.’

The cop ignored him. His face expressed a strange mixture of anger and bafflement. Might look like Richard Burton but he was far from word perfect in his role, which was to take charge of the situation, thought Joe. He punched 999 once more.

Beryl said, ‘Joe, have you forgotten to switch on again?’

Now the cop found his lines.

‘Leave this to me,’ he snapped. ‘And move back, will you? Now!’

He ran back to his car, presumably to call up help.

Joe examined his phone. Beryl was right. Again. He smiled sheepishly at her. He didn’t mind being wrong. You got used to it. And it was nice that now he could relax and enjoy the fire without feeling he had to do anything about it.

Then Beryl screamed, ‘Joe, there’s someone in there!’

And looking up along the line indicated by her pointing finger, Joe saw the black outline of a human figure against the dark-red glow in one of the upstairs windows.

Chapter 2

If Beryl hadn’t prefaced her cry with Joe! he might not have done it.

And if he’d taken thought, he certainly wouldn’t have done it, not because thought would have brought self-interest into play and there was a presumably fully paid-up public servant in calling distance, but simply because for Joe problem-solving by the cerebral route usually involved a paper and pencil and two pints of Guinness.

But pausing only to thrust the phone into Beryl’s hand, he’d set off running around the back of the house before he’d had time to work out by reason alone that just because the front of the house was an inferno didn’t mean the back was burning fiercely too.

It wasn’t. Not yet. At least not upstairs, though the flicker of the flames was clearly visible through the ground-floor windows. Meaning it was pointless going in at that level.

Against the rear wall stood a lean-to wash house with a sloping roof angling up to a first-floor window. There was a large aluminium water butt under the wash house downspout. With difficulty Joe clambered on it and used it as a step up on to the roof.

Here he paused. Through the chill night air he could feel draughts of heat drifting from the house. Must be hot as hell in there. He looked down into the water butt. From the black mirror of the water’s surface, cold-eyed stars stared back at him.

Again, no thought. Just a deep breath, then he crouched down and slid off the roof.

Spring might be bursting out all over but winter was still lurking here. He shot out like a missile from a nuclear sub and found himself back on top of the lean-to with no recollection of how he’d got there.

Dripping water from every orifice, he knelt on the slates, looking up at the first-floor window. A taller man could easily have reached the sill by stretching out his arm, but Joe wasn’t a taller man. In fact, he was a good inch shorter than Beryl Boddington, and when she wore her nurse’s cap, he felt a good foot shorter. But uniforms generally had that effect on him.

He tried to scramble up the roof. It was like being a squirrel in a wheel. The slates started sliding under his knees so that he had to scramble even faster just to stay on the spot. Much more of this and he was going to be back in the water butt. He flung himself forward, caught at the lip of the sill with the tips of his fingers, and got just enough purchase to draw himself up.

The window was open, which was good. It was also very small, which was bad. For while no man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature, any man by taking the Great British Breakfast and lunching regularly on cheeseburgers with double chips can add a couple to his girth.

There was a moment when he thought he was stuck and he tried to reconcile himself to the prospect of having his head toasted crisp while his legs kicked wildly in the chilly air. Far from composing himself, the notion made him struggle so violently, he erupted through the window like a cork from a bottle and found himself lying on a rug in a small but nicely furnished bedroom.

He felt beneath the rug. The floorboards felt warm but still well this side of combustion. The closed door was not so promising. It felt definitely hot to the touch and he’d seen enough disaster movies to know that opening it could be like throwing a canful of paraffin on to a bonfire.

But having got so far, he couldn’t just retreat. Could he?

He looked up for inspiration.

And found himself looking at a small trap door in the ceiling.

Fortunately, like most old farmhouses this one had been built for sixteenth-century dwarves, and standing on a chest of drawers elevated him right to the low ceiling.

The trap was a tight fit. As he pushed up with all his strength, it occurred to him that if the flames had got into the attic via the front bedrooms, this too could produce the can of paraffin effect.

Then all at once it gave way and he was standing with his head in the roof space, and it wasn’t being burnt off.

But there was smoke up here. It caught at his throat and made him cough in a manner which would have had Rev. Pot glaring. In the Rev.’s eyes, all ailments which affected the larynx were self-induced and totally undeserving of sympathy.

He ducked his head back into the bedroom, pulled off his sodden jacket and draped it over his head. Then he took a deep breath of air and dragged himself through the narrow gap into the attic.

It was unboarded so he had to lie flat across a couple of beams till his eyesight adjusted. Something scuttled over his outstretched arm. Mouse, or maybe a rat, getting the message there was trouble on the way and looking for an exit. He hoped it made it.

He rose to his feet and tore a couple of slates out of the roof. Air might feed fire but it also fed humans and anyway it was good to take a last look at the starry sky. He edited out last, took a deep breath and started moving forward.

Lack of height was now an advantage. If he’d been built like Arnie Schwarzenegger he’d have been bent double. On the other hand, he guessed the poor devil trapped in the fire would probably have preferred even a contorted Arnie.

Where he was moving to he didn’t know. What he needed was a plan. Break through the ceiling below him was an option. He considered it. Probably go up like a Roman Candle as the fire funnelled through the hole, and in any case it only made sense if he had some idea where the trapped man was situated.

Which, he realized, he might have.

There was a water tank up ahead. Not very big, looked like the header tank for a shower, and the water in it was bubbling like the shower was switched on. Meaning maybe the trapped man had sought refuge here from the flames.

He checked the fall of the pipes. Chances were they went straight down into the shower room. He touched the plasterboard around them. Still cool.

He raised his right foot and stamped. The plasterboard cracked. He stamped again, harder. His left foot slipped off the narrow beam, his whole body hit the floor and he went through the ceiling in an avalanche of dust and plaster. And water.

He landed soft and noisy. The softness was a human body. The noise was the human whose body it was, shrieking.

He’d have felt pleased with himself if there’d been time. It was a shower room and the trapped man had sought refuge here. Only it wasn’t a man. It was a young woman. He knew that because she was naked.

She was in a bad way. She’d probably breathed in too much of the smoke which was gradually filling the cubicle for anything but incoherent shrieks to come out. Her arms were gashed like she’d pushed them through a windowpane, and her face and body were heat-blistered, but worst of all was her left leg which was both burnt and torn. Went through a burning floorboard, he guessed. If she’d headed for the back of the house she might have made it the way he’d come in. Instead she’d headed into the shower, back into the shower most likely, which would explain both why she had no clothes on and why she hadn’t heard any noise as the fire took a hold below.

Shoot, here he was thinking like a detective when what he should be doing was thinking like big Arnie. The heat in here was growing by the second and it couldn’t be long before the flames came licking through and all that the rapidly diminishing flow of water would do was let them boil before they burnt.

He said, ‘We’ve got to get out. Can you move at all?’

Her eyes struggled to focus. They were grey and he could see that her face, even though blistered, was the face of a pretty girl, late teens maybe.

The eyes had got him now. They registered puzzlement for a moment. Couldn’t blame her. Even if he had been Arnie, she’d still have wondered where the shoot he came from.

He said, ‘I’ve come down from the attic. We’ve got to get back up there. Are you ready?’

Stupid question. Her gaze went up to the hole in the ceiling then back to his face. She nodded. He could see that even that movement caused pain. He knew there was worse to come and he guessed she knew it too.

He stood up and pulled her upright with him. She let out what was a shriek in any language but she wasn’t a deadweight, not quite. She was giving what help she could. He looked up at the hole into the attic. Even with munchkin-level ceilings, this was going to be the impossible side of difficult. What he needed was a ladder. He looked down. Best he could find was a low plastic stool, presumably for Arnie-sized showerers to sit on so they didn’t bang their heads. He propped the woman up against the wall, which was getting hotter by the second. Then he squatted down, positioned the stool, thrust his head between her legs from behind, took her weight on his shoulders and stood upright like a weightlifter doing a lift-and-press.

He presumed she shrieked some more but he couldn’t hear for the sound of the blood drumming in his ears, or maybe it was the fire raging beyond the wall.

‘Try to pull yourself up,’ he yelled.

He didn’t know if she could hear or, if she could, whether she’d have the strength or the will to obey.

But she was brave, braver than he guessed he’d have been in like circumstances. And she had the resilience of youth. He felt her body move, and he stepped up on to the stool and grabbed her thighs in his hands and thrust upwards with all his might.

There was a moment when he thought she was stuck, and all his strength was gone, and there was nothing to do but subside into the cubicle and pray they suffocated before the flames got to them.

Then suddenly she was through, and the weight was off Joe’s shoulders.

‘Don’t come off the beams!’ he yelled, easing her legs through the hole.

Now it was his turn. He reached up, took a strong grip on the beams on either side of the hole, and hoisted himself through with the fluency of an Olympic gymnast on the parallel bars.

Gold medal? he thought. Piece of cake. All you need’s a fire under your bum.

But there was no time for the National Anthem. With a series of cracks like an old sailing ship taking a broadside, the attic floor burst open at half a dozen points and tongues of flame came shooting through to lick greedily at the ancient beams.

Suddenly Joe was back in his childhood schoolroom. If a nine-inch beam burns at one cubic inch every five seconds, how long will it be before the house collapses in on itself? Answer: doesn’t matter ‘cos you’ll have suffocated long before that.

OK, another problem. (Shoot! I must be dying. My life flashing before me, like they say in the books.) If a middle-aged, out-of-condition, overweight PI picks up an eight-stone woman and tries to run along a narrow burning beam in dense smoke which reduces visibility to nil and breathing to less, how does someone explain to his pet cat, Whitey, why he never came home again?

Answer: not applicable. Man would have to be mad to try it. Man would have to be very stupid indeed not to work out that one life was preferable to two deaths and abandon the woman to her fate.

Such was the verdict of rational thought. But Joe was a slow thinker and he’d been up and running before good old rational thought had even got out of its blocks. The woman was in his arms. He hit the slope of the roof at the point where he’d already removed the slates to make a breathing hole, erupted into the cold Welsh night like a comet, went straight over the edge, crash-landed on the lean-to roof, bounced twice, caught the edge of the water butt with his heels, twisted in the air to give the woman the soft landing, and found himself lying on the blessed ground, looking up at a sky so packed with stars, he felt he was trembling on the brink of eternity.

Earth beneath him, water pouring over him, fire behind him, and the bright clear air above. The four first things. It was right they should be the four last things also. He felt his whole being drawn up towards that starry infinity.

Then this peace was disturbed by the arrival of moving shapes and chattering voices, growing ever louder and calling his name, all trying to get him back to the world of here and now. But his wise old body knew that this world was full of pain and tribulation, so it gave commands.

Joe closed his eyes, and light and noise and thought and feeling all died together.

Chapter 3

When he awoke he was still on his back and he still had a naked female body in his arms.

Only now it was Beryl Boddington’s and it smelled of wild strawberries and honey and she was sighing with pleasure, like a cello accompanying a Brahms love song. And, amazingly, he could see this marvellous body, every bit of it, even as his other four senses took their perfect pleasure.

Even their minds seemed twined. He yearned towards her, eager for consummation, and in his head he heard her laugh as she pulled away a little.

‘No need to rush, Joe, boy. Not here, this is for ever, this is the place where you can pick all the flowers along the way, and see them grow again even while you’re drinking in their scent.’

This was beyond anything Rev. Pot had ever promised in his most optimistic sermons. If Joe had known heaven was going to be like this he’d have paid a lot more heed to Aunt Mirabelle and never turned over and gone back to sleep on a Sunday morning. Let word of this get around, and there’d be queues forming at first light outside chapels and churches and mosques and temples and tabernacles and synagogues …

He looked at Beryl’s smiling loving face above his, felt her warm scented breath on his lips. He strained up to press his hungry mouth to hers, got so close that her beloved features blurred. He relaxed and blinked once, twice, and smiled as that lovely, loving, beloved visage slowly came back into focus, till once more he saw clearly those big brown eyes, so full of compassion and concern …

‘Oh shoot!’ said Joe. At least that’s what he tried to say, only his throat was so rough it came out halfway between a cough and a groan.

‘Joe, you’re awake,’ said Merv Golightly.

Joe blinked again, but it was no use. Merv remained. He let his gaze drift slowly round the room. There were half a dozen other beds in it, though no one in them moved. It was either a hospital ward or a mortuary.

He pushed himself up in the bed and groaned again as the movement set off a small symphony of aches and pains. When Merv tried to help him, he shook his head and pointed to a jug of water on the bedside locker. The big man poured him a glassful and he drank it greedily.

Then he tried his voice again and this time got a result, though it sounded like something coming out of an old-fashioned gramophone that needed winding up.

‘Where am I?’ he said,

‘Some place called Caerlindys, think that’s how you say it, but I couldn’t swear. Joe, my friend, it’s really great to have you back. But how come, all these years, and you never told me your big secret?’

‘Eh?’ croaked Joe.

‘Last night, we’d just got you definitely down for dead and long gone, then you come bursting through the roof of that burning building and fly through the air with this rescued lady in your arms, and even twist round so it’s you who hits hard and her who lands soft. Joe, your secret is out. Everyone knows now you’re really Superman!’

‘You’re a real joker, Merv,’ croaked Joe. ‘No wonder folk throw themselves out of your taxi while it’s still moving.’

Merv laughed loud enough to raise a couple of heads off pillows, which was a relief. Then he leaned close and murmured, ‘Seriously, man, though I ain’t putting this in writing, I’m truly proud to know you.’

Embarrassed, Joe downed another half-pint of water and asked, ‘So where’s the others? Where’d you all end up last night?’

Merv put his head on one side and gave a modest shrug.

‘That burning house, just another half-mile on, and there it was. Branddreth College, place where we’re staying. Didn’t I say I had the instinct?’

‘And where’s this place we’re at now, Caerlindys, is it?’

‘Sound like a native, Joe. Twenty miles going on seventy from the college, depending whether you know the lingo. Bad news is the town’s not much bigger than the Hypermart back home, good news is the hospital’s almost as big as the town.’

‘You bring me here, Merv?’

‘No. That cop, never caught his name, conjured up the whole circus, cop cars, ambulance and fire engine turned up. Too late to do any good, mind. House is ashes, which you’d have been too if you hadn’t pulled your Y-fronts over your trousers and done the switch. You’re a hero, Joe, but don’t be surprised if the cops treat you like an idiot or a suspect. Guy in charge is a DI called Ursell, pronounced arsehole from the sound of him. I’ve met some miserable bastards but he beats them all. He’s like Chivers without the charm.’

This was a poor recommendation, Sergeant Chivers of Luton CID being the founder member of the Sixsmith-sucks club.

‘He around, is he?’

‘Oh yes. Asking more questions than Ruby Wax and cheekier with it. He’ll surely want to talk to you, Joe. Numero duo on his list after the woman, and she’s not talking to anyone.’

‘The woman? Oh shoot.’ Joe was racked with guilt he hadn’t thought about the woman till now. ‘How’s she doing, Merv? You’re not saying she’s out of it?’

‘No, still with us, they say, but only just. She looked a real mess last night. Then so did you and look at you now! Hey, here’s something to cheer you up.’

Joe looked towards the door and groaned, but only inwardly. Groaning outwardly at Aunt Mirabelle was never a good idea. In a hospital bed, it could have you on your belly receiving an enema. In her eyes, any treatment that didn’t start with a good clear-out was doomed to failure.

Then his spirits lifted as he spotted Beryl close behind her, talking to a tiny nurse who looked about twelve, with an elfin face and the brightest red hair he’d ever seen, bursting out of the confines of her cap like tongues of fire. Not a comfortable image.

‘You awake at last, Joseph?’ said Mirabelle. “Bout time. Doctor says there’s not much wrong with you.’

‘Now that’s not exactly true,’ said Beryl, breaking off her conversation.

Mirabelle gave her a reprimanding glare, then stooped to kiss Joe on the cheek, at the same time whispering in his ear, ‘You did real well, Joseph. Your ma, God rest her soul, would have been real proud of you.’

‘Thanks, Auntie,’ said Joe, touched.

She straightened up and at her normal volume said, ‘Why you speaking that funny way? You ain’t gone and done something to that voice of yours, I hope. It’s rough enough the way the Lord made it without you sticking in your sixpenn’th.’

Joe sighed. He had no desire to play the big hero, but he didn’t really see why everyone should find it necessary to hide his light under their bushel. Surely modesty was his prerogative?

Rescue was close. Beryl gently moved Mirabelle aside and stood smiling down at him.

‘Hi, Joe,’ she said. ‘Reckon you owe me an apology.’

‘Huh?’

‘There we are, middle of a conversation, suddenly you take off without a pardon-me-ma’am, next time I see you, you’re flying out of a burning house with a naked woman in your arms. Hope you’d do the same for me if the occasion arose.’

The memory of his waking dream rose in Joe’s mind and he felt himself blushing.

‘You got a fever, Joe?’ she said anxiously.

Then she stooped and kissed him full on the lips.

‘No, that feels about normal,’ she said.

‘This a new NHS economy measure?’ he croaked. ‘All the nurses taking my temperature this way?’

‘In your dreams,’ she laughed. And Joe blushed again.

He took another drink of water. The red-headed nurse came forward and picked up the empty jug. She wore a name badge which told him he was being cared for by Nurse Tilly Butler, which was nice. Made it feel like a user-friendly hospital.

‘Throat bad, is it?’ she said sympathetically. ‘Doctor will be along shortly, get you something to soothe it then.’

‘Guinness?’ said Joe hopefully.

She laughed and said to Beryl, ‘You were right about him then. Back in a mo.’

‘What you been saying?’

‘Nothing that needs bother you. She’s a nice kid.’

‘I noticed. Shouldn’t she be at school?’

‘You think? Maybe she thinks you should be in the gerry ward.’

‘Sorry,’ said Joe, reproved. ‘So how’s it look to an expert, this place? They got chloroform yet?’

‘There you go again, Joe,’ sighed Beryl. ‘You and that lady you saved hit real lucky. Nurse Butler was telling me, they closed a lot of small hospitals round the region and put all their resources into this one. State of the art is what you got here. Makes where I work look ancient.’

‘Yeah, but they got you to keep them young,’ croaked Joe gallantly.

It got him a smile. Then a voice said, ‘Excuse me,’ and Beryl was edged aside by a weary-looking young man in a white coat whose name badge said he was Dr Godsip, though from the way he glanced down at it from time to time, Joe got the impression he wouldn’t have minded finding he was somebody else.

After a yawn which looked like it might be terminal, he started checking off Joe’s ailments. Joe was reminded of a mechanic doing an MOT.

‘Superficial burns to the face and hands; dislocated left shoulder, replaced; wrenched right knee; heavy bruising to the back and buttocks; various other minor strains, sprains, and contusions of the arms and legs; nothing life-threatening; I’d say you’ve been very lucky, Mr Sixsmith.’

It didn’t feel that way. Like warning lights on a test circuit, each of the injuries flashed pain as the doctor listed them, and by the time he finished, Joe felt much worse than he had before.

‘What about his lungs and throat, Doctor?’ asked Mirabelle. ‘He sounds real funny.’

‘Yes, that was the most worrying thing. Often it’s not fire that does the real damage, but smoke inhalation. But as far as we can see, he’s been lucky there too. There’ll be some discomfort if he breathes too deeply, and his oesophagus will feel like it’s been pulled through with a pineapple for a while, but no lasting damage. Now, normally we’d keep him in for observation for another day or two, but if he’s happy to discharge himself …’

Joe sat straight up, ignoring the pain.

‘Hey, man,’ he said. ‘What is this? I know you folk get short of beds, but how many legs do I need amputated before you let me stay here?’

It was Beryl who answered.

‘Don’t be exciting yourself, Joe,’ she said. ‘Yes, they are short of beds, but no, they’re not throwing you out. Only there’s a nice little sickbay at Branddreth College, and with me being a nurse, the doc’ll be happy to let me take care of your medication. Also there’ll be a doctor in attendance at the festival who’ll be able to check you out if necessary. We thought you might like it better to be close to the others rather than stuck here, miles away. But it’s your say-so.’

Joe scowled thoughtfully, but inside he was chortling with delight. Cosy little sickbay with Beryl as his private nurse or stuck here among the living dead with hospital hours and hospital food … no contest!

‘Where do I sign?’ he wheezed.

Godsip, who was still young enough to feel guilty at giving a patient the bum’s rush, wanted to put him in a wheelchair but Joe insisted on getting dressed and walking under his own steam.

He regretted it the moment he stood up but he wasn’t going to back off now and by the time he’d got into his clothes, he’d adjusted to the discomfort, but tying his shoelaces made him wince.

‘I’ll get that,’ said Merv, kneeling before him.

‘Heard you English were into hero worship but didn’t realize how far it went,’ said a sardonic Welsh voice.

It came from a tall thin man with eyes screwed up as if against the sun and a weathered face who looked like Clint Eastwood at early Dirty Harry age. His suit looked about the same vintage too.

Brynner, Burton and Eastwood, all in the same neck of the woods. Maybe I’ve wandered into an old movie, thought Joe, and these burns and bruises are just make-up.

Merv stood up. He didn’t tower over the newcomer but he had a couple of inches advantage which he used to good effect.

‘Joe, this is DI Ursell I told you about, but I expect you’d have recognized him anyway.’

Ursell regarded Joe as though thinking about inviting him to make his day.

‘Glad to meet you,’ said Joe. ‘How’s the lady?’

‘I’m a copper not a quack,’ said Ursell. ‘What bothers me isn’t how she is but who she is. Thought you could help me there.’

‘Sorry?’ said Joe.

Ursell rolled his eyes and said very slowly, as to a backward foreigner, ‘Did she say anything which might give us a clue who she is?’

‘Not a thing,’ said Joe. ‘Didn’t have time for introductions and she wasn’t in a fit state anyway. But don’t you folk keep records of who lives round here, council tax, electoral register, that sort of thing?’

It was a genuine question. Joe knew the Scots had a different legal system because it had come up in an episode of Dr Finlay’s Casebook, so maybe the Welsh moved in their own mysterious way too.

Ursell, however, looked like he was taking it as a crack.

‘Oh, yes, we keep very good records, as you may find, Mr Sixsmith. We like to know all about everyone who lives round here, or comes visiting for that matter. But nothing’s known about this woman, nothing at all, which I find very puzzling. I suppose everyone on your coach is accounted for?’

He glared accusingly at Merv, but it was Mirabelle who leapt into the breach.

‘What you saying? This poor lady jumped off our coach and ran into that burning house just so my nephew could risk his life saving her? And while we’re disputing the matter, how come that other policeman who was there didn’t do the saving? Ain’t that what we pay our taxes for?’

Even without the backing of rational argument, Mirabelle was a fearsome disputant. With it, she towered like the sons of Anak, and Ursell became as a grasshopper in her sight.

‘Sorry, no, you misunderstand me,’ he said, trying without much success for a placating smile. ‘Far as I understand it, Sergeant Prince was in his car, summoning help, and didn’t know there was anyone in the house till a few minutes later when he rejoined you all. House should have been empty, see? So what we have here is a woman nobody knows, and she’s in a bad way, and all of us are very keen to let her next of kin know what’s happened, so as they can get here to give her support and comfort.’

He didn’t sound very convincing but he suddenly sounded very Welsh, in the same way the Scots become very Scottish and the Irish very Irish at times they want to be defensively disarming. This was a phenomenon Joe’s radical solicitor friend, Butcher, had pointed out in reference to himself. ‘You saying I come over all Uncle Tommish?’ he’d demanded indignantly. ‘Worse than that,’ she replied. ‘You come over all poor-me-deprived-Luton-laddish.’

Mirabelle wasn’t disarmed.

‘If that wasn’t her own house burning, why you not hassling the folk whose house it is?’ she demanded.

‘That’s Mr and Mrs Haggard of Islington, London,’ said Ursell. ‘They’re on their way but over the phone they’ve made it clear no one was staying in Copa Cottage with their permission.’

He made Islington, London, sound like Gomorrah, thought Joe. And also he got an impression that this Mr and Mrs Haggard were not people of good standing in Ursell’s eyes. Of course it could be it was just this anti-Anglocolonization thing he’d once read about in a magazine at the dentist’s.

‘Maybe they got children,’ said Mirabelle. ‘Young ‘uns can be pretty free with what ain’t their own.’

She shot Joe an unjustifiably significant glance.

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Ursell, clearly tiring of being disarming. ‘Now, if I could have a quick word with Mr Sixsmith alone …’

There was resistance, but the DI was good at crowd control and in less than a minute he had everyone else out into the corridor. He now looked at the other patients as if considering pushing them out too but decided against it.

Joe said, ‘There was some writing on a wall, something about GO HOME ENGLISH. Maybe this wasn’t an accident, is that what you’re thinking?’

Ursell let out the long-suffering sigh of one who is fed up with being taught how to suck eggs.

‘Someone mentioned you were some kind of investigator, Mr Sixsmith,’ he said with a neutrality worse than sarcasm. Not that it mattered to Joe who’d been put down by men with research degrees in down-putting.

‘Not trying to investigate anything,’ he said. ‘Specially not when you had one of your own men right on the spot. Prince, did someone say his name was? He the local bobby?’

Ursell took his time answering.

‘Not really,’ he said finally. ‘Just happened to be in the area on another matter, it seems. And not one of my men. Uniformed, or perhaps you didn’t notice?’

Joe, familiar with the often strained relationship between CID and the rest back in Luton, said provocatively, ‘In, out, always a cop, isn’t that what they say?’

Ursell said softly, ‘We can certainly count ourselves lucky having two pairs of trained eyes at the scene of the crime.’

That unsarcastic sarcasm again.

‘So it was definitely a crime?’ said Joe.

Ursell hesitated then shrugged.

‘It’s no secret, not round here anyway. Yes, it was arson. Traces of an accelerant, probably petrol.’

‘So maybe if this woman shouldn’t have been in the house, these fire raisers thought the place was empty?’ suggested Joe.

‘Could be,’ admitted Ursell. ‘Why she didn’t hear something and get out quick is the puzzle.’

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said Joe, very superior. ‘She was naked when I found her. I reckon she was in the shower when it happened, probably didn’t hear a thing. Came out, found the place full of smoke. Ran into the front bedroom which was when we spotted her. Saw there was no way out there. Headed back, ceiling beneath already on fire, and her foot went through the floorboards. After that, best she could manage was to drag herself back into the shower, turn the cold water full on, and lie there waiting for the end.’

The long speech brought on a fit of coughing which spared Ursell the angst of having to agree.

‘You here to sing, you say? Interesting,’ he observed when Joe regained control. ‘Rest of the choir coughs in tune too, I daresay.’

‘Come along and listen if you’ve a spare moment,’ snapped Joe, irritated at the sneer against the choir. ‘You might learn something.’

‘Oh yes? About as much chance as I have of having a spare moment, with all this in my lap.’

Now Joe was thoroughly incensed, not a condition he was very familiar with.

‘Listen, Inspector. I’m sorry you’ve been inconvenienced, but this fire, whoever’s responsible, it’s not me or my choir, and it’s almost certainly not that poor woman who’s got herself nearly burnt to death. Now, if you need to talk to me again, you’ll find me at Branddreth College.’

He strode to the door. It was an effort not to show what an effort striding was, but he managed it.

With Merv’s strength at one side, and Beryl’s warmth at the other, he set off down a long corridor.

Ursell overtook them without a glance and turned down a side corridor. When they reached it, Joe looked along it and saw the inspector talking to a uniformed policeman who’d just risen from a chair outside a door.

‘Hang on a sec,’ said Joe.

He abandoned his supporters and walked down the side corridor. Ursell and the uniformed man watched his approach in silence. When he reached them, Joe peered in through the glass panel of the door. He’d anticipated what he would see there, but the sight of that deathly still figure lying on a bed, hooked up to a variety of drips and monitoring apparatus, still caught at his throat worse than the smoke from the fire.

‘How’s she doing?’ he asked.

‘No change,’ said Ursell.

‘I hope that … I hope …’

Joe broke off. What had this cop, who looked like he thought life was a form of irritable bowel syndrome, to do with his hopes?

He turned away, but he’d only gone a few paces when the inspector came alongside.

‘Mr Sixsmith.’

‘Yes?’ said Joe, halting.

‘I don’t think I said, you did OK.’

Saying it seemed to hurt his throat as much as speaking hurt Joe’s.

‘Yeah,’ said Joe. ‘Maybe not OK enough, eh? You’ll let me know if anything …’

‘Rest assured,’ said the inspector. ‘I’ll let you know.’

Maybe it was just the accent, but the words sounded very final.

Chapter 4

In The Lost Traveller’s Guide, the famous travel book devoted to places unlikely to be visited on purpose, Branddreth Hall, the seat of Branddreth College, is described thus:

Here we have a building which achieves the remarkable feat of spanning six centuries, from medieval stronghold through Tudor hall, Georgian manor and Victorian mansion, to twentieth-century school, without once coming within welly-hurling distance of distinction. Succeeding generations have recorded their disappointment that, despite all attempts at contemporaneous improvement, the complete building sullenly insists on remaining less than the sum of its parts, and in this unrepentant ugliness, the Lady House, an Edwardian dower house built in what might best be called the Mock-Tudor Council Estate style, shows an almost touching family resemblance.

Joe, whose architectural acme was the green and yellow marble-clad ziggurat housing the new Malayan restaurant in Luton High, viewed the hall with no such critical eye. All he saw was the gift-wrapping round the cosy little sickbay where Beryl was going to act as his personal nurse.

On their way, they had passed the burnt-out shell of the farmhouse, or Copa Cottage as he now knew it was called. Only a jagged shell of outer wall remained standing and firemen were still picking their way through the ashes. A real inferno, thought Joe. And nearly my pyre.

A fire engine and two police cars were parked in front of the ruin with a plum-coloured Daimler standing a little to one side, like a duchess keeping her skirts out of the heavy tread of the hired help.

Next to it stood four people, watching the firemen at their work. Two of them, a man and a woman, thirtysomethings, smartly tweeded in the way posh townies dress for the country, he with his arm comfortingly round her shoulders, Joe guessed to be the Haggards from Islington. A little to one side, regarding them with grave concern, stood a tall distinguished man, with aquiline nose, silvering hair, and a walking stick.

And set back from this trio, regarding them all with unreadable blankness, was Detective Inspector Ursell.

Who’d had time to finish his business at the hospital, leave after them, and still get here before they did. Which meant that Merv could still be a long way from sussing out these winding country roads, a suspicion confirmed when Mirabelle hissed, ‘What you doing bringing us past here?’

Thinks seeing the place again might do my head in, thought Joe, not altogether displeased at being regarded as such a sensitive plant. Then Beryl’s arm went around him, and he realized his body was shivering. Maybe he was that sensitive plant after all!

The rest of the journey (less than a mile – Merv had got that right at least) passed in melancholy silence. But when they got out of the coach and heard the sound of singing voices drifting through the bright spring air, interrupted from time to time by Rev. Pot’s cries of encouragement or abuse, Joe’s heart bounded and he felt like he’d come home.

Even the discovery that the cosy little sickbay was more barrack room than BUPA didn’t depress his spirits. Meekly he allowed Beryl to check him over for damage in transit then put him to bed, with Aunt Mirabelle playing gooseberry, more, he thought generously, out of concern for his condition than suspicion it wouldn’t debar him from unclean thoughts.

He drank some thin soup and a cup of tea. A high liquid intake was prescribed till his throat eased. Hopefully he enquired about the availability of Guinness. Beryl pursed her lips (oh, how he longed to open that purse) but Mirabelle, God bless her, said, ‘That black stout supposed to be good for nursing mothers, isn’t it? Don’t see how it can do you any harm. But sleep first.’

Upon which promise, and the imagined promise contained in the kiss which Beryl brushed across his mouth, Joe closed his eyes obediently and, to what would have been his surprise if he’d been awake to appreciate it, he fell asleep immediately.

He woke in semi-darkness and the knowledge that there was someone in the room.

Like most of Joe’s instant certainties, evidence came a good way second. His occasional good friend, Superintendent Willie Woodbine of Luton CID, justified his plagiarism of Joe’s occasional detective triumphs (the same occasions on which he became a good friend) by saying, ‘God knows how you get there, Joe, but you’ve got to understand, the real work starts with me having to plot a logical path that won’t get laughed out of court.’

While Joe didn’t see how this entitled Willie to take ninety per cent of the credit, he did see that a lowly PI couldn’t afford to turn down any offer of goodwill from the fuzz on no matter what extortionate terms.

Now he didn’t waste time working out what combination of sound, smell and sixth or seventh sense was giving him this info, but focused on the two main issues: one, he wasn’t alone; two, he didn’t know who it was he wasn’t alone with.

He kept his breathing natural. Not as easy as it sounded. It had taken the great American gumshoe, Endo Venera, whose book Not So Private Eye had become Joe’s professional Bible, to point out that not many folk had the faintest idea what their natural breathing sounded like when asleep. ‘Only way to check if you gurgle like a baby or grunt like a hog is to use your VAT,’ said Venera.

It had taken Joe a very confused five minutes to work out that the American didn’t mean value-added tax but voice-activated tape. Such hi-tech aids weren’t in his armoury, but he managed to rig up a conventional recorder on a timer so that he got an hour’s worth of the weird noises he made in bed. Even then he had to separate the basso continuo of his cat, Whitey, from his own surprisingly high-pitched plainsong. So now he was able to avoid the giveaway error of an imitation baritone snore as he lay there, and felt the intruder moving stealthily closer.

Very close now. His mental eye was seeing a mad Welsh nationalist with a can of petrol in one hand and a lighter in the other, bent on getting rid of this potential witness to last night’s crime. It was hard, but he kept his nerve and waited. The intruder had come to a stop. So, Joe realized, had his own breathing. Dead giveaway! Showtime!

He shot upright, flung out his arms, grappled his assailant to his body in a weapon-neutralizing bearhug, rolled out of the bed and wrestled him to the floor.

Various parts of his body sent out signals. Conflicting signals. His injured shoulder, back and knee registered what-the-shoot-are-you-doing-dickhead? shafts of pain, while his face and chest acknowledged gratefully that what they were pressing down on was pleasantly soft and yielding.

Then his ears got in on the act, picking up a high-pitched shriek of shock and indignation which confirmed what his torso was telling him.

This him he’d got hold of was a her, and a well-built one at that.

Ignoring his pain, he rolled off, stood up, and pulled the curtains aside to let in a torrent of bright sunlight.

It fell on a young woman in her mid teens with long blonde hair and a surprised expression. She was wearing a red skirt and a white blouse, both of which had ridden up under the pressure of his attack. She had strong well-fleshed legs and a bosom to match.

‘Hey, man,’ he said. ‘I mean, hey … I’m sorry.’

He bent over her and offered his hand to help her rise. It occurred to him too late that if her purpose were offensive, he was laying himself wide open to a kick in the crutch or a blade in the belly.

But all she did was take his hand and draw herself upright, saying, ‘Bloody hell, boyo, they told me you were ill.’

Joe’s aches, temporarily anaesthetized by his chivalric guilt, came flooding back, and he sat on the bed with a groan.

‘Too late playing for sympathy now,’ she said. ‘Not when you’ve indecently assaulted me already.’

She had a voice like a Welsh stream, bubbling with gently mocking laughter.

Joe said, ‘Really am sorry. Thought you were a burglar or something.’

‘So it was just self-defence, not irresistible desire. There’s disappointing. Is it your back is hurting, then?’

‘Among other places,’ admitted Joe.

‘Let’s take a look, shall we?’

She came round the bed and before he could protest she had pushed his pyjama jacket up round his neck and her fingers were pressing up and down his spine, lightly at first, then probing ever deeper. He opened his mouth to cry out in pain, then realized there wasn’t any, or at least a lot less than there’d been a few seconds ago.

‘Going, is it?’ she asked. ‘That’s good. Let’s hope it goes to somebody who deserves it. Not a real hero. First time I got my hands on a real hero.’

‘You the district nurse or something?’ enquired Joe.

This produced a cascade of laughter.

‘No way! You try that wrestling trick on Gladys Two-bars and she’d snap you like a twig, hero or not.’

‘Gladys …?’

‘Two-bars. Gave her a lady’s bike when she started, but twice out and the frame buckled under the weight of her, so they had to get her a man’s, and even then she needed a double crossbar.’

Joe offered up a prayer of thanks he’d been spared that encounter and asked, ‘So who are you, then?’

‘Bron, that’s Bronwen, Williams. My da’s caretaker here at the college, and when your friends had to go off, they asked if we’d keep an eye on you. I would never have said yes if I’d known what sort of man you were going to turn out to be.’

Joe didn’t enquire what sort of man that was, but asked instead, ‘So where’ve they gone, my friends?’

‘Down into Llanffugiol, silly. Festival proper starts tomorrow and they got to register, see what’s what, more rules than a lawyers’ union these choir contests, my da says.’

‘Yes, but it’s the singing that counts,’ said Joe defensively.

‘You think so? Easy to tell you’re not from round here. Could sing like an angel and they’d disqualify you for not having wings if they felt like it. Here, lie down, will you, else I’ll be doing my own back in.’

Obediently, Joe stretched prone on the bed and next thing the girl was straddling him, her bum warm against his buttocks as she leaned her fingers deep into his back.

‘You trained for this?’ he croaked.

‘No. You complaining? Send you back to that fancy hospital if you like. But you won’t find any of those puffed-up little nurses can give you this treatment. Nothing but a bunch of skivvies, that lot, just about fit for cleaning bedpans. Chuck you out before you can hardly walk, too. ‘Spect they’ll be chucking that woman out you rescued any time now.’

‘Don’t think so,’ said Joe, wondering what experience of Caerlindys Hospital had given Bronwen such a jaundiced opinion of the place. ‘She looks to be in a pretty bad way.’

‘You talk to her then?’

‘Not me. Police are trying but she’s in no state.’

‘Police are useless,’ she said dismissively. She was, thought Joe, a very dismissive young woman. ‘So they don’t know who she is, then? What she was doing there?’

‘Not yet. What’s the word locally?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Back home, everyone would have a theory,’ said Joe. ‘Can’t be much different here, I shouldn’t have thought.’

‘Mind our own business round here,’ she said sharply. ‘Got enough to do looking after ourselves without wasting time on strangers.’

In the circumstances, which were that her bare thighs were gripping the bare back of a complete stranger, this seemed a questionable disclaimer, thought Joe. But he wasn’t about to raise the objection.

The massage, temporarily suspended, now resumed, with the girl sliding back and forth above him like a rower pulling on an oar, as she let her hands run in long slow strokes the whole length of his back from bum to shoulders.

‘How’s that feel?’ she asked

‘Lot better,’ said Joe, his voice now husky with more than just smoke damage.

‘Turn over and I’ll do your front then,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said explosively. ‘Front’s fine, really.’

‘You sure?’ she said, her voice husky as his own. ‘It’s all down to tension, you know, get rid of the tension and you get rid of the pain …’

She’s taking the mickey, thought Joe. She knows exactly what’s going on and she’s taking the mickey.

Before he could decide how to respond there was a sound like the polite cough well-brought-up folk use when less well-brought-up folk would shout, ‘Oy!’

The girl dismounted like a pro jockey. Joe turned his head to see what had made the sound and rather to his surprise, because being right first time wasn’t something he was used to, he saw what looked like the very model of a well-brought-up polite cougher in the doorway.

It was the silver-haired man with the eagle’s beak he’d seen in the group by the ruined cottage.

‘Mr Sixsmith, I presume,’ he said, advancing. ‘I’m glad to see Bronwen’s looking after you. I’m Leon Lewis, High Master of Branddreth.’

He approached the bed with his hand outstretched. Joe, though already gratefully acknowledging the deflating effect of the interruption, was not yet in a position to do more than flap his hand out sideways.

‘Please,’ said the newcomer, brushing his fingers against Joe’s. ‘Don’t disturb yourself. I just wanted to check that all was well, and of course congratulate you on what from all accounts must have been a spectacular act of courage, worthy, I would say, of one of our country’s official awards for gallantry.’

His gaze moved from Joe to Bronwen.

What’s he thinking? thought Joe. Medal or maiden?

He took the chance to pull the bedspread over his bottom half, roll over, and sit up.

Lewis was smiling benevolently at the girl, who was looking at the same time resentful and embarrassed.

Good, thought Joe. Bit of embarrassment won’t harm you, my girl.

‘Best be off now,’ she said abruptly. ‘They’ll be wondering where I am.’

She left the room without a glance at Joe.

Story of my life, he thought. One minute they’re sitting on top of you, next they won’t give you the time of day.

‘So, Mr Sixsmith, well done, and welcome to Wales in general and Llanffugiol in particular.’

Lewis had a fine voice, musical and rich-timbred. Headmaster needed a good voice, thought Joe, remembering his own at Luton Comp. who in full throat could drown a departing jumbo.

But this guy hadn’t called himself a head.

‘Thanks,’ said Joe. ‘Glad to be here. High Master same as headmaster, is it?’

He’d never discovered a better way of finding out things than asking, but Lewis viewed him narrowly for a second as though in search of satire.

Then he smiled and said, ‘Indeed. Such a variation of title is not unknown even beyond the border, I believe. May I ask what the medical prognosis is, Mr Sixsmith?’

Sounded to Joe like something that doctors shoved into you.

He said, ‘You mean, how’m I doing? Pretty well. In fact, very well.’

To demonstrate he slipped out of bed. The embarrassing effects of Bronwen’s massage had vanished, but happily the therapeutic effects remained. Though not feeling completely back to normal, normality now felt like a gainable goal.

‘Like you can hear, voice is no good, though,’ he said. ‘Won’t be able to sing.’

‘And does it hurt you to talk?’

‘Not as much as it probably hurts you to listen,’ said Joe.

‘On the contrary, it’s a very great pleasure,’ said Lewis. ‘In fact, I would be delighted to hear your own version of events. We’ve been given the official account of what happened, of course – the constabulary are very accommodating …’

‘Mr Ursell, you mean?’ said Joe, unable easily to fit the DI and accommodating into the same sentence.

‘Ah. You’ve met the inspector, have you? An excellent officer at his level, I do not doubt, but one who tends to be rather officiously silent on what he regards as police business. Protecting his position, I suppose. Fortunately my good friend Deputy Chief Constable Penty-Hooser who is O/C Crime takes a rather more open view and has put me fully in the picture. The only thing better, of course, would be to get the full story from the horse’s mouth, as ‘twere, especially when, as I gather, the horse in question can lay claim to the professional expertise of a private investigator. To which end my wife and I hope you might feel able to join us at the Lady House for dinner tonight.’

‘Tonight?’ echoed Joe, thinking this was the first time he’d ever heard anyone say as ‘twere and wondering how the High Master had caught on he was a PI. His mate the DCC most likely.

‘I know it’s short notice, especially in view of your ordeal. But there is another reason for pressing you. Fran and Franny Haggard, who own Copa Cottage, are staying with us and they would dearly like to meet you before they go back to London tomorrow. So if it were at all possible …’

‘Don’t know if I’m up to going out to some restaurant,’ said Joe, foolishly avoiding the refusal direct.

‘What? Ah, I see. No, the Lady House is in fact where I live. It’s only a step from the college, but of course I would be more than happy to pick you up in my car …’

‘Think I can manage a step,’ said Joe sturdily, before he realized this was as good as an acceptance.

‘Excellent. Shall we say seven for seven thirty? Informal, of course. Don’t dream of dressing. Pleasure to meet you, Mr Sixsmith. Now I’ll let you get back to your rest.’

He touched his silver-topped stick to his silver-topped head and left.

Don’t dream of dressing? thought Joe, looking down at his red and yellow striped pyjamas. He knew things were different in Wales, but surely not that different!

It was the kind of jokey remark he’d have addressed to Whitey if Whitey had been present. Unfortunately, Rev. Pot had declared choir transport a petless zone ever since the great M1 dogfight, in which two border terriers, a whippet and a labrador-cross had assaulted each other and anyone who came near, obliging the coach driver to veer off the road on to a police-only parking site which was already fully occupied by a police car.

Whitey had taken no part in the action, contenting himself with sitting on Joe’s lap, sneering at the idiocies of canine behaviour and the inadequacies of human control. Nevertheless, he had been included in the general ban and was presently in police custody, meaning he was being looked after by Detective Constable Dylan Doberley.

Doberley, nicknamed Dildo by the wits of Luton CID, was a member of the choir. He had first come to Boyling Corner in lustful pursuit of a young mezzo and would have been indignantly ejected by Rev. Pot if he hadn’t turned out to have a genuine basso profundo voice. ‘Does not the Good Book teach us tolerance?’ proclaimed the Rev. But it was lesson he’d been hard put to remember when Doberley announced he couldn’t make the Welsh trip.

He’d backed up his own anger with the wrath of God, but Doberley had been unmoved.

‘Sorry to be letting down you and God both,’ he’d said. ‘But with Sergeant Chivers it’s more, like, personal.’

Joe knew what he meant. Having Rev. Pot and God on your back would be burdensome, but couldn’t come close to the personal pressure Chivers was capable of exerting. Joe knew all about this. The sergeant took his presence on the mean streets of Luton masquerading as a PI very personally.

It wasn’t all bad news on the Doberley front, however. The DC was between accommodations, having left the police Section House because it inhibited his private life and having been let down about a bedsit he hoped to rent. So he’d jumped at the offer of a bed in Joe’s flat in return for seeing to all the needs and comforts of Whitey.

This was an arrangement which caused Joe no little unease, mistrusting as he did both parties.

Better ring and check how things are working out, he thought.

Which should have been easy for a hi-tech tec with a mobile.

Except the last time he’d seen said mobile was when he’d shoved it into Beryl’s hands prior to his ‘heroics’.

Fortunately there wasn’t far to look, as the sickbay’s furnishings consisted of a metal locker. Its khaki colour suggested that it was army surplus and the young inmates of the sickbay had salved their convalescent boredom by scratching their names in the paint. An attempt had been made to blot them out but as the overpaint was a different shade, all it did was give the inscriptions a ghostly dimension, like they were trying to convey a message from the shadow world. The convention seemed to be that you scratched your name and the condition which had put you in here. Some were straightforward: Billy Johnstone, broken leg. Eric Pollinger, flu. Others oblique: Michael K. Tully, faintings. Sam Annetwell, spots. And some downright cryptic: Henry Loomis, sights. Simon Sillcroft, sadness. In fact, Simon Sillcroft and his sadness were regular attenders, his name appearing at least three times that Joe could see. Poor kid. He hoped he got over it. And Henry Loomis over his sights!

He thought of scratching his own name. Joe Sixsmith, heroics. Better not! Instead he opened the locker and found his spare clothing all neatly arranged on hangers and shelves. He was pleased but not surprised. The kindness of women still delighted him but had long since ceased to be unexpected. Beryl’s hand, he guessed, only because if Mirabelle had got her hands on the mobile, she’d have chucked it in the nearest pond, not positioned it suggestively on a pile of Y-fronts.

Maybe he was reaching for suggestively. But a guy could hope.

He punched in his home number, got nothing, remembered to switch on, and heard it ring for nearly a minute before there was a response.

‘Yeah?’

‘That the user-friendly way they teach you to answer the phone down the nick?’ said Joe.

‘Wha’? Who’s that?’

‘It’s me, Joe.’

‘You sure? You sound like a frog with laryngitis.’

‘Don’t sound so hot yourself.’

‘That’s because you just dragged me out of my pit which I’d just fallen into.’

‘Hey, you not fornicating in my bed, I hope, Dildo?’

‘Chance would be a fine thing. Chivers got me on nights and I’m trying to catch up on sleep, which ain’t easy what with the phone ringing and that crazy cat of yours always wanting something but not letting on what.’

‘Yeah,’ said Joe, recognizing the problem. ‘But you’re getting on OK?’

‘Yeah, yeah. Eats everything I give it and anything else I don’t actually lock up. And keeps funnier hours than me. Joe, I’ve gotta get some sleep, I’m on again tonight. Things OK with you in the Wild West?’

Joe considered the events of the past twenty-four hours and said, ‘Fine.’

‘Great. You do sound rough, though. Could have told you that Welsh beer would take the skin off your tonsils. Regards to all. Cheers.’

Joe switched off the phone. Should he have asked to talk to Whitey? he wondered. Probably not. Dildo would have thought he was insane, and the cat wouldn’t have disagreed.

He turned his attention to the more immediate problem of whether his hopes for Beryl would be better furthered as a bedridden invalid or a plucky convalescent.

Being in bed already could be regarded as half the battle, except it left you vulnerable to the attentions of undesirable visitors from Auntie Mirabelle to Bronwen Williams.

Not that Bron was altogether undesirable, but he doubted if it would help his cause with Beryl to be caught straddled by a Celtic masseuse. There was bedridden and bed-ridden.

He smiled at his joke, and stored it up for later retrieval. It was OK if you were Oscar Wilde, shooting out off-the-cuff one-liners, but less gifted mortals had to work at it.

So it was plucky convalescent. And in any case, if he was dining with the High Master tonight as ‘twere, he’d better start getting his sea-legs as ‘twere.

There was no lock on the door so he placed the wooden chair against it. No point taking risks with Bronwen on the loose. Then he stripped off his pyjamas and stepped into the narrow open shower cubicle. The water came out more in a spout than a jet, but it was nice and hot and helped soothe his aches to a distant nag. He glanced through the steam at the round white plastic hospital clock on the wall opposite. High noon. He tried his Tex Ritter imitation which usually went down well on Karaoke Nite at his local, but after a couple of notes acknowledged that his current voice was fit only for Lee Marvin’s ‘Wand’rin’ Star’. More suitable anyway. He might be footloose in the Wild West, but to the best of his knowledge there was no one out there looking to blow him away.

But maybe he’d better stick to whistling till he got his voice back.

You know how to whistle, Joe?

Now who had said that?

Stepping out of the shower he began to towel himself down carefully to avoid reactivating the sensitive areas. Then, dried off, he put on his clothes, combed his hair and went out to explore.

Chapter 5

Outside the sickbay, Joe found himself in a stone flagged corridor which magnified the slap of his trainers and set up an echo so strong he looked back to see if he were being followed. He must have passed along it when he arrived, but the press of company and his own fragility meant he hadn’t paid much attention. To one side a line of high narrow windows with pointed arches looked out on to a rolling, wooded landscape, but it wasn’t the light they admitted that you noticed, rather the shadows they threw, creating the effect of a medieval cloister which Joe recollected from some old Robin Hood film on the telly. The only hint to the casual visitor that this was the twentieth century was the winking light of a security camera high on the walls at either end. Maybe any kid spotted running instead of walking got shot with an arrow.

On the other side were classrooms. He pushed open a couple of doors and peered in. Rows of old-fashioned one-piece desks stood on carefully measured parade. The floorboards, though scrubbed clean, were old, uneven, and splintered, and the whitewashed walls were devoid of ornament and peeling.

People paid for their kids to come here? thought Joe. They managed things better in Luton.

A flight of stairs almost tempted him upwards but he decided best to keep his feet planted firm on the ground till he sussed out the geography, which didn’t promise to be easy. He turned a couple of corners and lost contact with the outside world for a while. Once more only the security cameras kept him reassured that he hadn’t time-travelled. Finally a narrow door opened on to what looked like a scaled-down version of the kind of baronial hall he recalled from that same old TV movie, its walls decorated with ragged banners, battered shields, rusty weapons and mouldering animal heads, plus (presumably the modern equivalent) photographs of scenes from college life, most featuring the High Master in close proximity to visiting dignitaries. One showed a sunlit group of boys in running shorts, flanked by a blazered Lewis and a tall angular, strawberry-nosed man in top-brass police uniform, looking like he was suffering from prickly heat. The legend beneath confirmed what Joe guessed, that this was DCC Penty-Hooser, who had presented the prizes at the last sports day.

No point having important friends if you can’t use them, thought Joe, heading across the hall to a huge oak door, solid enough to deter a peasants’ revolt. But first impressions, especially Joe’s, weren’t always right. At the merest touch of his finger the door swung smoothly open and he stepped out into the light.

As even The Lost Traveller’s Guide acknowledges, whatever the architectural shortcomings of Branddreth Hall, the guy who chose the site knew a thing or two.

Built on the other side of the ridge from the burnt-out cottage, it looked out westward across a tumble of wooded hills to a line of high mountains whose every detail was swept clear by the house-proud sun.

It was a great view. Even Joe, a devout bricks-and-mortar man, was impressed.

Then a wisp of cloud floated across the sun, running its shadow towards him over the white fields like a wolf loping towards a lost traveller. Joe shivered and quickly turned his head to look at something closer.

It turned out to be Frank Sinatra’s face, only a foot or so away.

Joe took a step backwards, thinking, is there some big Welsh lookalike convention going on? Or has Ol’ Blue Eyes really made it back?

‘Shoot,’ he said, recovering. ‘Where you drop from, friend?’

‘You the one from the fire?’ demanded the man, who was in his forties, wearing dungarees and the kind of look Sinatra might have worn if he’d flown in from the States to discover he’d been booked for Karaoke Nite at the Llanffugiol Working Men’s Club.

Or maybe it was just he was clearly suffering from a bad cold.

‘Suppose I am,’ said Joe distrustfully.

The aggressive distrust vanished to be replaced by a broad smile showing the kind of teeth that probably got you jailed in Hollywood.

‘Dai Williams,’ said the man, wiping his running nose on the back of the hand he then thrust out to Joe. ‘I’m the caretaker. Glad to meet you, Mr …?’

‘Sixsmith,’ said Joe, reluctantly touching the proffered hand.

‘Sixsmith? That all?’ said Williams.

‘Joe to my friends.’

‘And I hope I can be one of those, Joe. What you did last night was the act of a man I’d be proud to call my friend.’

‘Thanks,’ said Joe, embarrassed. ‘The caretaker? Think I met your daughter.’

‘Bron. Not been bothering you, has she?’ said Williams, frowning.

Oh, yes, thought Joe. But not in a way I can tell a protective dad. Not that the caretaker looked too protective, but with dads you could never tell.

‘No, no. Just dropped by to see I was OK. Mr Lewis came too.’

Just to underline, no hanky-panky.

‘Did he? Well, it’s his school, and welcome to it. Less I see the better. Had to come back early from Barmouth to see to your lot.’

This came over as an accusation.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Joe, who sometimes wondered how he came to be apologizing so often for things which he didn’t really feel responsible for.

‘That’s OK,’ snuffled Williams magnanimously. ‘Just as well you were coming, way things turned out. You hungry?’

Joe consulted his stomach and got a big yes vote. Nothing but that bowl of soup since Mirabelle’s sandwiches yesterday. It was a wonder he could still stand upright!

He said, ‘Think I could manage a bite.’

‘Yes, her the nurse said you’d be hungry when you woke,’ said Williams.

‘Beryl, you mean?’ said Joe, moved at her foresight.

‘That’s the one. Fine-looking girl, that,’ said Williams, with an appreciative crinkling of his runny nose.

Joe regarded him sharply. Was this pint-sized Sinatra imitation the local Pal Joey? he wondered as he followed him down the long west façade of the building and round the corner into a courtyard formed by the two main wings. The caretaker led him through a doorway which was probably the tradesman’s entrance in the old days. And probably the new days too, thought Joe, for didn’t places like this exist to keep the old days fresh?

‘Ella!’ called Willams. ‘You in there, girl? Got a hungry hero out here who needs feeding up.’

Joe’s incipient jealousy quickly evaporated when he saw Mrs Williams. A broad-shouldered, strong-featured woman a good six inches taller than Dai, she didn’t look the kind of wife a wise husband would mess with.

She told Dai sharply to take his germs elsewhere, then sat Joe at a well-scrubbed kitchen table and without prompting (or maybe Beryl had briefed her) she produced a mountain of scrambled eggs, mushrooms and tomatoes which filled Joe’s stomach without offending his tender throat. This was followed by soft white bread, fresh butter and home-made marmalade washed down with strong tea. And she didn’t trouble him with talk while he was eating.

A jewel among women, he told himself.

‘That was the goods,’ he told her fervently as he held out his cup for a refill.

The cup was a fine piece of Wedgwood china matching his plate, the best set, he guessed. A childhood spent observing Mirabelle in her natural habitat had taught him it wasn’t what a visitor ate that signified status, it was what they ate it off. His hostess, he noticed, was drinking her tea from a plain white breakfast cup.

‘More where that came from,’ she offered.

Joe was tempted but shook his head.

‘Better not,’ he said. ‘Mr Lewis has asked me to eat with them tonight and if his lady is as generous with the grub as you, I’d better leave a space.’

A knowing smile flickered across her lips but the only comment she offered on her employers’ cuisine was, ‘They’ll be wanting you to sing for your supper, I expect.’

‘Shan’t be doing any of that for a while,’ said Joe.

‘Pity. That Beryl says you always hit the notes on the head. Here, I’ve just been baking some scones, they won’t take up much space.’

Joe felt a warm glow at this reported praise. Many choristers do good service by being able to take a note when given it, but a choir needs at least one member of each section who can actually give the notes first time.

‘But what I meant was, they’ll be wanting you to tell them about the fire,’ continued the woman as she put a plateful of scones and a potful of jam in front of Joe.

‘Expect so,’ said Joe. ‘Good folk to work for, the Lewises, are they?’

She viewed him thoughtfully for a moment as if trying to assess his motive in asking the question. He gave her the wide-eyed smile of one who had no ulterior motive, which was easy because he hadn’t.

‘Williams seems settled,’ she said finally.

‘And you?’ asked Joe, trying a scone. It was as delicious as it looked.

She smiled.

‘My gran always said, complaining loses old friends and doesn’t make new,’ she replied.

‘Name wasn’t Mirabelle, was it?’ said Joe. ‘Sorry. My auntie. You may have noticed her?’

‘Now you mention it, I think I did spot someone who reminded me of Gran.’

They laughed together and things got even easier between them. Joe took another scone, promising himself it would be the last, and said, ‘Sorry we messed up your holiday, having to come back early for us.’

‘Williams been moaning? He never got on with Gran. Pay him no heed. Couple of days less in a boarding house in Barmouth is no great loss, specially when it’s run by my sister-in-law. Expects me to help in exchange for special rates, least that’s what she calls them. If that’s a holiday, give me home every time.’

‘Yeah, I’m not great on holidays either,’ said Joe. ‘Lot of folk are, though. Buying up country cottages for a few weekends a year. Can get up local folks’ noses, that, I’ve read.’

‘That what they’re saying about the fire up at Copa?’ she asked, circumnavigating his subtlety as if it wasn’t there. ‘May be something in it. Beer talk for most, but there’s always someone daft enough to take their little boys’ games further. She going to be all right, this woman?’

‘I hope so,’ said Joe. ‘She deserves to make it. She was very brave.’

‘Thought that was your line.’

Joe thought of the injured woman’s attempts to draw herself up into the attic, the pain she must have felt.

‘No, she was the brave one. I just did it on the run. She had to make herself do what she did. And there’s no way I could have got her out less’n she’d helped.’

Mrs Williams took a reflective sip of tea.

‘You’d just have left her then?’ she asked.

It occurred to Joe that if the injured woman hadn’t been able to pull herself through the hole in the ceiling, the only way he could have got out was to pull her back down.

Would he have done that?

Could he have done that?

‘Man don’t know what he’ll do till he finds out,’ said Joe.

‘Well, what you found out is what I call brave,’ said the woman. ‘Who is she anyway, this woman?’

‘No one knows,’ said Joe. ‘The Haggards, who own the cottage, are here so maybe they can help. Specially if they’ve got kids, or close friends with kids. Word soon gets around; you ever in Wales, there’s this cottage only gets used in a blue moon. Kids are like that. Empty place is an invite to squat.’

‘You sound sort of expert,’ she said.

‘Watch a lot of TV,’ said Joe, thinking, this is a sharp-eyed and-eared lady. Would probably find out he was a PI, no bother, but he wasn’t going to advertise the fact. Like with a doctor, being off duty didn’t stop people parading their symptoms.

‘Anyway, I think you’re wrong,’ she said. ‘Anyone getting into Copa would need a key. I heard Electricity Sample charged them Haggards a fortune for making the place secure.’

‘Who?’

‘Edwin Sample. Runs a security business in Caerlindys, but everyone remembers him when he had a little back-street shop repairing hoovers and kettles. Now he’s up there hobnobbing with Mr Lewis and his other jee-um mates.’

‘Jee-um?’ said Joe. ‘Sorry, don’t know Welsh unless it’s in a song.’

‘No,’ she said, laughing. ‘Gee Em. General Motors. Little local joke. Someone in the States once said, what’s good for General Motors is good for the country. Well, there’s some round here look at things that way too, what’s good for them is good for the rest of us. Don’t know who started GM, but it stuck.’

‘So who are they?’ asked Joe.

‘Councillors, Chamber of Commerce, Freemasons, top-cops, the usual. They look after themselves and we look after their tail-lights. But none of this is your concern, Mr Sixsmith. Day after tomorrow, you’ll be back over the border, safe and sound. Will you have some more? If not, I’d better get on. Lots to do, what with your lot and the reception …’

‘Reception? What’s that?’ asked Joe, noticing with surprise that the scone plate was empty. He was tempted to take up her offer of more, but virtuously decided against it.

‘Tomorrow night, in the college assembly hall. Haven’t you read your welcome pack? No, maybe you’ve been otherwise engaged. It’s a get-together for everyone concerned in the Choir Festival. Better to have it after everyone’s settled in and got the opening nerves out of the way, says Mr Lewis. Keep everyone interested and on their toes. Keeping me on my toes, that’s for sure.’

‘I bet. Sorry to have held you up. That was really great,’ said Joe.

He stood up and headed for the door. Except there were three of them and he couldn’t recall which he’d come in by. Not good for a trained PI. Well, self-trained.

He chose one confidently and opened it. He found he was looking into a small windowless room occupied by a chair and a bank of four TV monitors.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Enjoy television, do you?’

‘What? Oh, them. It’s the security,’ she said scornfully. ‘Waste of money, I think, but I wasn’t asked, was I? Not my money, anyway.’

‘Bet it was you had to do the clearing up after the workmen though,’ said Joe. ‘And keep them topped up with tea and stuff. Worth spinning a job out an extra week for them scones of yours.’

She smiled and said, ‘You trying to get on the right side of me, Mr Sixsmith? Well, you’re succeeding. But fair do’s to Mr Lewis, he had Electricity Sample do the job while we were on holiday a few years back. That’s right, Barmouth, where else? Everything done and tidied when we came back. At first I hated the idea of those cameras looking at me as I went round the school but I don’t notice them now. Mr Lewis said it was a good selling point to parents, knowing their kids were being watched over all the time. Could be right. Not that Williams bothers checking the screens that much, and if he did see an intruder, he’d probably send me or Bron to check him out!’

Joe laughed and said, ‘Bet you’d sort him out too. Thanks again.’

He reached for another door handle.

‘Want to get back into the college, do you?’ said Mrs Williams.

Joe had made another wrong choice. Faced with only one remaining door, he finally made it into the rear courtyard formed by the college’s two main wings.

He spotted Dai Williams at the corner of the left wing, in what looked like lively debate with a youth of about eighteen or nineteen. They stopped talking as Joe approached, then the young man, who was slim to the point of emaciation and had a pale poet’s face in a net of fine black hair, turned and moved away at a pace just short of running.

‘Dai, your wife’s a treasure,’ said Joe. ‘That boy looks like he could use some of her tender loving cooking.’

‘Young Wain? Don’t feed you up over at the Lady House, that’s for sure.’

‘He lives at the Lady House?’ said Joe, concerned at the implications for his dinner.

‘Well, he would, being their son. Got a damn sight better fed when he was with the other boys being looked after by my missus, I tell you.’

And now Joe recalled Mrs Williams’s knowing smile when he’d refused her offer of seconds.

‘So he went to the college, did he?’

‘For a bit, till his ma sent him off to one of those posh English places where they train you up to rule the working classes. Lewis said it wouldn’t look good running a school and not letting your own boy be educated there, but he didn’t object, not when it was her money, not his, paying the bills.’

‘Help them with their finances, do you?’ enquired Joe.

Williams showed his home-grown teeth in a grin and said, ‘Could say that. For certain I know how much it hurts Mr Lewis to part with money, believe me. Very close relationship we have. Feudal, I mean. Master and servant. Doesn’t fancy any closer relationship between our families though.’

He cocked his head on one side as though inviting Joe to work this out.

Joe worked it out.

‘His son and your girl, you mean?’

‘Sharp,’ said Williams approvingly. ‘Yes, young Wain was sniffing around there a while back. Mrs Williams got upset, like she was leading him on. Took them both by surprise, I think, when I made it clear last thing I wanted was any child of mine getting mixed up with Wain. I sent the boy away with a flea in his ear and promised him a boot up the arse if he bothered Bron again. Don’t think the High Master liked the way I talked, but seeing as we were in total agreement for once, he didn’t complain.’

Joe, who wondered how much real understanding of his daughter the caretaker had, said, ‘Ever think of moving on?’

‘Why should I?’ demanded Williams sharply.

‘Well, all this hassle, you don’t seem crazy about the Lewis family, and this is all right for an afternoon out’ – he made a gesture which comprehended all the visible landscape in this – ‘but it’s not what you’d call lively, is it?’

‘My missus been saying something, has she?’ said Williams. ‘Or our Bron? Oh yes, they’d like the bright lights and the big shops, but me, I’m all for the quiet country life, see, so long as I’m head of the family, this is where we stay. Anyway, what’s it to you?’

‘Nothing,’ said Joe. ‘Just chatting. None of my business. Sorry.’

‘No, that’s all right,’ said the man magnanimously. ‘I like a good natter. You ask all the questions you like, Joe.’

Remember, a Private Eye is also a Private Ear, said Endo Venera, Joe’s American guru. Never miss a chance to get people talking. You never know when it will come in useful.

He said, ‘So what’s this Wain do now?’

‘Bloody student, what else? Went off to America after he finished at school, working holiday they called it, more holiday than work if I know him, then back to some English university, Manchester, is it? Welsh university not good enough for him. He’ll end up a bloody Englishman. Started already. Few months over there and he’s back here telling us how to do things, just the way those bastards have always done. Useless load of wankers, the whole bleeding race of them. Best argument in favour of ethnic cleansing there’s ever been.’

Joe was momentarily knocked back by what felt like a Pearl Harbor attack out of a clear blue sky. Then it dawned on him that Williams was speaking to him as one member of a disadvantaged ethnic group to another. He thought of pointing out that the only disadvantaged group he belonged to was Luton Town Supporters’ Club, but decided against it. There were interesting tribal relationships here he’d like to find out about before he declared an interest.

‘So how does Mr Lewis take all this? I mean, he’s Welsh, isn’t he?’

‘Cardiff Welsh,’ said Williams dismissively. ‘Learnt the language from books and now you’d think he was descended from Cadwalader. Hates it when he hears Wain called Wain.’

Joe considered this for a moment but it was beyond him.

‘Why? When it’s his given name?’ he asked.

Williams wiped his nose on the back of his hand and laughed snuffily.

‘Owain’s his given name. Like in Owain Glyn Dŵr, see? But the boy started calling himself Wain soon as he got old enough to see what a prat his da was. Gets right up Lewis’s nose, I tell you. Best not to take notice, I say, but he’s not easy-going like me. You got kids, Joe?’

‘Er, no.’

‘Wise man. Meant to bring joy, they say, but look around you, what do you see with parents and kids? Lot more sadness than joy, I tell you. Oh, yes, sadness whichever way you look.’

He’s going to start singing, It’s quarter to three and there’s nobody in this bar but you and me, Joe, any moment, thought Joe. He’d heard the Welsh were a melancholic race but this was getting real heavy for such a bright sunny day.

Time to lighten things up.

‘Sadness, eh? Few nights in the sickbay with your wife would soon sort that out.’

It struck him as he spoke that there was some slight ambiguity here. He’d certainly caught Williams’s attention.

‘What’s that?’ he demanded.

‘No, just meant that she acts as matron, doesn’t she? And you talking of sadness made me think of something I just saw, some kid called Sillcroft, I think it was …’

Now all traces of melancholy had vanished from the caretaker’s face to be replaced by cold menace.

‘You some kind of reporter, Joe? You here sniffing around for a story?’

‘No!’ denied Joe indignantly. ‘Just saw this kid’s name scratched on the sickbay locker, and it said sadness alongside it, and I thought that with Mrs Williams taking care of him, and her cooking and all, that would soon cheer up most kids I know.’

Being transparently honest wasn’t much help when you wanted to deceive but when you wanted to persuade someone you were telling the truth, it came in real handy.

Williams’s face cleared.

‘Sorry, Joe. It was just that … well, never mind. Nothing to bother yourself about. Tell you what, fancy a drink tonight? I know a lot of the boys down the Goat and Axle would like to make your acquaintance. If you feel up to it, that is.’

It would have been easy to plead weakness or a prior engagement, but when a man’s trying to make amends, it’s a pity to turn him down.

‘Quick one early on, maybe. I need to be back …’

‘To get yourself an early night. Point taken. Suits nicely. We keep country hours round here, early to bed, early to rise. I’ll take you down about five thirty, then. Now I’d better get some work done. Never know who’s watching, do you?’

He glanced sideways towards a distant copse of trees with a house behind them. The Lady House?

‘Mr Lewis, you mean?’

‘That’s right, Joe. Don’t want the High Master on my back, do I?’

The idea seemed to put him in a good humour and he went off chuckling.

Joe watched him go, then set out himself in the opposite direction to ponder these matters. But not for too long. He was temperamentally unsuited to pondering for more than a few minutes at a time. If a panful of puzzles didn’t come to the boil quickly, best thing to do was stop watching it and leave it to get on under its own steam.

He turned his attention to more personal strategies. Now he’d accepted two invitations out, his picture of Beryl returning from the village to find him lying pale and interesting on his sickbed was fading fast. Even if he’d been the kind of lowlife who could play on a woman’s tender feelings to get his wicked way, then glance at his watch and say, ‘Oh, sorry, gotta run, they’re expecting me down the boozer then I’m going on to dinner,’ he doubted if he could have got away without a lot more fire damage.

This needed thinking about. Also he was beginning to feel quite knackered. As horizontal was his best thinking position as well as being therapeutically attractive, he returned to the sickbay and lay on his bed to think about it.

It was here that Beryl found him a few hours later, fast asleep, looking pale and interesting. She lay down beside him and woke him with a kiss.

‘Oh, shoot,’ said Joe when he realized what was happening.

‘Shoot yourself,’ said Beryl. ‘Don’t you know it’s bad manners to sound disappointed when a girl kisses you? And what are you doing with your clothes on?’

‘Soon get them off,’ said Joe hopefully.

‘No, thanks. You’re well enough to put your clothes on, you’re well enough to keep them on,’ said Beryl rolling off the bed. ‘So what have you been up to?’

He told her, giving a pretty full account, except it didn’t seem worth mentioning Bron’s massage.

‘Don’t know why I bother with you, Joe,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You fool us all into thinking you’re sick, then you pack your social calendar fuller than Fergie’s.’

‘It just sort of happened,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

Beryl laughed a deep throaty laugh which ran over a man’s libido like a hot tongue.

‘Nothing to apologize to me for,’ she said. ‘I’m just glad you’re feeling so much better. Not sure if Mirabelle will see it that way, though.’

‘So how was your day?’ asked Joe.

‘Interesting. We were greeted by the head of the Festival Organizing Committee, the Reverend David Davies …’ She smiled at something.

Joe said, ‘What?’

Beryl said, ‘They call him Dai Bard ‘cos it seems he writes poetry and he won the crown at some eisteddfod. Only the young ones thought of him when that Bruce Willis film Die Hard came out way back and they started calling him Bruce the Juice ‘cos he likes the old claret. They got a good sense of humour, this lot, if you listen closely.’

‘I’d laugh only it hurts,’ said Joe with uncharacteristic sourness which he immediately regretted. ‘Sorry. Only there hasn’t been a lot to laugh at since we crossed the border. So he’s a bundle of fun, is he, this Dai Bard? Talks in limericks, maybe?’

‘Well, no,’ admitted Beryl. ‘Certainly talks a lot, but doesn’t look like he’s having fun. In fact, he looks more like Hermann Goering having to tell Hitler the war’s not going so well.’

Joe pondered this. Beryl could be pretty round-the-houses sometimes.

‘Worried?’ he concluded.

‘You got it. He kept on being interrupted to go into a huddle with some other committee member. I got the feeling there’s a lot of crisis management going on which they’re not too keen to let anyone know about. Like the time they found the dead bat in the operating theatre.’

‘Down Luton ‘Firmary? I never heard about that.’

‘There you go,’ said Beryl. ‘But the hospital management were lucky. They didn’t have Mirabelle on their case.’

Joe knew what she meant. His aunt had antennae like antlers and a sunflower’s objection to being kept in the dark.

‘So what’s the word?’ he asked.

‘Lot of snarl-ups. Mobile toilet people turned up with nothing but men’s urinals. Herd of cows got into the main competition field so it was covered with cow pies. French choir thought the dates had changed and almost didn’t make it. And the Germans arrived a day early and found there was nothing ready for them. Took the Dai Bard half a day to persuade them not to head for home.’

‘Probably helped looking like Goering then,’ said Joe. ‘Well, let’s hope they’ve got their bad luck out of their system.’

‘Mirabelle doesn’t believe in bad luck, she thinks God’s trying to tell them something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like they should stop worrying about these foreigners and concentrate on seeing a home-grown team wins.’

‘Maybe someone is,’ said Joe lightly. ‘We probably count as foreigners ourselves, and I recall we had a hard time finding anyone who’d tell us how to get here. Even the signposts had been bust.’

‘Joe, you’re not getting a fit of the great detectives again, are you?’ she said warningly.

‘This Welsh air’s turning you into a comedian,’ he answered, grabbing her hand and pulling her towards him.

She wasn’t putting up much resistance when the door opened and Bronwen looked in.

‘Ooo, sorry,’ she said, smiling broadly and running her delicate pink tongue round her vibrantly red lips. ‘Thought I might finish that massage, Joe, but I see you’re in good hands. Da says he’ll pick you up round the back in twenty minutes. That be long enough for you?’

‘Yes, thanks. I’ll be there,’ said Joe.

The girl mouthed, ‘Bye’, and withdrew.

So did Beryl.

‘That, I assume, is the caretaker’s kid you mentioned,’ she said. ‘And what was this massage you didn’t mention?’

‘Massage? Thought she said message,’ said Joe unconvincingly.

‘Don’t think so, Joe,’ said Beryl. ‘And if you’ve only got twenty minutes, I think you should come with me to make your confession to Rev. Pot and Aunt Mirabelle. Though from the sound of it, twenty minutes ain’t going to be half long enough.’

Chapter 6

Beryl was right. Mirabelle in particular wanted to nail Joe to the floor till she’d finished quizzing him, and in the end he had to do a runner in mid-sentence, and even then he was late getting into the courtyard.

An old red pick-up was being revved impatiently on the cobbles, shedding a shower of rust with each vibration. Joe climbed into the passenger seat, apologizing profusely and trying to keep as much distance as he could between himself and the snuffling Williams.

Then he was hit by something soft on his left side, and Bronwen’s voice said, ‘Shove up, won’t you?’

Rev. Pot could have made a sermon out of the competing claims of the yielding warmth of Bron’s haunch on the one side and the hard angularity of the handbrake on the other, but both sensations were rapidly relegated to the realm of the inconsequential by the furiousness of Dai’s driving. Alongside him, Jehu was a slouch.

The hedgerows were so overgrown that there scarcely seemed room for one vehicle, yet soon they were hitting fifty which felt like eighty in these narrow winding tunnels.

It took Joe three mouth-moistening attempts to say, ‘Know I was late, but I ain’t in this much of a hurry.’

‘Hurry?’ said Williams, surprised. ‘Who says we’re hurrying?’

‘Your speedo for one.’

The caretaker took one hand off the wheel and blew his nose into what looked like an oily rag.

‘Round here you don’t drive by the speedo, Joe,’ he said. ‘You drive by the clock. Two minutes later and I’d be driving round this bend at two miles an hour.’

They took it on two wheels, or so it seemed to Joe. To his right he caught a glimpse of an open gate and a stampede of full-uddered cows about to emerge.

‘Ifor James’s beasts,’ said Williams. ‘Brings them to the milking parlour same time, spot on, every evening. You can put your life on it.’

‘Think we just did,’ said Joe, thinking nostalgically of the quiet pleasure of doing the ton down the Luton bypass in Merv Golightly’s taxi.

He contemplated drawing attention to a potentially fatal flaw in Dai’s road-safety strategy, to wit, the intrusion of strangers, but a sign saying Llanffugiol flashed by and thinking they’d soon be stopping, he held his peace.

It wasn’t a very big place but it seemed to have everything necessary to a not-very-big place, like a little shop, a little chapel, a little church, a little village hall, a little war memorial, and, the Lord be praised, a sizeable pub.

Only it was called the Grey Mare not the Goat and Axle. Also it was receding fast, as was a field full of marquees which must be the site of the festival.

‘Not going to the village pub, then?’ said Joe hopelessly.

‘No. More at home in the Goat, you’ll be, Joe,’ said Williams. ‘Your kind of people, see.’

The renewal of terror as they plunged back into a green tunnel prevented Joe from riddling this assertion. After what seemed an age, they drew up in front of a long single-storeyed building in leprous whitewash standing alone at a five-lane crossroads, and Joe climbed out with the unsteadiness of a round-the-world sailor finally hitting home.

‘Don’t know about you, boy, but I’m ready for a drink,’ said Dai, heading for the open door beneath a weatherbeaten sign proclaiming this was the Goat and Axle, prop. John Dawe Esquire.

A chorus of greeting swelled at his entrance, cut off as by a conductor’s baton when Joe followed.

‘Boys, meet Joe Sixsmith,’ said Williams. ‘You’ll have heard about the woman who got trapped in Copa Cottage last night. Well, Joe’s the hero who pulled her out.’

‘Bloody hot fire,’ said someone. ‘It’s grilled the bugger black.’

No one was given the chance to laugh as the tall barrel-chested man behind the bar, presumably John Dawe Esquire, brought his hand down on the polished oak with a crack that set the ashtrays jumping and said in a basso profundo, ‘Anyone thinks that’s clever can find another pub to drink in. Mr Sixsmith, you’re most welcome. Let me draw you a pint. And take heed, Danny Edwards, this is going on your slate.’

Edwards, Joe presumed, was the young man who’d made the crack.

He remained seated, looking resentful, and there were others who didn’t move either, but sat there either indifferent or neutral. Some – two or maybe three, he only got a fleeting impression of retreating forms – felt the need to leave as he came in, their exit marked by a sudden gust of rock music as an inner door opened then closed behind them. Joe hoped their exit was coincidence rather than comment, but his unease was soon dissipated in the unmistakably genuine warmth of the half dozen or so who crowded round to shake his hand.

They were all men in the bar. Bronwen had vanished, presumably heading straight for the source of the music. Certainly there was little here to attract such a bright young denizen of the modern era. In fact, Joe doubted if this particular bar had changed much in the past hundred years. Its small windows created perpetual dusk, which was no great deprivation unless you wanted a good look at the uncarpeted floorboards, the low ceiling stained with enough nicotine to dye a thousand lungs, or the dusty photos of depressed-looking men in stiff collars which crowded the flaking walls. Was sadness endemic in these parts? Joe wondered. Like one of them cancer clusters some folk reckoned existed round nuclear power stations. Or maybe some apparition of something bad that had once happened appeared from time to time and sent you plunging into the depths. Sights and sadness. He recalled the two odd ailments scratched into the sickbay locker’s paint. Perhaps there was a connection, cause and effect, the sights bringing on the sadness.

But the jollity of the chief welcomers quickly seemed to communicate itself to the others, and he began to feel that maybe there were worse places to be than sitting here among Dai Williams’s cronies, modestly retailing details of the Copa Cottage rescue to a continuo of admiring applause.

Even Danny Edwards had come out of his sulk and was showing a lively interest. At one point he turned to a neighbour and said something in Welsh. Instantly the landlord, who was addressed familarly as Long John, said, ‘English, boyo. Show some manners. We don’t have much to be grateful for, but at least the bastards gave us a common language to curse them in, isn’t that right, Glyn?’

His question was aimed at a slight pale-faced man in a corduroy jacket, sitting at one end of the bar, rather apart from the others.

‘Yes, indeed,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘If they could have foreseen the communications revolution, there’s no way they would have been so keen to teach English to their subject races.’

He glanced at Joe as he spoke with an including smile.

Here’s another got me pinned down wrong, thought Joe.

‘Only did it ‘cos they were too thick and idle to learn anyone else’s language themselves,’ said Edwards.

‘Not sure about that,’ said Glyn, the pale-faced man. ‘I’ve heard from my language colleagues at the comp. that it’s often the settlers’ kids who are quickest and keenest at picking up the Welsh.’

‘That’s right,’ said someone else. ‘And if we’re so clever, why aren’t we in charge of our own country, that’s the question.’

Joe said, ‘Thought you were, this Welsh Assembly and all.’

There was a brief silence then Long John said, ‘Don’t let them blind you with their propaganda, Joe. They’ve got assemblies in schools, but it’s still the staff who run the show, eh, Glyn?’

Everybody laughed, except Glyn who said quietly, ‘Not all the time,’ which seemed to throw a bit of a damper.

Then Danny Edwards, who despite the earliness of the hour seemed well-liquored, burst into excited Welsh again.

Long John said sharply, ‘Enough of that, Danny. Why don’t you –’

‘All right, I’ll say it in English,’ interrupted Edwards. ‘Or is it what I’m saying, not the sodding language, that bothers you, John? What I say is, where’s this pussyfooting around getting us? Fires are all right, but they’re even better when they’re started by bombs. How do you think the IRA have got real power while our independence movement is still a bit of a joke? The English don’t pay you no heed till you start hurting them …’

Long John came in hard, this time in Welsh. Others joined in and for a while Joe found himself forgotten while a furious argument raged. He couldn’t understand a word, though body language suggested a majority against Edwards, but a fair minority with.

Finally Long John said, ‘Gents, we’re forgetting our guest. Joe, friend, I’m sorry, but you’ll understand, I’m sure. Same the whole world over, I guess, probably you’ve found it with your mates. Doesn’t matter how good your cause is, there’s always a little healthy disagreement about the best way to fight the enemy.’

Joe finished his beer. Wise move would be to nod sagely, then make an excuse and leave. Except that wisdom like that got a bit too close to cowardice. And he recalled the wisdom of his father – whom he didn’t remember – retailed to him via his mother – whom he did remember, just – never take sweets from strangers, advice from friends, or crap from any man.

That was his sole inheritance but it was worth a lot.

He said, ‘Something you maybe should know, Mr Dawe. I ain’t no downtrodden disadvantaged minority cause. If this enemy you’re arguing about hurting is the English, then this enemy is me. I’m a lot of things, time-served lathe operator, baritone, Luton Town supporter, PI, and you can stick English in front of all of them and I’ll not be ashamed. Now I reckon it’s time for me to go. I got a dinner date.’

He stood up. Another furious discussion broke out, as before in Welsh, but this time he did pick up a single phrase. Uncle Tom.

Definitely time to go.

Only a dignified exit wasn’t much help if it meant a long walk back along unfamiliar roads, with his legs wobbly from the combined effects of last night’s exertions, this evening’s confrontations, and three pints of Welsh bitter, there being no Guinness in the place.

He said, ‘Mr Williams, thanks for the hospitality. Does it run to driving me back?’

On second thoughts, memories of the journey here rising through the beer, maybe he’d be better off walking.

More jabbering. Then Williams said ungraciously, ‘Can’t have you hanging round here, that’s for sure. But I’ve got some business will keep me. I’ll see if Bron can take you back.’

He went to a door almost invisible in the dreary wall, opened it to admit a blast of rock, and yelled, ‘Bron!’

The girl appeared with a can of something in her hand. Her father spoke to her, she looked reluctant, he spoke again, she said, ‘Take it now, I get it tomorrow morning, right? All morning?’

‘Right,’ he growled handing her the keys.

She came towards Joe and said, ‘Hear you need a chauffeur.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Catch you later then, Joe,’ said Williams, suddenly conciliatory. ‘It’s been good talking to you.’

‘That’s right,’ said Long John. ‘Hope you’ll come again.’

They’d realized they were silly making a big thing out of this when I can’t have understood a word of what was said, thought Joe.

As he turned to the door, his mind as usual was seeking for the good exit line he would hit upon at four o’clock the next morning. As usual it didn’t come.

Then Danny Edwards said something in Welsh, the words incomprehensible but the tone of voice unmistakably derisory, and several of the others laughed. And now inspiration came.

Apart from a bit of French at school, Joe had never messed with foreign languages, not to speak anyway. But you couldn’t sing serious if you sang in nothing but English, and he’d developed an excellent aural memory for sounds and inflexions. The Boyling Corner Choir had prepared for their visit to the festival by learning ‘Men of Harlech’ in Welsh to impress the judges. First verse seemed pretty appropriate. He cleared his throat and declaimed:

‘Wele goelcerth wen yn fflamio, A thafodau tân yn bloeddio, Ar i’r dewrion ddod i daro, Unwaith eto’n un?’

Rev. Pot had once told the choir, ‘Silence is sometimes a better response than applause.’

As Joe walked out of the Goat and Axle, he knew what he meant.

Chapter 7

Joe stood by the pick-up waiting for Bronwen. She was taking her time. Maybe she’d changed her mind. Lots of cars parked round the side of the pub, he noticed. Well, there would be. Not exactly the kind of place you strolled out of your front door to. He noticed a couple of farm buggies like the one he’d seen last night. Significant? Hardly. Must be common as muck round here, and from the odd whiff coming from the nearby fields, muck was very common. That van, on the other hand, looked definitely familiar. Surely it belonged to Nye Garage, their mechanical saviour? He began to stroll towards it when the pub door opened and Bronwen emerged. Behind her was the man in the cord jacket, Glyn, the teacher. He saw Joe looking and waved, then went back inside.

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