What if she'd fallen in the river?
"Sali! Shout if you can hear me!"
She saw where some of the undergrowth had recently been flattened, and she moved towards it. Overhead, the sky had darkened and mingled with the interwoven leaves. There was a harsh spattering of rain. She could hear it but couldn't feel it yet.
"Shout, Sali!"
She prised her way through the bushes towards the sound of water and felt her dress tear at the hem.
"Damn you. Sali, if you're—"
A blackberry had been squashed against her hip and she looked down and saw bubbles of juice like dark blood. Then she slipped and fell down the river bank, rolling over and over.
The crows had taken his eyes.
That was the first thing she saw.
She was winded by the fall and lay on her back, a few yards from the water. Pain rippled up her left leg: ankle twisted.
A muddy boot swung gently about a yard above her head. She must have caught it as she rolled past. The boot made a sort of click as it swung against the other boot.
Bethan retched.
"I said, didn't I. Miss Sion?"
Sali Dafis was standing at the edge of the river looking proudly up at where he hung, nylon climber's rope under his chin, knotted around the branch, his tongue out, black now.
Chapter XIII
Pontmeurig was eight miles from Y Groes, on the other side of the Nearly Mountains. A slow, messy drive, especially for a hearse.
It was an untidy town, mottled grey and brown, something that had rolled down from the hills in the Middle Ages and was still rolling, new housing estates and factories spilling over the old boundaries on either side of the river.
Still puzzled by the attitude of Aled Gruffydd, Dai Death drove the corpse into town past the cattle mart and the new car park and past what was left of the medieval castle, looming grey in the dusk. Sometime in the early fifteenth century the castle had been burned down by Owain Glyndwr, it was said, in retribution for something, and had never been rebuilt because nobody could remember why the hell they'd ever needed a castle in Pontmeurig anyway.
In a street squashed behind the ruins, almost opposite one of the town's three chapels, was an offensive new fast-food take-away. The Welsh Pizza House, owned, of course, by English people. Next to it was a small yard with a sign that said: V. W. Williams and Sons, Funeral Directors. Dai was parking the hearse under the sign when the police car drew up alongside and a constable wound down his window.
"You've done it again, Dai. He's not yours yet, he's ours."
"Oh, bloody hell." said Dai. "I'm sorry, Paul. Automatic pilot I'm on today. You back into the entry and I'll turn around."
"Daft bugger, Williams," he told himself, switching his lights on, then putting the hearse into reverse. Understandable, though: it had been a year since the Dyfed-Powys police had last used him as a meat wagon.
He pulled out into the main street and drove past the police station to the cottage hospital at the bottom of the town. The forecourt wasn't very big and was packed with cars, because it was visiting time, so he had to park on the pavement outside. He got out, hoping the police would find him a space. He didn't like having a fibreglass shell seen in public; people would think he specialised in cheap coffins.
A thirtyish couple walked past in identical outsize lumberjack shirts and baggy corduroy trousers with turn-ups. The man had a baby strapped into a sort of sling around his chest. "Pity, really.'" he was saying. "Super view. I thought." The voice carried across the quiet street.
"Look at that." Guto Evans said, walking up behind them on his way to the Drovers. "The Ethnic Look. Designer working clothes. And of course they have to pretend they can't afford a bloody pram. Evening, Dai."
"What do they call those things?" Dai asked him.
"Something Red Indian."
"Papoose." said Guto in disgust. "The day you show me a Welshman with a papoose around his neck is the day I emigrate to Patagonia" He peered into the back of the hearse. "Who have you got in there?" His black beard split into a wide, carnivorous grin. "Burnham-Lloyd himself is it?"
Dai did not find this funny. He'd had a vague hope that he, the local man, would have been chosen to handle the Burnham-Lloyd funeral, but the more he thought about it the less likely it seemed.
"Let me tell you something, Guto." he said. "Even if, through some insane aberration, they were to make you the candidate, I don't even think your mother would vote for you. It's a hiker."
"What is?"
"Him. In the back. They found him in the woods by Y Groes."
"English?"
"Probably."
"Second one in just a few days. Bloody hell, Dai, might as well be working for the council, the times they send for you to cart away the rubbish."
"Anybody can tell, Guto, that you are a natural politician. That sense of fair play, of diplomacy, the way you choose your words so as not to cause offence." Dai opened up the tailgate of the hearse so fast that Guto jumped back. "How would you like to help me carry him in?"
"Me? Carry a coffin? An Englishman's coffin?"
"Don't like the thought of death, do you, Guto?"
"Get lost," said Guto.
Dai nodded knowingly. Most people were made instantly uncomfortable by the arrival of himself and his hearse. Except for those in professions touching on the death business — doctors, nurses, solicitors, monumental masons.
And the police.
By the time Dai had arrived the body had been cut down and lay on the river bank in the manner of a determined sunbather, vainly stretching out his head to catch what remained of the light.
Then Dai saw the rope still dangling from the branch and realised what this was all about.
"Oh dear," he had said to Chief Inspector Gwyn Arthur Jones, and the policeman nodded.
"I've never understood why they come out here to do it," Gwyn Arthur said, taking out his pipe. "Three or four a year, I reckon. If it's not here it's the Elan Valley. If it's not a rope over a tree it's a rubber pipe from the exhaust."
Dai did not mention that it was his personal ambition to die here too in case the Chief Inspector got the wrong idea.
"Well, they come here for holidays. Happy memories, isn't it. Want to go out where they were happiest."
"Bottle of pills and a photo album would save us all a lot of mess," said Gwyn Arthur.
The corpse looked to be in his mid-forties and quite a seasoned hiker, judging by his clothing and well-worn boots.
"Who found him?"
"What's her name — the teacher. Pretty girl."
"Bethan? Oh God."
"Well, one of the kids it was originally. Anyway, Dai, we want to have a little poke around the woods, just to make sure he was alone. Then you can cart him up to the hospital mortuary. Why don't you go and bang on the Tafarn door and get Aled to give you a pint. If you leave your casket on the bank, by there, my boys will have filled it up for you by the time you get back."
Dai made his way back to the hearse. He'd managed to squeeze it into a bit of a clearing by the roadside so it wasn't very far to carry the coffin down to the river — not as far, anyway, as it would seem to the coppers carrying it back.
It was less than a quarter of a mile to the village, so he walked, feeling the air — so much lighter, somehow, than the air in Pontmeurig. He strolled across the bridge to Tafarn y Groes. It was just gone six. Aled rarely opened before seven-fifteen. Dai rapped briskly on the pub door. Forgetting, until the pain stung his knuckles, what a solid oak door this was.
For a long time there was no response.
Dai was about to knock again when the door opened slowly and unwillingly, and in the gap he saw Aled's worried face. His white hair was uncombed: he had a hunted look about him.