passed.
Apart from the bald man, the hearse was empty.
'Gone to fetch your mate,' Guto said.
Berry nodded. 'How far is the crematorium from here?'
Guto took off his Plaid Cymru rosette and put in it a pocket of his jacket. He was wearing the black tie he'd borrowed from Dai Death. 'Not far,' he said. 'We can walk.'
Chapter XLII
The funeral service for Giles Robert Freeman was pathetically brief. A throwaway affair, Berry Morelli thought, compared with Old Winstone's London send-off.
The entire business took place in the new Pontmeurig crematorium, the first the town had ever had, Guto explained. Built because, when attempting to extend the local cemetery, the council had hit a massive shelf of hard rock which meant that any future graves would have had to be dug with dynamite.
At the end of a wooded lane behind the hospital, the new crematorium looked, from the outside, like a small factory with two discreet steel chimneys hardly hidden by recently planted trees, especially in December.
The chapel inside was maybe a third full, mainly due to the Press contingent. Reporters had filed in, fresh from the Conservative, Simon Gallier's conference, as the organ drone began. Only a handful of people had been in place when Guto and Berry had arrived. Berry didn't recognise any of them at first, although a young woman in a black suit and gold earrings looked vaguely familiar.
The minister had begun the service before Berry realised that another woman, sitting in the front row two or three yards from the coffin must be Claire Freeman. He'd met Claire maybe a couple of times, never spoken much with her. She was the quiet type.
Now he was staggered by how different she looked. And it wasn't only her hair, which he remembered as blonde and was now almost black.
He wondered if poor old Giles would recognise her. And then wondered why that thought had come to him.
The coffin of pale pine sat on a plinth covered in black velvet. Would it slide away when the moment came, or just slowly sink? Berry looked at the coffin and tried to banish the image of Giles with his empurpled eye and his hands clawing at the black books.
Giles would be here forever now, filtered into the Welsh air through the steel chimneys.
But why not a mellow grey stone in a corner of the churchyard at Y Groes, where wild flowers grew and the air was soft with summer even when it wasn't summer?
The minister was a young guy with what Berry now recognised as a local accent. Each word was enunciated in that rounded, robust Welsh way which still didn't cover up the obvious fact that the minister didn't know a damn thing about Giles. When you listened to the words, rather than the music of the words, you realised it was just a bunch of platitudinous crap which could have applied, Berry thought, to some John Doe they'd pulled out of the river.
There was just one hymn. An English hymn that Berry had never heard before. As the congregation sang, with little gusto, he read the words on the flimsy service sheet they'd been handed.
What did this have to say about Giles Freeman? Anything at all?
Berry began to feel angry. Was this how it ended? They just signed the guy out, quick as they could, and drew a neat line underneath. Would they give him a plaque somewhere: Giles Freeman, immigrant, didn't last long?
He looked over at Claire. She wore a plain, black dress and no jewellery apart from a heavy Celtic cross around her neck. Over the back of her chair was slung a faded, green waxed jacket, the kind Giles used to wear. It didn't seem like a tribute.
Claire's blonde hair, the couple times he'd met her, had always been neatly trimmed, cut close to the skull. Her new dark hair was longer and wilder. And Berry thought she seemed taller somehow, maybe the way she carried herself. Although she wore no make-up that he could detect, she had with her a glamour he didn't recall.
Each time he looked at Claire he noticed that the other woman, in the black suit and the earrings, seemed to be looking at her too. He remembered where he'd seen this woman now. In the street last night. The one he'd wondered if she was a whore. He felt bad about that now; she didn't strike him that way at all today.
'Who's that?' he whispered to Guto. 'Woman in the earrings.'
Guto looked at him suspiciously. 'It's Bethan.' he whispered back. 'Bethan McQueen.'
'Ah,' said Berry. The schoolteacher referred to earlier by Chief Inspector Gwyn Arthur Jones.
As the congregation sank down after the hymn, he heard the sound of stiletto heels on the chequered tiles at the entrance, and then a slim woman of sixty or so came in, followed by a harassed-looking man tucking the end of his tie inside his jacket. There was a black smudge on his forehead. They sat across the aisle from Berry. The woman did not look at the man. But, after a short while, she too began to look hard at Claire Freeman, as if there was something there she couldn't quite believe.
Berry tried to work out if anyone was with Claire and came to the conclusion that the people nearest her just happened to be occupying those seats.
She was alone, and she didn't look as though she cared.
He searched her face for tearstains, any signs of grief. The face was without expression but calm and womanly and strong.
And sexy? That dark glamour?
Jesus Christ, Morelli. He felt uncomfortable, ashamed. He wanted to be out of here, and then he felt ashamed about that too. Ashamed at the relief he fell at the end, five minutes later, as the coffin drifted away below his eyeline, the machinery working smooth, silent magic under the velvet-covered plinth.
Giles had gone.
Without a sound. Without a word in his memory.
He looked at Guto and saw that Guto was looking at the woman in the gold earrings. Bethan McQueen, who was looking at where the coffin had been and was pale.
Outside, amid the leafless trees, she joined them.
'That's it then,' Guto said. 'That's the lot. Don't mess about, do they, the English?'
'They mess about as much as anybody.' Berry said. 'That's what's so…'
'I feel very empty' Bethan McQueen was saying. 'It wasn't a funeral, it was…'
'Waste disposal.' Berry said. He kicked morosely at the ornamental light-green, crystalline gravel around the crematorium building.
'Bethan, this is Morelli. He was a friend of Giles Freeman.' Guto turned to Berry, 'Bethan was teaching him Welsh.'
'Without great success, though, I am afraid.' Bethan said, solemnly shaking hands with Berry.
Reporters came out in a bunch. Charlie Firth taking out one of his thin cigars. Ray Wheeler saying.. 'down the pub and give the poor sod a decent wake, eh?'
The sixtyish couple hung around the doorway, apparently waiting for someone. The woman pointed at the man's forehead and he look out a handkerchief and wiped away the black mark.
'What did you mean.' Bethan said to Berry Morelli. 'by waste disposal?'
'I wouldn't mind so much, but the bloody thing was serviced a fortnight ago,' George Hardy said. 'I don't suppose you happened to notice a Volvo garage in the town.'
'You fool,' Elinor's features were pinched with contempt. 'Is it likely?'
'Suppose not. I wish she'd come out. Get this over.'
'All you've ever wanted, George, is to get things over.'
