"Hotel rooms?"
"The hotels in these parts, nobody would notice."
"Mr. Clean, huh?'
"Mr. Bloody Spotless." said Guto. "Well, you know…"
"Yeah."
Guto grabbed his pint with both hands. At which point, a thought seemed to strike him and he put the glass tankard down on the bartop and said seriously. "I never asked — are you a reporter?"
Berry started to laugh. He laughed so hard he thought he was going to lose control of his bladder. He laughed so hard people began to stare at him.
"What did I say?" said Guto.
Berry shook his head, tears in his eyes. He was thinking of the po-faced front-bench bastards in the House of Commons. He was thinking of the Energy Secretary making a careful statement at the bottom of his manicured lawn in the Cotswolds. He was thinking of his dad and a particular senator.
In the normal way of things, none of this would have seemed funny enough to make him lose control in a public bar.
He wondered, after a few seconds, if what he was really doing wasn't crying.
"I'm sorry," Berry said, getting his act back together. "Yeah, I'm a reporter, but I don't think I came here to report. I think I came to go to a funeral."
Guto said nothing.
"My pal died." Berry said. 'Tomorrow he gels cremated."
"Oh Christ," said Guto. "Giles Freeman, is it?"
Berry looked hard at the Nationalist guy. What did he know about Giles Freeman? "I'm looking for someplace to stay." he said. "One night, maybe two."
"Every hotel in this town is booked solid," said Guto.
"That's what I heard."
"Giles Freeman, eh?"
"Yep. You knew him? I guess he knew you."
"We met," said Guto. "Just the one time. But memorably. Looking for a posh place, are you?"
"Huh?"
"To stay."
"I'm looking for a bed."
"My Mam is feeling aggrieved." Guto said. "She does bed and breakfast all through the summer. Now, when everybody wants to stay in Pontmeurig, I have to tell her: forget it. Mam. What is it going to look like, you taking in party workers or reporters? English reporters, for God's sake! Me out there on the hustings and you cashing in. So, very aggrieved she is feeling."
"What's the charge?' Berry noticed Guto was suddenly looking at him the way business people the world over looked at Americans.
Guto's eyes gleamed. "Thirty-five quid a night?"
"Th..?"
"Big breakfast, mind," said Guto.
Guto's mother was a small, scurrying, squeaky creature with an agonisingly tight perm. In a living room so crammed with little jugs and vases and thousands of polished plates that Berry didn't like to move his arms, she told him seriously that Guto would be the death of her.
"She is delighted, really," Guto said. "She's never had an American to stay. What's your name anyway?"
"Morelli."
"That's an American name?"
"Don't be so rude, Guto." Mrs. Evans snapped. She smiled at Berry and her teeth moved.
"We had some Morellis, we did, at the back of us in Merthyr. Do you know Merthyr…?"
"Of course he bloody doesn't, Mam. Listen, Morelli, we can't do hash browns or steak and eggs for breakfast. Well, eggs are OK, but…"
Berry told them he was vegetarian.
"Oh dear, oh dear, we haven't any of that." wailed Mrs. Evans, squeezing the corners of her apron in anguish. "What will you think of us?"
"Toast?" said Berry. "Marmalade?"
"An American vegetarian?" said Guto, aghast.
"He'll be the death of me, this boy," said Mrs. Evans.
Chapter XL
Berry spent the night under a mountain of blankets in a bed like a swamp. He slept surprisingly well, and, at eight-fifteen on a grey Pontmeurig morning, came down to a table set for one, with a spare napkin. There was thick toast, thin toast and toasted rolls. There were three kinds of marmalade.
"These jars are new," Berry said.
"I sent Guto for to wake them up at the shop," Mrs. Evans explained. "I still don't feel right about it. I can't have you paying for a proper breakfast."
It occurred to Berry that Mrs. Evans did not know she was charging thirty-five pounds a night.
"Guto had to leave early to prepare for his Press conference," she said. "He'll make a terrible mess of it, I know he will. He'll say all the wrong things."
He already did, Berry thought. "He'll be fine," he said.
"Do you think so?"
"Guy's a natural politician."
"He won't win, I'm afraid," Mrs. Evans said. "And then he'll come on with all this bravado. And then he'll drink himself silly."
"They say he has a good chance."
Mrs. Evans shook her head. "Any chances he has he'll ruin. That kind of boy. They offered him a job once, down in Exeter. Head of the History Department. He wouldn't have it. That kind of boy, see."
"This is great," Berry said, munching a slice of toast with ginger marmalade.
"It's not a proper breakfast."
"It's my kind of breakfast," Berry said, "Can you tell me where I find the police department in this town?"
There were two public buildings in Pontmeurig built in the past five years. This morning Berry would visit both. One was the crematorium, the other was the police station.
The police station was so modern it had automatic glass doors.
"Who's in charge here?" Berry said.
"I am," said an elderly police constable behind the latest kind of bulletproof security screen. "'So they tell me." His voice came out of a circular metal grille.
"You don't have detectives?"
"Detectives, is it?" The constable looked resentful. "What is it about?"
"It's about what I guess you'd call a suspicious death," said Berry.
The policeman's expression remained static. He picked up a telephone and pointed to some grey leather and chrome chairs. "Take a seat, my friend." he said. "I'll see if Gwyn Arthur's arrived."
Above the security screen, the digital station clock was printing out 8:57 a.m.
The huge oak hatstand was a determined personal touch in Detective Chief Inspector Gwyn Arthur Jones's new office, where everywhere else was plastic or metal or glass and coloured grey or white. Berry decided the Chief Inspector might be the only guy in the CID who still wore a hat.
"I can appreciate your concern." Gwyn Arthur said. "I can even understand your suspicions." He spread his long fingers on the plastic of his desktop. "But none of us can argue with a post mortem report."
He took an envelope from a drawer of the desk. "You realise I don't have to show you this."
"Good of you." Berry said.
"Trying to be cooperative I am. As I say, I can understand your suspicions."
Before consenting to discuss Giles Freeman, the Chief Inspector had spent a good ten minutes lighting his pipe and asking Berry a lot of questions about himself. Casual and leisurely, but penetrating. He'd examined Berry's ID and expressed considerable curiosity about American Newsnet before appearing to accept that Berry's interest in this case was personal, as distinct from journalistic.
"This is the autopsy report, yeah?"
"You can skip the first three-quarters if you aren't interested in things like what your friend had for breakfast on the day he died. Go to the conclusion."
"I already did," said Berry. "Some of these medical terms elude me, but what it seems to be saying is that Giles died of a brain tumour. Which is what we were told."
"Indeed," said Gwyn Arthur. For a Welshman, he was surprisingly tall and narrow. He had a half-moon kind of face and flat grey hair.
"I don't get it"
"What don't you get?"
"This stuff. These. Berry held up the report. "This mean bruising, or what?"
"More or less. Abrasions. Consistent with a fall on a hard surface. Consistent also, I may say, with a blow. Which occurred to the doctor who examined him in the hospital and who passed on his suspicions to us."