As she did so, she weighed it up and down in her hand before laying it back on the brown paper.
‘I know I’m more used to handling frail archaeological skeletons, but don’t you think these are unusually heavy?’ she commented, looking at Richard with a slight frown.
‘Yes, I noticed that in the mortuary yesterday,’ he agreed, taking the bone from her and hefting it a few times himself. He looked across at Sian. ‘Can you decalcify a piece, if I saw it out for you?’
Their technician nodded. ‘But it’ll take a week before I can cut sections,’ she warned. To get a thin slice of bone suitable for looking at under the microscope required that the chalky calcium part must be dissolved out in weak acid.
Richard tapped the long bone against the edge of the table and felt it as unyielding as a rod of iron.
‘I’d like to get this X-rayed, too,’ he said. ‘I’ll take it up to Hereford Hospital; they’ll do it for me. I’ve got a coroner’s case there on Thursday, one of these operating theatre deaths.’
‘What are you looking for, Richard?’ asked Angela.
‘I’ve got an idea brewing in the back of my mind — and an X-ray may also give some indication of the age of this chap. The internal structure alters with advancing age, though admittedly it’s most useful when they are over fifty or sixty.’
He set about sawing a narrow slice from the shaft of the bone with a stainless-steel implement from his autopsy kit. Though the slice was only a quarter of an inch wide and went less than halfway through the bone, it took him five minutes and left him with an aching arm.
‘My God, that’s like flint!’ he complained, as he handed over the sliver of bone to Sian to put in a pot of formalin.
‘What else can we do?’ asked Priscilla, waving a gloved hand at the debris on the table.
‘This is where Angela comes in,’ he replied, eager to involve her in the examination. ‘I had a quick look at the vertebrae in the mortuary, but the light was not at all good in the late afternoon. See what you make of them, Angela.’
Though primarily a forensic biologist, the handsome brunette had had many years’ general experience in the ‘Met Lab’, as everyone called it, and could turn her hand to most aspects of forensic science. She pulled on some gloves and carefully arranged the three spinal vertebrae so that they interlocked in the proper anatomical position.
‘That’s all there was left of the neck?’
He nodded. ‘Just the lower three of the seven vertebrae. The upper ones must have gone with the head, as there was no sign of them anywhere in the adjacent peat.’
Angela picked up the top one, and looked at the central part with the hole for the spinal cord and the long spine at the back, between the two shorter wings that stuck out each side.
‘It’s had a bit of a bashing! Must have been chopped from the back.’ She took a lens from the pocket of her white coat and studied the upper surface intently.
‘There are deep cut marks, one almost going right through the left transverse process. And another that’s split the back of the vertebral body.’
‘Yes, I saw those. But what do you think caused them? A knife or something heavier?’
Angela took her time in replying, as she peered again through her lens. ‘Heavier, definitely. The edges are crushed, rather than sliced. I would think something like a cleaver or one of those agricultural billhooks.’
‘Not an axe?’
‘It would have to be a very sharp one, if it was. I’d prefer something with a thinner blade.’
Sian was looking at the small bone with fascination, visions of Mary Queen of Scots with her head on the block filling her mind. ‘But you’re sure he had his head chopped off, then?’
Richard stepped in, afraid that the girl might have nightmares about this. ‘Almost certainly after he was dead, Sian. He was strangled, remember?’
‘Why would they do that, Doctor Pryor?’ she asked, wide-eyed.
‘Almost certainly to stop us identifying him — and they seem to have succeeded, so far!’ he replied wryly.
‘You think it was a “we”, rather than a single killer?’ asked Priscilla.
‘Seems more likely, given he was tied up, throttled, beheaded and then buried out in a marsh,’ replied Richard. ‘Though it’s always risky to be dogmatic in this business.’
‘Nothing in the way of old injuries or scars, I suppose?’ asked Angela.
‘Unfortunately not. Almost the only surviving skin was on the back, so the abdominal area was missing, which might have had operation scars. All we have is that tattoo.’
‘Well, let’s hope the police have some luck with Batman!’ said Angela, pulling off her gloves.
Two days later and a hundred miles away, they were not having much luck with anything. The police house in Upper Borth was far too small for an incident room, so one had been set up in a disused hut about half a mile from the place where the body was exhumed. An army camp had been built during the war for some undisclosed purpose on the sand dunes at Ynys Las, near the top end of Borth’s great beach. Though it had been closed some years earlier, several of the long timber huts were still intact and with the power and phone reconnected, the police had installed the essentials they needed — trestle tables, chairs and the vital kettle and teapot.
As predicted, the chief constable had sought the help of the Metropolitan Police and late that afternoon, a detective superintendent and a sergeant arrived from New Scotland Yard, after an arduous train journey to Aberystwyth via Shrewsbury. Meirion Thomas picked them up at the station and took them to the Headquarters on the seafront to meet the chief and his deputy.
‘We’ve put you up in a hotel here in town for tonight, then comfortable digs in Borth from tomorrow,’ explained the local DI.
In the chief constable’s office, over coffee and biscuits, the London man, Paul Vickers and his assistant, DS Howard Squires, were given an account of the case, though so far, it was not very much. Paul Vickers listened impassively, leaving his questions until the end. He was not all that pleased at being sent down to a remote part of Wales at such short notice, especially as he had promised to take his fiance to the opera at Covent Garden on Wednesday and had already bought expensive tickets. But his name was next on the rota of senior detectives to be farmed out to the provinces and having an eye on promotion to chief superintendent, he could not afford to be difficult about it.
When Meirion Thomas had finished and the DCC had added a few more words, the London man laid his hand on the thin file that he had been given, which contained a summary of the investigation.
‘So what have you managed to do so far?’ he asked, trying to keep any condescension from his voice.
‘All the usual preliminary stuff, without getting a whiff of a result,’ replied the local CID man. ‘House to house in Borth and the nearby villages, though without a photograph or any sort of physical description of the chap or even his clothing, it was a waste of time.’
‘The only thing we have is that Batman tattoo,’ added Gwyn Price. ‘But it didn’t ring a bell with anyone — though of course, being up near the shoulder, it would never have been visible unless he was stripped or in bathing trunks.’
‘What about missing persons in the area?’ ventured Squires. David Jones jumped back into the discussion, anxious to assert his rank.
‘Trouble is, what area? And what time frame? We’ve got a few people reported missing in the county over the past ten years, but with a large summer tourist influx, the population is very fluid.’
Paul Vickers, a large, heavily handsome man of thirty-nine, with black hair and an expensive suit, pondered the answers.
‘So what have you got on his body and time of death?’ he demanded of Meirion.
‘The pathologist says it’s impossible to tell when he died to within a good many years, because of the preservative effect of the bog. But the tattoo must put some limit on it, when we can get some more information about this damned cartoon character.’
‘What about physical description?’
‘You’ll see tomorrow that he was little more than bones and some skin, as well as being minus his head, so the pathologist can only estimate that he was around five-feet eight in height, give or take a couple of inches, which is not a lot of use. No other distinguishing marks, he said.’
‘Who is this pathologist? Is he used to this sort of case?’ asked the sergeant, in a tone that suggested that
