she asked.
‘It was fine for a few years. Then I was posted to Singapore and she came over when things settled down and I got a job in the teaching hospital. But we had no children and she got bored, I suppose. An expat society like that is not the best place for an attractive woman with too much time on her hands.’
Priscilla took his meaning and smiled sadly. Getting up, she shrugged her coat back over her shoulders and held out a hand to pull him from his chair.
‘Come on, professor or major or whatever you are. Time for that meat and veg!’
As they walked back along the main street in the dark, she slipped her arm easily through his, as the waves hissed and sighed on the shingle beach nearby.
That night, as he lay on his bed, he was very conscious of the fact that Priscilla was lying only a couple of feet away on the other side of the wall.
FOUR
After a hearty Welsh breakfast at seven o’clock, they said goodbye to the amiable Mrs Evans, and in their working clothes once more, set off in the Humber, which had been parked all night in the road outside. When they reached the scene, all the players from the previous day were there, with the addition of the deputy chief constable, who in such a small police force as Cardiganshire, only held the rank of superintendent. David John Jones was a tall, dark man with the deep-set eyes of an Iberian Celt and though he was perfectly civil to them, Richard had the feeling that he was rather suspicious of outsiders from Monmouthshire on his patch. However, when the pathologist spoke to him in his native language, he loosened up and informed Richard that if this turned out to be a suspicious death, Scotland Yard may have to be called in, as their minuscule CID was not manned or equipped to run a murder investigation. This was a standing arrangement made by the Home Office to assist smaller constabularies.
They moved across to the excavation, where some officers had removed the coverings. Underneath, the hole was still partly full of water, though as the body had already been in a waterlogged swamp for an unknown number of years, another night’s soaking should make no difference. The pump had been started and the level was dropping quickly. As they waited, Richard asked what facilities were available for him once they had got the body out of the marsh.
‘There’s a decent mortuary at Aberystwyth General Hospital,’ replied Meirion Thomas. ‘The whole place was rebuilt just before the outbreak of war. That’s where the coroner’s cases are sent.’
‘You’ve told the coroner, Meirion?’ demanded David Jones.
‘Yes, sir, last night. He said to keep him informed about what we find today.’
Soon the pump had sucked the water down to the level of the sump and the remains were once again exposed. Richard courteously invited Eva Boross to be first in the hole, as she had the most experience of digging artefacts from the ground.
‘Looks much the same as we left it, but some of the peat underneath has washed away while under the water,’ she reported. ‘Best plan is to clear all around now, then undercut the peat until we can slide the whole thing on to that door.’
It took an hour to carefully isolate the long rectangle of peat supporting the body, Priscilla and Richard taking turns to relieve Eva of the back-breaking task. Then a couple of PCs manoeuvred the door alongside and gently, the block of peat and its macabre cargo were slid across on to its firm support.
As the door was manhandled to the surface and laid on the large tarpaulin, the Deputy Chief stared at the body with a frown on his saturnine features. ‘It’s a very dark colour! D’you think he’s black?’
‘All those foreign bog bodies were like that,’ said the archaeologist. ‘It’s the tannin in the peat that does it.’
The detective sergeant was whispering something to his inspector and Meirion turned around to look. Up on the road, there was now a small crowd of onlookers and he saw one with a camera.
‘We’ve got an audience already! I’ll bet the Cambrian News has got wind of it by now.’
The DCC scowled. ‘Damned nuisance, they are! I’ll bet if you found a body in the middle of the Sahara, there’d be people popping up from behind rocks inside half an hour.’
‘I can’t examine him properly here, especially with those folks watching, even though they’re a good distance away,’ said Richard Pryor. ‘Better cover him up until we can move him.’
The edges of the tarpaulin were lifted up and folded over the remains, then secured with cord. Two brawny constables then carried it away like stretcher-bearers to the larger of the two police vans parked up on the road.
As soon as they had left, Richard stood with Priscilla and Eva Boross, looking down into the now-vacant hole in the peat.
‘Definitely no head, unless it’s still buried in the peat well away from the rest of the body,’ he said.
The archaeologist agreed. ‘To be on the safe side, I feel we should ask the police to clear the peat away for a few feet all around where the body was, even if it means making the hole a lot bigger. You never know what you might find.’
They collected their kit together and walked back to the cars, where, as David Jones had suspected, a young reporter from the local paper was with the dozen onlookers, ready with his camera and notebook. The detective inspector went over to him and had a few words, which seemed to satisfy him. Wellingtons came off again and Richard was glad that he had lined the floor of his car boot with old newspapers, which caught the worst of the mess.
They followed the police van back to Aberystwyth where its cargo was taken to the mortuary behind the hospital in North Road. The porter who acted as part-time mortuary assistant looked askance at the peat-stained bundle that was carried in to his clean post-mortem room, though at least it didn’t smell, like some of the drowned bodies belatedly recovered from the sea or the river.
Sergeant Parry, with that facility that policemen have for cadging from local institutions, took the three scientists off to the doctor’s dining room, where they were served with tea and sandwiches. Home-cured ham and fresh salmon were very welcome, especially at a time when the austerity of post-war rationing was only just disappearing.
By the time they got back to the mortuary, the porter and two policemen had unwrapped the body, and now the door lay on a slab, already shedding black peat on to the surrounding floor.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ apologized Richard, but the porter, a fat man with a shining bald head, had become philosophical about the debris. ‘Don’t worry, doctor, I’ll hose it all down when you’re finished.’
Richard took a long red-rubber apron from a hook on the wall and hung it from his neck by a chain, another chain hooking it around his waist. Priscilla gave him some rubber gloves from his case and stood by with their camera, to add their own record to those taken by the police photographer. Meirion Thomas, Gwyn Parry and Eva Boross formed the audience, plus a couple of policemen who stood with white enamel mugs at the back of the room, drinking tea made by the mortuary man.
‘Right, let’s get on with it,’ said Richard, advancing on the body. He had a bucket of water and a sponge and began by gently cleaning the back surface of the trunk. Wrinkled and almost black, the skin was leathery down to the lower part of the buttocks, where it frayed off to expose the bones of the thighs. The lower parts of the legs and feet were still embedded in peat and when he removed it, they virtually fell apart into a collection of loose bones, ligaments and tendons, all stained brownish yellow. At the other end, removal of more peat revealed the bare end of the spine at mid-neck level, with two loose vertebrae not connected to anything.
While more photographs were being taken, Eva asked if he thought it was male or female.
‘We keep calling it “him”,’ replied Richard. ‘It’s so distorted that it’s hard to tell yet, until we can turn him — or her — over.’
The piece of cord was hanging loose and Priscilla used a pair of forceps to pick up the end for a closer look.
‘That bit we had with the core sample must be a single strand of this — there are three, twisted in a loose spiral.’ The DI, true to his farming origins, said that it looked like binder twine, a hemp or sisal cord used to tie up bales of hay.
