gates that he had left open when he had arrived.
He stalked back to the house and slammed the front door. Going back into the lounge, he poured himself another stiff drink and flopped into an armchair to morosely ponder his situation and wallow in some self-pity.
In spite of his threat, Michael Prentice did not contact his solicitor to ask him to be present at the search of his house, as he was confident that there was nothing to be found. When the police arrived on Wednesday morning, he assumed an air of bored indifference.
‘You won’t want me hanging around while you waste your time, Officer,’ he said nonchalantly, as he opened the door to Ben Evans. He had a bag of golf clubs on his shoulder and as he came out, he handed the officer a bunch of keys.
‘I’m off to the club until you’ve finished. Here’s the keys to the garage and the garden shed. Pull the front door to when you leave, there’s a good chap.’
He walked off to his car and drove away, past the CID Vauxhall, a Standard Eight and a small Austin Ten police van that were parked on the track.
‘Cheeky sod!’ muttered Lewis Lewis as he watched him go. ‘I’d like to find something here, just to pull him down a peg or two!’
‘Now, now, Inspector, we are upholders of justice!’ grinned Evans. ‘Everyone’s innocent until proved guilty.’
Lewis glared after the retreating Jaguar for a moment, then turned to the three officers unloading the van. One was a photographer from Bridgend HQ, the other two detective constables from Gowerton, one to act as Exhibits Officer if they found anything. The local uniformed man from the Southgate police station had just arrived on his bicycle and the whole team went into the house. Though it was June, it was overcast and the Home Service on the wireless was forecasting rain by the afternoon.
The superintendent had no idea what they looking for, but after a phone call to his chief superintendent, who was head of CID at Headquarters, they agreed that they should go through the whole routine. Then, if it turned out to be nasty, they would not be left with egg on their faces for not covering all possibilities.
‘You’ve got a woman dead and an accusation that she was being ill-treated by her husband,’ the chief had said. ‘Now this pathologist says she has bruises indicative of gripping on her arms and neck – and not least, a London QC is her father and is raising hell. That’s enough for me to give it the full Monty!’
Evans watched as the photographer took some establishing shots of the house, both from outside and indoors, while the inspector and two DCs made a methodical search of each room.
‘Are we looking for anything in particular, guv’nor?’ asked the older detective constable, an experienced man who had been involved in many searches.
Ben Evans shrugged. ‘Flying blind, I’m afraid. She had an injury on the back of her head, so look for anything that might have blood and hair on it. Could be a corner of furniture or the fireplace – or it could be the good old blunt instrument.’
However, every effort to find evidence of a fall or a struggle came to nothing. They searched everywhere, including the garden, the garage and the shed. They even put a head up into the loft, which from the layer of dust, appeared never to have been entered.
‘Are we interested in papers and stuff like that?’ asked Lewis, as he pulled open a desk drawer in the right hand front room, which appeared to have been used as an office, as it had a portable typewriter on top and a small filing cabinet alongside.
Evans came across and began looking through some of the papers, but they seemed to be either household bills or documents relating to the factory in Swansea.
‘No sign of a diary she might have kept?’ he asked the searchers, but was answered by shaken heads.
He shrugged off his disappointment. ‘I thought she might have left some record of him knocking her about, as she had written to her friend,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’s clean after all.’
They gave up after about two hours, having covered every inch of the house, even pulling back carpets and moving beds. The superintendent was last out and slammed the door shut, leaving the keys inside on the hall table. They had a final conference in the front garden, Ben Evans perching his large backside on the low wall of the circular rockery. He looked morosely into the murky water of the small pond that lay in the middle, where two sad- looking goldfish swam around.
‘We’ve got nothing, lads, and I’m not sure where we go from here. Any suggestions?’
Lewis Lewis scratched his head, then pulled out a packet of Players Navy Cut and offered them around. ‘We’ve never actually seen where she went into the sea and where the body was found, have we?’
Two of his colleagues took a cigarette, Evans and the photographer declining. When they had lit up, the senior detective constable queried what could be gained.
‘It’s almost a couple of weeks now, and we’ve had some rain and plenty of wind. What’s going to be left?’
Ben Evans thought for a moment, then whistled and beckoned to the uniformed man, who had been standing guard at the gate into the road. When he came up the path, Evans asked him if he was the one who had answered the call of the fisherman who had found the body.
‘Yes, sir – and I was there when the coastguards hauled her ashore.’
‘What about the place where she went swimming? Have you been down there since?’
The PC, a middle-aged man nearing retirement, nodded.
‘I was the one who found her dressing-gown thing, behind a gorse bush above the rocks.’
‘Can you show us both those places, Constable? We may as well have a look now we’re here.’
They trooped off behind the officer, who went a few yards along the track to the right, then turned down between stunted bushes and across to the top of the cliff.
Here a wide, shallow amphitheatre sloped steeply down to the rocks below, lined with coarse grass and patches of gorse. There was a narrow, ankle-twisting path going down to the sea, marked by muddy earth and outcropping stones.
The PC set off, followed more cautiously by the others and eventually they reached a band of flatter grass immediately above the rocky gullies, in which grey water surged and sucked with the swell.
‘Do people swim in that?’ said Evans, pointing down to the water, ten feet below.
‘Yes, plenty of them, especially at the weekends and in better weather than this.’ The constable pointed up at the low clouds from which an intermittent drizzle came down.
‘And this is where Mrs Prentice must have gone in?’ asked Lewis.
The uniformed man pointed to a nearby gorse bush, where a few bright yellow flowers resisted the wind and salt. ‘That’s where I found her clothing, sir. One of these thick white towelling jobs, with a tie-belt, like you get in Turkish baths on the films. There was a blue bath-towel as well.’
‘What about shoes?’ asked the photographer. ‘She’d hardly have come down that flaming path we just used in her bare feet?’
The constable shook his head. ‘No shoes, nothing but that dressing gown and towel.’
Ben Evans looked at Lewis.
‘That’s a bit odd, unless she was one of these “back to nature” folks and despised shoes.’
‘She may have some sort of sandals or rubber shoes and kept them on until she got down on the rocks,’ explained the PC. ‘I’ve seen a lot of people with those, it saves the feet until they’re right at the water’s edge.’
He pointed down at the grey rocks that formed the walls of the gullies. ‘They get right down there, then jump or clamber down into the water. They say it’s more fun than just walking in off a sandy beach, though at low tide, there’s a little stretch of sand exposed here.’
‘So where are the shoes now?’ demanded one of the search team.
‘Well they weren’t there when I came down to find the clothes,’ retaliated the constable. ‘But that was a day later, they could have been washed off by a big wave or blown off by the wind.’
The superintendent had a few photos taken of the site, then they clambered back up to the top of the cliffs. Once on the track to the houses, Ben Evans decided to cover all his bases and look at the place where the body was recovered.
‘It’s about a quarter of a mile, sir. Do you want to walk or drive?’ asked their guide. Opting to do it the hard way, the posse set off eastwards and passed the last of the houses, when the stony road became even more uneven.
‘Really need a Land Rover along here,’ observed Lewis, as they came to another dip in the high cliffs which
