Where Death Delights

brought up the subject.

‘I’m sorry I was so tiresome in Gloucester this morning, Richard,’ she said quietly. ‘But it was a bit of shock to see him just appear like that.’

‘I could see that you were upset,’ he said lamely. ‘Is there no chance that you might get back together?’

She shook her head vigorously. ‘Not the slightest! He did the dirty on me for months and was too cowardly to tell me. He just walked away one day, as if I’d never existed.’

‘Has he married her – or is he going to?’

‘I don’t know – and I don’t damned well care,’ she said fiercely. ‘As far as I’m concerned, he can go to hell.’

Richard felt it was time to change the subject and he turned the conversation to the two other cases in which they were involved.

‘It looks as if Mrs Oldfield’s crusade has run into the sand,’ he observed. ‘Unless she finds another set of bones for us to look at.’

‘I don’t see what else can be done,’ replied Angela, glad that the previous topic had been suppressed. ‘If her nephew’s blood group could be found, and was different to the bones, then at least she would have to give up.’

He sipped his gin reflectively. ‘A pity there isn’t some characteristic in tissues that’s absolutely unique to every single person. I expect it’ll come one day.’

‘But not in our time, Richard,’ she sighed. ‘Is there nothing else in those bones that would help?

‘Not a hope! Even if we had the head for dental identity or frontal sinus pattern, without the corresponding data on dear Anthony, we’d be no further forward.’

Their talk shifted to the Gower drowning.

‘I wonder what’s happening down there, they’ve gone very quiet,’ said Angela.

Richard repeated what he had said to Moira. ‘That’s the trouble, once the pathologist has shot his bolt, that’s often the last we ever hear of it, unless we read about in the Western Mail.’

He finished his drink and stood up. ‘I remember in Singapore, giving evidence in court, then never even knowing whether the accused was convicted or not, unless I happened to see it in the Straits Times.’

Angela nodded. ‘I know what you mean, it used to happen to us in the Met Lab. But I’d still like to know what those Swansea bobbies are up to.’

SIXTEEN

Those Swansea bobbies had plenty of other work to occupy them for the next few days, while they waited for a response from the Forensic Laboratory. They decided to hang fire on most aspects of the case, though Lewis Lewis did go across to Porthcawl and interview Daphne Squires, whose address he had obtained from Trevor Mitchell.

It was a fruitless exercise, as the blonde hotly denied any knowledge of anything, apart from being a ‘friend’ of Michael Prentice, which she stridently proclaimed as being the right of any British citizen. No, she had never met or even seen Michael’s wife, as she had never been to the house until after her death. No, she knew nothing of any strife between them, though she did admit to knowing that he was seeking a divorce.

She certainly knew nothing about any physical violence taking place and she managed to distance herself so well from the man that it sounded as if she hardly knew him.

Lewis gave up the struggle before long and drove home in disgust at a wasted journey. Ben Evans had considered sending Lewis on up to Reading to interview Marjorie Elphington, the friend to whom the dead woman had written the letter that had started all this – but he decided that unless and until the case was a ‘runner’, it would be a waste of the inspector’s time.

The ball was now in the court of Dr Archer, the chemist, and knowing of the case overload from which all the forensic laboratories suffered, Ben Evans and Lewis Lewis settled down for a long wait, as many police requests took weeks to come back.

However, the unusual nature of their problem played in their favour, as Archer was intrigued by an analysis that he was certain none of his colleagues in the other six Home Office labs had ever come across. The scientist even thought he might give a talk about it sometime at one of their regular scientific meetings. He read up more about molybdenum and decided that a ‘spot test’ was a fairly straightforward procedure, just to determine if any of the substance was present.

Archer even gave up his Saturday morning to come in and start playing about with the methods described in the manuals and on Monday, he finished off the analysis.

By the afternoon, he was able to ask the liaison officer to phone Gowerton with the result. Lewis took the call and moments later, came into Ben Evans’s cramped office next to the CID room.

‘Here’s what you want, boss! The lab have broken all records this time.’

He put a page from a message pad in front of the superintendent. Evans picked it up and read Lewis’s neat handwriting aloud.

‘All three samples contain molybdenum sulphide. Two control samples of similar commercial motor oil are free from that substance. Written confirmation to follow.’

Ben laid the note back on the table and looked up at his inspector. ‘The bastard! Let’s see how he explains this one away!’

Lewis Lewis was not so enthusiastic about the significance of the discovery.

‘So now we know his Jaguar was parked on the cliff above where his wife’s body was found. But he can wriggle out of that, surely?’

Evans hoisted himself out of his chair and reached for his hat on top of a filing cabinet.

‘Well, let’s go and see what fairy tales he’ll spin us this time.’

As it was still too early to expect Michael Prentice to have returned from his office, the two detectives drove past his house in Pennard and carried on until they reached the spot where the oil leak had been found.

Lewis parked the Vauxhall a little further on and they walked back, the long slope running way down to the rocks on their left. The sky had scudding clouds and there was a stiff breeze, but it was still a pleasant day to be by the sea. Ben Evans scanned the ground at the edge of the stony track and his broad brow furrowed as he failed to find the black smudge which had been sampled the previous week.

‘Where the hell’s it gone?’ he muttered to himself. Realizing that he had overshot the spot, he turned around and bent almost double, retraced his steps.

Suddenly he stopped and beckoned to Lewis, who was watching his boss imitating a bloodhound.

‘Come and look at this! The silly fool, hasn’t he learned that when you’re in a hole, you stop digging!’

The inspector came across and stooped to see what the senior officer was pointing at.

‘That was the rock, you can see that rubbed-off white tip where the sump dragged across it. But most of the black stuff has gone!’

Lewis saw that a six-inch strip of limestone looked cleaner than the surrounding rock, but there were still hair- like streaks of black visible.

Ben Evans straightened up, his hands on his hips.

‘He’s used a wire brush on it, the idiot! If he’d left it alone, he might have got away with some excuse.’

‘We’ll have to get this photographed again,’ said the inspector. ‘Then the “before and after” difference can be proved.’

They walked back to their car and drove back to Southgate village. As the car they had taken from the transport pool had no radio, Lewis telephoned Divisional Headquarters and arranged for a scene photographer to come out, for they did not want someone to drive over the rock and obliterate the evidence. As he came out of the phone box, he saw a black Mk IV Jaguar drive past and in a leisurely fashion, they followed it back to Bella Capri.

Prentice was just closing the garage when they arrived, after having put the car inside. As Evans walked up towards him, he noticed that the hardstanding outside the garage also appeared to have been cleaned, though a