Where Death Delights (22 page)

One of these came across and he showed his warrant card.

‘Have you come about the van that was stolen?' she asked.

Thinking that a little discretion might be advisable, Lewis nodded. ‘I'd like to see whoever's in charge, please.'

‘Mr Prentice won't be in until later, but Mr Laskey is here. He's the other director,' she added helpfully.

Upstairs, he found Laskey to be a small, cheerful man with rimless glasses on a large nose. As soon as the girl had left the room, the inspector came clean and admitted that he was not here about any stolen van, but was making enquiries about the death of Mr Prentice's wife.

Laskey was taken aback and looked embarrassed. ‘I don't know that I should be saying anything about that, Inspector. It's Michael's private business.'

‘There are certain matters which need to be cleared up, sir. I don't want to open this up to other employees unless it's absolutely necessary,' said Lewis.

The director blinked at him owl-like through his glasses.

‘But what on earth can I tell you?' he said plaintively.

‘Did your partner mention anything about his domestic affairs in recent weeks?' began the inspector. ‘Did you know that he was involved with another lady from Porthcawl?

Laskey's sallow face flushed. ‘That's a very sensitive subject, Officer. And it's none of my business.'

‘But I'm afraid it's mine, sir. From your answer, you did know he was having some marriage problems?'

‘Well, Michael did mention it to me. He was thinking of a divorce and Mrs Prentice was dead against it.' A look of understanding crept over his face. ‘Oh dear, do you mean she might have done away with herself because of it?'

Lewis had not meant anything of the sort, but he let it lie.

‘Was his manner and behaviour any different recently, since this problem?'

Laskey thought for a moment. ‘He was looking worried, I suppose, but that was presumably because of his troubles at home. Otherwise, nothing different as far as the business was concerned.'

‘Did he come into the factory as usual on the days leading up to the death of his wife?'

‘Yes, of course. After it happened, he was naturally away for a day or two, but he seemed to take the tragedy very well.'

After a few more questions, Lewis saw that there was nothing useful to be got from Laskey. On the way out, he casually asked what they did in the factory and full of enthusiasm – and relief at a change of subject – the other man offered to show him around. They went down to the large building, which was divided into bays, where a dozen men were working at benches and at machine tools. One part was filled with electrical equipment, including an oscilloscope. Lewis had a genuine interest in motor vehicles and asked some intelligent questions about the various operations. Laskey seemed happy to answer, keeping up the fiction to the employees that the inspector was here about the stolen van.

‘That's where we're working on a better ignition system than the usual induction coil,' he explained, as they passed the electrical section. He showed Lewis a new disc-brake device and then took him into a bay where a white-coated man was using a micrometer to measure the main bearings and big-end journals of a crankshaft. The place smelt strongly of engine oil and there was some chemical apparatus on a side bench.

‘This is where we are developing a new oil additive that will reduce frictional wear on moving parts, like cylinder walls and bearings. It will make engines last longer and use less fuel.'

Lewis, who had been a motorized traffic officer before going into the CID, was intrigued. ‘How can you do that – or is it a trade secret?'

Laskey grinned. ‘The principle's been known about for years. There are several competitors working on the same problem of getting the correct concentration of molybdenum sulphide to stay suspended in the lubricating oil.'

They passed on to a couple of other experimental ventures, then Lewis took his leave, much to the relief of Laskey, who had been very unhappy at being questioned about his partner.

Back in Gowerton, the said partner had finished writing his statement and signed it with a defiant flourish.

‘There you are, Superintendent! If there are any more questions, I'll only answer them in the presence of my solicitor, because I've had enough of this pointless harassment. I trust that coroner will now let my poor wife be buried with dignity.'

‘That's up to him, sir,' said Ben Evans. ‘The next thing we need is to examine your house. You are entitled to be present, as is your solicitor, if you so wish.'

Michael Prentice goggled at the detective, the veins on his forehead standing out like cords.

‘Examine my house? Why in God's name would you want to do that?' he exploded. ‘My wife drowned in the sea! What the hell's my house got to do with it?'

‘Until we get an explanation of how those injuries were sustained, sir, we need to carry out all necessary investigations.'

‘Well, I'm not having it, d'you hear! What right have you to intrude on my property?'

Imperturbable as ever, as he'd heard all these protests before, Ben Evans offered him a choice.

‘We would like to do this with your consent, that's the easy way. Otherwise, we'll have to obtain a magistrate's warrant. It's up to you.'

‘Do what the hell you like!' snarled Prentice, going to the door of the interview room. ‘I'm going straight to Swansea to see my solicitor.'

Ben Evans followed him as he stalked out of the building and jumped into his car. After the Jaguar had scorched out of the yard, the detective superintendent shrugged and turned back into the building.

Richard Pryor and Angela Bray were up early on Tuesday morning, with breakfast at six o'clock. They were on the road well before seven and in Ledbury before eight.

‘I don't know why it has always been traditional to have exhumations so blessed early,' complained Richard, as he drove the Humber through the gates of the cemetery. ‘It used to be at dawn, for God's sake!'

‘If it was December, it would be dawn now,' said Angela brightly, as unlike her partner, she was a morning person. ‘I suppose it was to avoid the press and the public, though that's a faint hope these days.'

However, there was no sign of curious crowds as they drove into the deserted cemetery. All they met was a local police constable, who directed them to a parking space near a hut where the staff kept their shovels and made their tea.

‘The others are up at the top end, Doctor,' he said helpfully, as Richard clambered out with his black bag.

They walked the length of the tree-lined path, Angela noticing that the headstones of the graves became more modern as they went. Soon they saw a police car and a plain black van parked opposite a canvas screen. It was stretched on poles around a few recent graves, which were still mounds of turf with wooden crosses instead of headstones. Inside, one of these had been excavated and a heap of red soil was piled to one side. A pair of undertaker's men lounged against their van, smoking until they were needed.

Also inside the screens was John Christie, the Monmouth coroner's officer, attired as usual in his tweeds and trilby.

With him was a council official from the Parks and Cemeteries Department, clutching a plan of the burial sites and two gravediggers, who had been removing all the earth that they had laboriously filled in a few weeks earlier.

‘I've had the soil removed down to the top of the coffin, Doctor,' said the official importantly. ‘Once the coffin plate is checked, my men can get it up for you.'

He stepped to the edge of the hole and waved his papers.

‘I can confirm that this is Plot 275 E, occupied by Albert John Barnes.'

‘Mebbe, mebbe not!' muttered Christie, under his breath, as one of the gravediggers went down the short ladder into the hole and, with a trowel, began excavating two tunnels under the coffin for ropes to be passed through. The soil was fairly dry and not hard-packed, as it had so recently been disturbed. Within a few minutes, the veneer-covered chipboard had been hauled out and laid on two timbers set across the top of the grave. One of the workers rubbed at the brass plate to remove the earth. The council official peered at it and nodded.

‘Albert John Barnes, it says. Would one of you gentlemen please confirm that?'

John Christie bent to look at the nameplate and nodded.

‘That's the one! We'll have it away to Hereford now.'

As the two undertaker's men carted it off to their van, Richard wondered what would happen to the empty grave if the remains proved not to be Barnes – but that was not his problem.

Angela was very quiet on the journey to Hereford.

‘I've never been to an exhumation before,' she said suddenly.

‘If you want the truth, neither have I!' confessed Richard. ‘The need never arose in the Army, nor in Singapore. They are pretty uncommon events.'

Angela shuddered. ‘I've led a sheltered life in a laboratory, I suppose. Seeing where you end up at the bottom of a deep hole is a powerful reminder of your mortality.'

Hereford was not many miles away and the road from Ledbury came in past the County Hospital, so within a short time the cortège arrived at the mortuary. In the small office, a police photographer was waiting, organized by John Christie, as well as Dr Bogdan Marek, whose territory this was. In addition, Edward Lethbridge was there. He had had no desire to attend the exhumation nor view the disputed remains, but he felt that he should represent his client, on whose behalf he had set all this performance in motion.

The undertakers wheeled the coffin in on a trolley to the outer room where the body store was situated and proceeded to unscrew the lid. Richard Pryor put on a rubber apron and offered one to Angela.

‘It'll keep the earth off your clothes, if nothing else,' he said cheerfully.

They stood at the side of the coffin as the lid was taken off and propped against the wall. As the contents were virtually skeletal and very incomplete, there was no satin lining, but a sheet of rubberized fabric covered the bottom and was folded over the remains, which were laid out in an approximately correct pattern.

‘Better push the whole lot into the post-mortem room,' said Pryor to the mortuary attendant and they followed the trolley into the stark chamber next door. Angela had seen plenty of dead bodies when called out to London scenes of crime, some in all stages of decay and mutilation, so she had no qualms about being in such close proximity to what was left of a corpse, though after lying about in the open air for several years, it was not particularly offensive, being mainly bones.

Pushing the coffin close to the porcelain table, Richard took charge and folded back the flaps of fabric to expose what was left of the body. After he had had a good look, he asked the hovering photographer to take pictures in situ and, for a few moments, the room was dazzled by flashes of home-made lightning.

Then the pathologist began taking the bones out one by one and reassembling them in proper anatomical order on the white table, when Dr Marek began peering intently at them.

‘There's quite a lot missing,' observed Richard. ‘Some of the ribs and quite a few vertebrae, as well as the skull. A lot of the smaller hand and foot bones have gone, too. There are small teeth marks on some of them, foxes and rats, probably.'

He waited until he had all the skeleton laid out before addressing the vital point.

‘Thank God we've still got the sternum!' he muttered and though he had already handled it, he picked it from between the ribs and held it between the fingers and thumbs of each hand. The breastbone was blade-shaped, about six inches long and an inch and a half wide, tapering to a point. Richard studied it, turned it over, then held it out to the others, who were clustered around.

‘Flat as a pancake!' he announced. ‘Doctor Marek was quite right, no sign of a
pec rec
there!'

The Polish pathologist looked pleased at being proved right, though he had had no doubts about his memory of it. While the photographer took some close-ups of the bone, the coroner's officer wanted some firm assurance to take back to Brian Meredith.

‘So we can definitely say that this is not Albert Barnes, Doc?'

Richard was more cautious. ‘We mustn't jump to conclusions, there's a lot more we can do yet. Certainly there's nothing unusual about his sternum, but of course we're relying on Dr Welton's clinical examination for the truth of that. Mind you, I can't see any possible reason for him being wrong about Barnes having a depressed sternum, but after all the fuss we've caused, we've got to be a hundred per cent sure.'

Angela volunteered to write a list of all the bones for Richard, being a good enough biologist not to need advice about any but a couple of small wrist and ankle bones. While she was doing this, Pryor examined every bone minutely, looking for any signs of old injury, but he found nothing.

‘There are still a few tendon tags here and there,' he said. ‘As well as some joint cartilage, so death must have been within about the last five years.'

‘But it could have been less, I suppose?' asked Marek.

‘Yes, it depends on the appetite of all those predators out there. They haven't left much.'

When he had finished looking at the remains, Richard measured the surviving long bones of the legs and arms. He used an osteometry board which he had made himself in Singapore, a two-foot plank with a long ruler screwed to one edge. At one end was a ledge and a slider moved along a groove in the middle. He put a bone against the ledge, then slid the moving part until it touched the other end of the bone, reading off the length on the scale.