The Corpse's Tale (Trevor Joseph Detective series) (3 page)

‘It’s an expensive gold and diamond bracelet watch in perfect condition. Look at her wrist after it was removed.’

Trevor picked up the photograph and peered at it.

‘I had it blown up.’ Patrick handed him a close up.

‘Bullet wound?’

‘Robbins said it was made by a narrow sharp pointed instrument, possibly a hiking pole with the safety end removed. And whoever did it used considerable force. There were splinters in the wound. Of what I don’t know. They were bagged, but like so many other samples never sent for analysis. The injury was inflicted after death. Someone took off her watch, speared her wrist and then replaced the watch.’

‘Could David Morgan have taken it as a trophy, kept it overnight and returned it in the morning?’

‘You’re the detective, Joseph.’

‘The samples Robbins took…’

‘Were sent to the lab last night. Don’t expect miracles after ten years.’ Patrick lifted his specimen jar. ‘Coffee? We may even have some chocolate biscuits in the fridge.’

C H A P T E R T H R E E

‘I ’
D F O R G O T T E N
W
A L E S WA S
so pretty. The countryside around here is lovely, it reminds me of Devon,’ Trevor commented.

The sign for the end of the motorw a y flashed up and Peter Collins slowed the car. ‘Very pretty,’ he agreed dryly. ‘Hills, fields, hedges, sheep, grass. Hills, fields, hedges, sheep grass – wait, I can see two cows and three trees.’ He negotiated a roundabout and turned on to a narrow two-lane road. ‘You sure about the B road number? That signpost didn’t mention Llan.’

‘But it did name the town before it, and the one after.’ Trevor opened the file on his lap.

‘Where are we staying again?’ Peter slowed behind a tractor that was doing a steady ten miles an hour.

‘The Angel Inn.’

Peter blasted his horn. ‘If I read that signpost right, we’re in the Bible belt of Britain.’

‘It did say Sodom and Gomorrah, but the arrows were pointing in different directions.’

Trevor winced when Peter hit the horn a second time. ‘Where do you expect that man to go?’

‘Off the road and into a field.’

‘I can’t even see a gate.’

‘He can go through a hedge can’t he?’

Trevor pulled a sheet of paper from the file. ‘I hate cold cases.’

‘Mulcahy knows that, which is why he gave you this one. What I don’t understand is why you had to drag me along.’

‘Admit it, you’re flattered.’

‘To be ordered to follow you into the back of beyond?’ Peter questioned. ‘I most certainly am not. I feel as though I’ve been sent into exile.’

‘It will be a nice break. Us working together just like the old days.’

‘I like the new days. Having my own desk in our nice cosy station and my nice cosy life where I get to cuddle my girlfriend at night. At last.’ The tractor turned off and Peter put his foot down, only to slam on the brakes again when a herd of cows blocked the road.

‘Joys of country living.’ Trevor hid a smile at Peter’s annoyance.

‘Joy nothing.’ Peter pressed the button that wound up the electric window. ‘It’s bad enough seeing them without smelling them too.’

Trevor glanced at the file. ‘Anna Harris was murdered ten years ago this week.’

As they were marooned in a sea of cows, Peter switched off the engine and waited for the animals to turn up the farm track to the milking sheds ahead. ‘Seeing as how we’re here until the cows go home, you may as well fill me in. Sorry I couldn’t go to the briefing.’

‘More like wouldn’t,’ Trevor corrected.

Peter gave Trevor a toothy smile. ‘All perfect, but only as a result of two hours of agony at the dentist.’

‘You don’t have to give excuses to me. I’m not your teacher.’ Trevor turned the page. ‘Facts, David Morgan was arrested at the scene of the crime, charged with Anna’s murder within twenty-four hours and the case against him prepared in a month by the local force. It took six months to come to court because David Morgan’s defence team wanted medical and psychiatric reports. Due to an accident at birth he has a mental age of ten.’

The car rocked when a cow nudged it. Peter leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. ‘And we’re expected to find out ten years later if the locals set up the village idiot as the fall guy?’

‘According to the defence, David Morgan w a s n ’t that much of an idiot. He held down a part-time job as caretaker of the local Church and kept the graveyard tidy. He also did odd jobs for people in the village, the landlord of the Angel Inn, the local doctor and several of the neighbours, including the victim, Anna Harris’s parents.’ Trevor pulled a photograph from the file. ‘Pretty girl.’

Peter opened one eye and gazed at the studio portrait of a young woman with long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. ‘Very,’ he agreed. ‘What do we know about her?’ He closed his eyes again.

‘Anna Harris, eighteen years old, had just taken her A levels and was guaranteed a place at Drama College. She had experience as a child actor and model, mainly catalogue work and as an extra in TV productions. She was spending her last summer at home with her parents, helping them out in their antique shop and auction house.’

‘Boyfriend?’

‘Several, nothing serious,’ Trevor continued to turn the pages of the file. ‘According to her mother she was determined to make a career as an actress and she avoided emotional entanglements.’

‘So, she was ambitious. Friends?’

‘The entire village, if the reports are to be believed.’

‘Male or female?’

‘Both.’

‘Enemies?’ Peter asked.

‘None.’

‘That I don’t believe,’ Peter said flatly. ‘Isn’t it considered unlucky for the Welsh to speak ill of the dead?’

‘Not that I’ve heard. You into making up myths now, Collins?’

‘Just something I heard somewhere,’ Peter replied. ‘What do we know about her movements the night she was killed?’

‘She worked in her parents’ antique shop from nine in the morning until six in the evening. Then she went home. From seven until nine o’clock she was at an amateur dramatics society rehearsal in the local community centre. The society was run by the vicar and his wife, Tony and Judy Oliver. They were preparing to put on a show in August. The last one Anna would star in before she left for college. It was The King and I, Anna, unsurprisingly, was to play Anna.’

‘How many were at the rehearsal?’

‘Sixteen gave witness statements. At nine o’clock twelve of them went to the Angel Inn.

Anna Harris went with them and drank half a pint of cider.’

Peter sat up and opened his eyes to see a cow staring at them through the windscreen. ‘Tell me, as a farmer’s son, can you say shoo to a cow?’

‘You can say what you like, whether it will shoo or not is an entirely different matter,’ Trevor answered.

Peter turned the ignition. As the engine purred into life the cow moved slowly away. ‘Did Anna go home by herself that night?’

‘Yes. She was the first to leave the pub at around ten o’clock. Her parents were away for the weekend on business and she was going to open their shop for them in the morning. She would have intended to cross the churchyard. It’s a short cut from one side of the village to the other and used by everyone who lives there. It shouldn’t have taken her more than five minutes to walk from the Angel Inn to her parents’ cottage. The local boys don’t believe she reached there. Her body, with David Morgan sitting next to it, was found shortly after seven o’clock the next morning in the churchyard by the vicar.’

‘Do we have the post mortem report?’

‘Yes and photographs. I’ve already gone through both with Patrick O’Kelly. According to him the man who did the post mortem,’ Trevor flicked through the file again, ‘a Professor Robbins, was thorough, but more than half of the samples he took were never analysed.’

‘But they are in the lab now?’ Peter checked.

‘Yes.’

‘I hope they’ll be enough. I hate exhumations even more than you hate cold cases. She was buried, not cremated?’ he asked.

‘In Llan Church,’ Trevor confirmed. ‘Let’s hope we can leave her there in peace.’

‘Results of the post-mortem report?’

‘She was bludgeoned to death with an axe. Single blow. There’s no doubt that it belonged to David Morgan. He normally kept it, along with other tools, in a shed at the back of the church but he said he forgot to put it away the night before the murder. He even identified the markings he’d made on the handle.  His face, hands and clothes were stained with Anna’s blood. His story was, he saw a girl he didn’t recognize as Anna lying behind his tool shed when he turned up for work that morning. He thought she was still alive and tried to help her. Unfortunately for forensics, by pulling the axe from her head.’

‘When was she killed?’

‘According to the pathologist who tested her stomach contents – she ate peanuts in the pub as well as drinking cider – anything between one and three hours after she left the pub. That puts her death somewhere between eleven that night and two in the morning.’

‘So if David Morgan didkill her it would be a case of the murderer returning to the scene of the crime several hours after the event.’

‘It would.’ Trevor referred back to the file. ‘The police found one of Anna’s earrings in David’s pocket. It was bloodstained. He insisted he had picked it up on the path in the churchyard that morning a few minutes before he found Anna’s body.’

Peter nodded. ‘Give the man the benefit of the doubt and it’s feasible. The murderer drops the earring, David Morgan picks it up. He stumbles across the body. There must have been more hard evidence than that against him.’

‘Several witnesses saw him out looking for his dog from ten minutes past ten until midnight the night before, in the vicinity of the churchyard. That gives him time and opportunity.’

‘Did anyone hear anything? Screams, cries?

‘Nothing.’

‘An axe isn’t your usual murder weapon. Why did David have one at all?’ Peter changed down a gear as they drove up a steep hill.

‘The church uses a wood burning stove in w i n t e r. Farmers donated wood after land clearance, and David chopped it,’ Tr e v o r explained.

‘And possibly pretty girls?’ Peter looked sideways at Trevor. ‘All right, we have timing, weapon, bloodstains and earring, what else?’

‘Very little from what I can see,’ Trevor thumbed through the papers.

‘Motive? I take it she was sexually attacked.’

‘Pathologist found evidence of sexual activity but not violent rape. She had been stripped naked, her dress was found nearby, as was one earring, but her underclothes were missing. David had the second earring but the underclothes were never found.’

‘Forensic evidence?’

‘Apart from the bloodstains on David Morgan’s clothes, hands and face nothing that I can see here.’

‘The axe?’

‘No prints other than David’s and no blood or DNA on it other than his and Anna’s.’

‘The earring?’

‘Partial thumbprint and fingerprint, both David Morgan’s. The blood was Anna’s.’

‘If that’s it I’m not surprised Morgan was freed on appeal. The best you can say about the evidence is that it’s circumstantial. The worst that it’s a fit-up job. Is Morgan back in Llan?’

‘Arrived two weeks ago.’ Trevor saw the signpost for the village and closed the file.

‘It will be interesting to see what kind of reception he received.’ Peter stopped the car in a viewing lay-by and looked down on the scattering of houses clustered around a church and a road that cut through the valley.

‘Very,’ Trevor agreed.

‘One thing is certain, Joseph. We should have this wrapped up in record time. There’ll be nothing to do here except work.’

‘And drink in the pub.’

Peter smiled. ‘That too.’ He pushed the car into gear and edged back out on the road.  

C H A P T E R F O U R

‘I’
M GLAD SOME PEOPLE
like living in a place like this.’ Peter drew up in the car park of the Angel Inn.

‘Really?’ Trevor studied the pub that would be “home” until they finished working on the Harris case. It looked ancient, long, low-built with small windows set in thick stone walls, it was painted a garish pink.

‘They leave more room for the likes of us in the towns and cities, Joseph. Do you think there were ever enough people in this village to fill that church?’ He pointed across the road. Llan Church was massive; built of granite on a low hillock on the floor of the valley, it dwarfed the surrounding buildings. It was also a carbon copy of a dozen others he’d seen since they had crossed the Severn Bridge into Wales.

‘Possibly, from the number of gravestones around it.’ Trevor stretched. It had been a long drive and the last forty miles on narrow, winding roads had felt like eighty. An appetizing smell wafted from an extractor fan set in the wall of the pub, reminding him he was hungry.