The Corpse's Tale (Trevor Joseph Detective series) (9 page)

‘It’s good, Sergeant Collins.’

‘Why don’t you and Sarah go and order for us, Peter? I’ll have the same as Sergeant Thomas.’ Trevor sat down. ‘You have someone with the Morgans?’

‘Constable Alan Williams, he’s experienced but I’m not expecting trouble this evening. There are too many people out and about in the village. If anything happens it will be when everyone’s asleep and I’ll be there.’

‘I hope you have a quiet night,’ Trevor said sincerely.

‘Were you in the force when Anna Harris was murdered, Sergeant Thomas?’ Peter Collins set pints of Guinness in front of himself and Trevor. Sarah followed with mineral water for herself and Mike.

‘It was the first case I worked on. I was a rookie of nineteen. I dug out my notebook for that year for you.’ He took it from his pocket.

‘Can you remember the case?’ Trevor moved a beer mat beneath his glass.

‘Very well. It shook everyone in the county.

Not that we hadn’t had serious crimes in Mid Wales before, but most of them were domestic. Farmers killing their wives and vice versa. I remember being surprised that all the samples the pathologist took weren’t sent to the lab. Professor Robbins was meticulous. I watched him do the post-mortem. Part of my training,’ he explained.

‘We’ve all been through it.’ Peter took a long pull at his pint.

‘I asked Sergeant George why he was only sending some of the samples for analysis. He said there was no point in testing everything because it was obvious that David Morgan was guilty. More lab work would only add to the cost of the investigation and eat into our budget which was already stretched.’

‘What samples are you thinking of in particular?’ Trevor asked.

‘The watch that had been strapped on to her wrist after death.’

‘You knew about the injuries beneath it?’

‘You couldn’t miss them once the watch was removed. And there were semen stains on her dress. I thought it might be as well to check them against David’s blood type. DNA wasn’t in common use – not here anyway, not back then.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Reading through the notes I made at the time it struck me that I would investigate a similar case – not that I want one thank you very much – differently now. But the force has changed a great deal in the last ten years.’

Lily came in with their meals and Mike waited until she had served them before continuing. ‘As I said, I was nineteen when Anna Harris was murdered, Inspector. I didn’t move in the same circles she did, but I knew who she was.’

‘ T h e r e ’s a social pecking order in this backwater?’ Collins smothered his boar steak with redcurrant jelly.

Mike laughed. ‘The class war is well and truly alive and well in Mid Wales, sergeant. The moneyed crachach…’

‘The what?’ Peter demanded.

‘Crachach – it’s Welsh for elite or toffs – send their children to private or We l s h medium schools. They don’t mix with the kids from the council estates where I come from. The two factions don’t drink in the same pubs or even buy in the same shops. But I knew Anna Harris by sight and reputation.’

‘What sort of reputation?’ Trevor suspected he already knew the answer to his question.

‘For sleeping around. But she was choosy. According to one of my friends who worked as a TV extra alongside Anna, she was star-struck and ambitious. Her nickname in the studios in Llandaff was “Brutus” because she’d stab anyone in the back to get ahead. There were rumours she’d have sex with anyone who would introduce her to a producer or director. Some even said she slept her way into Drama College, but I think that was jealousy coming from the ones who didn’t get in.’

Trevor was instantly on the alert. ‘Any ideas who these “anyone” were?’

‘As I said, I didn’t know her personally. It could be no more than idle gossip.’

Collins wiped his lips with his napkin. ‘More killers have been caught through idle gossip than interrogation, Sergeant Thomas.’

‘Excuse me.’ Mike Thomas answered a ring on his mobile. He listened for a few seconds, then barked. ‘I’ll be there. Two minutes.’

‘The Morgan house?’ Trevor asked.

‘Lynch mob. Williams has sent for back-up.’

Trevor was already out of his chair. ‘We’ll drive you.’

The Morgan house was engulfed by a crowd of angry people. Trevor had expected teenagers, but there were a hundred or more people of all ages, from elderly men and women down to babies in pushchairs who had been brought there by their mothers.

Mike Thomas left the car and held his hands up in an appeal for calm. But the mob carried on shouting, screaming insults and throwing sticks and stones. A uniformed constable was standing in front of the house desperately trying to look as though he wasn’t concerned by what was happening. Trevor noticed that all the missiles that were being thrown were landing well clear of him. But two garden gnomes, half buried in weeds, had lost their heads.

Mike Thomas didn’t attempt to fight his way through the mob. He simply tapped the shoulders of the people in front of him. They turned, saw him and moved aside. He was soon standing alongside his colleague on the doorstep.

Collins went to follow, but Trevor held him back.

Mike started to speak, quietly in his normal voice. A hush descended.

‘You all know who I am. I don’t know what you’re doing here…’

‘Driving out a killer,’ a man shouted.

‘Before he murders our daughters and sisters,’ someone else screamed.

‘Shut up,’ another yelled. ‘Let the sergeant speak.’

‘David Morgan has served time in prison. A judge has set him free…’

‘To kill again,’ a woman screeched hysterically.

‘Do you think he’s likely to do that, Mrs Protheroe, with Constable Williams and me watching him? We’ll be here all night I promise you.’

‘Then he’s under house arrest?’

‘David is a free man, he can go wherever he wants to.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘To stop you lot ending up in court for grievous bodily harm – or worse. Go home and leave the policing to the professionals. That’s a polite request. Otherwise, in one minute I’ll be out there with my notebook booking people for public affray.’

‘They’re here to whitewash Dai Helpful.’ Mrs Protheroe pointed at Trevor, Sarah and Peter.

‘They’re here to reopen the case. Standard procedure when a judge remits a sentence, Mrs Protheroe. Good evening.’

‘Bloody bootlickers,’ she muttered as she passed Trevor.

‘And a good evening to you, too, Madam,’ Peter called after her.

Trevor waylaid a young boy. ‘Whose idea was it to come here?’

The boy shrugged his shoulders.

‘You can do better than that,’ Trevor coaxed.

‘Someone overheard Mr George, Mr Morris and Reverend Oliver talking in Morris’s shop. They said Dai Morgan’s going to get millions in compensation for going to prison. He’ll be free, rich and laughing and Anna Harris will be left rotting in her grave.’

C H A P T E R T E N

‘ D
O Y O U H A V E A N
eye-liner pencil can borrow?’ Trevor asked Sarah as they were leaving the breakfast table the next morning.

‘Any particular colour, sir?’

‘I didn’t know they came in different colours.’

‘Electric blue might be his shade,’ Peter suggested.

Sarah rummaged in her handbag and handed Trevor a black pencil.

‘Thank you.’ Trevor slipped it into his shirt pocket.

‘I suppose it’s too much to ask what it’s for,’ Peter said.

‘It is. Enjoy yourself at the jeweller’s.’

Trevor went upstairs and telephoned Mike Thomas in the Morgan house. After Mike assured him that there had been no more disturbances during the night, he switched on the TV. He was watching the film of Anna’s funeral again when the telephone rang. He picked it up.

‘Trevor Joseph.’

‘And this is your favourite pathologist.’ ‘Patrick, good to hear from you. Any

results?’ ‘Where do you want me to start?’ ‘The wrist injury beneath the watch.’ ‘Robbins took swabs. There were glass, gold

and stone fragments mixed in with blood and bone. The blood tested positive for Anna Harris. The gold was nine carat, the slivers of glass thin and polished.’

‘Like a watch face?
‘Exactly.’
‘But the watch was intact.’
‘I keep telling you…’
‘You deal in facts. The semen and pubic

hair?’

‘The DNA in the semen was fragmented but what we have matches the hair. Give us a suspect and we can clear or identify him as the man who had sex with Anna Harris the night she was murdered. Your boys are running it through your database. As of ten minutes ago there were no matches. But the database was only started in 2003. If he hasn’t committed a crime since then, there won’t be a match on file.’

‘It’s not David Morgan’s.’
‘No, he gave samples voluntarily and

permission for us to keep them on file. His solicitor hoped they would prove his innocence. They certainly prove he didn’t have sex with Anna Harris that night. Ask me about the tissue under the fingernails.’

‘You found a DNA profile?’

‘Partial. It doesn’t match the pubic hair or semen. There were traces of nail varnish mixed in with it. Bright red. It’s possible Anna Harris clawed her attacker’s hand.’

‘I have the watch and the dress she was wearing when she was killed. They’re still in police evidence bags. If we need any tests, you’ll interpret the findings?’

‘Anything I can do, anytime, you know that Trevor.’

‘Thanks, Patrick, much appreciated.’

Trevor made a few more notes. Wanting to take another look at the churchyard, he went downstairs.

Rita James came out from behind the bar and waylaid him in the hall. ‘Nasty business that, at the Morgans’ last night.’

‘It was, Mrs James.’

‘Mike Thomas and Constable Williams were both there all night.’

‘So I understood from Sergeant Thomas this morning.’

‘You telephoned him then?’

‘First thing.’

‘Lily,’ Rita James stopped the barmaid as she was leaving the kitchen. ‘Get the flowers and chocolates Stephen George brought yesterday and put them on the Olivers’ lunch table.’

‘Celebration?’ Trevor asked.

‘Judy Oliver’s birthday.’

‘And Stephen George sends her flowers?’

‘They are brother and sister, Inspector.’

‘Of course,’ he frowned. ‘When I first met Angela George and Judy Oliver they told me they were sisters-in-law.’

‘Closer than most sisters despite the divorce. You going out?’ she enquired.

‘For a while, Mrs James.’

Trevor stood outside the pub and tried to imagine himself inside Anna’s mind. He crossed the road and looked at the church notice board. He took the pencil Sarah had given him and made a mark on the glass. It was difficult to see what the mark was. But the pencil dulled the glass and it was easy to see it had been smudged. A clever way of signalling provided no one cleaned it, and that wasn’t very likely.

He walked up to the shed and sat on the tomb. Thoughts whirled at breakneck speed through his mind. Patrick had proved from the evidence left on Anna’s body that she had met two people after she had left the pub that night. Evidence Stephen George had deliberately withheld. First, the man she had made love with. A man who had no police record, and who might – or might not – have given her the watch. Definitely a man who didn’t want to be publicly linked to her. Possibly because he was married.

Then she met her murderer, who could be identified because Anna had scratched him before she died. The proof of his identity had lain beneath her fingernails. Why hadn’t Stephen George sent the scrapings for analysis? Had Anna’s lover already left her when the murderer struck?

Trevor imagined Anna alone where he was sitting. The murderer creeping up behind her. It would be dark around the tomb even in moonlight. If he had come from behind the yew tree she might have heard him but not seen him until he had struck her. And then it would have been too late. A single blow, Patrick had said. She would have fallen but she took minutes to die, minutes when she reached out –

He recalled the film of Anna’s funeral service, leapt off the tomb, ran back into the pub and up the stairs.

‘You all right, Inspector?’ Mrs James called after him.

‘Perfectly, Mrs James.’ He closed the door and switched on the TV and DVD player.

‘Come on,’ he muttered as he flicked through the tracks.

‘Have we got news for you, Joseph?’ Peter walked in, Sarah close behind him.

‘Just a moment.’ Trevor found the track he wanted and pressed play.

Judy Oliver was standing in front of the altar, facing Anna’s coffin and the congregation. Pale, trembling, her voice rang out c l e a r l y. The voice of an actress trained to perform no matter what her personal feelings.