Where Death Delights

NINETEEN

Three weeks later, a letter arrived at Garth House which caused a celebration, prompting Angela to fetch the bottle of Yugoslav Lutomer Riesling which she had in her room. The whole staff, including Jimmy Jenkins, gathered in the lounge to drink out of a mixed collection of glasses, toasting Richard’s appointment to the Home Office list.

The letter from an under-secretary in the Home Office was terse and colourless, but the essence of it was that ‘if he was so minded, they would look favourably upon any application to have his name added to the list circulated to Chief Constables, as being medical practitioners suitable to be recommended to coroners as proficient in dealing with deaths which require forensic expertise.’

A retainer of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum would be offered on condition that the pathologist made himself available at all times or to arrange for another listed pathologist to act in his absence.

‘On call twenty-four hours a day for a hundred-and-fifty quid!’ exclaimed Sian. ‘I should join a trade union if I were you, Doc! Chaps sweeping factory floors get more than that for a forty-hour week!’

Her socialist crusading spirit was aroused, but Richard calmed her down by pointing out that he doubted that he would be called on very often, as he did not have a specific area to cover, but was only going to act as a back-up for other pathologists, as he had done in the Gloucester shooting.

‘I don’t know who fixed this up,’ he said ruminatively. ‘Brian Meredith and his brother have friends at court, so to speak, but so does Arnold Millichamp. And, of course, the Gloucester CID may have passed the word up to their Chief Constable.’

Whoever it was, the welcome title all helped towards consoli-dating their venture’s position in the forensic community. Several weeks passed and he had no other calls on his new status, but Moira sensibly suggested that as the summer holiday season had finished, other pathologists were no longer in need of a locum.

‘We’ll have to wait for one to break a leg or come down with malaria or something!’ suggested Sian, facetiously.

A few days later, the dangerous waters of the Severn estuary provided another body for Richard Pryor to examine at the Chepstow mortuary. Though badly decomposed, the police found a Seaman’s Identity Card in the remnants of the clothing and the index number was traced through the Central Register of Seamen. The victim was identified as a deckhand who went missing off Lundy Island two months earlier from a tanker taking crude oil for the Llandarcy BP refinery at Swansea. Richard found the body too far gone for a diagnosis of drowning and thought it a good opportunity to try out the controversial diatom test once again.

In their laboratory next morning, Angela once more showed Sian each step of the process. Small pieces of the tissues were taken, with precautions to avoid surface contamination with body fluids.

‘That’s to eliminate false results from getting diatoms other than via the bloodstream,’ she explained. ‘It doesn’t matter about the lung, because that’s going to be contaminated anyway, down the windpipe.’

Sian watched as the tissues from each organ were heated in small beakers of concentrated nitric acid in the fume cupboard, a dangerous operation if not done with great care, as the brown fumes from the highly corrosive liquid spiralled up into the exhaust outlet.

It took a long time for the digestion to get rid of all the organic material, but when the extracts had cooled, Angela put a portion of each into conical-bottomed centrifuge tubes and diluted them with distilled water.

‘Couldn’t you use tap water?’ asked Sian, always cost-conscious, but Angela shook her head.

‘Not safe to do that,’ she advised. ‘It often contains diatoms that grow inside the pipes.’

The digests were centrifuged to throw what was left of the solids down to the bottom of the tubes, then she repeated this twice more to dilute the acid to harmless proportions.

‘Now let’s have a look at those,’ she said, taking the tubes over to the microscope.

Putting a drop of the final sludge on to a glass slide and dropping a coverslip on to it, she peered through the eyepieces for a few moments, twiddling the stage controls to move the slides around under the high-power lenses.

Then she leaned back to let Sian’s glossy head take her place. ‘Plenty in the lung! Have a squint at those. Good old Bristol Channel diatoms!’

When Sian had satisfied herself, Angela went through the extracts from brain, liver, bone marrow and kidney.

She was glued to the microscope much longer this time, but eventually got up and declared herself satisfied.

‘Thought we were going to draw a blank, but the marrow has hit the jackpot,’ she said. ‘You need to find a reasonable number of diatoms, not just one or two – then hope the chap hadn’t been eating cockles or oysters the night before!’

Her technician seemed very taken by the technique and wanted to practice for herself.

‘I’ll have a go at the next body from the water myself,’ she promised. Angela, impressed by her keenness, had a suggestion.

‘We kept some tissues from the Gower case. Why don’t you use those, as Richard was convinced she was drowned, so it should be a good positive.’

Full of enthusiasm and without any other pressing work for the moment, Sian looked out the labelled pots and started on the digestions. Angela kept a motherly eye on her from a distance, but let her get on with the procedures herself. By the afternoon, the acid digestion was completed and Sian happily made up the slides from the various tissues.

She spent a long time staring at them down the microscope, while Angela was busy with a paternity test on another bench.

‘Any joy, Sian?’ called the biologist eventually.

‘Plenty in the lungs, but of course, you said that’s of no use in proving drowning,’ she replied, sounding rather disappointed.

‘Are there none in the other organs, then?’

‘Yes, I’ve only found half a dozen in the kidney and another five in the marrow. Is that enough?’

Angela rose and came across the room.

‘Let’s have a look. Lung first, eh?’

Sian gave up her seat and stood alongside, while Angela peered down the instrument, then slid the other organ slides into place under the lenses. This seemed to go on for a long time and the technician became restless.

‘Did I do it properly?’ she asked anxiously.

Angela made no direct reply but asked her to hand down a book from a nearby shelf.

‘The thin green one, on the end,’ she said in a worried tone. She riffled through the pages and Sian saw dozens of photographs and drawings of diatoms, some boat-shaped, some circular, others like needles.

‘Give me that lung slide we made this morning, please. The one from the oil tanker death.’

Still with no explanation, Angela changed the specimens on the microscope stage, then changed them back again.

When she looked up at her technician, her face was serious.

‘Sian, can you give Richard a call, please? I think we’ve got a problem!’

‘But that’s bloody impossible!’ he exclaimed. ‘Linda’s body was hauled out of the sea by the coastguards, so we know she was in there!’

Angela shook her head stubbornly.

‘I’m not denying that she had been in the sea, there are plenty of marine diatoms in her lungs. But she didn’t die in sea water. It was fresh!’

Richard stared down the microscope, though he was none the wiser until Angela pointed out various illustrations in the atlas of diatoms that was still open on the bench.

‘The ones in the kidney and marrow are all freshwater species, no marine ones at all. There are stacks of them in the lungs as well, but of course they’re mixed with marine diatoms, as she had been submerged later in the sea.’

Pryor jumped from the stool and paced back and forth.

‘There’s no possibility of some mistake?’ he demanded. ‘Could the samples have been mixed up?’

Angela was unruffled. She pointed to the bench top.

‘There are the pots in front of you! You were the one who brought them back and it’s your writing on the labels, as well as the signature of the DI who was there.’

Sian, who had been standing wide-eyed listening to this, decided to join in.

‘I was the one who did the digestion, Doctor. I’ll do it all over again, just to make sure.’

Moira came in with some forms to sign and immediately sensed that something was going on.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked. ‘Am I interrupting something?’

‘These two ladies have thrown a great big spanner in the works!’ said Richard. ‘I suppose we should have looked for these blasted diatoms straight after I did the PM, but it just didn’t seen necessary, it was so obvious that she had drowned.’

‘And now you’ve discovered that she didn’t?’ gasped Moira, afraid that her perfect doctor had dropped a huge clanger.

‘No, not at all,’ said Richard. ‘But she drowned in the wrong sort of water!’

Angela explained that diatoms in sea water were different from those in fresh water. ‘Though there’s an overlap, there is such a preponderance of some species that there’s no doubt which water it was. In fact, it’s said to be possible to tell whether someone drowned in the brackish waters of an estuary, if both sorts are found together.’

They all thought about this for a moment.

‘So where did the poor woman drown?’ asked the practical Moira.

‘In almost any water but the sea,’ sighed Angela. ‘They’re everywhere – rivers, streams, ponds, lakes, even puddles if they’ve been there long enough.’

‘So you could even find them in the bird bath in your garden?’ said Sian.

‘Yes, but you have a job to drown in a bird bath,’ objected Moira.

Richard was not so sure. ‘There have been plenty of cases of people drowning in only a few inches of water, like a big puddle or a bucket. Of course they’d either have to be drunk or drugged, unless someone was holding them so that their nose and mouth were covered.’

There was another pregnant silence at this.

‘Holding her face under?’ said Angela sepulchrally.

‘But under what?’

Richard stopped pacing. ‘That’s for the police to discover. But could you identify a particular source of water by the type of diatoms, Angela?’

She shook her head. ‘Not firmly enough to give in evidence. This diatom business is only now being considered as useful, even though it’s been suggested on and off for ages. Many people are still too critical of it to use it routinely.’

‘So you couldn’t definitely identify any river or lake as being the place? Not that there seems to be any of those around Pennard, it’s on top of the cliffs.’

‘She could have been driven from anywhere,’ pointed out Sian. ‘You said this Prentice chap has got a big Jaguar, he could have brought her from Lake Windermere, for all we know!’

‘When are you going to tell the CID, Richard?’ asked Angela. ‘I think we ought to repeat the tests, just to be on the safe side.’

‘I’ll work all night, if you want me to,’ volunteered Sian, eagerly.

Angela tempered her enthusiasm a little. ‘Let’s get the digestions started now, then they can simmer all night, so that we can look at them first thing in the morning.’

Richard nodded his agreement. ‘Then I’ll ring Ben Evans and make his day! Angela, if he finds some suitable water in the district, we may have to go down there and sample it for diatoms.’

Detective Superintendent Evans slammed his phone down and gave a roar of delight.

‘Lewis, come in here!’ he yelled out of the door. As his inspector hurried in from the CID room outside, he gave him the news like a trumpet call.

‘I reckon we may have got that swine Prentice! Doc Pryor and his team have done some fancy tests and reckon Linda didn’t die in the bloody sea at all!’

He explained what he’d been told on the telephone and though neither of them fully understood the technicalities, they knew they had to find some fresh water that would fit the bill.

‘Are we going down there now?’ asked Lewis. ‘What are we looking for?’

‘I’ve arranged with the doctor to come down today, with the lady scientist who discovered this. She was a forensic expert from the Met Lab, so she must know what she’s talking about.’

‘Where’s Prentice now? Still working in that place of his in Jersey Marine, I suppose.’

‘To hell with him for the moment, we’ve got to find some water around there. Apparently, this lady may want to take some samples.’

By noon, Richard and Angela were on the road in the Humber, with a cardboard box containing a dozen glass sample jars on the back seat.

They reached Gowerton about three o’clock, after a quick snack on the way – a sandwich, currant bun and cup of tea at Saunders Refreshment hut on Stalling Down, near Cowbridge. At the police station, they met Ben Evans and Lewis Lewis to give them a detailed account of their recent discovery, emphasizing that as far as they were concerned, there could be no other explanation other than Linda Prentice had drowned in fresh water, not the sea.

‘Let’s go and find some for you, then,’ growled Evans. He and the inspector climbed into a patrol car with a uniformed driver and the Humber followed behind. They went out westwards into the country, through Penclawdd to Llanrhidian, then back to join the secondary road that went up over Cefn Bryn, the hilly spine of the Gower peninsula.

‘Where the hell are they going?’ asked Richard, but soon it was made clear, as the black Wolseley in front pulled over to the side of the road, in the middle of a large stretch of moorland. They stopped behind it and saw that at the side of the road was a large, sinister-looking pool, surrounded by rushes. They got out and joined the two detectives, who wore their habitual belted raincoats and trilbies, as it had been a day of typical Welsh drizzle. The four of them stood at the edge of the almost circular pool, which was about a hundred yards wide.

‘We brought you here first, as it’s about the largest pond in these parts,’ said Evans. ‘It’s called the Broad Pool at Cilibion.’

He pointed at the ridge in the distance. ‘Up there on Cefn Bryn is Arthur’s Stone and there’s a legend that this pond is where King Arthur chucked in his sword Excalibur. Lot of nonsense, that – but there’s plenty of water to get drowned in, even though it’s shallow.’

Angela dutifully filled one of her jars at the edge and agreed that it was murky enough to be full of diatoms. Then they moved on and went over the hill to Reynoldston and back to Pennard through Parkmill, where they stopped again to sample the small river that ran down from Ilston to Three Cliffs Bay.

‘The seaward end of this stream is not all that far from Pennard,’ said Lewis. ‘But it would be a devil of a climb up and down, as well as being busy with trippers, except at dead of night.’

‘We may as well get to the house and work out from there,’ suggested Evans. They went on their way again and arrived at Bella Capri, getting some curious looks from a few walkers, as the two large black cars, one with a ‘Police’ sign, drew up outside the house.

‘No sign of his Jaguar, guv,’ murmured Lewis, as they looked over the gate at the silent bungalow.

‘Where do we start?’ asked Richard, turning to survey the rather arid cliff top, with its rocky ground and scraggy gorse. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any streams or ponds up here.’

‘The nearest river is the one that comes down the Bishopston Valley and empties into the sea at Pwlldu,’ said Lewis. ‘More of a stream, really, it goes underground for part of the way.’

The superintendent pushed open the gate. ‘Let’s have a look around now we’re here. I suppose he doesn’t have a swimming pool around the back?’

As they walked up the drive, Angela pointed to the circular rockery in front of the bungalow. ‘What’s that? A fish pond?’

They quickened their pace and went to the rather neglected heap of large stones, with its central cement-lined hollow. Angela put her fingers into the murky water and pulled out some weed with green slime trailing from it. ‘I’ll bet this is rotten with diatoms,’ she announced.

‘Bit small to drown in, isn’t it?’ asked Lewis, dubiously.

‘Let’s try it and see!’ said Ben Evans, suddenly grabbing the smaller man and pushing his head forwards over the outer ring of stones until his face was almost touching the water. Fortunately, he had left his hat in the police car or it would probably have fallen in.

‘Hey, lay off, boss!’ he complained, as the grinning superintendent pulled him back up. ‘But you’re right, it could be done.’

Angela had an objection. ‘Surely she would struggle and then there would be signs of restraint! Wouldn’t she show fresh bruises on her shoulders and arms if she was gripped to hold her under water for a few minutes?’

Richard pursed his lips in doubt.

‘If she was thrashing about, yes – but what if she was unconscious, after a bang on the head?’ he asked. ‘There were certainly signs of a recent head injury, which could be put down to being bashed against rocks while still alive in the sea – but which we now suspect didn’t happen!’

They were suddenly interrupted by a call from the police driver, who had been leaning on the bonnet of the big Wolseley, having a surreptitious smoke.

‘Super! Does the chap you’re interested in, drive a Mark Five Jaguar?’ There was an unmistakable urgency in his voice, as he pointed an arm down the track towards Southgate.

Ben Evans’s head snapped up as he replied. ‘Yes, a black one! Why?’

‘Because a car like that was driving right up here, when it suddenly reversed, turned in the bushes and has gone like a bat out of hell back down the road, sir!’

Lewis stared at his senior officer. ‘He must have spotted us messing about here at the pond!’

The superintendent was already pounding down the path, moving very quickly for a man of his bulk, Lewis racing after him. They piled into the police car, the driver discarding his Woodbine and scrambling in to start the engine.

‘Get after him, man! There’s only one road out of this place,’ snapped Lewis, who had taken the front passenger seat.

The driver did a neck-jolting two-point turn into the bracken and gorse at the side of the bumpy track, then shot off after the other car, which was already well out of sight. Angela and Richard were left staring after them, her diatom pot still in her hand.

‘Never a dull moment in this job,’ she said calmly.

In the police car, the driver was bemoaning his lack of acceleration.

‘We’ll never catch a big Jag like that,’ he said bitterly. ‘Why couldn’t he have had a Standard Ten instead?’

Thankfully, unlike some of the CID cars, this one had radio and Lewis was already reaching for the handset. Calling up the Control Room, he requested interception on the most likely roads back towards Swansea, as westwards was a dead end at the end of the Gower peninsula, with only ocean between it and North America.

Their driver raced the Wolseley through Pennard, the chromed gong on the front bumper hammering out a warning as they went. The road branched at Pennard Church and Ben Evans yelled for the constable to take the left fork and go up to the next junction and then towards Fairwood Common, the road to the centre of Swansea.

‘Where does he think he’s going?’ shouted Lewis. ‘He can’t get away, there’s nowhere to go.’

‘He’s in a panic, that’s what!’ replied Evans. ‘He saw us looking into that pond and realized the game was up.’

Lewis was on the radio again.

‘They’ve got two traffic cars coming from Dunvant. If he’s on this road, they should block him before he gets there.’

In a few moments, they were on an open road going across the moorland towards Upper Killay, the now-abandoned RAF fighter station on their left.

‘That’s them ahead,’ shouted the driver, just as Lewis had a radio confirmation that the first traffic car had made contact. Peering down the long straight road, Lewis could see one vehicle slewed across the road and another tilted on the verge at the side. In a few more seconds, they were alongside another police car, with the Jaguar half-toppled into a rush-filled ditch, where it had attempted to squeeze past.

Two uniformed officers were pulling a dishevelled figure out of the driver’s door when the two detectives approached. Shaken, but still defiant, he began blustering about illegal harassment, but Ben Evans jerked his head at his inspector. Lewis Lewis stepped forward and laid a hand on the man’s shoulder as he was held by the other officers.

‘Michael Prentice, I’m arresting you for the murder of your wife Linda. You need not say anything, but anything you do say may be used in evidence.’

Ben Evans added his own unofficial rider.

‘You’ll hang for this, you callous bastard!’

The morning tea break at Garth House had become a regular briefing session, where news of their cases was bandied about. A week after their trip to Gower, Richard reported a telephone conversation he had with Ben Evans in Gowerton, who was officially ringing him to tell him that both he and Angela would be required to give evidence at the magistrates’ court in a few weeks’ time.

‘There’s going to be a full hearing at new committal proceedings against Prentice,’ Ben had said. ‘He’s got another high-powered barrister to represent him and it looks as if they’re trying to wangle a manslaughter verdict to save his neck.’

The three women in the staff room all wanted to know if Michael Prentice had confessed to what had happened.

‘I can’t see he can plead manslaughter if he held his wife’s head under water until she drowned!’ objected Sian.

‘Ben Evans told me that Prentice coughed to causing the death when he saw us taking samples at the garden pool – but he later retracted some of it to try to bolster his manslaughter defence,’ said Richard.

‘So what did he say he did?’ asked Sian, who had developed a proprietorial interest after having prepared the diatom test.

‘He claims they had a hell of a row again over his infidelity with that blonde woman. She threatened him with a carving knife and chased him out into the garden. They struggled against the rockery and some how she fell face forward into the water and drowned!’

‘That sounds utter nonsense to me!’ declared Moira.

Richard drank some tea, then agreed. ‘Of course it is, but if the alternative is an eight o’clock walk in Swansea prison, he’ll clutch at any lame excuse.’

Sian shuddered, suddenly less proud of her expertise in demonstrating diatoms.

‘It’s pretty horrible to think that what I did could lead to them hanging that man,’ she murmured.

Angela put a reassuring arm around her shoulders.

‘It’s not what you did, Sian, it’s what he did that matters,’ she said softly. ‘He killed her, then threw her into the sea as if he was getting rid of some inconvenient rubbish.’

The technician nodded. ‘I suppose I’ll get used to it, but I still think that this awful ritual of hanging is barbaric. The sooner it’s abolished, the better!’

Privately, Richard Pryor agreed with her.