by Jan Newton
‘Sorry, Rhys, it’s true. And she’s had a child at some stage, but the doctor couldn’t say when. There was no identification on the body apart from a signet ring with the initials CRH engraved on it. But that doesn’t mean it was hers. The only significant distinguishing feature, other than the impressive network of new and healed needle tracks, is a small tattoo on the left shoulder. We think it’s a red rose and a shamrock or a four-leaf clover.’ She handed Rhys a photograph, which he carefully Blu-tacked and stuck on the board. ‘Dr Greenhalgh is waiting for dental records to be circulated. Apparently, the victim had absolutely terrible teeth and,’ Julie flicked through her notebook, ‘Dr Greenhalgh was concerned at the state of the rest of the body too.’
Goronwy frowned. ‘It’s not as bad as some we’ve seen, Sarge. What’s the problem?’
Julie pointed at the photograph. ‘She’s taken X-rays which have revealed multiple fractures to both arms, legs and several ribs.’ She looked up at the others. ‘All the fractures have healed, apart from two. Apparently, the poor woman had recent fractures to her right arm, which, judging by the mis-alignment, had never been attended to. The doc thinks that was the reason for the odd shape her right hand was held in when she died.’ Julie scanned her notes. ‘There was also some recent blood spatter on her clothes. It wasn’t her blood but it was human. Given where she was found, the doc checked it wasn’t from a sheep or something.’
‘Now that’s more promising,’ Swift said. ‘Is she running tests on the blood?’
‘She is, but nothing’s come back immediately. She says there are other possibilities and she’ll let us know when she hears anything.’
‘How did we not notice she was a woman?’ Swift was incredulous. ‘Dear God, that was a bit of an oversight.’
Julie nodded. ‘Don’t beat yourself up, Sir, Dr Greenhalgh missed it too. But what she did say, which might help explain the slightness of the body, was that on examination of the intestines, she discovered absolutely flat villi which would have led to problems with the absorption of nutrients from her diet.’
‘Villi?’ Morgan Evans grimaced. ‘You do like to get into the finer detail don’t you?’
Julie ignored him and held up her hand, spreading her fingers wide. ‘Your intestines are full of bumps, like this, which absorb the vitamins and minerals you need from the food you eat. If they’re flat, there’s a lot less surface area to do the job and you can end up seriously malnourished.’
Swift scratched his ear. ‘And I have every confidence that you’re going to tell us what causes this anomaly, Sergeant.’
‘Of course she is,’ Morgan muttered.
Julie ignored him. ‘Coeliac disease, Sir. People who have coeliac disease can’t eat gluten because that’s what causes this sort of damage.’
‘You’re kidding.’ Rhys whistled through his teeth. ‘So that’s bread and stuff, is it?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Rhian’s decided that bread’s bad for you. She’s bought some sort of celebrity cookbook and now I can’t even get toast at home. Nerys does it for me when I get to work.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know if I can bring myself to tell Rhi she’s actually right.’
‘So, what does the doctor think about the broken bones?’ Swift slid off the desk and wandered over to the board and its scant information. ‘Battered wife maybe?’
‘She says she wants to run a Dexa scan, just to be sure, but she thinks maybe her bones were more brittle than usual due to the diet problems. Still,’ Julie tapped her notebook on her teeth, ‘she might have had a little bit of help sustaining the fractures, don’t you think?’
‘Well can we not just cross-check dental records with people with this disease then? If it can affect your bones and teeth then she could be pretty easy to track down, couldn’t she?’ Rhys was suddenly animated and Swift smiled.
‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘And we need to chase up fingerprints too, don’t forget.’ He turned to Julie. ‘I think you and I should go and have a wander round Llandrindod, Sergeant, and see what we can come up with, as that’s about the only place we haven’t covered yet. Besides,’ he grinned, ‘Brian Hughes has heard a rumour that our victim may have been seen hanging around outside the Metropole, just over a week ago.’
*
Julie still hadn’t got used to the way Swift was greeted when he ventured out of the office. In every shop and on every street corner, there was someone who knew him and either waved or stopped to speak to him. She waited while he chatted with a woman in Middleton Street, and imagined Frank Parkinson and Helen in the back streets of Manchester, dodging insults, spit and far worse. The only mention of pigs or bacon since her relocation had been in the station canteen. Nerys produced the most amazing bacon and fried egg barmcakes, every Friday morning. Julie hadn’t mentioned that to Adam, of course. That would have meant another lecture on the dangers of processed meats, saturated fats and choline consumption. Strangely enough, he hadn’t yet ventured into gluten free territory.
Swift ended his conversation and they turned left and crossed the road by the bandstand. Several teenage girls were sitting on the steps, their ties and skirts as short as humanly possible.
‘Hiya, Mr Swift.’ One of the girls waved as they passed and Julie grinned.
‘Is there anyone you don’t know?’
‘I don’t know as many people in town as I used to, to be honest. What with all the movements in and out there must be a fair few I don’t know by now.’
‘But there can’t be that much movement of people, surely?’
‘There’s more now than there used to be. Some of the kids go off to college and don’t come back. Then there are those who come here to retire.’ Swift waited for a sizeable gap in the sporadic traffic before ambling across the road to the Metropole Hotel. ‘But I suppose I must know quite a number.’
‘I can’t get over how friendly everyone is.’
‘Not everyone’s pleased to see us, not by any means, but we don’t do so badly, fair play. I’d say most people are glad to see us.’
‘Well I’ve not been called a pig for over three months now, and that has to be a record.’
‘Not that you’ve heard anyway, Sergeant.’ Julie glanced at Swift. His expression betrayed little, but he couldn’t hide the smile around his eyes. He held the door open for her and they entered the hotel to be greeted by the sound of laughter in the bar.
The manager was blessed with a good memory for faces. ‘Sergeant Kite, how can we help you?’ He held out his hand to Julie then Swift. ‘Craig. Found another body have you?
‘Actually, we have.’
Julie looked at Swift. ‘Where was it again, Sir?’
‘The body of a young woman was found yesterday above Pont ar Elan. We’re just enquiring about guests who may have not returned when they were supposed to, say within the last week or so.’
The manager’s face had paled and he shook his head slowly. ‘I was joking. I never thought you really had found… I mean I didn’t know. No, we’ve had nothing like that. All our visitors are accounted for.’ He ran his finger down the register. ‘I can’t believe there’s another one. That sort of thing never happens here and now we’ve had two in the space of a few months.’
‘I’m beginning to think I’m a bad influence,’ Julie said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard of anyone in town misplacing a guest lately?’
‘No, not that I know of. Unless… no, I’m sure there was a sensible explanation for it.’
‘Go on,’ said Swift.
‘Well, I don’t want to tell tales, get anyone into trouble or anything.’
‘Please,’ Julie said, ‘if you know anything at all that might help us identify this person, tell us.’
‘Well,’ the manager looked from Julie to Swift and back again. ‘There was a kid hanging about outside here one evening. Scruffy. Looked as though she could do with a good meal. Probably about a week ago now, but I’m not completely sure what day it was. She did come in eventually and asked if we had a cheap
room for a couple of nights.’ He smiled. ‘When she said cheap I think she really meant free. I told her we were fully booked.’
‘And were you?’ Julie asked.
The manager gave Julie what her mother would have called an old-fashioned look. ‘No, but I didn’t want to embarrass her to be honest. But then she asked if I could point her in the direction of a reasonable B&B,’ he paused and looked down at the register. ‘The thing is, the lady who runs the B&B I told her about is the mother of a rugby mate of mine. She’d applied for all the right licences but it was taking a while to get the paperwork back. I probably shouldn’t say this, but she was struggling a bit to make ends meet.’
‘Go on,’ Julie said.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing to do with this person in the Elan Valley.’
‘We’re not interested in whether the paperwork’s in situ.’ Swift scratched his ear. ‘But we do need to find out who this poor soul was.’
‘Yes.’ The manager reached for a notepad and a pen. ‘Of course. I think you’d better ask her yourself though, rather than me telling you tales.’ He handed Julie the piece of hotel notepaper, which she read and passed to Swift. ‘I don’t know if the girl ever turned up, but that’s the address. It’s a Mrs Pritchard.’
*
The house wasn’t what Julie had expected. It was at the centre of a sweeping Victorian terrace, red brick and sandstone. From the cellar, right up to the gabled window set high in the slate roof, the late afternoon sun reflected from gleaming glass. Three floors of tall windows were edged in heavy lined curtains, held in identical curved flounces. The front door with its gleaming black finish and its artfully arranged brass fittings wouldn’t have been out of place in Downing Street.
‘Are you sure this is the address, Sir?’
Swift looked up at the brass numbers and back at the paperwork. ‘That’s what it says.’ He lifted the knocker just as the door opened.
‘Mr and Mrs Simpson?’ The woman who held the door open was maybe in her early fifties and immaculately turned out, from the double row of pearls at her throat to the suede of her pale grey court shoes. Swift showed her his warrant card.
‘DI Craig Swift and DS Julie Kite. Mid Wales Police.’
They watched the colour drain from the woman’s face. ‘So you’ve found him then.’ She swayed slightly, despite holding firmly onto the door. ‘So you’ve come to tell me that either he’s dead or he’s going to prison, have you?’
Julie exchanged a glance with Swift. ‘Do you think we could come in, Mrs Pritchard. It is Mrs Pritchard?’
The woman nodded and stepped back, allowing them into the hallway. It was carpeted in plush pale blue, which led to wide, curving stairs, and the whole hallway was beautifully decorated in greys and creams. Julie couldn’t help noticing empty hooks on the walls and the faint shadows of pictures no longer there. The sitting room was equally tasteful, but on the ornate side-table was a leather-bound folder bearing the legend Information for Guests in gold italics. Cardboard displays spilled colourful maps and brochures onto an inlaid sideboard, like wilting tulips discarding petals onto the dark wood.
Mrs Pritchard motioned for them to sit either side of the bay window, in pale blue winged chairs. She remained standing, the fingers of her left hand grasping her right wrist, as though she was attempting to anchor herself there.
‘Who is it that you’ve lost?’ Swift’s voice was gentle, and Julie was reminded, yet again, of his compassion. How had he kept hold of that after everything he’d seen over the years? It took Mrs Pritchard several moments to reply.
‘Mr Pritchard. James that is. My husband.’
‘And what makes you think that Mr Pritchard deserves to be in prison?’ Swift stood up, motioned for her to sit and drew up a straight-backed wooden chair for himself. ‘Can you tell us about it?’
‘I don’t know. Not exactly, but there must have been something awful happening that he couldn’t tell me about. He must have been in some sort of trouble. There’s no other explanation for it.’ She sat down and immediately looked away, out of the window and across the avenue, but Julie doubted she was seeing the parked cars, or the trees in the park beyond.
Mrs Pritchard turned back to Swift. ‘He left me. Just like that, after thirty years.’ She looked up at Swift. ‘He didn’t even leave a note. He just didn’t come home from the office one night and when I finally thought to check, after phoning round friends and making a total fool of myself, all his clothes were gone.’
‘It must be horrible,’ Julie said, attempting to emulate Swift’s easy style, ‘to find out that someone has left you like that. But even so, it’s not usually something that carries a prison sentence.’
Julie, it seemed, still had a way to go, and Mrs Pritchard’s bottom lip began to tremble. ‘But he’s taken everything. He emptied all the bank accounts, except the current account, which had very little in it. He took the car and even his golf clubs.’
‘And you’ve not heard anything from him?’ Swift was frowning.
‘Nothing. I thought something terrible must have happened to him. I phoned round all the hospitals I could think of and anybody who might know where he was. But then a neighbour said she thought she’d seen him on Anglesey, at a pub we used to go to when we were visiting friends who live in Bangor. Of course, I went straight up there. I was there for three weekends, searching all the old haunts. I even asked at every hospital between here and there too, just in case, but there’s been was no sign of him.’
‘And when did all this happen?’ Julie asked.
‘It was about a fortnight before Christmas. We were planning a huge family party, a great gathering of the clan.’ She shook her head. ‘He was supposed to bring home the invitation cards from the printers that night, so we could get them written and in the post in good time.’
Swift offered his handkerchief before she had even realised she was crying. ‘Did you report it to the police?’
Mrs Pritchard nodded, dabbed her eyes, took a deep breath and handed the crumpled linen back to Swift. ‘They were very nice about it, but said I should leave it a few days and then go back. As an adult, they said, he had every right to go away for a few days on his own.’
‘So when you went back to the police,’ Julie said, ‘there was still no sign of him?’
‘I didn’t go back.’ Mrs Pritchard turned towards her. ‘By that time, I’d managed to work out that he’d emptied the bank accounts, and then his work phoned to say his P45 was ready to be picked up.’
‘So he’d handed his notice in?’ Julie frowned. ‘And you had no idea?’
‘None at all. The girl from HR joked about how lucky we were to be able to take a sabbatical in such a lovely warm place. It was all planned, you see. I didn’t let on, couldn’t even ask her where she thought he might have gone, but I went straight over there to collect the P45 and asked for his final pay by cheque rather than the normal transfer at the end of the month. I told her we were in the middle of changing banks. She probably shouldn’t have done it, but thank goodness she did. At least that cheque gave me enough to keep going for a few months.’
‘So what have you done since then? Do you work?’ Swift asked.
‘I had a little voluntary job at the charity shop, but apart from that I’ve not worked for years. I’ve no CV to speak of and even my office experience is years out of date.’ She stood, abruptly. ‘He didn’t want me to work. He said he wanted to relax at weekends and not get involved in anything domestic.’ She straightened the embroidered antimacassar on the chair back. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘This isn’t why you came to see me, is it? Shall I go and make us some tea?’
‘No,’ Swift said, standing himself and causing his bulk to block her exit. ‘No, we’re fine, but thank you. We just want to ask you about a guest who may have stayed with you lately. A young woman, probably in her early twenties, very slight in build and with rather short dark hair.’
Mrs Pritchard sank back into the chair. ‘My other runaway.
So she’s turned up has she? What was her excuse?’ She held up a hand. ‘No, don’t tell me, I think I’d rather not know. I thought she looked honest enough and I only let her stay as a favour.’ She sighed. ‘I felt sorry for her, but it’s just further evidence of what a really awful judge of character I am, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’ Swift asked.
‘The fact that she disappeared too, without so much as a word. It was just like James all over again, except she owed me money.’
‘Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?’ Julie turned to a new page in her notebook. ‘So a young woman answering this description did stay with you about a week ago? And she was a paying guest?’
Mrs Pritchard frowned. ‘Well, that was the idea, although as it turns out, it was probably better that she hadn’t actually paid me anything. I’d taken a gamble letting her the room, you see. I wasn’t properly licenced when she turned up. I should have waited for the paperwork, which turned up a couple of days later as it happens. But, as I said, I felt sorry for her.’
‘And why was that?’ Swift sat back down. ‘What was the matter with her?’
‘I was never completely sure, to tell the honest truth. She was distraught when she arrived. She looked as though she hadn’t had a square meal for weeks and her clothes… well let’s just say a charity shop wouldn’t have accepted them.’ Mrs Pritchard curled her lip at the memory. ‘But once she’d had a good soak in the bath and I’d run up the road and got her some half decent stuff from Oxfam, she was actually quite a pretty little thing.’
