Grounds for Appeal by Bernard Knight Read Free Book Online Page B

she asked hopefully.
    Richard shook his head as he carried on digging away at surplus peat. ‘Nothing yet, but the problem is I don’t know how much being buried in an acidic bog full of tannin affects the rate of decay.’
    â€˜How long would a body last in ordinary soil?’ asked Eva, who professionally had never had to deal with anything but ancient deaths.
    â€˜Depends on many factors, like the type of soil, especially acidity, wetness and temperature,’ he replied, as he continued to ferret away at the encroaching peat. ‘Left on the surface, there’s often not much left after a year except bones, but animal predators like rats, foxes and insects are responsible for much of that. Buried, the corpse will last much longer, but again depending on whether or not it’s in a sound coffin.’
    â€˜A couple of cases I saw when I was with the Met, still had cartilage on the joints and some tendons after a year,’ offered Priscilla.
    â€˜Sure, but five years certainly sees off all the soft tissues, if they’re not buried. Doctor Boross, do you know what the old bog bodies were like internally after all that time?’
    The archaeologist, virtually a chain smoker, tapped the ash from her latest Gold Flake into the big porcelain sink.
    â€˜Quite good organ preservation in some, I recall. Even the stomach contents were identifiable, but some had very pliable bones, due to the acid water decalcifying them.’
    Richard tapped the exposed thigh bone with a wide knife that he was using to dig out the peat. ‘These are exceptionally hard, I must say! So again that’s against our friend here being from the dawn of history.’
    It was when he started sponging down the shoulders and upper arms that this speculation was abruptly confirmed. The arms were still tucked under the body, but on wiping the slimy coating from just below the right shoulder, Richard stopped and bent to peer more closely at the dark grey, wrinkled skin.
    â€˜What the hell’s this? Priscilla, there’s a torch in that case, can you bring it, please.’
    They all clustered round as she aimed the beam at where his finger was pointing. Very faintly, there were darker marks under the surface and when he smoothed out the wrinkles between a finger and thumb, they saw the blurred outlines of a tattoo.
    â€˜I don’t think Batman was around in the Iron Age!’ he said, with a tinge of disappointment.
    After their session in the mortuary, they adjourned to the DCC’s office in the old police building on the promenade. It was now late afternoon and Richard and Priscilla had a long journey ahead of them back to the Wye Valley, but they needed to take stock of what they had learned so far.
    David John Jones sat behind his DI’s desk as they drank the inevitable cups of tea. The two from Tintern had been offered a meal in a local hotel, but as Richard decided that they would stop somewhere on the way home, they held their discussion straight away.
    â€˜So we’ve got a murder on our hands,’ said the senior officer, with a sigh of resignation. ‘We’ll have to get the Yard in straight away. This is beyond us. I’ve only got one ranking CID officer for the whole of Cardiganshire – and we’ve already got a clutch of burglaries and two sheep-stealings to cope with.’
    Richard nodded his understanding. ‘We’ll do all we can to help with the forensic pathology side, though of course, the Home Office lab in Cardiff must look at any physical evidence, like that cord that was used to strangle the fellow.’
    The post-mortem had not been all that helpful, with such an incomplete and decayed body to work with, but there seemed little doubt that the ligature that had been wound twice around the neck was the cause of death. A length of similar cord had tied both wrists together in front of the body, even though the underlying skin and bones had disintegrated