Love Story, With Murders by Harry Bingham Read Free Book Online Page A

so open, so soldier-like, flirtatious and charming, that after twenty minutes the two DCs conducting the interview broke for a consultation with their team leaders, and
decided to run the whole thing differently. Someonewent out to get chips, and the rest of the interview was conducted over mugs of tea and plates of chips with brown sauce, with Price doing his
gallant best to assist.
    I know all this only because one of the DCs involved, Susan Konchesky, told me about it all. Watkins says nothing except, ‘Interrogation of Price revealed no grounds for suspicion. His
garden is easily accessed from the landto the rear of his property. He reports a minor squabble with Elsie Williams’ – according to Konchesky: she didn’t like him burning garden
clippings, he called her an old harpie – ‘but no real contact.’ The Ice Queen doesn’t say it, but we all know by now that Elsie Williams could have picked a quarrel with an
empty room, so Price is hardly unique in having had a run-in with her.
    And inany case, as Watkins goes on to say, there seems absolutely no connection between Elsie Williams or Arthur Price and Ryan Humphrys, the plumbers’ merchant. Nor between any of them
and Mary Langton.
    ‘Price and Humphrys have supplied us with lists of friends, family, and tradesmen who have had access to their property. We are currently cross-checking those lists against address books
andphone records, but so far we haven’t found any significant overlap.’
    Watkins grimaces at the lack of correlations. As though it’s someone’s fault. Then says, ‘Causes of death.’
    There’s laughter at that. It sounds stupid – because people tend not to live long and healthy lives when they’ve been divided into dozens of pieces and distributed around
suburban Cardiff – but Watkins is right:we don’t actually know what killed either Langton or Khalifi. Were they cut up whilst still alive? If so, why? If not, then what?
    More questions than answers. The corpses seemed to have been butchered reasonably proficiently, ‘but a garden saw or kitchen knives could have done the job adequately. We’ve got no
evidence so far of slashing, hacking, or even signs of struggle.’ So quite likelya clean death, with butchery taking place thereafter.
    Then some complex and uncertain forensic material, which Watkins summarises in her usual take-no-prisoners way.
    The biggest curiosity: the condition of Mary Langton’s corpse.
    The leg found in the freezer was, according to the guesstimates we have so far, in roughly the condition you’d expect from a leg that had been frozen for fiveyears, then left to rot in a
wet freezer with the power off. The arms and the head were in worse condition, but probably not five years worse. The fact is that forensic science doesn’t have a whole raft of statistical
data on how rapidly a head decomposes when submerged in a barrel of old lawn mower oil. There are various tests currently being done to explore how far the oil has penetratedthe bone and soft
tissues. Those tests may or may not give us something more definite, but we’re never likely to get a firm fix on the timing.
    ‘Best estimate,’ says Watkins, ‘the head was in that barrel for one to three years. Maybe more, maybe less.’
    A stone had been left in the mouth to keep the head below the surface. It had fallen out, with a little oily plop, when I lifted the head.In ancient Greece, corpses were buried with a coin in
their mouths, so the newly dead had something with which to pay for their passage into the underworld. That falling pebble felt like Mary Langton finally making payment. Her spirit finally exiting
this world.
    ‘With the arms, it’s a little clearer,’ Watkins continues. ‘If those arms have been consistently stored at ambient temperature,the extent of the decomposition is
consistent with something between two and four years. I’m told that, in the opinion of our forensics team, it is highly unlikely that the