Tangled Web by Ken McClure Read Free Book Online Page A

Anne-Marie Palmer’s body.
    ‘She’s lying in Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor, Doctor. Dr French is carrying out the post mortem this evening.’
    ‘D’you know when exactly?’
    ‘About now I should think.’
    Gordon set the phone to re-route calls to his mobile number and left the surgery to drive the five miles or so to the Ysbyty Gwynedd hospital in Bangor. The hospital sat high on a hill overlooking the main east-west carriageway across North Wales. There were two police vehicles sitting in the car park so he wasn’t surprised when he found several police officers in conversation outside the Pathology department.
    ‘Has Dr French started?’ he asked.
    ‘About five minutes ago.’
    Gordon went on through to the post mortem suite, knocked and entered without waiting. French looked up from the table, knife in hand. The two plain-clothes officers standing nearby did likewise. ‘I’m Tom Gordon, the Palmer’s GP in Felinbach. I hoped you wouldn’t mind?’
    ‘I suppose not,’ said French, although he didn’t sound too enthusiastic.
    ‘I think we’ve met a couple of times before at regional seminars?’ said Gordon.
    ‘Really,’ replied French, sounding indifferent.
    Gordon nodded to the other two men in the room. One was Chief Inspector Davies; the other was introduced to him as DI Lawrence.’
    Gordon nodded and said, ‘A sad business.’
    The policemen grunted without committing themselves. French remained intent on what he was doing. Gordon moved closer to the table and couldn’t prevent himself from uttering a slight sound of disgust. He immediately felt embarrassed at being so unprofessional.
    ‘She is a bit of a mess,’ said French coldly.
    ‘What a bastard,’ murmured Davies. ‘What the hell did he have to do that to her for?’
    ‘I must be missing something,’ said Gordon. ‘She couldn’t have decomposed this much in three days.’
    ‘He doused her in acid,’ said French, hydrochloric acid if I’m not mistaken. You can still smell it.’
    Gordon moved closer to the blackened little body on the table and could smell the acid. ‘Right,’ he said wrinkling his nose at the burning sensation in his nostrils. Is this going to make it difficult to establish exact cause of death?’
    ‘Well nigh impossible in the circumstances,’ said French. ‘Just as well he confessed. Look at her. What a bloody mess.’
    ‘He must have tried to dispose of her using acid and then changed his mind and decided to bury her after all,’ said Davies, his voice suffused with distaste. ‘His own kid for Christ’s sake.’
    ‘John Palmer didn’t do this,’ said Gordon, still staring at the body. ‘I know the man. He just couldn’t do anything like this.’
    ‘If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard that, I’d be a very rich man,’ said Davies.
    ‘But hydrochloric acid …’
    ‘He’s a science teacher. It wouldn’t exactly be difficult for him to get hold of it,’ said Davies. ‘The old marble chips experiment if I remember rightly.’
    French stood back from the table and said, ‘Frankly, I don’t think I’m going to be able to do too much more with this one, Alan. She’s been too badly damaged by the acid.’
    ‘Jesus,’ said Davies in a low whisper. ‘Not to worry. Maybe the bastard’ll be kind enough to tell us how he topped her in the first place.’
    ‘If he did …’ added French.
    Gordon thought for a fleeting moment that French might have had some reason for doubting Palmer’s guilt but then he realised with horror that he meant something else entirely.
    ‘Davies picked up on it. ‘You’re not suggesting that the acid was the cause of death, are you, Doctor?’
    French held up his palms. ‘I was just being pedantic as befits my profession,’ he said. ‘But as we don’t actually know the cause of death then, as it stands …’
    ‘For Christ’s sake, there is no way on Earth that John Palmer would immerse his own child in acid under any circumstances and certainly