Free Grounds for Appeal by Bernard Knight

DI and sergeant dropped them off at the Bellevue Hotel, just along the seafront from the police headquarters, then went to the nearest pub for a pint before going wearily to their own homes.
    â€˜That pair think we are still in the colonies,’ grumbled Gwyn Parry. ‘Condescending couple of bastards!’
    Antipathy between county police and the Metropolitan Police was traditional. Some forces felt it was an admission of inferiority to have to ‘call in the Yard’, but Meirion Thomas took a more phlegmatic view of the situation.
    â€˜It’s no good getting uptight about them, Gwyn. There’s no way we can carry on with this on our own. This fellow could have been brought to Borth from anywhere and dumped in that bog. We can’t go looking all over Great Britain for him!’
    Next morning, while Vickers and his sergeant were travelling towards Borth in the back seat of a police car, Richard Pryor was sitting in his office in Garth House. He was holding up a large X-ray film to the window, so that Angela and Priscilla could see it against the daylight outside. They all looked intently at the dense white image of the thigh bone, which contrasted sharply with the black of the surrounding celluloid.
    â€˜What d’you make of that, ladies?’ he asked chirpily. Angela could tell that he was pleased with what he had discovered, but she was not going to give in easily.
    â€˜I suppose the radiologist in Hereford told you what it was, clever-sticks!’ she chided.
    Richard pretended to be affronted. ‘He only confirmed what I already suspected! Ever heard of Albers-Schonberg?’
    â€˜Sounds like an Austrian composer or a psychiatrist,’ suggested Priscilla, facetiously. Richard grinned and waggled the film in his hand.
    â€˜No, he was a German radiologist, who described this disease in 1904. It’s better known as “Marble Bone Disease”, for obvious reasons.’
    â€˜It’s not obvious to me,’ said Angela, stoutly. ‘Pris and I are proper doctors, not physicians!’
    Richard became serious and pointed to the dense white shaft of the bone.
    â€˜We thought the femur was very heavy and with good reason. This is a quite rare genetic defect in which the bone becomes extraordinarily dense and thickened. Look, there’s hardly any marrow cavity down the middle of the bone. It’s all overgrown and as hard as a rock – in fact, the modern name for the disease is “osteopetrosis”, meaning rock-like bones.’
    â€˜So what makes you so excited about this, apart from your academic interest?’ asked Priscilla. Richard dropped the film on to his desk.
    â€˜Well, because it’s so rare. Maybe there’s a medical record somewhere of this chap, if he was ever seen in a hospital. Although the bone is so hard, it’s brittle, so they get a lot of fractures. And it seriously affects the skull as well, so if they ever find a spare head somewhere, we could match it to this fellow.’
    The two scientists were quite impressed after all.
    â€˜Quite a unique pair of identifying features, Richard,’ said Angela. ‘Albers-Schonberg disease and a Batman tattoo!’
    â€˜Better than nothing, which is what we had when we dug him up,’ said Richard defensively. ‘Something useful to tell the cops, anyway.’
    Angela hauled herself off the corner of his desk, ready to go back to her work in the laboratory.
    â€˜You said something about possibly telling the age of the body from his bone X-rays . . . any joy there?
    â€˜Not really, according to the radiologist,’ he replied.
    â€˜The presence of this great thickening obscures the details of the internal structure, especially as the marrow cavity is partly obliterated. Normally, the internal architecture of weight-bearing bones is modified as people get older. But he said there was no positive evidence of advanced age, for what that’s worth.’
    As