Free Grounds for Appeal by Bernard Knight Page A

the two women went out, he reached for the phone and dialled Aberystwyth, to leave a message for Meirion Thomas to contact him.
    The investigators in Borth had just left the hut, to go over to the site of the excavation to show it to the London men. There was nothing really to see, apart from a hole in the ground surrounded by posts and tape, but Meirion Thomas felt that Vickers and his assistant should get a feel for the whole case. Howard Squires was very taken by the panoramic view, which included the huge bog, the sea and the surrounding hills, but his senior officer seemed distracted. He was thinking of a woman, in fact his former fiancée, Angela Bray. Engaged to her for over a year, he had suddenly become infatuated with a younger woman and broken it off. He was well aware how hard Angela had taken it and knew that it was a factor in her decision to leave London and team up with this Welsh pathologist, Richard Pryor. Some months earlier, he had been called to Gloucester to identify a murdered South London criminal, shot in a gang dispute. The pathologist was Richard Pryor and with him had been Angela Bray, which led to an embarrassing confrontation in the mortuary. Now history was in danger of repeating itself and he would have to be careful to avoid meeting her again, as ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’.
    â€˜Guv, have you seen enough here?’ His sergeant’s voice brought him back to earth.
    â€˜Er, yes, I think so.’ With an effort, he focused his attention again and looked around. ‘How would they have brought a body here? The same way as we came?’ he asked the locals.
    â€˜Probably, it’s only a few hundred yards from the road,’ answered the DI. ‘We assume that there were more than one and presumably they had some sort of transport. He was only of average height, but I doubt one person would have struggled here with the corpse.’
    â€˜Unless he was killed right here?’ objected Squires.
    Meirion gave a doubtful shrug. ‘Possible, but it seems unlikely that they would cut off his head here and take it away.’
    â€˜The whole damned case seems unlikely!’ muttered Vickers, as he took a last look around.
    They went back to the police car and drove back to the headquarters in Aberystwyth, where an office had been put at the disposal of the Scotland Yard men. Vickers said that he would have to make a lot of telephone calls to get things moving, before going back to Borth after lunch.
    In Meirion’s own office, a message relayed from the incident room asked him to ring Doctor Richard Pryor and when he got through, the doctor told him of the confirmation of the rare bone disease discovered in the corpse. It took a few minutes for Richard to explain about Albers-Schonberg disease, but the detective quickly grasped its significance.
    â€˜So we’ve got to find a guy somewhere in Britain who had this disease – and find a skull somewhere which also suffered from it?’
    â€˜That’s about it, Inspector! I’ll see if I can find if there is any kind of central medical register of patients who have been diagnosed with marble bone disease. I doubt it, as it’s so uncommon, but there may be some orthopaedic surgeons who have an interest in it.’ He thought for a moment, then went on. ‘It’s a pity that I didn’t find any old fractures in the skeleton. They are quite common in Albers-Schonberg, as the bones are brittle. They could have been matched with the X-rays of patients who had had multiple breaks, but we’re out of luck on that score.’
    â€˜So we’ve got to find a head somewhere?’ repeated the detective.
    â€˜That’s about it – as well as someone with a Batman tattoo!’ agreed Richard. ‘Any progress on discovering when that character became popular?’
    â€˜The chaps from the Yard are looking into that. They’re more likely to have people in London