Evan and Elle Read online

  He strode down the hall with Watkins and Evans in tow. Dr. Owens was standing at the front of the briefing room. The two detective constables were sitting with notebooks at the ready. They glanced at Evan with a certain amount of surprise as he followed the other officers into the room. Watkins sat near the back of the room. Evan perched on a chair behind him.

  “Sorry to keep you, Doctor. Please go ahead.” D.I. Hughes pulled out a chair beside the doctor, facing the other officers.

  Dr. Owens cleared his throat. “I have completed an autopsy on an unidentified man whose partially burned remains were discovered early this morning in the ashes of a fire at the Chez Yvette restaurant, Llanberis Pass. Probable age of the victim between thirty and forty, based on bone density and tooth condition. I was not able to determine ethnicity because skin and hair were burned too badly. Height about five feet eleven to six foot.

  “The internal organs were as I suspected—in fairly good condition, considering what they’d been subjected to. He hadn’t eaten in a while, by the way, which probably indicates he wasn’t a restaurant patron. A good amount of alcohol in the system, though. Also my examination of the lungs showed no evidence of smoke inhalation.”

  He paused at a gasp from someone in the audience. “I take it you all appreciate the significance of this. This man was dead before the fire started.”

  “Any idea how he died?” Hughes asked.

  “I couldn’t find any traces of toxic substances in the body. I examined the heart to see if he had, in fact, died of natural causes. The exterior of the heart was—um—pretty well cooked, but contained less blood than I would have expected. On closer examination of the wall of the heart, it appeared to have been punctured.”

  “Due to the heat of the fire?” Watkins asked.

  “No. In my estimation, I’d say he was stabbed in the chest with a rather large knife.”

  Evan felt his own stomach lurch.

  D.I. Hughes rose to his feet. “You realize the importance of these findings, don’t you? We’re not dealing with a victim caught in a tragic fire anymore. We’re dealing with a homicide and a fire most probably set deliberately to cover it up.”

  Chapter 13

  “You see, I told you that bloody Frenchwoman had her answers down too pat,” Inspector Hughes said. The meeting had just concluded but the D.I. had held Watkins and Evan back as the room cleared. “I thought she was a cool customer.” He perched on the edge of the nearest desk. “I’d always wondered what would make a Frenchwoman—and an outstandingly good cook, so we understand—come to a place like this. Now we know. She had something to hide.” He wagged his finger at Evan. “And the chappy you saw had obviously tracked her down. He looked up inquringly at Evan. “She said her husband was dead didn’t she? Maybe this man had come to blackmail her, maybe to threaten her. In either case she was desperate. She grabbed a knife and killed him to shut him up. Then she panicked and set fire to the place. Only the fire didn’t do its job.”

  “If she wanted the fire to burn up the body, why did she sound the alarm so soon?” Evan asked. “Why not slip out and wait until someone else called the fire brigade? One of the village boys told me that she had run to his mother and given the alarm.”

  Hughes nodded. “Of course, I’m just presenting one scenario. I’m not saying that she’s guilty. But we have to go with the most likely suspect first, don’t we? She claims she was the only person in a locked building.” He paused, then sighed as he struck his fist against the palm of his hand. “Damn and blast. The last thing I need on my plate is a murder investigation right now. I’m supposed to be deploying maximum manpower for Operation Armada—a directive from the commissioner himself. He thinks it will be a feather in our cap if we manage to shut down a major point of entry in the drug trade, and I have to say I agree with him. But how can I stake out every possible landing point in our territory when we’ve got a homicide to solve? I just don’t have the manpower.” He slid off the desk and brushed off his hands. “You’ll have to do the spadework, Watkins. Find out who the man was and what connection he had to Madame Whatshername.”

  “Very good, sir,” Watkins said.

  “Get Evans here to give you a full description of the man he saw in the restaurant,” Hughes went on.

  “Excuse me, sir, but didn’t Dr. Owens say that the man probably wasn’t a restaurant patron?” Watkins interrupted.

  “I didn’t notice him eating anything” Evan said thoughtfully, “only drinking red wine.”

  Hughes nodded. “It’s still worth pursuing.” “Get his description, and the dental charts that Dr. Owens has compiled for us, over to the French police ASAP. We may well find that he’s wanted over there. It’s not completely inconceivable that this is somehow tied in with the drug traffic. Who knows, maybe they selected her restaurant as a drop-off point.”

  “Maybe she set up shop there for that very reason, sir,” Watkins suggested.

  D.I. Hughes’s face lit up. “Now, that’s worth pursuing. Find out everything you can about her, Watkins. See if the French police have anything on her. And let’s see what she’s got to say for herself now.”

  “Do you want her brought in, sir?” Watkins asked.

  “No, I think we’ll wait awhile. We can’t hold her on what we’ve got, and I don’t want her getting the wind up and rushing back to France. Let’s see if we turn up any more concrete evidence first. I’m sending up a lab team right away to go through the rubble and bring in anything that could be a possible murder weapon. I don’t think we’ve got much hope of fingerprints after a fire like that, but you never know.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Evan said cautiously, “but if she was the chef, wouldn’t her fingerprints be on all the knives?”

  “Precisely,” Hughes said. He looked delighted that he had scored a point on Evan, whom he had never quite forgiven for solving a couple of murders. “We’d expect to find her prints there. It would be other prints that would be of interest to us. Our legal system does assume a person innocent until proven guilty, you know, Evans.”

  “Yes sir,” Evan said, suitably squashed.

  The inspector headed out of the door, with Watkins and Evan following at his heels, like young doctors in the wake of a famous surgeon.

  He paused outside his office door. “You know, I’ve just changed my mind. I think I’ll go and talk to her right now. Evans, you can come with me. It’s your territory up there. We won’t charge her with anything yet, but we’ll fingerprint her. Let’s see if we can rattle that composure when she finds what we know about the body. Watkins, get onto France. Come along, Evans. It’s just possible we’re onto something really big here.”

  He swept out like a ship in full sail. Evan had to break into a trot to keep up with him.

  “It’s treadful, just, Mr. Evans,” said Mrs. Williams when Evan came home, weary and emotionally drained, shortly after eight o’clock.

  Evan looked at her warily. Surely it wasn’t possible that even Mrs. Williams and her spy network had managed to hear about the pathologist’s findings and the evidence of murder that had been given in a closed room.

  “What is, Mrs. Williams?” he asked, taking off his cap and hanging it on the hook in the hall.

  “The way they make you miss your dinner all the time. There’s Sunday joint in the oven for you and now it’s spoiled. I’ve never heard of such a thing—making you work on the Sabbath like this and keeping you from your leg of lamb, too. I’m going to have a word with the chief inspector down in Caernarfon and tell him that he’s working you too hard.”

  “I really don’t mind, Mrs. Williams.” Evan felt himself becoming hot around the collar as he visualized Mrs. Williams lecturing the D.C.I. He could imagine the old man’s remarks only too clearly. “It’s all part of the job, you know. If something comes up, then I have to be on duty.”

  “I suppose you’re still looking into that poor man burned in the fire. Do they know who he was yet?”

  “Not yet,” Evan said.


  “But I heard that Barry-the-Bucket found his car for you. A rental car, they say it was, not a local at all. Diolch am hynny for that. I mean, you expect foreigners to go around killing people, don’t you?”

  “Not usually,” Evan muttered as he followed her into the kitchen. An appetizing smell of roast lamb and onions was coming from the oven. A less appetizing smell of overcooked cabbage wafted from the stovetop.

  Evan sat and let Mrs. Williams put a heaped plate in front of him, but for once he didn’t have much appetite. The D.I.’s interview with Madame Yvette had left him upset and confused. He knew that everything pointed to her guilt, or at least to her involvement, but he didn’t want to believe that she was capable of a crime. Would a woman who was contemplating a major crime actually invite intimacy with a policeman, he wondered. What if he’d taken her up on her offer and they’d become romantically involved?

  Then another, more chilling, thought came into his head. It was possible that the entire seduction was deliberate. Maybe she was just testing the local police presence to see what she was up against and what chance she had of getting away with murder.

  Mrs. Williams tut-tutted a lot as she took away his half-eaten meal. “I know it was overdone tonight, Mr. Evans, but I tried my best. Is there something else I could get you instead?”

  “No, nothing, thank you, Mrs. Williams. It wasn’t your food, I promise you. I’ve just got too much on my mind.”

  “Is there nothing else you fancy, then? A boiled egg or two? Some welsh rarebit? A slice of my bara brith?”

  Evan smiled at her. “I’m not about to starve to death, Mrs. Williams.”

  But she was still shaking her head. “That’s what comes of working you too hard. Look at you, so exhausted you can’t even lift good food to your mouth. It’s not right, that it isn’t.”

  At that moment the phone rang.

  “Dear me now, there it goes again. Not a moment’s peace.” She bustled down the hall to the telephone.

  “Yes, he’s here, but he’s already had a long day and he needs his rest,” Evan heard her saying before he managed to politely wrest the phone away from her.

  “Evans here.”

  He heard a familiar chuckle on the other end of the line. “I’m glad to see you’re being well taken care of, boyo,” Watkins said. “Got you tucked up with a hot water bottle and a nice cup of cocoa, has she?”

  “Give over, Sarge,” Evan began but Watkins went on. “You wait until you’re married, boyo. I pity the poor girl that gets you. Spoiled rotten, that’s what you are.”

  “Did you call just to tell me that, or have you got something important to say?”

  “First I wanted to hear how the D.I.’s interview went. Did he manage to make her break down and confess, then?”

  “He didn’t manage to get anywhere with her,” Evan said. “She stuck to the same story. She swears that she was alone in the place and she woke to smell smoke. She’s no idea who the man could have been. She also swears she never saw him before that night.”

  “It could all be true, of course,” Watkins said. “If this is in some way connected to the importation of drugs, then she could have been instructed to open a restaurant and the bloke who got himself cremated could have been a contact whom she’d never seen before.”

  “And he could have run afoul of a rival gang,” Evan suggested, he realized he was still trying to create scenarios in which Yvette was innocent of murder.

  “You’ve got her prints and all her particulars now, haven’t you? Well, that’s a start. Bring them down first thing in the morning, will you? Our little computer whiz is going to scan them and send them across to the French police. They’ll do a match-up on their computer and by the end of tomorrow, we’ll know if she has a record.”

  “You’ll probably find tomorrow is a public holiday in France,” Evan commented dryly. “They seem to have at least one a week.”

  Watkins chuckled. “Lucky we discovered young Glynis speaks French. I thought I was going to have to use you.”

  “My French isn’t so bad,” Evan said. “I seem to remember I made myself understood all right with the barmaids in the French pubs.”

  “Oh well, you would, wouldn’t you—I’ve noticed you and the ladies! The Don Juan of Snowdonia—that’s what they call you.”

  “Cut it out, Sarge. You know very well I do nothing to encourage them.”

  “Then it must be that innocent boyish face—it makes them feel motherly.” He chuckled again. “I’ll see you down here in the morning then. I hope the French police are going to be helpful on this, although I’m not counting on it.”

  First thing on Monday morning Evan delivered his information and fingerprints to P.C. Glynis Davies at the computer center. Her face lit up when she saw him.

  “This is so exciting. This is my first homicide investigation!” She scanned the fingerprints, then took the sheet of paper and began typing the information into the computer. “You’re not officially in the plainclothes branch, are you?” she asked, looking up shyly at Evan. “But I hear you’re an absolute genius at solving murders.”

  “I’ve just been lucky. I’ve been in the right place at the right time.” Evan felt himself flushing.

  “It’s more than that. You’ve obviously got a flair for it. Not everyone has. You should apply for a transfer to the CID. I’ve just applied for one myself.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes, I know I’ve only just started, but I want to show them I’m keen to get on. Wouldn’t it be fun if we did the training course together?”

  Evan was imagining Bronwen’s reaction to his taking a course with the gorgeous and gifted P.C. Davies.

  “I think I’m quite happy where I am at the moment,” he said.

  Glynis sighed. “And I don’t think the D.C.I. will approve my transfer either. I’m the only person who knows anything about computers so I suppose I’ll be stuck here until I can train someone to replace me.” She glanced at the screen. “Ah, good. At least we’ve got an acknowledgment from the French police. They will do their best to be of assistance to their English brothers. How nice.” She looked up at Evan again, this time with an angry frown on her face. “I just wish everyone didn’t think that Wales was part of England.”

  “Are you from around here?” Evan asked. He hadn’t taken her for someone with strong Welsh sentiments.

  “Oh yes. I was born in Llandudno. My father’s still a doctor there.”

  “You don’t sound very Welsh.”

  She grinned. “That’s because I was sent to boarding school in England. My Welsh is rather rusty, but I can still siarad cymraeg typyn butch. What I need is practice.”

  He got her hint but pretended he didn’t. “Any news yet from the mental hospital?”

  “No, and I don’t expect any for a while. It will take time to look through old visitors’ books and trace relatives, won’t it? And I’d imagine they’re all overworked at a place like that. I think our best hope is the police. If either person has a record, then at least we’ll know where to go from here.” She got up. Evan noticed she was tall, with long slender legs in sheer black stockings. Her uniform skirt must have been a centimeter or two above regulation. “I haven’t had any breakfast yet. I’m going for a cup of coffee.”

  “In the cafeteria? You’re a brave woman.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Good heavens, no. There’s a little coffee shop within walking distance. They do a good cappuccino. Do you feel like joining me?”

  A good cappuccino with Glynis was sorely tempting but Evan forced himself to say, “I’d like to, but I should be back in the village as soon as possible. I’m the only officer on duty up there.”

  “Some other time, then,” Glynis said.

  Evan nodded. He felt strangely unsettled as he drove back to Llanfair. Why should there be any harm in going for a cup of coffee with a pleasant colleague, he asked himself. Of course he knew the answer. He found her attractive. Did that indicate that he
wasn’t ready to be tied to one woman yet?

  Back in his office, he pushed Glynis Davies firmly from his mind and got down to work. The day dragged on. The only phone call was from Mrs. Powell-Jones complaining that the diesel fumes from the Parry Davies’s new van were polluting the atmosphere and would be detrimental to the rare Snowdon lily. She intended to report this to the National Trust immediately.

  Evan found himself wishing he was down at the computer center, right on the spot when the news came through. He had no idea what was going on, stuck up here. For all he knew they could have identified Madame Yvette and the dead man by now. He was just locking up for the night when the phone rang. He hesitated, then unlocked the door again and picked up the phone on the fifth ring.

  “I wondered where you’d got to,” Watkins said.

  “You almost missed me. I was knocking off for the day. It’s five o’clock.”

  “It’s all right for some who can keep civil service hours,” Watkins said.

  Evan ignored the barb. “Any news from France?”

  “Yes and no. Typical bloody French, about as unhelpful as they can be. Listen to this. They can’t find a prints match but they point out that most departments aren’t on line yet. If she’d committed a minor crime or been fingerprinted outside of a big city, only the local police would have a record of it, so we’d have to search district by district. They suggest we call the local police in the relevant department.”

  “So much for international cooperation,” Evan said. “And what about the mental hospital?”

  “They’re working on it. Which probably means it’s at the bottom of a huge pile in somebody’s in-tray.”

  “At least we know that she’s not a major international criminal on the run.”

  “Or she’s just too smart to have been caught yet,” Watkins pointed out.

  “So what do you do next? Have P.C. Davies call every police HQ in France?”