Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

The DI grunted and hauled himself to his feet. He tapped the letter. “So there might be something in this, eh?”

The coroner’s officer held up his hands defensively. “Don’t ask me, that’s your job. But I’d have a word with my boss first.”

The coroner was a local solicitor who conducted his business from his offices above a shoe shop in Pontypridd’s Taff Street, a few hundred yards from the Divisional Police Headquarters. Mordecai Evans and his sergeant took a walk there, pushing impatiently through the ambling throng in the narrow road, which was the town’s main shopping street.

They turned in at a door on which a worn brass plate declared “Thomas, Evans and Rees – Solicitors” though these gentlemen were long dead and the present senior partner was Mr David Mostyn, Her Majesty’s Coroner for East Glamorgan.

In a seedy reception area at the top of a narrow flight of stairs, a girl with a bad head-cold showed them into his office. Mostyn was a rotund man with a shiny bald head and a round, pink face that always seemed to have a smile on it, even when he was discussing death in all its often horrible forms. He ushered the two detectives to hard chairs and sat down again behind his paper – infested desk.

“My officer has told me about the situation over the phone,” he began, picking up a form from a pile in front of him. “We already had a bit of a problem in that Doctor Carlton hasn’t yet been able to give me a cause of death.” He gave them a cheery grin, as if he had just won the Lottery.

“Surely that’s unusual in itself, sir?” muttered Mordecai, picking at a pimple on his neck.

The coroner shook his head happily. “Not that unusual, Inspector. Especially if tablets or alcohol are involved, nothing may be found at the post-mortem, but the answer may come later from laboratory tests.”

The DI delved into his inside pocket and pulled out Rita Lloyd’s letter, now encased in a clear plastic envelope. He handed it across the desk.

“You see our problem, sir. I get this this morning, then I’m told she’s already dead!”

David Mostyn scanned through the single page of writing, then handed it back and rubbed his bald head as an aid to thought.

“It certainly requires us to proceed with caution, officer. What do you know about this pair?”

Mordecai motioned with his head towards his sergeant. “Williams here knows them best, he comes from that part of the valley.”

Willy cleared his throat and began to speak as if he was in the witness box, though he managed to avoid phrases like, “I was proceeding in a northerly direction.”

“Sir, Lewis and Rita Lloyd have been known to me for a long while. In fact, I arrested him some time ago for assaulting his wife. He is the owner and licensee of the Elliot Arms in Tonypandy, a free house where he lives with the now deceased.”

The coroner nodded, his benign smile still firmly in place. “Have you spoken to him about this yet?”

Mordecai shook his head. “We’ve only known about this for an hour, sir. It was only by chance that Lewis Armstrong mentioned to my sergeant that she was dead.”

The coroner stared down at the paper he held in his hand.

“All I’ve got is Lewis’s daily notification to me. It just says that the family doctor was called to the house-Dr Battachirya, that would be – who then phoned in to say he was reporting a death, as he couldn’t give a certificate. The woman was found dead in bed by the husband at seven-thirty yesterday morning.”

Mordecai Evans’s pugnacious face stared at David Mostyn.

“That’s all you have, sir?” he demanded, as if he suspected that the coroner was holding out on him.

“At this stage, yes. If the p.m. had shown a natural cause of death, like a coronary or a stroke, I would have issued a disposal certificate and that would be an end of it. As it is, I have to wait for the pathologist, Dr Carlton, to come back to me eventually with an update based on the results of the tests he sent away.”

“How long will that take, sir?” ventured Willy Williams.

Mostyn beamed back at him. “Varies a lot, sergeant. Some things, like alcohol and carbon monoxide, he can have done in his own hospital the same day. More complicated tests for drugs have to be sent away and can take weeks.”

The inspector glowered at the coroner as if it was his fault. “We may not be able to wait that long, sir. I’ve spoken to my Superintendent and he’s told me to see the husband and if I feel there’s any doubt, to proceed as if it’s a criminal investigation.”

David Mostyn’s smile faded a little. “And what would that entail in this case?”

Mordecai shrugged his bull-like shoulders. “We may have to call in the Scenes-of-Crime team to the pub, sir. And possibly ask the Home Office pathologist to carry out a second autopsy-with your consent, of course.”

He could almost see the figures ringing up like a cash register in the coroner’s eyes, as Mostyn calculated the extra cost to the budget he received from the local authority. However, he rallied and with his grin at maximum rictus, he agreed with good grace.

“Well, have a talk with this Lloyd chap, Inspector – and keep me informed as to what’s happening.”

The Elliot Arms was an ugly red-brick building on the main road through the Rhondda Valley, a twisting, congested route lined with terraced houses, betting shops and Chinese take-aways. Built in 1900 to wash the coal-dust from the throats of thousands of miners, the public house had fallen on hard times, now that not a single pit remained in the valley. Lewis Lloyd had managed to survive by accepting a frugal life-style, most of his custom coming from the old colliers whom came to the Elliot mainly out of habit. There was also a hard core of pigeon fanciers, whose Club met once a week in the barren room above the Public Bar. Lewis was himself a pigeon man, with a large loft out in the backyard where he kept a dozen cherished Fantails. He also had a moderate lunch-time trade in ham-rolls and pasties bought mainly by the workers from a small plastics factory further up Mafeking Terrace, the side street on the corner of which his pub was situated.

Just past the factory, the road angled up at almost forty-five degrees, climbing out of the valley bottom to the green heights five hundred feet above, where his bird-watching retreat lay beyond the last houses and then the allotments.

This Wednesday, the day after his wife had been carried out feet first by Caradoc Builders and Undertakers, Lewis Lloyd drew back the bolts on the doors to the Public Bar on the dot of twelve. He did this every day, closing up at three and opening again from six until eleven.

Yesterday was an exception, not because of overwhelming grief, but because he had had to go down to the coroner’s office and the undertaker’s to sign forms, which threw his usual routine out of kilter. The loss of his wife made little difference to his staffing problems, as Rita rarely appeared in the bar, except when she wanted a fresh bottle of gin or when the fancy took her for a flirtatious gossip with some of the less geriatric patrons.

At lunch times, Sharon, a fat adenoidal girl from Mafeking Street, helped behind the bar, mainly employed in inserting a lettuce leaf and a slice of reconstituted ham into bread rolls. She also removed the cellophane from cloned Cornish pasties and popped them into the microwave, to satiate the appetites of the workers from Panda Plastics. On alternate evenings, the gloomy mahogany bar was manned by either Wayne or Alvis. The first of these two young men was a deserter from the Army, the other on bail awaiting trial for burglary.

With the doors opened, the landlord walked across the cavernous room, its half-panelled walls and ceiling yellowed with decades of cigarette smoke. He sat on a stool at the end of the bar, next to the hinged panel that gave access to the serving area and his sitting room and kitchen beyond. Picking up the Western Mail , he began reading the sports pages, ignoring the sympathetic looks from Sharon, who having been nurtured on television soap-operas from the age of three, was convinced that his nonchalant manner concealed abject grief. In fact, Lewis’s mind was not on the current aberrations of the Welsh Rugby Union, but was busy reviewing the likely consequences of his recent homicidal behaviour.