The Thread of Evidence Read online

  Everyone shifted their position, to stare expectantly at the professor. The chief constable put all their thoughts into words. ‘That sounds almost too good to be true. How could you possibly do it?’

  Leighton reached for a spare piece of paper from the desk and produced a pencil.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ he said, rapidly sketching two semicircles on the paper. ‘These are the upper and lower jaws of our skull.’ He drew five small rings at various places on the semicircles. ‘These represent the five teeth which are missing from the skull. The sockets are quite normal, so that means one of three possibilities: one, the teeth dropped out after death – but you didn’t find them in your sieves. Or, two, they were extracted within a few weeks before death – which is highly unlikely, as there’s no disease at all in the other teeth. Or three, they were deliberately pulled out after death by the murderer. And that’s what I think happened.’

  There was an uncomprehending look on every face except that of the speaker.

  ‘What’s all this leading up to, sir?’ asked Pacey.

  ‘Look, if the killer wants to pass off the body as Mavis, he has to eliminate anything that can be shown to belong to someone else. Now, he hasn’t a clue what Mavis’s teeth were like, but he guesses – quite correctly – that we won’t either. People didn’t go so regularly to the dentist in those days. And the record card, even if she did, would hardly survive all these years. But now he has a body, which otherwise is a good match for Mavis, but which has five teeth with fillings. So all he can do is to pull them out and chuck them away!’

  The chief constable shuddered at Powell’s enthusiasm over the prospect of a killer cracking out his dead victim’s teeth.

  ‘With due respect, Doctor, I find that hard to believe. For a start, if there were no records of Mavis’s teeth, why didn’t he just leave them in his other body?’

  ‘Because fillings date almost as well as clothes. A dentist could have told almost at sight that they were modern fillings, not thirty years old. You see, the techniques and material used would be unmistakeable to an expert.’

  Pacey bobbed his head slowly. ‘I’m with you now, Professor. But how are you going to apply this to the missing girls list?’

  ‘We get as many dental record cards as we can,’ explained Powell. ‘Any woman who had even one tooth extracted is out – there wasn’t a single dead socket in that skull.’

  ‘How can you tell that?’ asked the colonel.

  ‘When a tooth is pulled out during life, the socket gradually collapses and fills up with bone. This starts soon after the extraction and it’s obvious after a few weeks.’

  Barton seemed to be convinced and the doctor went on talking:

  ‘Then we narrow them down further by scrubbing out all those with fillings in their teeth in any place other than these five.’ He tapped his sketch with a finger.

  The others nodded their understanding.

  ‘Now, if we came across a woman who had perfect teeth apart from fillings in these same five, and who had had no extractions, on purely statistical grounds, I’d recommend you to be very interested in her as a candidate for our bones.’

  Pacey found some objections to this brainwave.

  ‘Two snags, Professor. The first is that I’ll bet that we won’t be able to find half the dental records – a lot of the women may never have had any to find. The other thing is that, as this killer seems such a cunning bastard, what’s to stop him taking out a couple of extra teeth, healthy ones, just to confuse the issue?’

  Powell shrugged and grinned wryly. ‘Ah, there you have me, Superintendent. Though I think that these days, most people in this age group would have had some dental treatment and so there’d be a record. But, in any case, this is a method to exclude a lot of your list. It will be the ones with no record – unless you find the jackpot one with the five teeth. Yes, it will be the blank cases that will need following up.’

  The colonel came in to defend Powell. ‘I think it sounds admirable. It will narrow down your list a devil of a lot, Pacey; you should be very thankful for that.’

  He changed the subject, turning to speak to Willie Rees.

  ‘Rees, which of these women is nearest to Tremabon?’

  ‘There’s one in Swansea, sir. And another in Brecon. The other two are from Cardiff. Those are the only four from Wales.’

  Powell looked mildly astonished. ‘I’m always amazed at the number of people that just vanish. Where do they get to – they can’t all be murdered, or white-slaved!’

  ‘A lot of them take damn good care not to be found,’ replied Pacey. ‘They either elope, or run away with the lodger. They don’t really disappear at all – that is to say, they just change their way of life and keep well clear of their families.’

  The chief constable slid off the desk and made for the door.

  ‘You’ll get straight on with the job of tracing those dental records, I suppose, Mr Pacey.’

  His words were more of a statement than a question.

  ‘Yes, Colonel, right away,’ Pacey replied evenly, keeping the exasperation out of his voice. ‘I’ll get them down to Professor Powell as fast as they come in.’

  The chief vanished and Powell and Meadows soon followed, leaving the resident detectives to have a smoke and a cup of tea.

  Pacey hoisted his great legs onto his desk and watched the smoke from his cigarette swirl about in the draughty air.

  ‘Willie,’ he said after a while. ‘Did anything strike you about that last session in here?’

  Rees stared at him. ‘No, not particularly – what d’you mean?’

  ‘All that guff about skulls and X-rays and teeth and hair – all medical, Willie – all medical.’

  The inspector still looked blankly at Pacey.

  ‘Willie, if you had just croaked somebody and had to get rid of the body – would you think to pull out certain teeth, and of the type of fillings and the colour of the hair?’

  Rees, still not seeing what the other was getting at, shook his head.

  ‘No, Willie, nor would I. Nor would the majority of lay people.’

  ‘What do you mean by “lay” people?’ asked the inspector.

  Pacey slid his legs off the desk and crashed them down on to the floor.

  ‘I mean, Willie, that this whole affair smells very “medical” to me. I’m going over to the county reference library for a few minutes. I feel a “hunch” coming over me!’ He clumped out, leaving a thoughtful and somewhat mystified Rees sitting in his room.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘I still think we’re barking up the wrong tree,’ objected Willie Rees.

  He and Pacey were striding across the wide road alongside the castle which led to Cardiff Law Courts and Police Headquarters. Two days after the meeting in Cardigan, they had sifted all the information from the list of missing persons and had got down to a shortlist of four.

  ‘But why are you so mad keen on this one?’ persisted Rees.

  ‘Because it’s the only one to make any sense,’ replied the superintendent. ‘Look, we had sixteen to chase up at the beginning. Then Powell’s scheme about the teeth whittled that down to seven. Right?’

  ‘Yes, thank God – and the professor.’

  Pacey did some of his favourite finger-jabbing into Willie’s ribs as they neared the elegant civic buildings.

  ‘Seven. Then you found that one of them had a short “polio” leg – so we’re down to six.’

  The inspector grunted his agreement.

  ‘Then two of the others had photographs available – which any fool could see were impossible to fit on to the professor’s skull picture. So they were knocked out and we’re stuck with the last four.’

  ‘But I still don’t see why you’re so sold on the Cardiff girl. That other one from Bristol seemed a dead ringer to me. And we had a photo of her which fitted the skull like a glove.’

  ‘This one might, if we can get a picture.’

  ‘Might – and it might not!�
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  ‘Well, I’ve got my money on this one, Willie. I feel it in my bones. I’ll lay you a dollar that it won’t turn out to be the one from Bristol. There now!’

  Rees scowled again. ‘I’m not taking you; you’ve screwed too many dollars out of me like that in the past,’ he grumbled. ‘I reckon you’ve got something up your sleeve that the rest of us don’t know about.’

  Pacey was all wide-eyed innocence. ‘What, me? I wouldn’t hold out on you. Now, would I, Willie?’

  The inspector’s unprintable reply coincided with their arrival at the police headquarters, much to the disgust of a policewoman standing on the steps.

  Within a few minutes, they were shown into a room where a swarthy police officer in plain clothes sat at a table. After introducing himself as Detective Inspector Austin, he waved them to a couple of seats and told them what he had to offer.

  ‘We’ve had one missing girl on the books for seven years,’ he started. ‘We haven’t been very interested until now – as she was one of the “fly-by-night” type, if you get me.’

  Pacey eyed him with professional interest and decided that, although the Cardiff man was cocky-looking and wore far too natty a suit, he was very much on the ball. Austin picked up a record card from the table.

  ‘Julie Gordon, her name was. In November, fifty-five, another woman called Edna Collins reported her missing. She shared a flat with Gordon. They both worked as hostess-cum-barmaids at a posh drinking club in town. This Collins said that the girl Gordon had been in the club as usual on the Friday night, but hadn’t shown up since. She reported it on the following Wednesday, by the way. Apparently, it wasn’t all that unusual for Julie to buzz off for the odd weekend – presumably dirty – but she’d never stayed away as long as this before. And, by the time the middle of the week came without any sign of her, the room-mate thought she had better tell somebody.’

  The detective paused, turned over the card and then flipped it back again.

  ‘And that’s about all. We went through the usual routine – inquiries at the club, circulating the description and notifying the Bureau, but we’ve never heard a word since then about her. At least, not until you telephoned yesterday with a description that fits this one, for what it’s worth.’

  Pacey looked across the table with interest in his face. ‘What about relatives?’’

  ‘A dead loss – the girl was originally from an orphanage, according to this Collins. She came from London, via Birmingham, where she had the same sort of background – barmaid, theatre usherette, club hostess. No record of being a “tom”, you understand, but it sounds as if she was pretty accommodating to the club members and anyone else in trousers who took her fancy. This Collins character is of the same sort.’

  Pacey’s fingers tapped the edge of his chair as he listened.

  ‘What about her appearance – hair and all that?’

  The local man’s eyes dropped back to the card. ‘Five foot four, as you said it had to be over the phone; black hair; “good-looking” – I don’t know whose opinion that was, but there’s a photo here that the other woman gave us. Only a small one, but she certainly looks a dish in it!’ He gazed at the snap with relish.

  ‘You were telling me about the hair,’ said Pacey, dragging the other man’s attention away from the picture.

  ‘Ah, yes – Collins said it was jet black, but she used to have it dyed. The real colour was mousey brown.’ He handed the photograph and a negative over to Pacey. ‘As you can see, she was ash blonde when this was taken.’

  ‘What else do we know about her?’

  ‘Collins said that she never remembers her going to a dentist since she came to Cardiff, but that Julie had some fillings in her teeth. She’s no idea which ones, of course.’

  ‘What about this Collins?’ asked Pacey. ‘Are her present whereabouts known at all?’

  The Cardiff detective smiled smugly. ‘She’s still in the same job, in the same bar. She’s got a smart little flat in the centre of town. The boys on the beat say they’ve had their eye on her place from time to time, but nothing definite is known about what she uses it for. I’ve heard a squeak myself that the club owner pays the rent.’

  Pacey looked slightly pained at this recital of the seamier side of life in his capital city.

  ‘‘Yes, that’s fine. But can we get out to see her this afternoon, d’you think? I want to call in Swansea on the way back, if there’s time.’

  Austin’s grin got broader and even more self-satisfied as he lifted his telephone and spoke into it. ‘Send her up, Jim, will you?’

  He put the receiver down and kept on looking pleased with himself. ‘I arranged for her to come here and meet you. She seems keen to keep on the right side of us, so she’s been waiting downstairs for you.’

  A tap on the door heralded a uniformed constable, who ushered in the former room-mate of the possibly late Miss Julie Gordon.

  Edna Collins was a striking pink-rinsed blonde. Although just beginning to go to seed, she was still attractive in a brassy sort of way.

  The eyes of the local detective made a rapid tour of appreciation, and he fumbled with the Windsor knot of his narrow tie as he asked her to sit down. Pacey dragged a chair forward for her and sat back to study her closely from under his shaggy brows.

  Over-heavy make-up, over-false lashes and a bold pair of eyes gave her the look of an upper crust barmaid to perfection. She was overdressed, the weather being hardly cold enough for the black topcoat with an enormous white fur collar. She sat down and eyed the three men with the assurance of a woman who knows exactly the impression she makes with the opposite sex.

  ‘It’s about Julie, you said?’ she began, without any preamble. Her accent was unmistakably that of a Londoner.

  ‘Yes, Miss Collins. These gentlemen are CID officers from West Wales who would like to ask you a few things about her disappearance. I’m sure that you’ll be willing to do anything to help us clear up the mystery about your friend.’

  ‘Has she turned up then?’ Edna sounded incredulous.

  ‘No, not exactly,’ Pacey answered evasively. ‘We think she may have been involved in an accident. We want to see if the girl we’re interested in could be Miss Gordon.’

  ‘Well, couldn’t I just go and see her? I’d soon tell you if it was Julie or not.’ The hard voice suited her appearance.

  ‘No, I’m afraid we haven’t got her to show you,’ said Pacey, somewhat ambiguously. ‘We’ll have to go about it another way.’

  Edna loosened her coat, revealing a prominent bosom, tightly sheathed in a bright red dress.

  ‘I’ll do all I can for you, I’m sure.’

  Her powdered skin was stretched across her high cheekbones and, for a moment, Pacey was reminded of the skull from the lonely cliff.

  ‘I’d like to hear all about the disappearance again. I know it was a long time ago; over seven years. But I want to know everything that you can remember.’

  Edna Collins spun her story out over a few minutes; but it boiled down to no more than the summary that Austin had given them.

  ‘What about the days immediately before she vanished? Anything odd about them, that you can recall?’

  The pink head shook in reply. ‘No, I can’t say there was.’

  ‘What about her friends – any particular ones you know of? Would she have been likely to have gone off with some man – or even got married on the hop?’

  Collins threw back her head and laughed.

  Not a very attractive laugh, Pacey thought.

  ‘Married?’ she exclaimed. ‘God no, not Julie. She had too much fun staying single – like me!’ She caught the resident inspector’s eye and smiled archly at him. ‘Anyway, she’d have told me, and I’m damn sure she wouldn’t have left all her clothes behind at our place.’

  Pacey fixed her with his eyes. ‘She left all her things behind, you say?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right – and she thought the world of her clothes.’

 
‘Didn’t she take anything at all, like a weekend case?’

  ‘No, not a single thing. Just what she was wearing when we closed on the Friday night.’

  ‘It doesn’t say anything on the record about you telling us that she left all her stuff behind,’ Austin said accusingly.

  ‘Hard luck, darling!’ the hostess replied easily. ‘Blame your coppers then, because I told them all right.’

  Pacey went back to his earlier question. ‘Any boyfriends – particular ones?’

  ‘Dozens of them! Everybody was Julie’s friend. I always told her she was too easygoing.’

  ‘Yes, but did she have any particular boyfriend around the time she disappeared?’

  ‘Not for more than a week at a time,’ grinned the woman.

  ‘Which one was it that week?’ Pacey asked doggedly.

  The garish fur collar jerked as she shrugged.

  ‘It’s hard to say – she ran so many at the same time. I remember that there was a chap in the club several nights that week who seemed to be making quite a play for Julie. I remember him because I thought that I wouldn’t mind getting to know him myself,’ she added reflectively.

  ‘Why – was he good-looking, then?’ Pacey asked shortly.

  ‘No, not really. I don’t go for the film star type myself,’ said Edna, airily, looking pointedly at Austin. ‘This chap wasn’t ugly, not by any means. But he had character – you know what I mean?’

  ‘Know who he was?’ demanded the superintendent.

  ‘Not a clue. He was only around for those few days. I don’t think he came in after that Friday. I only remember him at all because I had a passing fancy for him myself. I wondered when Julie didn’t come in on the Saturday whether or not she’d gone off for the weekend with him – bit of jealousy, I guess!’

  She winked at Austin, who was the most appreciative member of her audience.

  ‘Would you know him again if you saw him?’ asked Pacey.

  Edna thought for a moment, her reddened lips pursed. ‘It was a long time ago, but – yes, I reckon I might recognize him. He was in the bar quite a bit that week, so I had plenty of time to get a good look at him.’