Evan and Elle - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,30

group of men.

“So we’ve got a body this time, have we?” he called in his high, clipped voice. “I hope you and your wretched dog haven’t disturbed anything, Potter.”

“No sir.” Potter’s face was sullen. “Nobody’s disturbed anything, except for taking the beams away to get to him.”

“Ah, so he was covered in debris, was he?” Hughes peered down at the body.

“Yes sir. There were three big beams over him,” Watkins said. “And some slates where the roof caved in.”

“Ah, quite.” He stared at the body for a long moment. “Poor devil,” he said. “Not a pleasant way to die, I’d imagine. Look how he’s grimacing. Any idea who he was?”

“No sir,” Watkins answered. “I put in a call to HQ to see if anyone’s been reported missing. Evans and I interviewed the restaurant owner last night. She gave no indication that anyone else might have been inside. She says she locked up for the night. The next thing she knew, she woke up to smell smoke.”

“I suppose it’s possible he was a customer trapped in the gent’s loo,” Hughes observed dryly.

Potter sniggered.

“It’s not that unbelievable, Potter,” the D.I. said. “If you’d grown up here like these gentlemen, you could attest to the fact that bathrooms tend to be on the primitive side and doors have a habit of jamming on you.”

“But not in this case, sir,” Evan said. D.I. Hughes’s look implied that mere village policemen, like Victorian children, should be seen and not heard.

“Oh—so you’ve visited the bathroom in question, have you, Evans?” D.I. Hughes managed the ghost of a smile.

“No sir, but the whole place had been remodeled, and I was a customer there last night. My girlfriend and I were the last to leave.”

Hughes began to look interested. “How long was this before the fire?”

“About an hour, hour and a half maybe.”

“And you saw nothing out of the ordinary? No strange cars parked nearby when you left? Nobody hanging around?”

“No sir.”

“Nothing else that struck you as any way unusual?”

“I don’t think Evans goes to French restaurants often enough to know what’s unusual,” Watkins chuckled.

“There was one thing, sir,” Evan said. “A man came in alone and after she spoke to him she was upset.”

“Ah—now that’s interesting,” Hughes said. “That’s definitely something to go on.”

He broke off as Dr. Owens approached, followed by two young P.C.s, one with a camera slung over his shoulder.

“Do you want me to start taking pictures, sir?” he asked, giving a friendly nod to Evan and Watkins.

“Yes, go ahead, Dawson. Try to get where he was lying in relation to the known plan of the building.”

Dr. Owens knelt beside the body. “Luckily the blaze wasn’t too consuming,” he said. “We still might learn something from this chap.”

Evan shot him a look of admiration. “You can still do an autopsy on a body like this?”

“Oh yes. I think we’ll find that the internal organs are pretty much intact—nicely browned on the outside perhaps, but pink in the middle, like good meat.”

A painful recollection of the lamb he had eaten last night sprang into Evan’s mind. He wondered how pathologists could make jokes about their work.

“So you’ll be able to get DNA samples?” Watkins asked.

“Yes, if we have anything to match them to. If the chap’s not on anybody’s file anywhere, we’re none the wiser. I’d say we’ve more chance of identifying him through his teeth. He’s got a couple of gold fillings. We haven’t used those in Britain since the National Health came in.”

“So you think a foreigner?” Hughes asked.

“That would be an initial guess.” He turned to the young police constable. “Now if you’d bring the stretcher from the van, Thomas, we’ll let Constable Dawson finish taking his pictures and then we’ll get the body back to the lab.”

As Evan helped P.C. Thomas slide the stretcher under the body, he caught the glint of metal below the hip. “Hold on a second. We might have something here,” he called and dug out a coin. It was bent out of shape but the words République Fra——were still legible.

“A French coin,” Hughes said, taking it from Evan. “And right where his trouser pocket would have been, too. This confirms that he was recently over there at least. A Frenchman comes to visit a Frenchwoman and she fails to mention it? Either he slipped in without her knowing, or she’s in this up to her neck. Get the body back to the van and then I’ll go and talk to her myself.” He handed the coin