Evanly Bodies - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,35

Bragg said. "Given the amount of time she'd have needed to complete that walk, she wouldn't have had much chance to hide a weapon before she called us."

"Unless she'd dropped it in the bushes along the way," Evan reminded him.

He didn't look pleased to be reminded. "Right. Yes. We know that," he said.

But another hour's searching revealed nothing. Mrs. Rogers had returned from her outing with the policewoman and was now out in her garden, pulling the dead heads off chrysanthemums while the policewoman threw a ball for Lucky. It was a peaceful, everyday scene. Someone had lit a bonfire in a neighboring back garden, and the pleasant smell of burning wood and leaves floated toward them as they piled back into their vehicles.

"I get the feeling she's a smart cookie, and she thinks we're rather slow and stupid," Bragg said. "She probably thinks it's really easy to outwit us."

"Well, she has, so far," Wingate said. "We've got nothing on her that would stand up in court."

"We'll get it," Bragg said. "I have a good feeling about this one."

As soon as they arrived back at headquarters in Colwyn Bay, they went first to the forensics lab.

"I was just about to call you lot," they were greeted by Owen Jones, one of the members of yesterday's team. "I think we've wrapped up all the preliminary findings on your crime scene yesterday."

"And?" Bragg demanded.

"What do you want first? Ballistics report?"

"Fire away," Bragg said. Pritchard smirked. Evan couldn't decide whether Bragg was intending to be witty or not.

"Right." Jones picked up a piece of paper from the table beside him. "Interesting size bullet-eight millimeter. You don't come across that often in modern weapons. Nine is more common. Our ballistics chap suggests it might have come from a Nambu Type 14, a Japanese handgun used by their officers in World War II. I take it nobody's been able to come up with the casing yet? That would confirm it."

"No casing," Bragg said. "We've given the house and grounds a pretty thorough search, and we've come up with nothing."

"There was a photo of a bloke in a WWII uniform on the bedside table," Pritchard said. "Her dad, do you think? Left her the weapon?"

"I bet he did," Bragg said excitedly. "Tell me, do you think it was a weapon that a woman could have fired easily?"

"Absolutely,' the technician said. "If it's a Nambu, it's a light little thing. In fact it was always a source of amusement that Japanese officers were issued something so flimsy. Most of them chose to carry swords instead, so I understand. More chance of killing somebody with those."

"And yet it seems to have done an efficient job this time," Bragg said.

"Five feet away-you can't very well miss, can you?"

"True. So what else have you got for us, Jones?"

"Fingerprints-no obvious fingerprints that we can't identify. Especially significant from your point of view, the only prints on the lawn mower were Mrs. Rogers's and the gardener's. Mrs. Rogers's were the clearest. And on the window latch, only Mrs. Rogers's fingerprints show up, apart from a few indistinct ones."

"And if the killer had worn gloves?" Bragg asked.

"If he'd worn gloves, he'd likely have smudged the nice clear set of prints we got. As it was, we didn't see any evidence of smudging or attempts to wipe anything clean."

"If Mrs. Rogers really is the killer, surely she'd have thought of that," Evan blurted out. "The first thing she'd have done is to wipe away her fingerprints."

Bragg smirked. "As I've said before, it's lucky for us that most perpetrators aren't too bright. And they're in panic mode. They don't always stop to think." He clapped his hands together. "Right, lads. I think we're finally getting somewhere. Let's have the uniform boys bring her in."

"Are you charging her, sir?" Wingate asked. "Isn't that a little premature?"

"I'm not charging her officially, Wingate. As of now she's helping us with our inquiries. However, I think we're going to be too busy to get to her before tomorrow morning. Let's just see whether a night in a cell will make her more willing to tell us what she knows."

Chapter 13

Evan felt uneasy as he drove home in the fading light. The storm had blown away, leaving stripes of deep blue cloud across a pink sky. The setting sun glowed on the west-facing slopes, turning the granite dusky pink and even tingeing the fleeces of the sheep. Water cascaded down the hillsides in ribbons and danced in the ditches beside