Evanly Bodies - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,50

We'll have that bolshie lot panting for their coffees."

Evan picked up the tray of coffees and followed the others to the door.

By the end of the afternoon they had interviewed the families who lived in the houses behind the alley. Two couples remembered being woken by something around midnight, but couldn't say whether it was a gunshot or not. One woman did look out of the back bedroom window but said nothing moved in the alleyway that she could see. And there was one old dear who told them it had to be terrorists. "They're everywhere, these days, so they tell us," she said. "I'm sure I saw a dark man in white robes last night. I see them all the time. They're everywhere, you know."

"Batty, and watches too much TV news," Bragg muttered, as they left her.

"I have to confess, I'm stumped." Bragg looked around the empty kitchen, now with the body removed and cleared of blood. "Who the hell would want to shoot a university professor and then an Italian pizzeria owner? Something tells me it has to be a gangland killing-efficient, opportunistic, through a window. I can see that the Italian might have crossed paths with a criminal element but not Professor Rogers. It's like nothing I've ever come across before. I certainly don't want to admit failure on our first case, but I'm not sure where we go from here."

Evan looked at him with new understanding. Beneath the brash exterior obviously lurked a fragile ego.

"In every case I've worked on so far," Evan said cautiously, "the key has been in finding the connection."

"Thank you, Sherlock Holmes," Bragg said dryly. "What the hell do you think we're trying to do?"

Evan's new-felt sympathy and understanding vanished as quickly as they had come. "I just meant that we have to keep on digging. Find out who Alessi was fighting with when he was arraigned for disturbing the peace. Talk to Professor Rogers's colleagues some more. I get the feeling they have more to tell us if we give them time and opportunity."

"I agree with Evans," Wingate said. "There were definitely undercurrents going on there. And there was that student we were told about-the one who felt cheated out of a first. Who knows, maybe he came back here to settle scores."

"With a pizza parlor too?"

"Maybe he was employed here and Luigi gave him a hard time, or even that he used to buy his pizzas here and was shortchanged." Wingate shrugged. "I don't know. It sounds outlandish, but when someone goes off the deep end, they become trigger happy, don't they?"

"Right. So tomorrow we visit the faculty members at home. We attempt to ascertain the whereabouts of that student Simon whatsit and see if he really is abroad. Pritchard can tell us what he picked up at the pub-and it better be nothing in skirts, Pritchard. And Evans can do some praying for us all when he goes to church."

"What about right now, sir?" Pritchard asked.

"Back to HQ to take a look at the records. See what's on Luigi's rap sheet and who he and his wife talked to on the phone. I don't think we can do anymore interviewing today, do you? People don't take kindly to having their Saturday evening disturbed. And I expect you blokes like the occasional Saturday evening at home as well."

With that they were dismissed.

Chapter 17

The road that wound through the village of Llanfair was usually deserted, apart from a woman on her way to the shops, a mother pushing a pram, or a solitary vehicle winding its way up the pass. It was surprisingly full of pedestrians as Evan came down from the cottage to his car on Sunday morning. He wondered for a moment what was going on until a distant church bell reminded him what day it was. This was still a decent, God-fearing community, and everyone was off to the service at Capel Bethel or Capel Beulah, depending on how big a dose of hellfire they wanted. Capel Bethel's minister, Reverend Parry Davies, went in for a more humanistic approach, while Reverend Powell-Jones over at Capel Beulah was still a firm believer in the wages of sin being death and of hellfire waiting for most of his congregation. Since his sermons tended to go on for over an hour as well, repeated in both Welsh and English, his congregation was noticeably smaller.

Evan had just opened his car door when he heard his name called and saw Mrs. Williams, dressed