Evan Only Knows by Rhys Bowen

Author:Rhys Bowen
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2011-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

Evan sat for a long time in his car, watching seagulls wheeling overhead and listening to their screeching cries. His fingers gripped the steering wheel. He was not by nature a violent person, yet every encounter with Tony brought out angry, violent thoughts, leaving him taut as a coiled watch spring. Why was he putting himself through this? Every instinct in his body was telling him to forget about the whole thing. If DCI Vaughan found that he was interfering in the case, taking the side of a man the police all wanted to see convicted, he’d call Evan’s superiors in North Wales and Evans would find himself out of a job. What would policemen like Bill Howells, colleagues of his dad, think if they found out he was working secretly to free Tony Mancini? And what would his mum think? Evan drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. The problem was that deep down he felt that his dad wouldn’t have backed out. His dad would have wanted him to go on with it.

But I’m bloody well going to make sure of my facts this time, he decided. I’m not sticking my nose out for Tony Mancini only to find he’s been lying again. He started the engine, swung the car around the roundabout, and headed out of Swansea, in the direction of Bridgend where the South Wales Police was headquartered.

He found the home-office pathologist working cheerfully in his lab at the county morgue. It had been Evan’s experience that pathologists rarely looked like people who spent most of their waking hours delving into body parts. The one in North Wales looked like a prim schoolmaster. The one he faced today looked more like a farmer or pub owner. He was big, red faced, and jolly.

“Hello, young man? What can I do for you?” he asked as Evan came in. “I know you, don’t I?”

“Evan Evans.” He went to extend his hand, noticed what the pathologist had been doing, and thought better of it. “You knew my dad, and I think we met a couple of times.”

“Robert Evans’s son? Of course. And now you’re here on this new business.”

“They said you did the autopsy on Alison Turnbull?”

The doctor nodded.

“I wondered if you could tell me—was it clear that she was raped and then murdered?”

“You mean was she suffocated at the same time the rape was going on?”

Evan cleared his throat, trying to phrase the question. “No, I meant could it be possible that she had sex before she was killed, but that the two weren’t connected?”

The pathologist paused, digesting this new theory, nodding several times. “Well, that’s an interesting thought. She’d certainly had intercourse very shortly before she died, so it was always assumed that it was murder following a rape.”

“Can you tell that it was rape? I mean, were there signs of violence?”

“Apart from the bruises on her face, no. There weren’t. There were no signs of considerable force, if that’s what you mean.”

Evan found himself flushing and was glad that the light in the room was so focused on the autopsy table, leaving the rest in gloom.

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