Read Online According to the Evidence by Bernard Knight - Free Book Online

box-like incubators were held at body heat and against the third wall, next to the door into Moira’s office, was a large white refrigerator.
    Siân was working through the specimens that Richard Pryor had brought in from recent post-mortems at Chepstow and Monmouth – a carbon monoxide analysis from an industrial coal-gas poisoning and a barbiturate identification from a suicide. Before coming to Garth House, she had been a medical laboratory technician in a large Newport hospital and was currently studying for an external qualification in biochemistry.
    Angela was dealing with a batch of paternity tests, one of the mainstays of their practice. In the six months since they had started, she had worked up quite a reputation among solicitors far and wide for helping them in cases where mothers were claiming that a certain man was the father of their child and should be paying maintenance. She checked the complex pattern of blood groups of the mother, child and putative father to see if he could be excluded, though the tests could never positively prove his paternity.
    As they worked, they chatted sporadically. Angela had told Siân about their experiences the previous day in the depths of Breconshire, as the girl was always avid for details of their forensic cases.
    â€˜From what you say, whoever killed that man must be someone on the farm,’ she declared with her usual forthrightness. Siân always saw everything in black and white, rather than acknowledging shades of grey.
    â€˜It seems most likely, as there’s hardly anyone else within walking distance,’ agreed Angela. ‘But we mustn’t jump to conclusions in this game. Proof has to be according to the evidence.’
    There was a silence as Siân put one eye to the Hartridge reversion spectroscope sitting on her bench. She adjusted a knob to line up the spectra of a solution of blood from the victim of the factory accident, which would give her a percentage saturation with the deadly gas carbon monoxide. She noted down the reading, then picked up the conversation where they had left it.
    â€˜But who else could have done it? You say the place is way out in the sticks?’
    â€˜No doubt that’s what the police are doing today, knocking themselves out to see if there’s any possibility of someone else being involved. Maybe there’s somebody in this chap Littleman’s past that’s relevant. He was a heavy drinker. Maybe he gambled as well and owed a lot of money.’
    Siân thought that strangling the fellow wasn’t a very good way of collecting the arrears, but she contented herself with remarking that she would be doing the alcohol estimations on his samples that afternoon.
    Moira came in from the office at that point with the typed copies of the short statement that Angela had dictated earlier about her involvement. ‘What about these fibres you collected?’ she asked. ‘You haven’t examined them yourself?’
    â€˜No, it’s an odd situation. I could have dealt with them – it’s just up my street – but I can’t get involved any further than just handing them over to the police as exhibits. I’ve got no official standing in the case, unlike Richard. It’s the forensic lab in Cardiff who will have to do the business.’
    â€˜Couldn’t the cops have employed you to do it, instead of them?’ persisted Siân.
    Angela shook her head. ‘Then they’d have to pay us, but they get the forensic lab for free, as it’s part of the Home Office system. Anyway, Cardiff will probably have to examine other stuff from there, like the clothes that people were wearing, so it would be pointless having two lots of scientists involved, especially if eventually we had to go to court about it.’
    Moira went back to her office and Angela swung back on her rotating stool to get on with adding sera to her racks of tubes, while Siân began a duplicate