Stealth by Margaret Duffy Page B

sort of – but the attached report is in French and that’s as far as I’ve got with the translation.’
    Greenway said, ‘Apparently he’d been drinking, heavily. Even after that length of time significant concentrations of alcohol were found in the blood and urine. I don’t know about France but in Britain two thirds of adult males found drowning or drowned had consumed alcohol. The vital detail as far as this man’s concerned is that there was foam in the airways, indicating that he was alive when he went into the water. And yet you say, Patrick, that the man was a good swimmer.’
    â€˜Well, certainly good enough to swim the short distance to a flight of steps. But if he was totally sloshed and had ingested a huge amount of water as he fell in . . .’
    â€˜What else does the pathologist say?’ Greenway went on to ask.
    â€˜My conversation French is much better than the written word and a lot of this is in medical language,’ Patrick said. ‘You’ll have to get an interpreter to look at it to get the full story. But in his conclusion there’s something along the lines of investigators having to determine the circumstances preceding death before final conclusions are reached. Finally, I
think
he says he cannot possibly be expected to explain the cause of all the lacerations and bruising to the body and, in his view, there is unexplained bruising to the back of the neck and head.’ Patrick looked up. ‘That’s interesting if I’ve got it correctly. He could have been chopped across the nape of the neck or hit a couple of times with some kind of blunt weapon like a pickaxe handle. There’s nothing in the police email about any witnesses, is there?’
    Greenway shook his head. ‘No, and it could have happened after dark. There wasn’t anything in the email about police intentions to determine the circumstances before death before they reach any conclusions either. End of foreign immigrant nobody cared about. Sad, but it’s not our problem and I can’t see that anything would be gained by going over there and trying to throw our weight about.’
    â€˜The motive if he was murdered, though?’ I queried. ‘Clement Hamlyn or someone else working for him tying up a few loose ends? That seems a bit far-fetched unless Morella had threatened to go to the police, blackmailing him, perhaps.’
    â€˜Yes, I can’t see Hamlyn having any strong connections with the South of France. Why would he?’
    â€˜Is Daniel Coates still on the loose?’
    â€˜Er, yes,’ Greenway answered. ‘Didn’t turn up in St Tropez. If the truth were known the cops there missed him if he only stopped overnight. But I’m hoping he’s still in the sights of Operation Captura.’
    â€˜He told me he didn’t know the man who had fallen in the water. He could have been lying.’
    â€˜And went back to Cannes and had some kind of drunken altercation with him,’ Patrick ventured. ‘Or shoved him in the water just because he felt like it. It would figure.’
    We then turned to the subject of Miss Smythe’s murder and I forgot to raise the matter of tides and currents again and the likelihood of Alonso Morella’s body finishing up in the sea off Cannes if he had fallen, or been pushed, off the harbour wall into the water.
    Greenway reiterated that the Met had carried out comprehensive house-to-house enquiries in the immediate area of Miss Smythe’s house and nobody had reported seeing anyone loitering or behaving suspiciously. Local known villains, those not detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure, had been questioned with no useful findings there either and police informers had been silent on the matter.
    â€˜This case cannot be allowed to go cold!’ he finished by almost shouting.
    I was beginning to see why the Met had been so delighted to hand everything over to us and afterwards