Read Slated for Death for Free Online

people who didn’t like her, I never heard. I think people were afraid to criticize her.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œShe just had some sort of power. I don’t know what it was. Connections? Success? I don’t know.” Victoria shrugged. “I always felt a bit like the kid in ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes.’” She gave Penny a level look. “As if I saw through her somehow, and others didn’t.
    â€œAnd you know, people who matter did take notice of her,” Victoria continued. “Yes, she dined occasionally with the lord lieutenant himself.” She glanced at her watch. “Or so I heard.” She stood up. “We’d better get to work. The afternoon clients will be arriving.”
    Penny reached up and gently touched her arm. “We can be a few minutes late. Please sit down. I want to hear more about her.”
    â€œWell, what were your impressions of her?” Victoria asked. “She was in the spa every six weeks or so to get her hair done. You saw her.”
    â€œI don’t really remember her that well,” Penny said. “I knew her to see, of course, but I didn’t take that much notice of her. She got her nails done occasionally, but Eirlys did them.
    â€œIt’s funny, that. You see someone occasionally and then, when something like this happens and you try to remember everything you can about that person, you find you can’t remember very much at all. I never even knew she was Doreen’s daughter.”
    â€œOne of them,” Victoria said.
    â€œDoreen had two daughters?” Penny asked.
    â€œRebeccah. But I gather she and Glenda were chalk and cheese. Very different. Our Glenda had aspirations and Rebeccah didn’t do much of anything at all. Sold cheap tat down the local market, apparently.”
    â€œWell, I guess that’s a job of some sort.”
    â€œSpeaking of jobs…”

 
    Seven
    â€œWhat do you make of the bite mark?”
    Sgt. Bethan Morgan kept her eyes on the road as she and Det. Chief Inspector Gareth Davies drove along the A55 North Wales Expressway from Bangor to Llandudno. They had just attended the postmortem examination of the body of Glenda Roberts and had been shown a clear and recent bite mark on the inside of her right forearm. The area had been swabbed for DNA and close photographs taken. The pathologist wasn’t optimistic, though, that they’d get any DNA from the wound. It was a day or two old and Glenda had most certainly showered or bathed since the bite had been inflicted.
    â€œI’ve been thinking about that,” Bethan replied. “And asking myself, who would bite another person. And the only answer I can come up with, really, is a child.”
    â€œA frustrated child who is also very angry,” Davies replied.
    â€œOr frightened?” Bethan suggested. “But the pathologist said the size of the bite indicated an adult, not a child.”
    â€œThat’s troubling,” commented Davies.
    The pathologist recorded cause of death as blunt force trauma. “I know what you’re going to ask me now,” he had said to Davies. “Could she have fallen? And the answer is no. The head injuries are not consistent with a fall. Someone delivered several blows to the back of her head with something sharp and flat, I would say. You wouldn’t have seen the extent or nature of the injury while the body was in situ at the mine and especially in the darkness; we needed to get her up on the slab to get a good look at it. I can’t say exactly what kind of weapon or instrument caused the injuries, but the blows were delivered with strength and intensity. The assailant certainly meant to inflict great harm, or more likely, to kill.” The pathologist peeled off his gloves, and dropped them into the medical waste bin. “Sorry I can’t be more helpful with the type of instrument. I expect determining what the weapon was will be