As Richard Pryor had anticipated, Meirion’s first task was to notify the coroner, a local solicitor in the town. This gentleman was a little hesitant about taking official notice of the matter, as he felt that so far, the evidence of a corpse buried near Borth was a little flimsy. He recalled reading about a fellow coroner in London, who some years ago had declined to hold an inquest on a decayed foot found inside a shoe. It had been washed up on the banks of the Thames, but that coroner had decided that he had no proof that the owner of the foot was necessarily dead!

Cautiously, his Aberystwyth counterpart asked the detective to keep him informed of any developments and Meirion went off to arrange for the two young botanists from the university to revisit the scene next day.

Early in the afternoon, he picked them up from Penglais, the hill overlooking the town where many of the college buildings stood, and took Louise Palmer and her student away in a black Wolseley driven by his sergeant, Gwyn Parry. A small van followed them, containing a couple of uniformed constables and some scene equipment. They drove north up the main A487 road through Bow Street, then turned left on to a minor road that looped down towards Borth. After Louise’s description of where in the bog they had made their discovery, the DI parked just beyond the hamlet of Llancynfelyn and they walked across sloping fields down to the level plain of the bog. Geraint Williams soon found the spot where his ragged piece of gorse was still sticking up from the bore hole.

‘Here we are, the spot marked “X”!’ he said with almost proprietorial satisfaction. ‘The ground has dried out a bit since then.’

The detective inspector stared at the mottled browns and greens of the soggy marsh without enthusiasm. He was a stocky, red-faced man of about forty-five, looking more like a farmer than a police officer. This image was enhanced by the long, belted brown raincoat and the flat cap whose peak was pulled down over his forehead.