‘This is Edward Lethbridge, of Lethbridge, Moody and Savage. We are solicitors in Lydney and I wondered if you could help us?’

Richard felt his own frisson of excitement at this possibility of their first case. ‘I’m sure we can, Mr Lethbridge. We have hardly opened for business yet, but I’m sure that we can do something for you. How did you hear of us so soon?’

‘The coroner, Doctor Meredith, gave us your name and telephone number. I’ve known him for years, as we have occasional dealings in the coroner’s court. This is a little difficult to explain over the telephone, so I wonder whether you could call at my office.’

Only too anxious to follow up this invitation, Richard arranged to meet Edward Lethbridge in Lydney that afternoon. Sian hurried in to the laboratory to tell Angela and start putting more bottles in place in case they were needed for this new development. The biologist was more restrained in her reaction.

‘He probably wants us to do a paternity blood test in some family dispute,’ she said evenly, ‘Still, it’s all grist to the mill, and we certainly can do with the money.’

It was not a paternity test, but was hardly a serial-killer case either, as the pathologist discovered later that day. He drove the ten miles to Lydney in his five-year-old Humber Hawk, the Severn estuary visible down on the right of the A48, which took most of the traffic from England into South Wales. It was a busy road, far too narrow, tortuous and built-up for the volume of traffic it had to bear, thought Pryor. With the rapid increase in manufacturing and trade generally since the war had ended, the infrastructure of the country was proving woefully inadequate. Big lorries lumbered past him almost in convoy and those in front held him up, many of the old trucks of pre-war vintage belching fumes from their worn engines. A decade after VE and VJ days, things were improving rapidly, but there was still a long way to go.