‘You said, she, not he, not they, she.’

He nodded twice. ‘Yeah, I guess I did. First impressions count. Maybe it was a woman, after all.’

30

Lewis handed Kesey a half-pint glass of weak lager shandy and joined her at a table for two in a quiet corner of Caerystwyth Rugby Club’s lounge bar. ‘There you go, boss, that should take the edge off.’

Kesey accepted her drink with an outstretched hand, smiling as he took his seat opposite her. ‘This is the same table me and Grav used to sit at. Right opposite the dartboard. Every time I come here, I feel surrounded by his memory. He took me under his wing when I first arrived in Wales. I’ll always be grateful for that.’

Lewis emptied almost half his pint glass of best bitter down his throat in one greedy swallow. He wasn’t in the mood for reminiscences. ‘Yeah, I know what you are saying, good bloke and all that… now, tell me, what did you make of the soldier’s statement? Is it something we should be taking seriously?’

Kesey slurped her shandy, spilling a few drops of the golden liquid onto her blouse before placing her glass down on a sodden beermat. ‘He’s not the world’s most reliable witness. I can tell you that much. Everything about our perpetrator’s MO screams bloke for me.’

‘Yeah, I’ve been thinking along the same lines. But now we’ve got the anonymous caller, Heath and the soldier all talking about a woman. And the various descriptions are a pretty good match for each other. Maybe Heath or the soldier was the anonymous caller. That would make sense of it. My money would be on Heath. The soldier came in of his own volition, up front and honest. Ringing in incognito doesn’t seem his style.’

Kesey shook her head. ‘Maybe, it’s a possibility, but it’s a big leap. You called at Heath’s house, and he gave you a statement. It seems he tried to help as best he could. There’s nothing to suggest he’d spoken to us previously. You’re making assumptions we’re not entitled to make.’

Lewis felt sure it was an argument he couldn’t win. ‘If there is a woman involved, she’s an accomplice. There is no way in the world it’s a woman acting on her own. The facts don’t fit. I’d bet my pension on it.’

The possibility of two offenders acting in unison wasn’t something Kesey had considered up to that point. But there were cases, well-known cases, that told her it wasn’t something she could rule out without very good reason. ‘We’ve got three potential witnesses, one of whom’s anonymous and of dubious value. Add to that the fact that the soldier was seriously pissed, up to his eyeballs on prescription drugs, and it was dark, doesn’t fill me with confidence. He can’t even say if he saw a man or a woman with any certainty. And that’s if he saw anyone at all. That leaves Heath’s evidence. He does at least know what he saw, but that’s as good as it gets. All he’s saying is that he saw a woman of similar description standing outside the Wellers’ house on the pavement on the day of Megan’s interview. She wasn’t going into the house. She wasn’t coming out of the house. I don’t like coincidences any more than you do, but I don’t think we should read too much into it. There are significant differences in the descriptions despite some similarities. It’s dubious at best.’