Read Gift Wrapped for Free Online Page B

his familial DNA if you can,’ Hennessey said as he turned and left the room. ‘That would clinch the issue of identification very neatly.’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ Webster responded promptly as he put his jacket on.
    Reginald Webster and Carmen Pharoah glanced at each other when Hennessey had left the room. Pharoah inclined her head reproachfully and Webster shrugged and then grinned. ‘Thanks,’ he said quietly, ‘I owe you one.’
    She returned the grin. ‘Well, we work with liars and con men all the time; their well-honed skill tends to rub off on one. But I confess I was wondering when you were going to return to your desk, roof tops and backyards and new buildings on the skyline indeed. What on earth was it that held your fascination for so long?’
    â€˜Well, nothing really,’ Webster conceded as he picked up his notepad. ‘The world outside just suddenly became more interesting than the monthly statistical returns for the merry month of May just gone. All right, let’s go and visit a lady in beautiful Selby; see what we see, as the boss says ... and find what we find.’
    Upon returning to his office Hennessey saw that, in the brief period of his absence, the missing persons file in respect of James Wenlock, forty-six, late of Selby, had been placed on his desk and had been done so with due deference, in the middle of his desk facing him, rather than left as if dropped haphazardly. He sat in his chair, picked up the file and opened it. He saw instantly that the photograph in the file did indeed resemble the e-fit published in that morning’s newspaper, and was of a man with a smaller nose than that shown on the e-fit, but other than that, Mrs Wenlock was, he strongly suspected – indeed, believed – going to be proven correct. Her husband, or the remains of, at least, had now been found. Mr Wenlock’s occupation, Hennessey read, was given as that of accountant. Other than that there was no more information in the file. The police had evidently done all they could at the time: they had taken note of the name of the missing person, the address, next of kin, put a photograph in the file and noted the date that James Wenlock was reported missing, knowing that the missing person would turn up alive and well within twenty-four hours, as most missing persons did, or else their body would either be found or it wouldn’t. Only in exceptional circumstances, where there was clear evidence of foul play, would the police search for an adult missing person and, as Hennessey saw, this clearly had not been one such occasion. James Wenlock had quite simply vanished.
    Mrs Wenlock’s house revealed itself to be, as Carmen Pharoah had suggested, in a prestigious area of Selby. It stood set back from the main road leading westward out of the town. A well-tended sunken lawn of perhaps thirty feet in depth separated the house from the roadway. The lawn was bounded on both sides by thick and neatly kept shrubs; beyond the line of shrubs to the left, as an observer would view the house, there was a stone-paved drive, at the top of which was a brick built garage affording accommodation for just one car, and which stood separate from the house. The house itself was inter-war vintage, probably built in the late thirties, Webster guessed. A front door stood between two large bay windows with windows above those on the ground floor and also above the door. The house was, by then, built of faded red brick under a steeply sloping black-tiled roof which evidently, thought Webster, as he and Carmen Pharoah viewed the house, afforded much attic space. The house would, he further thought, greatly please his father-in-law, who had endlessly advised him not to consider buying any property built after the end of the Second World War. ‘Take it from me, Reginald – they just don’t build them any more – not properly anyway. They throw them together these days.’ He