A MURDER suspect today challenged police to decide if he had committed the crime after UK officers met French colleagues to discuss his wife's disappearance.

Robert Lund, 52, from Darwen, who still lives in France, is so convinced there is no evidence against him that he wants to prove the police have had nothing to work on.

And he said a recent trip to France by Lancashire-based police officers to see gendarmes in Castres, near Toulouse, would have come to nothing. He claimed the French police have had no dealings with the case since December 2000.

"The only thing I want from the British or French police is for them to come up with a crime," said Mr Lund, whose wife Evelyn was found dead in October 2001 on the back seat of her Toyota Landcruiser at the bottom of a lake.

The ex-Blackburn with Darwen tree protection officer has admitted being the prime suspect in the disappearance of the mum-of-three, formerly of Winter Hill. Evelyn disappeared in December 1999 and her body was found 22 months later.

Mr Lund told the Lancashire Evening Telegraph in an exclusive interview in December at the couple's home in La Veaute that their relationship had turned violent. He revealed how unhappy Evelyn, 52, was in the last days of her life.

"There is a disappearance and an inquiry but they have never established a crime and therefore to say I am guilty of anything is a farce. It's ludicrous," he added.

"How can you be a suspect in anything that hasn't even taken place?

"I have no idea what they are up to. It is still all a big secret.

"I can't understand why the police have had meetings over here, as the gendarmes have had nothing to do with it for years.

"The last time I saw the judge was in March 2003, when more tests were carried out."

Mr Lund claims he is totally in the dark about the whereabouts of his wife's body and has little hope of a conclusion to his wife's disappearance.

He said: "Maybe they don't want me to have her body because, after the cremation she wanted, they would have no further access to it.

"If they release it, I may have forensic tests done myself.

"I still don't know when this is going to end."

The biggest investigation the French Tarn region has ever seen was launched when Evelyn disappeared but after four years there has yet to be any clear indication if the animal lover's death was an accident, murder or suicide.