He could almost hear Gwyn’s brain working at the other end of the line. ‘You say your pals suggested this might be linked to possible gang squabbles up there?’
‘That area is one of the places where there used to be a lot of that sort of trouble. Still is, comes to that.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ retorted Gwyn with feeling. ‘These bloody sheep rustlers and a lot of organized country-house burglaries are down to your Midland villains.’
‘Do you want me to have a word with our CID, to see if they can make a few enquiries?’ asked Tony.
Gwyn chewed it over in his mind for a moment.
‘I’d better talk to my DI first and see whether he thinks it’s worth bothering your lot with it. We’ve still got the Yard involved, though they got fed up and buggered off back to London. I’ll let you know when I come to fetch Bethan on Saturday.’
As December had arrived, Priscilla’s time was up as Angela’s locum and she was leaving on Sunday to go back to London to look for a job. Richard Pryor would have liked to have kept her on at Garth House, but they both knew that there was not sufficient work there for two biologists. She was going back to stay with a friend again until something turned up.
‘Farewell party on Saturday evening, then!’ Richard had declared. He treated them all, including Moira and Jimmy Jenkins, to a meal at the large hotel in Tintern Parva, opposite the ruins of the huge Cistercian abbey. Afterwards they came back to the house and sat until midnight in the staff room, with the table well supplied with Lutomer Riesling, Mateus Rose, whisky, gin, beer and cider for Jimmy.
Well fed and relaxed, the conversation roamed over a variety of topics from growing vines to headless corpses.
The Borth Body was naturally prominent in their gossip, especially as it was the one case where Priscilla had been so useful in confirming the physical dimensions from the bones.
‘The investigation seems to have come to a dead end,’ said Richard. ‘I had a call from the DI this week, saying that unless something turns up, the coroner wants to hold an inquest to get the paperwork tidied up.’
‘I hear the Yard have gone back to the big city,’ added Angela, with a tinge of relief in her voice. Richard guessed she was afraid that Paul Vickers might have shown his face here if the investigation had proceeded any further.
‘A pity we’ll never know how it got there,’ said Priscilla pensively. ‘I wonder how many bodies there are knocking about the countryside which will never be found?’
‘You archaeologists dig up far more than we pathologists ever see,’ chided Richard. ‘Are you still keen on going back to your digging, rather than forensic work?’
The glamorous redhead nodded. ‘I had enough of that in Australia. Those couple of short digs I went on before I came here made me realize that was what I really wanted to do.’ She looked despondent. ‘But when – or even whether – I’ll get the chance again, I just don’t know.’
‘Something will turn up!’ said Angela reassuringly. ‘You’re too good a scientist to go to waste.’
Moira, who had had three glasses of wine, had shed some of her usual reserve. ‘You’re bound to be fine, Doctor Chambers! A couple of college degrees and bags of experience. I only wish I had had the chance to go to university, instead of just a secretarial college!’
‘It’s never too late, Moira,’ said Angela encouragingly. ‘These days there are part-time courses and grants for mature students.’
‘Hey, hang on!’ called Richard, in mock outrage. ‘That’s our wonderful secretary and chef you’re trying to get rid of!’
Moira smiled a little sadly. ‘Just a pipe dream, Doctor Pryor.’
He shook his head vehemently. ‘Nonsense! We’ll make some enquiries next week and see what part-time courses are around. You could have day release in the week like Sian here, then maybe later you’ll want to go full-time.’
Jimmy stepped in to lighten the mood. Though he still wore his old poke cap, tonight he was wearing a baggy tweed jacket and a stringy tie for the occasion.
‘I ain’t going to no college, doctor!’ he said stoutly. ‘I already done fifty years in the university of life! And learned a lot about growing strawberries, not them old grapes!’
Richard was the constant butt of good-natured teasing about his desire for a vineyard on the acres behind Garth House. Though Jimmy, an inveterate cynic, was always scornful of the project, he had still worked hard to get the vines planted and now seemed resigned to ‘the doctor’ making a success of it.
‘You wants some proper advice about it, doctor,’ he proclaimed, over his third pint of local cider. ‘Otherwise you’ll fall flat on your face.’
And where am I going to get that, Jimmy?’enquired his boss. ‘I’ve read umpteen books on viniculture, what more do I need?’
‘You can read a dozen books on riding a bicycle, but that don’t help you when you first gets on one!’ retorted the grizzled old gardener. ‘A pal o’ mine down in Cowbridge does some hedgin’ and ditchin’ for a fellow nearby who has got about five acres of vines and has been making booze there for a couple of years. I reckon he’d let you go down there and have a look round and a chat if you got in touch.’
‘Don’t encourage him, Jimmy!’ complained Angela. ‘Or he’ll end up closing our forensic business and going bankrupt trying to market Chateau Merthyr Tydfil or something!’
Her partner made a face at her and went into a huddle with Jimmy to get more details of this alcoholic Garden of Eden down in the Vale of Glamorgan. The time went on and eventually the party broke up, Richard taking the Humber down the valley to drop off Moira at her house and Priscilla at her lodgings, before taking Sian the five miles down to Chepstow, as the last bus had long gone.
When he got back, Angela had just finished washing up glasses in the kitchen and was on her way to bed.
‘Thanks for the celebration, Richard,’ she said warmly, as they walked up the corridor. ‘It was good of you to give Priscilla a nice send-off. I know she’s worried about her job prospects. She says she’s got some savings tucked away, but they won’t last long in London.’
‘Perhaps she ought to look for a temporary place in one of the forensic departments there, even though she says she wants to go back to digging holes in the ground. I could have a word with someone in Guy’s, or St George’s or The London Hospital.’
Angela smiled affectionately at him as she moved to the foot of the stairs.
‘You’re a real Good Samaritan, aren’t you? You’ve fixed up Sian to become a biochemist, you’re encouraging Moira to become a lawyer and now you’re going to get a job for Priscilla! What are you going to do for me, eh?’
She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and hurried up the stairs, leaving him thoughtfully touching his face as he contemplated the possible answers to her question.
NINE
Gwyn Parry sat in his detective inspector’s office upstairs in the police headquarters on the promenade in Aberystwyth. Though a small room, its one window had a striking view across the beach and Cardigan Bay, from which sometimes Gwyn imagined he could see the Wicklow Mountains across the Irish Sea.
He was waiting for Meirion Thomas to finish his phone call, which he had made after the sergeant had told him what he had heard from Birmingham. The DI seemed more impressed with the rumour than he had expected, but being a cautious man, he kept to the old police principle of keeping his backside covered in case it was kicked by his senior officers. He had phoned the Deputy Chief and was speaking to him now.
From the rapid-fire conversation in Welsh, Gwyn gathered that the DCC was in favour of pursuing the matter and this was confirmed when Meirion put the phone down and picked up his 1953 Coronation mug of strong tea.
‘Davy John says to go ahead with it, at least as far as asking the Birmingham City Police to see if there is any substance in this yarn. He suggests going through your brother-in-law to find out who is the best person to approach, then if it firms up, we’ll have to make an offici
al request for help.’
The detective sergeant nodded as he cradled his own dose of Typhoo Tips, in a cup inscribed ‘A Present from Tenby’.
‘Do you think there could be a connection?’ he grunted. ‘It sounds damned far-fetched to me. It’s a hundred miles between Borth and Birmingham – and the trail would have been cold for at least ten years.’
Meirion shrugged as he looked out of the window at a lobster boat half a mile out at sea.
‘We’ve got nothing else, boy! If B’rum will have a sniff around for us, we’ve got nothing to lose.’
‘What about those two clever dicks from the Met?’ muttered Gwyn. ‘Will they have to come back in on the act?’
‘Now fair play, Gwyn!’ replied the DI placatingly. ‘They did what they could, even if it was damn-all. Let’s just wait and see if anything turns up, shall we?’
On Monday, Tony Cooper was on an early shift at the police station in Steelhouse Lane in the central part of the city, near the courts and hospitals. His wife’s brother-in-law had come up over the weekend and told him of the blessing that the Cardiganshire Force had given to a discreet snoop around to see if there was any credibility in the legend of the mysterious head.
When his next refreshment break came, he went up to the canteen and, after a plate of bacon, egg and baked beans, took his tea over to another table where a detective sergeant he had known for years was sitting. He told him the story and asked him if he had any ideas about how to take this forward.
‘If there’s even a sniff of truth in this, then it’ll become official,’ he explained. ‘But the Welsh chaps don’t want to raise a fuss if there’s nothing in it.’
His colleague had never heard anything of a trophy head, but offered to enquire amongst other CID men, once again lengthening the chain of investigation.
‘I’ve always been either in the city or out east,’ he admitted. ‘But someone up in the Winson Green or Handsworth Manors might know something.’
He was as good as his word and next day, several plain-clothes officers in the older suburbs to the north-west of the city centre were asking questions of both their older colleagues and some members of the public. They were not going far from their normal routine to do this, but a natural curiosity, plus the not-unwelcome task of going into a few more pubs than usual, helped to spread the word quite effectively.
One of the older constables in Handsworth claimed that he had heard the same rumour many years before, probably soon after VE Day in 1945, but could recall none of the details nor whether it had ever been followed up. A day later, the best information came through a detective sergeant in the same area, who had occasion to meet one of his grasses, a local petty thief who in return for a few pounds and a relaxed attitude to some minor offences supplied him with snippets of news about local burglaries and the activities of worse villains than himself.
They met in a greasy spoon café at the end of one of the long streets of terraced houses, some of which still carried gaps like missing teeth, where Luftwaffe bomb damage had yet to be repaired. After the furtive-looking man in a stained war-surplus greatcoat had passed on this week’s trivial criminal intelligence, the DS casually broached the subject of pickled heads.
‘Ever heard of anything like that, Sweeny?’ he asked innocently. The unshaven man opposite looked at him suspiciously, as he took a bent cigarette from a battered tin.
‘What you wanna’ know that fer? Going back donkey’s years, that is!’
‘Just some rumour going round the station that one of the old fellers claimed he’d heard. Said it was supposed to be in some pub around here.’
Sweeny, whose nickname inevitably came from his surname of Todd, looked uneasily around the single room of the café, empty but for the fat woman dozing behind the counter.
‘Any money in it for the info?’ he muttered.
‘Ach, come on, man!’ retorted the detective. ‘This is a bit of local history, not jail bait.’
Sweeny pushed aside a dribbling bottle of HP sauce and leaned across the oilcloth on the table.
‘I never saw it meself, but there’s no doubt there were one in the Barley Mow, down Winson way. Years ago, that was, when Olly Franklin were the landlord.’
‘If you never saw it, how d’you know it was there?’ objected the detective.
‘Anybody who knocked about with the gangs knew that!’ replied Sweeny, scornfully. ‘That’s why the bloody thing was kept, wann’ it?’
‘I don’t follow you,’ said the sergeant. ‘Are you having me on?’
The sallow face looked at him pityingly. ‘It was a frightener, wann’ it? I wasn’t long out of the army then, but I soon learned that there were different gangs around here, real nasty bastards they were, too. I dunno who this bloke was, but he musta’ done something that really pissed off Mickey Doyle, ’cause he had him wasted and then kept his head as a warning to others.’
Sweeny suddenly seemed to realize that he had said too much and stood up abruptly.
‘You didn’t hear nothing of this from me, mind!’ he warned. ‘I don’t want to get mixed up with Doyle and end up with my own head in a bloody bucket!’
With that, he slouched off to the door and vanished into the street.
When Sweeny’s information went back along the chain of police officers to reach Aberystwyth, David John Jones had no hesitation in rapidly turning it around again.
He phoned the Assistant Chief Constable (Crime) in Birmingham and explained the situation, being careful to take responsibility for initiating the informal snooping, to avoid making problems for the Birmingham officers.
‘I thought the whole scenario was so unlikely that I didn’t want to waste your time with a lot of nonsense,’ he said with all the cunning of a Cardiganshire man. ‘But now that we have heard several different mentions of this damned head, I thought we might put it on an official footing.’
He went on to tell his opposite number that the Yard were also involved and got the usual reaction.
‘Let’s make some more enquiries up here before we wheel them back in,’ suggested the ACC. ‘This man you mentioned, Micky Doyle, is well known to us. A villain of the first water, though he somehow manages to keep out of jail.’
‘What could possibly be the connection between a body hidden down here and the rest of him being up there with you?’ asked Davy John. ‘Is this suggested gang connection feasible?’
‘I came down here from Manchester, so I’ll believe anything about gang warfare,’ said the Birmingham officer. ‘Anyway, I’ll get some men on to it and get back to you.’
With a promise to mail the whole file on the ‘Body in the Bog’ to him, David Jones rang off and sat back to ponder on when – or even, whether – to tell New Scotland Yard about this potential new development.
TEN
Garth House seemed emptier without the colourful and vivacious figure of Priscilla Chambers decorating it. Even Moira, who originally viewed her arrival with more than a tinge of jealousy, missed her attractive personality and cheerful manner.
‘Let’s hope Priscilla gets a job she likes pretty soon,’ she said to Sian, as the technician brought in some results for typing. ‘She seemed so keen on going back to her old bones.’
‘I thought that perhaps she and Richard might have got something going between them,’ said the ever-romantic Sian. ‘Especially as nothing of the sort seems to be developing elsewhere!’
She said the last part in a stage whisper, though Richard was at Hereford mortuary and Angela was in her front sitting-room, reading a newly arrived copy of the Journal of Forensic Sciences from America.
Moira failed to respond to Sian’s comment, as although she knew it was a ridiculous fantasy, she had her own dreams about Richard Glanville Pryor. To change the subject, she told Sian about a phone message she had just received.
‘They want another conference in Bristol over this Appeal,’ she announced. ‘The QC is coming down from London for it, so Richard and Angela will
have to make another trip across the river.’ She sighed heavily. ‘I wish I knew more about the law. The more I see of it here, the more I want to learn. It seems far more interesting from this angle than all that dull stuff about probate and conveyancing that I used to type when I worked in a solicitor’s office.’
Sian was upbeat about Moira’s ambition. ‘I’m sure Richard will help you. He promised he would and he never breaks his word. In fact, I heard him telling Angela only yesterday that he would have a word with his friend the Monmouth coroner, as his brother is a barrister.’
Encouraged by this, Moira began banging her typewriter with new enthusiasm, contented that her hero was still thinking of her well-being.
Christmas was now only a few weeks away and Angela was planning to have a few days at home over the holiday. She was still concerned about her mother, though she was recovering well from her slight stroke. Angela drove back to see her at their stud farm every weekend, just as Richard went quite often to visit his parents in Merthyr Tydfil. He could rely on being well fed there, instead of staying in lonely isolation at Garth House. Moira always made lunch for him on Saturdays, but Sunday was down to his own efforts, unless he went out somewhere to eat.
The message about the case conference with leading counsel also carried the news that the Appeal had been listed for early January, so Richard had resolved to go soon to the libraries of the medical schools in Bristol and Cardiff . He wanted to check that he had read everything available about the estimation of the time of death, so that he could not be wrong-footed if it came to a contest in court. He had just read an important article that had been published earlier in the year, originating from Ceylon, but wanted to make sure that nothing even more recent had slipped past his notice. Richard knew that Doctor Angus Mackintyre was one of the dogmatic old school of ‘It is so, because I say so’ philosophy, but he did not want the opposition to find even one chink in his own argument. Even if not relevant to the issue, he knew that once an expert witness is shown to have a weakness, it can be used to denigrate the rest of his evidence.
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