Three of the slabs had corpses on them, one being in the process of being sewn up and made presentable by another mortuary attendant. On one of the empty tables stood a metal container with a police exhibits label tied to its handle with string. The photographer began by taking a few shots of it, the flashes from the bulbs illuminating the whole room.
‘What do you need, doctor?’ asked the senior technician solicitously. ‘Will just an apron and gloves do, or do you want a gown as well?
Richard settled for a green rubber apron and some rubber gloves and approached the table with the canister. Close behind came the two CID men, Trevor Hartnell already lighting up a cigarette. ‘Can’t stand the stink in these places,’ he said apologetically. ‘Blood and Lysol, I reckon!’
His detective sergeant seemed immune to smells and stood impassively on the opposite side of the white table, still wearing his belted mackintosh and wide-brimmed trilby.
‘Right, sir, I’d better identify this properly to you.’ Hartnell, who wore a heavy grey overcoat, tapped the label on the handle. ‘This is the container we recovered yesterday from a shed at 183 Markby Road, Handsworth. It’s been dusted for prints, not that I think that will help after it’s been knocking about for all these years.’
Richard took a stainless-steel T-bar from the assortment of mortuary tools left on the table. This was like a short, wide screwdriver with a crossbar, used for levering off skullcaps after they had been sawn through. He used it now to pop off the lid, which he laid to one side, allowing a pungent aroma to arise from the interior of the drum.
‘That’s mainly methylated spirit, by its smell,’ he remarked. Peering inside, he saw strands of hair floating under the surface, but resisted the temptation to use them to lift out the head, in case they detached from the scalp. Sliding both gloved hands down the sides, he carefully hoisted it out and laid it on the table.
The head was covered in shrivelled skin of a pale greyish colour, with a wizened caricature of a face. It seemed to have collapsed in on itself, the cheeks hollow and the eyelids lying back in sunken sockets. There was no sign of decomposition and the hair, which was still black, lay in wisps across the scalp. The lips had contracted back in a bizarre grin, showing irregular teeth in grey gums.
Richard stood back to allow the photographer to take a series of pictures from various angles.
‘Why the pale colour, Doc?’ asked Tom Rickman, who seemed unmoved by the gruesome object.
‘Alcohol fixes the tissue like that, making them hard, not like formaldehyde. It used to be used for preserving specimens many years ago and some of the pots in old medical museums are full of it.’
‘The head has lasted well, if it really is ten or more years old,’ observed Hartnell.
The pathologist agreed. ‘It also tells us that the head was put into preservative quite soon after death, as there’s no sign at all of decomposition.’
‘How soon, doctor?’
‘Depends on the environment and even the season. A head will last much better than the belly, but in cold weather like this December, it would keep fresh for a week at least, but left in a warm house or during hot summer weather, a couple of days would see it going off quickly.’
The two detectives peered intently at the face.
‘I haven’t been around our manor for very long, so I wouldn’t expect to recognize him, even if that horrible face was in better shape,’ said the inspector. ‘What about you, Tom? You’ve been in Winson Green for a long time.’
The sergeant leaned closer, then shook his head. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell with me. But I doubt his own mother would recognize him, all shrivelled like that.’
Richard got to work, taking the head in his hands and studying it closely from every angle. He lifted the stiff eyelids and saw the globes inside had collapsed completely. The jaw was immobile, due to the fixation of the muscles by the alcohol, but he could see almost a full set of teeth, even though some were chipped and discoloured.
‘Plenty for a dentist to get his teeth into, so to speak,’ he said. ‘I can see some metal fillings at the back and there’s one canine tooth missing.’
‘Is that going to tell us who he is, Doc?’ asked Rickman.
Richard shrugged. ‘Only if we get a name by some other means, so that you might be able to find a dentist who treated him and has some records.’
He had left his black bag on a table nearby and now opened it to take out a glass jar in which a piece of bone was padded in cotton wool. Fishing it out, he held it out to the watchers.
‘Now for the crunch question!’ he said lightly. ‘This is a vertebra from the top end of the spine of our friend in Borth Bog. It’s got tiny cuts on it where the head was detached, so I want to see if it matches up with the stump of spine on the head.’
The helpful attendant, himself aproned and gloved, held the grisly exhibit upside down on the table so that the ragged undersurface was uppermost. Amongst the tatters of grey muscle, the lower end of the spine was visible, with a central hole where the shrunken spinal cord lay. With a dissecting knife, Richard cut away some of the muscle and, with his fingers, delved down towards the base of the skull.
‘Three vertebrae left, which corresponds with being next to this one, which is number four of the seven bones in the neck.’ He pointed down at the dried specimen from Wales, which he had laid on the porcelain table.
‘Does that clinch it, doctor?’ asked Hartnell.
‘Suggestive, but not definite. I’d like to see some similar cut marks on the upper one, proving that a knife or something sharp had been used to sever the neck. I need to take it off and have it back in our laboratory for a good look under magnification, after cleaning all the tissue gubbins from it.’
The inspector looked disappointed at not getting a quick answer. ‘Nothing else you can do today, doctor?’
Richard grinned at him. ‘Fear not, Mr Hartnell! I’ve got one more trick up my sleeve.’
He turned the head right way up again and set it on the slab, its ghastly rictus of a smile beaming at the three police officers. Then he looked across at the mortuary technician.
‘Do you think you could saw the skull off for me, please? It’ll be a bit difficult, not being attached to a body.’
The man seemed pleased to have a challenge. ‘No problem, sir. I’ll get Reg to hold it for me.’
The other attendant, a much younger man, left his stitching tasks and came across to grip the head in his strong hands, while his senior took a knife and slit the scalp across the top of the head, from ear to ear. When he had peeled it back, a more difficult job than usual due to the stiffness of the tissues, he took a silvery handsaw and prepared to attack the exposed bone.
‘Don’t you use an electric saw?’ asked Richard.
‘The younger lads do, but I’m of the old school, doctor, I like to use a bit of muscle on it.’
Richard concealed a smile, as if he was right about the identity, quite a lot of muscle would be needed.
The technician laid the saw blade against the skull and began sawing almost horizontally around the circumference, with a slight V-shaped dip on each side to allow a good fit when it was replaced. However, as Richard watched his face, he was gratified to see a frown appear as the man’s efforts seemed abnormally strenuous.
After a few moments, he stopped for a rest. ‘Bloody hell, sir, this is as hard as flint!’ He tapped the top of the skull with the back of the saw, producing a dull, almost metallic sound.
Richard, with some relief, turned to the detectives.
‘I think we can take it that the rest of this fellow is lying in Aberystwyth mortuary. I’ll get it X-rayed to make certain and do some other tests, but I don’t think there’s any doubt at all now.’
An hour later, they were back in the coroner’s office where Richard gave his provisional findings to Theobald Priestly.
‘The head must be from the body in the bog,’ he said firmly. ‘It would be a remarkable coincidence if they both had
the same very rare disease. The number of spinal vertebrae match up, three on the head, four on the body, which gives the correct total of seven.’ He added this for the benefit of the police, rather than a medical coroner.
‘You say you would like the head X-rayed, just to check on the bone density?’ asked Priestly.
‘Belt and braces, really, just to make sure. The skull thickness was hardly above average, but it certainly was abnormally dense. I’m afraid your mortuary technician had to swallow his pride and send for the electric saw!’
‘Fine, I can arrange to have it taken to the hospital for an X-ray,’ agreed the coroner. ‘One of the radiologists is a friend of mine, so he can look at the films. I’m sure he’d be interested in seeing an Albers-Schonberg, it’s so rare. You know, I’ve never seen one in my thirty years as a doctor.’ He sounded quite pensive, as if this had made his life incomplete.
‘Perhaps you could ask him if he knows of any cases reported in the Birmingham area,’ suggested Richard. ‘It might help to put a name to this chap.’
The group soon broke up, the coroner needing to contact his opposite number in Cardiganshire and the CID men going off to report to their seniors, before making their way to Winson Green prison.
For Richard, his priority was getting back to Jimmy Jenkins at the car and finding somewhere to have a late lunch, before setting off for the Wye Valley.
With some relief, he dumped his bag into the waiting Humber, complete with an extra vertebra and a fragment of skull for Sian to decalcify.
‘Home, James, and don’t spare the horses until we come to a café!’
FIFTEEN
Winson Green Prison was a huge and forbidding Victorian structure stretching along the A4040 in the centre of the suburb of the same name. It had a high stone wall and an entrance which looked as if it should have ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here’ carved above it. With a bad reputation even among English prisons, both for the prisoners’ living conditions and the degree of violence of both inmates and warders, it was often in the news for one scandal or other.
Given the now major status of the death of the bog man – and the possible involvement of one of Birmingham’s most notorious gang leaders – the Assistant Chief Constable had pulled enough strings with the prison authorities to get a rapid approval for his detectives to interview Billy Blair that day.
As DI Hartnell and Sergeant Rickman waited in the cold outside the wicket gate in the massive main doors, the inspector asked Tom if he knew Blair, as the convict had been incarcerated before Hartnell had arrived in this part of the city.
‘Yes, a real toerag is Billy Blair,’ growled the sergeant. ‘One of Doyle’s gang from way back. He’s done a couple of stretches before, mainly for assault and obtaining money by menaces. This time he’s doing six years for robbery with violence. He must be getting near time for release; he lost his chance of parole because of an attack on a warder.’
‘Sounds a nice chap,’ said Hartnell sarcastically, as the door opened and they began the laborious process of being admitted, with much signing of passes and jangling of keys as they were escorted through half a dozen gates and doors.
Eventually they came to an interview room, the bleakness of which made their similar facility in the police station look like a luxury boudoir. The bare concrete chamber was divided in half by a heavy wooden counter, above which was a high barrier of steel mesh.
A few hard stools stood on their side and as they sat down, a door opened in the far wall beyond the screen and a sullen-looking warder led in a man in grey prison overalls, who he pushed towards a single stool opposite the policemen, before moving back to lean against the wall. ‘This is your William Blair,’ he announced in a surly voice.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Hartnell and this is DS Rickman,’ began Trevor.
‘I know that bastard Rickman, he nicked me once . . . and I got off!’ sneered the convict, setting the tone for the interview. He was a wiry, pugnacious-looking man of about forty, with cropped blond hair and a square, ugly face, which had a scar running down from the left eyebrow, part closing the eyelid in a permanent droop.
‘We just want to ask you a few questions, nothing to do with why you’re in here now,’ continued the DI, trying to avoid antagonizing the man.
Billy Blair looked at him suspiciously through the wire.
‘Why should I bother? What’s in it for me?’
Hartnell shrugged. ‘If you’re helpful, it’ll be noted on your record. I hear you’ve already lost your chance of parole, but a few Brownie points can’t do you any harm.’
The prisoner continued to glower at them. ‘Whadd’yer want to know?’
The sergeant had less patience than his senior, especially as Blair had got off to a bad start by insulting him.
‘We want you to tell us about this head. The one that used to be in the old Barley Mow.’
This must have been about the last question on earth that Blair had expected and his genuine surprise was apparent to the two detectives. But he rapidly covered up and growled his denial of any knowledge of the matter.
‘I don’t know what the ’ell you’re on about!’
‘Come off it, Billy!’ snapped Rickman. ‘We’ve just taken it from Olly Franklin’s shed.’
Blair’s face suffused with anger. ‘That fat, drunken bastard! Was he the one who set you on to me?’
His tone suggested that if he was at liberty, Olly would rapidly suffer for his treachery.
‘Never mind about that! Tell us about this head,’ demanded the inspector.
‘Never heard of it! Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ replied the convict, defiantly.
‘Listen, Billy, we’ve not only got the head, we’ve got the rest of the body too. It’s a murder investigation now and at the moment, you’re the only one in the frame for it.’ Hartnell was not averse to stretching the truth when it seemed useful.
Blair’s red face rapidly paled at this threat.
‘Don’t be bloody silly! What would I know about that?’
Tom Rickman took up the questioning again.
‘Come off it, chum! You were one of Mickey Doyle’s lads before you were locked up. He’s done a runner to the Costa del Crime, so you’re the next best thing.’
Blair’s small eyes flicked from one officer to the other as he sized up his position. ‘Doyle’s mob broke up a coupla years ago, after I came in here.’
‘This bloke’s been dead a damned sight longer than that,’ snapped Hartnell. ‘He copped it when you were still on the loose, so unless you start talking, we might be looking at you for a Murder One – or at the least, an accessory to murder.’
‘You’re trying to stitch me up, ain’t you?’ snarled the other man.
‘Tell us what you know about this head,’ said the DI implacably.
‘Look, I heard about this head years ago, like all the other guys did in this part of Birmingham,’ he said in an attempt to be dismissive. ‘And yeah, it was in the Barley Mow at one time. I’d forgotten all about it; it was no big deal.’
‘No big deal!’ said Rickman in derision. ‘A feller’s head in a bucket of meths?’
Now that they had prised his mouth open, the convict seemed more willing to speak.
‘It was a gag that Mickey Doyle used to pull,’ he said sullenly. ‘When he got the lads together for a few pints, he would get Fred Mansell, the previous landlord, to bring this tub up from somewhere. Then he’d haul it out by the hair and show it to the room, saying that he had plenty more tubs for anyone who crossed him up. Everyone was half-pissed by then, including Doyle. It was a bit of a joke, really, a sort of tradition.’
Even the hardened CID men thought that waving a murdered man’s head about was hardly a ‘bit of a joke’.
‘So why did this charming old tradition come about, Billy?’ asked Hartnell, but Blair seemed to be having second thoughts about being helpful and sat sullenly on his stool beyond the screen.
The detective in
spector looked across at his sergeant and gave a slight wink with the eye away from the screen.
‘Tom, he’s admitted knowing about the head, so if he’s not going to tell us any more, I think we’re obliged to charge him with being an accessory, just for starters.’
Rickman nodded gravely. ‘Sure, boss. At least we won’t have to drag him down to the station, as he’s already banged up here.’
Hartnell turned back to the glowering, but now very uneasy man on the other side of the barrier.
‘Last chance, Billy! Two things and I’ll let you off the hook for now. First, why did Doyle hold these frightener sessions? And who was the dead chap, anyway?’
Blair shifted on his stool and, after some thought, came to a decision.
‘Look, I was never at one of these shindigs at the Barley Mow, right? We all heard about them, but it was before my time. I never saw the bloody head, so I don’t know who it belonged to.’
‘But you must have heard the gossip, being one of Doyle’s mob,’ retorted Rickman. ‘What was he trying to prove?’
Blair shrugged. ‘It was a frightener, like I said. I did hear that this bloke had been a collector for Doyle, going around for the takings from his gambling joints and knocking shops, as well doing pick-ups from the protection rackets. There were a few of these guys, but this one was caught ripping Doyle off big time, so he had him creased as a warning to the others.’
They were getting somewhere at last, thought Trevor Hartnell.
‘And hoisting his head out at these booze-ups was a way of reminding everyone, is that it?’
Billy made a face and shrugged again. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, mate! But it seems to fit the bill.’
‘And you’re sure you don’t know who it was?’ rumbled the sergeant. ‘There must have been a whisper going around, some of the gang are bound to have known him.’
‘You’d better ask them then. I told you, it was before my time.’
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