He paused and frowned. ‘That was not the end of the story, because a few weeks later, a policeman came around with a list and photographs of recently stolen goods and one of the items was the card table. It was part of a robbery from a large manor house near Oswestry. There were many such thefts in those days, I’m afraid.’
‘There still are, sir,’ replied Rickman, rather bitterly.
‘So what happened then?’ asked Hartnell.
‘The police took the table away, and though I eventually had a few pounds compensation from an insurance company, I certainly came off badly.’
The detectives were beginning to think that they were also getting a poor return for their journey from Birmingham, but the DI tried to squeeze as much as he could from the old dealer.
‘The man you bought the table from, was he also in the van?’
‘Yes, in the passenger seat. The tattooed man did the driving and carrying.’
‘Can you recall anything about the van, sir?’ asked the sergeant. ‘Its make or even its colour?’
Bertram Tomlinson gave a crafty smile and reached for a battered notebook that lay amidst the confusion on his desk.
‘I can do better than that, Officer!’ he said as he opened the dog-eared book at a point where a piece of paper marked the page. ‘I can give you the registration number!’
‘The crafty old fox! I’ll bet he suspected that his Georgian table was stolen, if it was that cheap. Pity for him that he hadn’t sold it on, before it was circulated,’ said Tom Rickman, as they drove back towards Birmingham.
‘Just as well he was suspicious of the seller,’ observed Hartnell. ‘He was afraid that the chap would do a runner after being paid, so he took down the registration of the van parked alongside his stall.’
‘Amazing that he’s still got the number, but I saw that he had all his purchases and sales written down in that old book. I doubt it tallies with the one he shows to the Inland Revenue!’
The detective inspector looked at the notes he had made in the shop. ‘I hope the number will still get us somewhere. It’s over eleven years ago, according to Tomlinson’s records. The van may well have been scrapped by now, though the name of the registered owner at that time should be on record somewhere.’
‘I don’t recognize the index letters, do you, guv?’ replied the sergeant. ‘EJ 2652 isn’t a local one, anyway. I know most of those in the Midlands.’
When they got back to Winson Green, Trevor Hartnell got straight on the telephone to an inspector he knew in the Traffic Department, who rang back an hour later.
‘Trevor, that number originated in Cardiganshire. I chased up the Licensing Authority there and the van was a 1939 Bedford 30 hundredweight K-Model, registered to a Jaroslav Beran in Aberystwyth.’
Hartnell and his sergeant had a hurried consultation with their Divisional DCI, who on hearing the latest news, telephoned their boss in headquarters. He wanted instructions on how to proceed, as this looked like another issue that crossed police-force boundaries.
‘The Welsh lads had better follow this up,’ directed the chief superintendent. ‘The ball seems to have bounced back into their court for the moment. Who the hell is this Jaroslav chap?’
‘It’s a Czechoslovakian name, sir. We had a few Czechs in the army when I was serving. He probably stayed behind at the end of the war.’
‘Well, get on to your contact in Aberystwyth and follow it up! Maybe this van is still around somewhere. If you can find it, it had better be impounded for the forensic lab to give it a going over.’
The DCI relayed this to Hartnell, who, though it was getting late in the day, managed to find Meirion Thomas still at his desk in Aberystwyth. After telling him what they had just discovered, he added a caution. ‘Of course, it may all be a wild-goose chase! We can’t be sure this chap with the tattoo is our lad from the bog.’
A chuckle came over the wires from West Wales. ‘I’ll put money on it being him! If he was associated with Jaroslav Beran, he must have been involved in something illegal. Beran is “known to us”, as they say!’
He went on to explain that the Czech had several convictions in the past for receiving stolen goods and had done two stretches of six months and eighteen months in Swansea Prison.
‘I nicked him myself the last time,’ he said. ‘We tried to get him for the actual burglary, but he wriggled out of it on some legal technicality.’
‘Any connections with Birmingham that you know of?’ asked Hartnell.
‘Not specifically, but it was suspected that he was on the fringes of a gang who came down from the Midlands in the Forties, knocking off isolated country houses. They were probably also involved in a bit of sheep rustling during the black market days.’
‘Is he still around your neck of the woods?’
‘Haven’t heard of him since he came out of Swansea a few years back, but the probation people must surely have kept tabs on him for a bit. He used to have a sort of bric-a-brac shop down in a back street here, obviously fencing some of the stuff that was nicked elsewhere.’
Hartnell digested this information. ‘No hope of identifying this driver chap, the one with the tattoo?’
Meirion Thomas, sitting with his feet up on a chair, staring out at the sea, shook his head at the telephone. ‘It’s a long time ago. I was only a DC then. I can ask around with the older or retired CID men, but that would have been before he first got arrested, so he wouldn’t have come to our notice all that much.’
‘What about this van, then? Thankfully, this dealer in Ludlow took down its registration, otherwise we wouldn’t have had this break. Is it likely to be still around? Plenty of pre-war vehicles are still on the road.’
The local DI swung his feet down to the floor, ready for action.
‘I’ll check that with our County Road Tax Office — they’re in the same building as us, as it happens. Unless they’re too busy with their Christmas parties, I’ll ring you tomorrow about it. And I’ll get on with trying to find this damned Jaroslav fellow.’
After he had rung off, he clumped down the stairs and followed some passages to the other side of the big building, which still seemed reluctant to shed its atmosphere of an old hotel.
As it was past five o’clock, he expected everyone to have gone home, but found a middle-aged man and a couple of young ladies busy decorating the main office, standing on the public counter to pin up paper chains to the ceiling beams. A cardboard Father Christmas stood on a filing cabinet and a sprig of mistletoe hung from one of the lights. A bottle of Cyprus sherry was surrounded by three half-empty glasses on the counter and it seemed from their jovial and cooperative manner as if the Yuletide festivities had already started.
One of the girls found another glass and pressed a sherry upon Meirion. As he had no intention of more detecting that evening, he accepted, then announced his mission, laying on the urgency of the quest, as it ‘was related to a murder investigation’. As the Borth body was the first murder in the area for several years, they knew perfectly well what he was referring to and, with rather giggly excitement, the other young lady took his piece of paper with the registration number and went across to a long bank of metal cabinets, with scores of small drawers, each carrying index numbers.
Within a couple of moments, she returned with a card and laid it on the counter, topping up his glass at the same time.
‘There we are, Inspector! That’s all we’ve got on EJ 2652. Merry Christmas!’
He studied the details on the card, which gave the specifications of the vehicle and the list of owners since new. There were six and the last but one was Jaroslav Beran. Meirion pointed to this final name, and asked the girl, who was hovering over the counter, consumed with curiosity, ‘Does this mean he sold it on to the last chap?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, in July 1952. The current registered owner is Myrddin Evans of Ty Ganol Farm, Comins Coch.’
‘Does that mean he still has it?’
The clerk shrugged. ‘Can’t
tell from that. There’s no scrapping notification and no further transfer of ownership, but often they don’t bother to tell us if it’s been taken off the road.’
‘You can’t tell if it’s still got a current Road Fund Licence, then?’
She shook her head. ‘You’d have to see the vehicle for that — or at least look at the logbook, to see if it’s been stamped to show a current payment.’
With seasonal greetings all round, he thanked them and went back to his office. First job tomorrow, he thought, was to go up to Comins Coch to see if this damned van is still there.
SEVENTEEN
In the house in the Wye Valley, there was as yet no sign of an anticipation of Christmas and work went on as usual. On Tuesday, the solicitor in Bristol phoned to confirm that the date for the Appeal was the tenth of January. After returning from his morning visit to the mortuary in Chepstow, Richard invaded Angela’s sanctum across the hall to discuss the arrangements.
‘We’ll have to stay in London for at least the previous night, as the kick-off is ten thirty in the morning,’ he said. ‘A pity it’s a Thursday.’
She looked at him enquiringly. ‘Why is it a pity?’
‘Means no chance of a dirty weekend, partner!’ he replied with one of his facetious grins.
‘You’re like an overgrown schoolboy sometimes, Richard!’ she replied with mock disgust, though she had to hide a smile of her own. ‘If I have to put up with you for a night, I suppose we could stay again at the Great Western in Paddington. It seemed so convenient for the train.’
Serious again, he nodded. ‘I’ll get Moira to ring up and make a booking. I wonder how it will turn out?’
He was referring to the Appeal itself, as until today they had heard no more from the lawyers since the conference in Bristol.
‘Are you happy with our side of the evidence?’ asked Angela, motioning to him to sit down in a swivel chair on the other side of her desk.
‘I’m quite sure that I can debunk the ridiculously over-accurate estimate of Anthony Claridge about the time of death. What about your end?’
His partner shrugged. ‘I’m absolutely sure that the blood splatter couldn’t have come from the knife; it had to be the injury to the nose. Whether or not they believe me is out of my hands.’
Richard nodded. ‘That’s not our problem. We just present the scientific truth as best we can. After that it’s up to the lawyers.’
She fixed him with her brown eyes. ‘Do you think she was guilty, Richard?’
He thought for a moment. ‘It would be wrong to say that I don’t care, as any miscarriage of justice is an affront to society, especially if it arises from bigoted minds who are more concerned with their own reputation than with the truth. But what matters to me is offering the best scientific opinion I can, without any influence from sympathy or compassion for the client. Perhaps she did kill him, but on the evidence that was presented to the trial jury, she shouldn’t have been convicted, given the alibi she had. That’s what matters to me.’
Angela nodded. ‘That’s how I feel, too. At least Millie won’t hang, whatever happens next month.’
There was silence for a time, as they both looked out across the valley, where the trees now wore their grey winter uniform. Richard, conscious of an air of sadness that had descended on them, decided to change the subject.
‘What did you think about the last part of the Dumas saga last weekend? A pity if the family get divided because of the return of the prodigal son.’
Recognizing that he was trying to divert her, Angela was grateful for his sensitivity.
‘Do you feel this chap from Thailand is genuine?’ she asked.
The final chapter of the strange story related to them by Louis Dumas was that the arrival of the alleged missing son had created a serious rift in the family. Though the father maintained a neutral scepticism until more proof was forthcoming, Emily Dumas was convinced that Pierre Fouret was her long-lost son, Maurice. When the younger Dumas, Victor, learned of the extraordinary reappearance of his brother, he exploded into a tirade of denial, both because of what he claimed was the cruel deception being played upon his parents, especially his mother, but also with an eye to his inheritance. Apart from the house and vineyard, his father had extensive property in France and the prospect of having to share it with an alleged elder brother incensed him beyond measure. He had denounced the man as a scheming impostor and every argument put forward by his parents was met with a contemptuous dismissal.
‘If he could find those facts from the army records and the old newspapers, so could anyone else, especially a confidence trickster intent on swindling you!’ he had declared, according to Louis. He refused to take part in any medical tests or to meet Pierre, threatening that if he came to the house, he would walk out on him.
The Dumases had consulted lawyers and employed an investigative agency, but they were not helpful, saying that as far as they could determine, the facts advanced by Pierre Fouret were true, but repeated what Victor had pointed out, that such public information was available to anyone who had the incentive and patience to dig deeply enough. They had contacted the Fourets in Montreal and confirmed that Pierre’s story was true as far back as his being taken by them from the orphanage, but there was no corroboration of what had happened in the years prior to that.
‘We even made enquiries through the British Embassy in Thailand,’ Louis had said. ‘But it was impossible to locate any of the nuns in the former orphanage as it had long been disbanded. Enquiries in Vietnam were out of the question, as since the contentious splitting of that country into two by the Geneva Accord of 1954, the northern part containing Yen Bai was now communist, making a search for Sukhon impossible, even if she were still alive in war-torn Indo-China.’
Angela and Richard had discussed this before and the obvious direction of the Dumases’ concern was whether any biological tests could determine whether Pierre Fouret was really Maurice Dumas.
Angela sighed. ‘I told them time and again that there was no technique based on blood tests or anything else that could absolutely prove that any child was the offspring of a particular person. All that can be done is to exclude that possibility — but it sometimes seems hard, even with intelligent, educated people, to get them to believe it.’
Her partner ran a hand through his springy hair.
‘I know, it’s like a doctor telling a patient some important fact about their illness, then finding that however well you explain it, their mind seems reluctant to accept it if it doesn’t fit with what they want to know.’
‘I can give them probability results, which sometimes can be pretty near a positive answer,’ agreed Angela. ‘But you can never get to the hundred per cent mark, even if you get lucky with all the blood subgroups and the other factors that are being discovered all the time.’
‘What about the genetic stuff that these people discovered in Oxford the year before last?’ asked Richard. ‘Will there be any hope of this DNA being useful?’
‘You mean Crick and Watson?’ she replied. ‘Well, who knows what may come out of it in years to come. But at the moment, it’s just a nice toy for geneticists. It’s not going to help the Dumas family.’
He stretched and hauled himself out of the chair. ‘Well, anyway. I’m sorry for them, as until this is settled one way or the other, there’ll be no peace in the family.’
That same morning, Meirion Thomas and his sergeant, Gwyn Parry, drove north out of Aberystwyth for a few miles on the A487 until they reached the village of Comins Coch.
‘Do you know where Ty Canol is?’ asked Meirion, as Parry swung the Wolseley off the main road and drove through the village back out into the countryside to the south.
‘Yes, and you should too! It’s where we had that stake-out for almost a week, about five years ago. Remember, we had a tip-off about rustlers and damn-all happened.’
There had been so many of those attempts to foil the sheep thieves that the DI had forgotten this one, bu
t when the whitewashed farmhouse came into view after a couple of miles, it all came back to him.
‘Myrddin Evans, he was the farmer, wasn’t he?’ he recalled.
‘Yes, and there he is!’ said the sergeant, pulling up at the gate to the yard. A man wearing the inevitable flat cap perched on one side was dragging the gate open for them. Gwyn Parry drove across to the other side of the cobbled yard, into the shelter of a rusty corrugated French barn. There was a strong east wind and chaff was blowing around their legs as they got out of the car.
Myrddin Evans had closed the gate again and advanced on them, the skirts of his grubby raincoat flapping, even though he had several turns of binder twine wrapped around his waist. He came near and glowered at the two policemen.
‘Don’t tell me there’s another tip-off about rustlers! I’ve got all my ewes up in the pound behind the house, so there’s no chance of them being pinched!’
He spoke in Welsh, but with a few choice English obscenities mixed in. Meirion always thought that the expression ‘swear like a trooper’ was nonsense, as they couldn’t hold a candle to farmers when it came to foul language.
‘Nothing to do with that, Mr Evans,’ said Parry, placatingly. ‘We called to ask about your van, that’s all.’
The weather-beaten face registered surprise. His mouth opened, revealing totally toothless gums.
‘I haven’t got a bloody van! I use a Land Rover with a big trailer these days.’
Meirion Thomas hauled out a piece of paper from his breast pocket and held it fluttering in the cold wind.
‘According to the Vehicle Registration people, you’ve got a green Ford thirty-hundredweight, number EJ 2652.’
‘Oh, that old thing! It’s not been on the road for years. The crankshaft went and the body’s so rusty it wasn’t worth fixing. What d’you want to know for?’
‘Have you still got it?’ asked the sergeant.
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