The farmer waved a hand vaguely in the direction of a row of stone-built cowsheds on the other side of the yard. ‘Bloody thing is rotting away behind there. I keep fence posts and rolls of wire in it.’
‘Is it the one you bought from Jaroslav Beran down in town?’
Myrddin Evans’ bewilderment became more obvious.
‘Yes, that foreign bugger sold me a pup; I paid forty quid for a heap of rust. Didn’t last more than a year before the engine blew up. What’s all this about, anyway?’
‘That man you bought it from was a crook, Myrddin. We’re looking into some of his past activities, for which he may have used the van,’ said Meirion evasively.
‘Needn’t tell me he was crooked,’ growled the farmer. ‘He sold me that heap of rubbish for a start!’
The DI started to walk across the yard. ‘Let’s have a look at it, then.’
Behind the grey-slated roof of the cowshed, they found a green van nestling in a patch of dead nettles. All the tyres were flat and it seemed to be sinking slowly into the Welsh countryside. The rusted bonnet was against the wall of the building, so that the back doors were accessible, being kept closed by yet more binder twine being wrapped around the handles.
‘Want to look inside?’ demanded the owner.
‘Yes, it may be that we have to take the whole van away for examination. But let’s see what it’s like first.’
Evans reluctantly unwound the hairy cord that bound the handles together and with a squeal of rusty hinges, dragged the two doors apart. Inside, the detectives saw a layer of six-foot fencing posts on the floor, covered with rolls of pig-wire and spools of barbed wire. Both being from farming stock, they saw nothing odd in old vehicles being used in this way. The countryside was peppered with old railway wagons, which made cheap and useful shelter for animals, feedstuff and equipment.
They advanced on the old Ford and looked at as much of the floor as was visible. Then they trampled through the nettle stems and dragged open the side doors to look at the sodden, rotting upholstery of the seats.
‘Think forensic can do anything with this?’ asked Parry.
The DI shrugged. ‘Amazing what they can find, sometimes.’
He turned back to Myrddin Evans, who was regarding them with a scowl at this waste of time.
‘Have you ever carried meat in this — or killed any animals in it, chickens and the like?’
He shook his head. ‘No, never! I used to collect feed sacks from the Farmers’ Co-op in it — and sometimes hauled a few sheep or pigs. But never slaughtered in it, I was never into black-marketing, not like some I could mention around here.’
Meirion had his doubts about that, but he was not interested in that now. ‘We might have to either take this van away or perhaps have a team of experts up here to examine it. We’ll let you know.’
The farmer’s scowl deepened. ‘Bloody nuisance! Any compo in it for me?’
Meirion pleaded ignorance on that one, but before they left he had one last question.
‘Do you know if this chap Beran is still around?’
Myrddin pushed his cap back on his head to scratch his grey bristles with a forefinger. ‘He was keeping that old shop he had in Vulcan Street when I bought that damned van off him. But I did hear later that he lived somewhere out of town. Bow Street, I think it was.’
After failing to find Beran in the telephone directory, the legwork that followed was delegated by Meirion Thomas to a couple of detective constables. They were sent to comb the Electoral Roll and question the Rates Department in the County Hall for any address of the elusive Czech. Nothing at all was found in the name of Jaroslav Beran and by mid-afternoon, the DI had sought the advice of the Deputy Chief Constable, David John Jones.
‘How the hell did a fellow with a name like that ever come to be in Aberystwyth?’ demanded Jones.
His senior — and only — ranking officer in the CID looked down at his boss.
‘At the trial that sent him down for eighteen months, it was said that he was a member of the Free Czech Army during the first part of the war, but he was invalided out in ’forty-two, on account of being accidentally shot in the foot.’
‘Did it himself, I’ll bet,’ grunted the DCC. ‘That’s an old dodge. But someone must know where the damned man is?’
‘He’s certainly not around here. That farmer who has his old van thought he had moved to Bow Street, but there’s no mention of him being there in the county records. I’m waiting to have a call back from someone in the Parole Board in Swansea. They must surely have kept tabs on him, or he’d be back behind bars by now.’
When he went back to his own cubbyhole of an office, there was indeed a call from Swansea, with interesting information about the missing man.
‘He changed his name, that’s why you can’t find him,’ said a man identifying himself as Beran’s probation officer.
‘Can an ex-con do that?’ demanded the DI.
‘Yes, he can these days. He claimed that his foreign name was a hindrance to him getting a job and like many of his Czech and Polish ex-forces friends, he wanted an English-sounding name. As long as we could still keep track of him, we had no reason to object, so now he’s officially called James Brown. We’ve got an address for him, it’s Gelli Derwen, Llancynfelyn, near Borth.’
The detective inspector almost fell off his chair with astonishment. Llancynfelyn was within bowshot of the part of Borth Bog where the body had been buried. In fact, it was there that the police vehicles had parked when they went to dig it up.
He hurried back to David Jones’ room with the news.
‘This fellow has to be involved, somehow! It’s far too much of a coincidence that the tattooed bloke drove Beran’s van years ago in some crooked scheme involving stolen goods from houses robbed by Midland gangsters.’
The DCC, usually a placid man more concerned with staff rosters and overtime claims, became almost animated.
‘You’re right, bach! But why the hell would he go back to live on the edge of the bog?’
‘Morbid interest or a guilty conscience?’ suggested Meirion. ‘So what do we do now? Bring in Birmingham — or even the Met?’
David Jones scowled. ‘Nothing those London blokes can do that the Midlands and ourselves can’t. Best tell Birmingham straight away — and you’d better get the forensic people to go over that van you told me about.’
Once again, Meirion beat a retreat downstairs, where he first phoned the liaison officer at the Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory in Llanishen, on the outskirts of Cardiff. They already knew about the case, as they had dealt with some of the material from the bog exhumation, but Meirion explained the new developments and the DCI who acted as a go-between between police forces and the lab, promised to come up next day with one of the scientific officers, to have a preliminary look at the old van.
The next call was to Trevor Hartnell in Winson Green, who was still nominally the Investigating Officer in the death of the tattooed man. He was delighted to hear of the progress made in Aberystwyth and wanted to be in on any interview with Jaroslav Beran, presumably now to be known as ‘James Brown’.
‘At least it’s less of a mouthful — and we can call him Jimmy,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ll talk to my DCI and probably the chief super first, but I’ll have to come down there. Can’t get there until tonight, I’m afraid.’
Meirion could see a risk of his Christmas going down the pan, but there was nothing new in that for a policeman.
‘No problem, he’s been here for years, so another day won’t matter. He’s hardly likely to do a runner after all this time.’
That same Tuesday afternoon, a violent altercation took place at the side of the main A49 road between Hereford and Leominster, a few miles north of the city.
An elegant two-tone Alvis saloon was pulled up close behind a large green Post Office Telephones van which had extending ladders secured to the near side.
The driver of the GPO vehicle descended from
his cab and stomped angrily back to the car, where the driver had wound down his window, ready to engage in a shouting match.
‘What d’you mean by blowing your bloody horn at me all the time?’ snarled the man from the van, a large, pugnacious fellow dressed in dungarees.
The car driver, a portly man in his fifties, glared red-faced up at him. ‘Because you cut me up back there, pulled right across in front of me. I want to see if you’ve scratched my offside wing!’
The van man put his hands on the roof of the Alvis and bent down so that his face was almost in the window opening.
‘Don’t be damned silly, mister. I had to pull in because of oncoming traffic, but I didn’t come within feet of you!’
Another higher-pitched voice came from inside the car, where a woman was sitting in the passenger seat.
‘Oh yes, you did! I’m sure I heard a scraping noise as you passed!’
The car driver pulled at his inside door handle and tried to open it against the bulk of the GPO man.
‘Get out of the way, I want to see if there’s any damage,’ he snapped, his fleshy face now suffused with angry indignation. He struggled out and pushed past the bigger man, who was at least a dozen years younger, and half a foot taller. Bending down near the front of the sweeping front wing, he stared at it, then ran a hand over the lower offside edge.
‘Yes, I thought so!’ he shrieked. ‘Those are new scratches. Now the whole wing will have to be resprayed!’
It was the van driver’s turn to push him side, as he bent to make his own inspection.
‘I didn’t do those. They must have been there already. There’s none of my green paint in them. I told you, I didn’t come near your damned car!’
‘You must have!’ screeched the Alvis driver. ‘I’m going to have a look at your nearside.’ He padded away between the vehicles to the grass verge and scanned the side of the van. With a howl of triumph, he pointed to the skirt of the rear part of the body, where low down behind the rear wheel, the green panelling had a comb-like series of grey lines. ‘I told you so! You did scrape across my front. Those are the same colour grey as my paintwork!’
The van driver ran a perfunctory hand across the offending area of metal.
‘Get away with you! Those were there before. You’re just a bloody troublemaker. I’m off, can’t waste time with the likes of you.’
Without further ado, he walked round the front of the green van and opened the driver’s door. Almost gibbering with righteous anger, the tubby Alvis-owner hurried around him and, reaching into the cab, snatched the ignition keys from the dashboard.
‘You’re not going until we settle this!’ he said quaveringly, holding the bunch of keys defiantly behind his back.
‘Give me those flaming keys, blast you!’ roared the other man, who was not used to being crossed by posh little men who criticized his driving skills. He advanced on his antagonist, who made the mistake of throwing the keys into the winter undergrowth of the verge, where they vanished into a tangle of brittle stems and briars.
‘You can look for them once you’ve admitted being in the wrong and given me your name and address,’ retorted the car owner, his voice almost squeaking with tremulous emotion.
With a howl of rage, the GPO driver gave him a push in the chest, which sent him staggering back against the gleaming radiator of the Alvis. He lost his balance and slid down to sit momentarily on the chrome bumper, then slowly subsided on to the road surface, where he toppled over and lay still.
At this, his wife erupted from the front of the car, followed by another woman who had been sitting in the rear seat. They crouched over the fallen man, whose face was now pale, with sweat beading his forehead, in marked contrast to the purple enragement of a few moments earlier.
‘You’ve killed him!’ screamed his wife. ‘Get an ambulance!’
EIGHTEEN
Samuel Jackson was in fact not dead at the scene, but he died an hour later in the Casualty Department of Hereford County Hospital.
He had only been admitted a few minutes earlier and the junior doctor who saw him had time only to administer oxygen and give a few last-hope injections to try to bolster the feeble, irregular heartbeat. Then the SHO had sent urgently for his registrar, but it was too late and after talking to the distraught widow and her fellow passenger, both doctors were in a quandary as to the cause of death.
Over a hasty cup of tea in the sister’s office, they discussed what they should do.
‘Do the police know about it, Tim?’ asked the registrar.
‘There were two constables who came behind the ambulance,’ replied the young doctor. ‘They were talking to the driver of the van outside, then they came in to see the wife and sister, who were carrying on about manslaughter!’
The registrar rolled his eyes heavenward. ‘Let’s keep out of that! He didn’t have any injuries, did he?’
The SHO shook his head. ‘Nothing worth talking about. A few trivial scratches on his back, that’s all. The wife said that he had been struck in the chest and fell back against the car, then fell to the ground.’
‘Nothing on his chest?’
‘A bit of reddening over his sternum, but no bruises.’
The registrar looked at his watch anxiously. ‘I’ve got to be off. I’ve told Mrs Jackson that we think the cause of death was a heart attack, but that in view of the circumstances, we have to report it to the coroner.’
As he made for the door, the sister hurried in and grabbed the harassed younger doctor and hustled him out to see another emergency, a farm worker who had cut his wrist half-through with a billhook.
That evening, Richard Pryor was in Angela’s upstairs sitting-room, watching their newest acquisition, a Bush TV-53 with a fourteen-inch screen in a wooden cabinet. He had decided to treat themselves to a Christmas present and only that day a dealer from Chepstow had installed the device and erected an aerial on a long pole attached to a chimney. He warned that reception in the Wye Valley was ‘a bit dodgy’ due to the hills on either side, but to a novice like Richard, the slightly blurred black-and-white images were enthralling. Angela’s family home in flatter Berkshire boasted much better reception, but she kept it to herself, not wanting to spoil her partner’s obvious pleasure.
However, someone else soon spoiled his enjoyment of the end of Panorama, as the telephone extension in her room began ringing. It was the Hereford coroner’s officer wanting to speak to Richard about the death of Samuel Jackson.
‘Both the coroner and the police feel that we should have a Home Office pathologist on this one, doctor,’ he explained. ‘The relatives are screaming blue murder — or at least manslaughter, as the chap collapsed after a scuffle. And the hospital would prefer an outside opinion, as he died on their premises and the wife is hinting at their failure to save him.’
It was common after any death in a hospital where there was even a possibility of an allegation of negligence, for the post-mortem not to be performed by their own pathologist, to avoid any accusation of prejudice.
Richard agreed to come up the next day, after he had dealt with a couple of cases in Monmouth, then went back to the start of the Benny Hill Show.
When he arrived at Hereford next morning, he found the coroner’s officer waiting for him, together with a detective inspector and a police photographer.
They stood in the little office as the DI explained the position.
‘The wife and two sons, one of whom is a solicitor in Worcester, are raising a stink about this, sir. There’s no doubt that Frederick Holmes, the Post Office driver, pushed the deceased, as both the wife and her cousin are solid witnesses and Holmes doesn’t deny it, though he says he was provoked by Jackson throwing his bunch of keys away.’
‘But it was nothing more than a push in the chest, not an actual heavy blow?’ asked Richard.
The inspector shrugged. ‘Well, the wife is making the most of it, quite naturally. But the hospital doctor says there was nothing significant in the way of
injuries.’
‘And he died within an hour of this incident?’ persisted the pathologist.
‘Yes, he was alive when the ambulance reached him. It got there about thirty minutes after the incident. A passing AA man on his yellow bike and sidecar had stopped to see what was going on and he drove off to phone from the nearest box.’
‘Do we know if Mr Jackson was conscious after the collapse?’
‘He was according to the wife. Groaning on the ground and complaining of a pain in his chest, but then he slipped into a coma by the time the ambulance arrived.’
The coroner’s officer, a bluff police-officer nearing retirement, added a little more.
‘I spoke to the senior house officer and his registrar, sir. They had told the relatives that they felt that coronary artery disease was the cause of death, but the wife and sons were emphatic that the assault, as they called it, had led to the heart attack.’
Richard trod carefully here, as an incautious word, even to policemen, might come back to haunt him.
‘Well, it’s true that any stress, emotional or physical, can precipitate a sudden cardiac arrest in people with heart diseases, but it certainly can’t cause coronary artery disease. I think we should keep an open mind until the results of the post-mortem. Eventually, it may be a matter for the lawyers, rather than doctors.’
With this hopefully diplomatic remark, he hung up his jacket and went into the post-mortem room next door, to put on his boots and apron. He found Samuel Jackson to be a rather short, plump man of fifty, who looked as if his main form of exercise was going to good restaurants. The coroner’s officer said that he was a successful businessman from Worcester, owning a brewery and a chain of shops.
The only signs of injury were the slight scratches on the back of his neck and between the shoulder blades, consistent with sliding down the front of his Alvis, rather than significant evidence of impact. The reddening of the front of the chest seen by the Casualty Officer was no longer visible to Richard’s eye.
The internal examination revealed no injuries whatsoever and the only positive findings were an over-abundance of fatty tissue and generalized arteriosclerosis. Most significant of all was severe narrowing of all the coronary arteries, with thrombosis of the main branch of the left artery.
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