‘Listen, we want some answers,’ continued the Birmingham DI. ‘Firstly, who was this man in the bog? Secondly, how did he die — and finally, did you kill him?’
The last question jerked Beran into sudden animation.
‘No, I not bloody kill him! Don’t try to hang that on me!’ he flared.
‘Hang it on you might be quite near the mark, Jaroslav!’ said Meirion heavily. ‘You can still hang in this country, you know. Both for murder or even being an accessory to killing.’
Trevor Hartnell nodded his agreement. ‘But you might be able to do yourself some good if you’re helpful to us by telling us everything you know.’
For a moment, they thought the Czech might be about to ‘cough’. But then the obstinate expression came back across his heavy features. Having learned about criminal proceedings from hard experience, he uttered the words he knew were his best defence.
‘I want lawyer — now!’ he muttered.
TWENTY
It was now Friday, the day before Christmas Eve, and as everyone at Garth House was planning to be away over the coming holiday, there seemed little point in hanging up festive decorations in an empty house. Moira was going to Newport to spend three days with her sister and Angela was off to Berkshire for the whole week. Sian was going home to her large family in Chepstow and Richard was off to his parents in Merthyr Tydfil, though as he had agreed to be on call for the police until Boxing Day, he was leaving his contact number with the forensic science laboratory in Cardiff. Though there were no chains of coloured paper festooning the rooms, Moira had put up several sprays of red-berried holly from a tree in her garden — and Sian had hopefully hung a sprig of mistletoe from a light in the staff room.
The following week was a barren one for getting much work done. Though more people died over this period, from road accidents, suicides and increased natural disease precipitated by cold weather, overeating and overdrinking, the legal machinery ground to a halt for quite a few days, as solicitors’ offices were closed, coroners held no inquests and the other courts were suspended. However, the police and forensic pathologists had to carry on as usual — and in fact, the homicide rate increased slightly, mainly due to more alcohol-induced disputes. Richard had arranged with the several coroners’ officers with whom he dealt to begin post-mortems again on Wednesday, as a Sunday Christmas meant that an additional day’s holiday was due after Boxing Day.
After lunch on Friday, they held a modest office party in the staff room, where they exchanged Christmas presents and spent an hour in pleasant relaxation. Richard contributed a bottle of Harveys sherry and one of Mateus Rose, while Angela brought Gordon’s gin, her favoured tipple, and a bottle of cherry brandy.
Moira had made mince pies and an iced cake with Santa and reindeer decorations. Jimmy came in long enough to drink two pint bottles of Rhymney Bitter, then vanished on one of his mysterious expeditions with friends ‘up the valley’, which Richard suspected involved shotguns and dogs.
They ate and drank in a convivial mood, looking back contentedly at the first seven months of their forensic venture and looking forward to even more success in the coming year. No one was driving that day, so the level in bottles dropped without challenge and as it did, so the level of chatter and gossip rose. Their more memorable cases were revisited and the star event was, of course, the Body in the Bog.
‘Haven’t heard a word from the cops about it lately,’ said Richard, relaxing deeply into the sagging armchair that had once belonged to Aunt Gladys. It sounds as if the trail has gone cold — hardly surprising after more than ten years.’
He was about to add that even Scotland Yard had given up and gone home, but looking across at Angela, he decided to close his mouth, as he knew she did not want to be reminded of Paul Vickers.
‘What happens when an investigation stalls like this?’ asked Moira. ‘Does the coroner just put the file on the top shelf and forget about it?’
Richard warmed to her abiding interest in legal matters.
‘No, eventually he will have to hold an inquest, but inevitably there would be an “open verdict”, which allows the body to be buried, but leaves the option for a later criminal trial or a reopened inquest, if further evidence ever comes to light.’
Moira, a couple of glasses of wine making her less reserved than usual, broached a subject that she had been nurturing for some time.
‘My eyes have been opened since I’ve been with you all,’ she said, rather emotionally. ‘You all are experts in various things and I’ve just been stagnating, especially since I lost my husband. It’s time I did something myself. Doctor Pryor, if I tried to start training as a lawyer next year, would you help me, please? You know so many solicitors, barristers and all about college applications and so on.’
Though it was hardly a Christmas party topic, Richard was immensely pleased that he seemed to have stimulated someone to move on to better things.
‘Of course I would, Moira. I’d be delighted to do what I can. Let’s talk about it after the holiday. It can be your New Year resolution!’
Angela and Sian also added their encouragement. ‘Only on condition you find us someone who can cook as well as you!’ chaffed Angela. ‘Seriously, it’s a great idea. I’m sure you’d do well. You could be a QC cross-examining me before very long!’
Sian came across and gave Moira a hug. ‘You’ll knock them out, a great girl like you!’ she enthused. ‘Why not go the whole hog and do a degree, like me? I know you’ve got double matriculation from your School Certificate, so you could apply to Cardiff or London. There are grants for mature students; you could start next October.’
Richard beamed like a benevolent father with his forensic family. ‘That would give us time to scour the kingdom for a secretary almost as good as you!’
Moira, throwing caution to the winds, went over to Richard and kissed him on the cheek, her eyes moist with gratitude to these good friends. After a hug for Angela and another for Sian, she pulled herself together and demanded that they all tucked into her mince pies and iced cake.
As they ate, Richard proposed a few toasts, primarily to the continued success of Garth House Consultancy and all who sailed in her. Then Angela raised her glass to Millie Wilson, who was languishing in Holloway Prison. ‘Let’s hope we can do her some good at the Appeal,’ she said sincerely. ‘I’m afraid she won’t be having much of a Christmas this year.’
They all drank to Millie, then Sian reminded them of another apparently stalled case.
‘I expect that the Dumas family won’t be too happy this year, either,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry for the poor mother, yearning to believe that this chap from Siam really is her lost baby, but not knowing if it’s true.’
‘I think even worse is the rift it’s caused between them and the younger son,’ declared Angela. ‘No sign of him agreeing to blood tests, Richard?’
He shook his head. ‘Like the bog body, I haven’t heard anything lately. That’s the trouble with our business, we experts do our bit, then we’re left out of the loop until we’re wanted again.’
‘Don’t worry, doctor! I’ll keep you fully informed when I’m a lawyer,’ promised Moira, with a slight giggle.
In Aberystwyth, the police had something of a problem, in that the local solicitor who they had called at Beran’s demand was doubtful if they had enough grounds for detaining his new client. He had certainly evaded questioning, but that was hardly an arrestable offence. The blood in a van which he had once owned was potentially very serious, but as the lawyer was keen to point out, Beran had been one owner amongst several others and there was no question of detaining them.
The Deputy Chief Constable, who was nominally in charge of the CID, was called in by Meirion Thomas as a more senior back-up to their discussions. David Jones quickly pointed out that neither had those owners ever been fingered by an antiques dealer in Ludlow as having employed a driver with a Batman tattoo identical with one found on a corpse buried very near Beran’s
place of residence and whose blood group tallied with those found in his old van. To clinch the last point, Meirion made a phone call to Ludlow and next morning sent a police car post-haste to the town, which brought back Bertram Tomlinson, who positively identified Beran as the man who had sold him the stolen card table and whose delivery man was the fellow with the distinctive tattoo on his shoulder.
Meirion promptly charged Beran with receiving stolen goods, which was enough of a holding offence to satisfy the solicitor and keep him in custody for at least a few days until things were sorted out after Christmas.
He was housed in the station cells and refused police bail, given his propensity to escape on motorcycles.
‘He’ll have a Christmas dinner there, anyway,’ said Gwyn Parry, philosophically. ‘Though I don’t think we can run to paper hats.’
‘What about that poor bloody lurcher?’ asked Meirion, a confirmed dog lover.
‘No problem! That PC we took with us says he’ll take it home with him. If everything pans out, I doubt Jaroslav Beran will see the outside of a prison for many years, so probably Constable Lloyd will have got himself a free dog.’
As expected, there was a hiatus in most forensic activities over the Christmas period, but by the middle of the week, things slowly started moving again.
Richard’s long weekend in Merthyr had not been interrupted by police calls after all and on Wednesday morning, he was back in Chepstow mortuary dealing with four sudden deaths and a traffic fatality. At Garth House, Moira came in to make him his lunch and leave a pie for him to warm for his evening meal. He had told her not to bother with typing the reports until next day and as he had already given Sian an extra day off, he was alone in the big old house. The weather had turned cold and grey, but it was dry, with a cutting east wind. They had no central heating and he couldn’t be bothered to light a fire in the staff room, even with the attraction of their new television set. Instead, he spent the time either in the kitchen, warmed by the big coke-fired Aga, or in his study where he had an electric fire.
It was here that in the afternoon he took a phone call from Aberystwyth. It was DI Thomas, who gave him an update on what had been happening both there and in Birmingham.
‘I had a talk with Doctor Rees from the Cardiff forensic lab. He said there was no more they could do to refine that blood type from the floor of the van, mainly due to the long time since the sample was shed and the effects of the weather. I suppose your lady, Doctor Bray, would say the same thing?’ he asked hopefully.
‘She’s away this week, so I can’t definitely speak for her, Mr Thomas. But I suspect she’d say that if the Home Office scientists can’t do any more, then no one can. Mind you, I think they were very fortunate to get even a blood group out of that stuff, after all this time in those conditions.’
‘I suppose there’s nothing more that can be done in the pathology line to narrow down the identity?’ asked Meirion hopefully.
‘Can’t see what, really,’ said Richard sadly. ‘We had no joy with finding anyone with that marble-bone disease, even though it’s very rare. Presumably it wasn’t bad enough for him to complain about it, so there may be no medical record of it anywhere. That suggests that he might not have been in the Forces, as probably a medical officer would have picked it up.’
‘Maybe he was foreign, like this Czech chap we’ve got in custody,’ suggested the inspector.
‘I wonder if a dentist might be able to help,’ mused Richard. ‘I’m not an expert on teeth, but I understand that some dental work, like fillings and bridges, can be recognized as having been done abroad.’
So far, because there was not the slightest hint as to who the bog body was or even where he might have come from, no forensic dentist had looked at the teeth to match them with a prospective individual. There were a few dentists, usually in hospital or university practice, who offered forensic expertise in addition to their usual duties, but the subject was only just beginning to become recognized as a separate speciality.
‘I can probably find an expert who might take a look at the teeth in that head. I’d have to discuss it with the Birmingham coroner first, as he’d have to pay him a fee.’
Meirion said that he thought it was worth a try.
‘Unless we can get this Beran fellow to spill the beans, we’re stumped. Without an identity, it’s virtually impossible to bring anyone to trial for his death.’
After they had finished speaking, Richard rang the Dental School in Bristol University, hoping to find someone to give him advice, but as he had half-expected, everywhere there was shut down for the rest of the week.
He looked at his calendar and confirmed that New Year’s Day was the following Sunday.
‘Thank God, life gets back to normal on Tuesday,’ he murmured, after realizing that the New Year holiday would be pushed on to Monday. His eye moved further along the calendar and saw that the Appeal was written in for 10th January, just a couple of weeks away. He decided to start revising all the notes and data he had prepared for his evidence, as he needed to be word-perfect to make any impression upon the three Lord Justices of Appeal.
He was deeply immersed in this for the next hour until the telephone again rang. Rather to his surprise, it was Louis Dumas, speaking from his house in the vineyard. After some rather strained small talk about the holiday season and the cold weather, Louis came to the point.
‘After failing to get my son Victor to consent to meet Pierre Fouret, my wife and I have decided to go ahead with the blood tests without his agreement. Are you still willing to proceed with them, doctor?’
Richard heard the resigned sadness in his voice and suspected that, as Angela had forecast, Christmas in the Dumas household had not been very merry.
‘Certainly, if that is definitely what you want. I must emphasize again, though, that the blood tests can only positively exclude Maurice being your son. They can never confirm it, even though the results may be very persuasive.’
Louis confirmed that he understood this perfectly.
‘It is mainly the desire of my wife, doctor. She says she cannot rest until we have done all that is possible to resolve this matter. She says she would prefer to know that he is not our true son, rather than be forever in doubt.’
As he seemed firmly committed to the decision, Richard agreed and they went on to arrange the practical details. He explained that because of the visit to London the following week, it would have to be when they returned and they fixed on the following Tuesday.
‘As you know, my partner Doctor Bray is the expert in this field. We could come down to you at St Mary Church to take the blood samples, if that would be convenient for Mr Fouret, as well as yourselves.’
Louis confirmed that his putative elder son was still in London, returning to Canada in a few weeks’ time, and that he had made it clear that he would be willing to come down to provide a blood sample at any time.
Richard put the phone down after polite good wishes for the New Year, though he wondered how happy it would be if the tests excluded Pierre Fouret from being a Dumas. With a sigh, he took down the calendar from the wall above his desk and wrote in the appointment for that January day.
In Birmingham, the detectives were also stirring themselves after the Christmas paralysis. DI Hartnell had had a meeting with his Chief Inspector and the head of CID, to report his visit to Cardiganshire and the arrest of Jaroslav Beran, as they preferred to call him.
‘He’s just on a holding charge of receiving, based on the identification of the guy from Ludlow, but it’s not going to keep him locked up for long unless we get something a bit stronger on him.’
‘I’ve still got men looking out for any former members of the Doyle gang,’ said the chief superintendent. ‘But they seem to be keeping their heads well down. I suspect that they’re still wary of Doyle’s long arm, even though the bastard is in Spain.’
‘No hope of getting anything out of Doyle himself, I suppose?’ asked the DCI, pessimistically.
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‘Not a chance! That’s why he’s sitting tight on the Costa del Crime. But what about this publican who had the head in his shed? Have we taxed him with knowing anything about Jaroslav Beran?’
The two CID officers from Winson Green looked at each other. ‘No, we haven’t had a chance to see him since this Beran fellow surfaced,’ said Hartnell. ‘We’d better have a word today.’
‘He’s out on bail, after being charged with obstructing the coroner and all that stuff,’ said the chief. ‘Anything else I should know about?’
‘The DI in Aberystwyth told me he spoke to the pathologist today. He suggested getting a dentist to look at the teeth of our head to see if there was anything useful there that might tell where he was from. He’s going to have a word with our coroner about it.’
The head of CID sniffed. ‘Sounds as if we’re scraping the barrel now, lads. What a way to end the year. I’m sorry now that anyone ever dug this bloody body up!’
It was a sentiment that the two officers from Winson Green echoed as they made their way back to their dismal part of the city.
‘I’d better get around to see Fat Olly and try to put the frighteners on him again,’ said Trevor Hartnell. ‘I’ll pick up Tom Rickman at the station and go round there now.’
An hour later, he and his sergeant were knocking on the door in Markby Road. It was snatched opened by Olly’s wife who stood glaring at them, her long grey hair straggling about her face and shoulders. Trevor’s impression was of a bad-tempered Old English Sheepdog, which was heightened when she opened her mouth to bark at them.
‘You’ve got a damned cheek coming round here again, when you got my husband into such trouble!’ she snarled, lacing her complaint with a few choice blasphemies. The officers ignored her tirade, as after so many years on the city streets, to them abuse was like water off a duck’s back.
‘We need to talk to your husband,’ said Tom Rickman impassively. ‘Either here or back down at the station.’
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