Grounds for Appeal (20 page)

‘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 inspector 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.'

Blair decided to seize up at this point, having come too close to incriminating himself in these old felonies. He refused to say any more and after another five minutes of fruitless badgering, the two police officers called it a day.

‘You'll be hearing from us, Billy,' promised Hartnell as they left their stools. ‘Don't think you're walking away clean from this affair.'

With this rather empty threat, they watched as the warder pushed the convict out through the door opposite. When it had closed behind him, Hartnell turned to his sergeant with a scowl.

‘That bastard knows more than he's letting on! We need to find some of the old Doyle gang to see if we can sweat a bit more out of them.'

They went off to the station, only a few hundred yards away, to report their meagre findings to the top brass at headquarters.

Next day, the forensic routines down in the Wye Valley were going on as usual. Christmas was fast approaching, now little over a week away. Angela was planning to have a full week at home in Berkshire, family gatherings having become more important now that there was always the fear of another stroke hovering above her mother. Richard had promised to spend a couple of days with his parents in Merthyr, though he had also agreed to stand in as Home Office pathologist for the Gloucester police over the holiday period, as their local man wanted to take his wife and three children up to their grandparents in Derby for Christmas.

The autopsy rate was having its usual festive period surge, as unfortunately it was always a bad time for both suicides and road traffic accidents. Richard was busy every day at Monmouth and Chepstow mortuaries and had several forays down to Newport for ‘Section Eight' cases, the shorthand for road deaths where it was possible that a charge of ‘causing death by dangerous driving' might be brought by the police. It was usual to ask a Home Office man to deal with these, as the hospital pathologists who did the routine coroner's cases were never keen to get involved in potential criminal cases, partly because they disliked being called to the Magistrates and Assize courts.

Sian was consequently busy with her alcohol estimations, both with post-mortem bloods and with some defence cases where the accused was seeking to contest the clinical diagnosis over ‘unfit to drive' by a police surgeon. All in all, the Garth House partnership was thriving, as their reputation spread by word of mouth, cases coming in from a wide area in Wales, the West and the adjacent part of the Midlands. Angela's paternity testing was flourishing, but there was still not enough income to warrant considering an increase in staff.

On that cold but sunny day, they were all in the kitchen, taking a rest from their labours at the afternoon tea-break, when they heard a car zoom up the steep drive and stop in the yard with an impatient squeal of brakes. Richard, who knew most of the vehicles that called here by the sound of their engines, did not recognize this one and stood up to look through the window.

‘It's an MG-TC,' he exclaimed, looking out at a small low-slung sports car. It was bright red, with a black fabric hood hoisted against the blustery weather. ‘Who do we know who has one of those?'

He was soon given the answer, as a shapely leg emerged from the driver's door, followed by the rest of Priscilla Chambers' shapely body, swathed in a heavy car coat, her auburn hair half-hidden by a colourful Hermès silk scarf.

By now they had all seen her. ‘It's Pris, what on earth is she doing here in a car?' exclaimed Angela, as they all moved towards the back door to greet her.

She hugged them all and gave Richard a full-blown kiss on the lips that made his toes tingle.

‘I'm frozen,' she cried gaily. ‘That car's great, but I need a new hood, there's a gale blowing through it!'

After she had been plied with hot tea and biscuits, she told them her news.

‘Thank God for your dismembered body, Richard,' she began. ‘I've got a job already, thanks to digging in that blasted bog!'

She explained that having hit it off so well with the Hungarian archaeologist, Doctor Boross had phoned her a week ago and asked if she would be interested in a temporary lectureship in her department at the university in Aberystwyth.

‘It's for a year in the first instance and has cropped up as they've got a rescue dig on an old abbey,' she explained. They all pressed their congratulations on her and wanted more details.

‘Have you got the job actually in the bag?' asked the more cautious Angela.

‘Eva Boross was quite definite about it, said my experience was just right for the post,' answered Priscilla happily. ‘I'm on my way down there now for a formal interview tomorrow afternoon.'

‘What's with the car, then?' enquired Richard, looking out of the window again at the MG, which was one of the first models manufactured after the end of the war and which was looking its age a little.

‘I decided I couldn't survive down in the wilds without transport,' replied the ebullient redhead. ‘It's a bit of a banger at seven years old, but it was cheap and it goes well.'

‘You can't drive down to Cardiganshire tonight,' protested Moira. ‘It'll be dark in an hour or so. You must stay with me tonight and set off first thing in the morning.'

After some token protestations, Priscilla gladly accepted and then Richard stepped in to trump Moira.

‘We need to celebrate this, folks,' he said amiably. ‘I'll treat you all to a meal down in the village.'

Work was abandoned for the rest of the afternoon, as Priscilla was brought up to date on happenings in Garth House, especially the news that the head of her bog body had been found in Birmingham.

Richard went out for a good look at her ‘new' car, admiring what was under the bonnet and assuring Priscilla that a good garage in Aberystwyth could work wonders on its rather shabby appearance.

That evening, they went again to the hotel in Tintern Parva, though Jimmy was not with them this time as he had gone off on one of his mysterious absences, which Richard suspected was some form of organized poaching.

The meal was excellent and they all talked about the delights of leaving rationing and shortages behind.

‘It only seems yesterday that we were living on dried egg powder and Spam,' said Angela.

‘And the kids had concentrated orange juice and cod-liver oil and malt shoved down their throats every day,' laughed Sian.

‘You were all healthier for it, though,' claimed Richard, until he was shouted down for spending much of the war in Ceylon, where he was accused of living on the fat of the land in an officer's mess.