Grounds for Appeal (29 page)

‘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.

‘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.'

Her response was cut short by the former licensee appearing in the passage behind her, his corpulent body dressed in a grubby vest under a shapeless brown cardigan. Unshaven and bleary-eyed, he was an unsavoury sight, but he pulled her out of the way and confronted the two policemen.

‘What's it this time? I'm on bail until next Thursday.'

‘A few questions about the old days, Olly,' said Hartnell. ‘We'd better come in, unless you want another trip downtown.'

Reluctantly, the fat man waddled back down the passage to the kitchen, where his wife vanished into the scullery after a poisonous glare at the detectives. Preferring not to sit down in the scruffy room, the two officers stood to confront Franklin.

‘Did you know a chap called Jaroslav Beran when you were running either of the pubs?' demanded Hartnell. ‘He was a foreigner, had been in the Czech army.'

Expecting a sullen denial, Trevor was surprised when Olly nodded his head, the wattles under his chin bobbing up and down.

‘Yes, “Johnny B'rum” they called him, easier to say. Real rough bugger, Johnny was, always in fights.'

‘What did he do? Any sort of work?' asked Rickman.

Olly leered. ‘Work? Not many of Doyle's boys did any work, other than thieving or coming the heavy on anybody Mickey didn't like.'

‘So he was one of Doyle's gang,' confirmed the DI. ‘What happened to him?'

Franklin shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘Dunno, he just disappeared, years ago. Mind, that's what happened to them all, they came and they went. Some got banged up in jail, others went off thieving somewhere else, I suppose. Mickey didn't keep them around long enough for them to become serious competition to him.'

‘When was this Beran fellow around, d'you remember?'

Olly stared at the ground for inspiration. He didn't mind answering this sort of question, which seemed remote from his own troubles with the police.

‘I came here in 'forty-four, he was here then. Can't recall when he went, must have been a year or two later.' He suddenly looked up at his interrogators. ‘You're not thinking he was the bloke with the head, are you? Couldn't be, nothing like him! I know the head was a mess, but it wasn't Jimmy.'

Hartnell waved a hand at him. ‘No, this chap is alive and well. But did he have any special crony in those days, a chap quite a bit smaller than him?'

Olly shook his head slowly. ‘Not that I recall. There were up to a dozen of Doyle's mob who used to come to the pub. I didn't know the names of most of them – safer not to be too nosey, in fact.'