Grounds for Appeal (32 page)

‘So what's happened?' asked Richard, perturbed that all his hard work seemed to have been in vain.

‘The three wise monkeys in there declared that this was an Appeal, not a retrial. Their argument, from which I could not budge them, was that your opinions could have been given at the original trial and is therefore not new evidence.'

‘But we were not involved at the trial,' protested Angela. ‘We'd never even heard of Millie Wilson then.'

The QC threw up his hands in disgust. ‘I know, but this has happened before. The judges take such a narrow view of things and stick like glue to the rules. I tried to preach the “natural justice” sermon to them, but they were not impressed. Obviously, they had made up their minds not to hear you before we'd even started.'

‘I still don't understand why our evidence was not good enough for them,' persisted Angela stubbornly.

Marchmont waved his arms about in denial.

‘My dear lady, it was first class! Their blinkered argument was that as you are not putting forward any new discoveries made since last year, the same evidence could have been offered at the trial, either by you or by some other competent forensic experts. I could not deny to their lordships that all you have so diligently put forward in your excellent reports was available knowledge last year. The judges said that the fact that it was not so offered was the fault of the defence team and that was not a factor that concerned them.'

Richard was becoming as exasperated as the senior counsel.

‘So Millie will have to spend God knows how many years in prison because of some technicality seized upon by three elderly judges? Is there nothing that can be done for her?'

Marchmont mopped his brow with a flowing white handkerchief before settling his wig back on his head.

‘After their lordships have lunched, I'll try to nit-pick a few points in the trial proceedings, but I know it will be futile. The success rate in criminal Appeals is abysmally low, as the judges' mafia stick together and the Lords of Appeal fall over backwards not to find any fault with the way their brothers in the lower courts conduct their business.'

With more profuse apologies and commiserations – and a reassurance that all expert witness fees and expenses would be met – the lawyers left them to make their way out of the vast building. Richard was still seething with indignation at having done all that work in vain, but Angela was more concerned with their inability to have helped Millicent Wilson.

‘The poor woman will be devastated,' she said, as they walked out into the Strand. ‘I don't envy Douglas Bailey for having to break the news to her.'

In the open air, away from the inimical atmosphere of the courts, Richard's mercurial temperament took an upswing.

‘Come on, let's go and have a nice lunch somewhere, then get to Paddington and head back to civilization in Wales.'

Next morning at coffee in the staff room, they had to relate every detail of their abortive trip to Sian and Moira, who were equally incensed by the outcome.

‘They say the law's an ass and now I quite believe them,' said their fiery technician, her socialist hackles rising. ‘All those old judges, with their Eton and Oxford backgrounds, should be sacked and some younger ones appointed, who know what ordinary life is really like.'

Moira was more thoughtful about the debacle and got Richard to explain what had gone wrong. He repeated what the Queen's Counsel had said to them.

‘What did he mean by “natural justice”?' she asked, her growing interest in the law evident once again.

‘I'm not all that clear, but I think the general thrust is that, notwithstanding all the conventional rules of legal procedure, if a situation seems a flagrant disregard of common sense and fair play, then the rules should be circumvented . . . but you'll be able to tell me more about it in a year or two's time, when you're a legal expert yourself!'

Their forensic debate was interrupted by the phone ringing in the office and Moira went off to answer it. She came back to tell Richard that the police in Aberystwyth wanted to speak to him and when he picked up the receiver, he found it was Meirion Thomas on the other end. They spoke for about ten minutes and when Richard went back to his cold cup of coffee, he had more news to tell his colleagues.

‘It sounds as if our Body in the Bog case has been wrapped up as far as it can go,' he announced.

The others clamoured for the details, all having had a stake in the unusual case. Angela had done the original serology on the tissue from the borehole, Sian had prepared histology sections of the skin and the bone disease, while Moira had typed all the reports.

‘So who was he? And have they got the chap who killed him?' demanded Sian.

Richard retold the chain of events which Meirion had described to him.

‘Some antique dealer recalled seeing a man with a Batman tattoo years ago. They traced his van back to Cardiganshire and found old blood stains in the back, of the same group as our corpse. The van belonged to a former Czech soldier, who was in a gang in Birmingham, then got moved to Borth to act as a fence for stolen goods and a lookout for sheep rustling.'

‘Extraordinary story!' said Angela. ‘You wouldn't believe it if you read it in a novel. They did pretty well to get a blood group from a van after a decade.'

‘You haven't told us yet who he was!' persisted Sian.

‘Some American seaman called Josh Andersen, who decided he didn't want to be torpedoed in 1942 and ran off to become a gangster in the Midlands. It seems that he started pinching money from the gang boss, who had him rubbed out, as they say in Chicago.'

He went on to relate what DI Thomas had told him, about the Czech's confession that he had been lumbered with a headless corpse for disposal.

‘A pretty tall story, that!' observed Moira. ‘Have they charged him with the murder?'

‘Apparently not, though they're holding him as an accessory for the time being. No doubt the Director of Public Prosecutions will have to sort it out. Meirion thinks that probably either the gang leader, Mickey Doyle, or one of his henchmen actually did the deed. But Doyle legged it to Spain several years ago and they can't get him out.'

‘So why cut his head off?' queried Sian with a little shudder of horror, even though she had known about it for weeks.

‘Retribution for trying to fleece his boss, apparently. This Doyle villain seemed to have taken grave exception to this Josh skimming part of the profits from his protection rackets, brothels and casinos, so he had him killed and then exhibited his head on festive occasions as a warning to the rest of his gang.'

They kicked the topic around for a time, squeezing every last bit of information from Richard, who only knew what Meirion had told him.

‘We must tell Priscilla about this, unless it's already all over the local papers down in Cardiganshire,' said Angela. ‘She was in on it from the very beginning. In fact, she owes her new university post to this beheaded gangster, as otherwise she would never have met Doctor Boross!'

‘Well, it certainly beats going down the Labour Exchange as a means of looking for a job!' giggled Sian.

It was one of those cold, fine days that occur in winter, with a thin blue sky looking down on frosted fields, as Angela and Richard drove to Cardiff on their way to the vineyard in St Mary Church. They had decided to make a day of it, as it was the first time that Angela had been to the city, declared the capital of Wales only a few months before. After an early lunch in the Angel Hotel, the place where Louis Dumas had met his alleged son, Richard walked her around the centre of the city, which he knew well from six years there as a medical student. She dutifully admired the huge castle and the superb buildings of the civic centre, although secretly she would have preferred spending the time in the three large department stores.

Then a forty-minute drive through the Vale of Glamorgan brought them to ‘Chateau Dumas', as her partner insisted on calling it, where a rather apprehensive Louis and Emily received them courteously. They ushered them into the sitting room, where a tall young man rose to greet them. Black-haired and serious of face, the two doctors saw nothing of either of his presumed parents in his features – but Richard recalled that the younger son Victor also bore no particular resemblance to them. The father introduced him as Pierre Fouret and the soft-spoken Canadian replied in an accent which was more French than North American.

‘I understand that we all have to undergo this ordeal of the needle!' he said, in a tone intended to lighten the rather tense atmosphere. Angela, who was rather taken by this good-looking man, went along with his ploy.

‘Just a small prick in the arm, Monsieur Fouret. I guarantee that you'll survive!'

The bloodletting was performed swiftly and discreetly in Louis's study across the hall, Angela's experienced hands taking the three samples into her labelled tubes with the minimum of drama or disturbance. When she had repacked her bag and washed her hands, they went back to the sitting room for the inevitable tea and biscuits. They made rather strained small talk for a while, keeping off the subject of the Dumas family problems. Pierre told them of his life as a tractor salesman and the travelling it entailed.

‘I'm off back to Quebec next week and will probably be in the States and Mexico for a few months,' he explained. ‘I doubt I'll be sent back to Europe until the autumn.'

Richard wondered if this was a coded message that he would not be hanging around the family, seeking to ingratiate himself with them. The time soon came for them to leave and as they rose to go, Richard learned that Louis intended driving Pierre back to Cardiff to catch the train for London.

Richard and Angela made their way to the Humber, parked on the gravel area outside, as the Dumas clan said their goodbyes. Angela got into the front seat and as Richard was putting her case in the boot, he saw another car turning into the driveway from the road outside. It was a new yellow Triumph TR2, a two-seater sports car with the hood down, in spite of the winter weather. It drew up nearby and Victor Dumas got out, muffled in a heavy car coat and a scarf. He looked rather surprised to see Richard, but greeted him affably.

‘Hello, doctor! I didn't expect to see you back here in this cold weather. I'm afraid the vines are all fast asleep for the next few months.'

Feeling rather uncomfortable, Richard saw no alternative but to say why he was there.

‘Just called in to take some blood samples. We were just leaving, actually.'

Victor's face changed in an instant as he realized the implications. His smile vanished and his face reddened in anger.

‘Is that bloody crook here?' he snarled. ‘I'll not have him pestering my parents, they've suffered enough!'

As if on cue, the trio from the house appeared at the front door and stopped dead as soon as they saw Victor outside. As he marched angrily towards them, his father stepped forward and attempted to act as peacemaker.

‘Victor, come and meet Pierre Fouret. He's just come to have a blood sample taken . . .'

He got no further, as Victor began ranting at the older man, who stood impassively under a barrage of invective and abuse, the thrust of which was that he was a scheming charlatan, out to make trouble and wheedle his way into his parents' affections.

Emily began to weep, Louis tried ineffectually to restrain his younger son and Richard wished the ground would open up under him, so that he could avoid witnessing this highly embarrassing family feud. He was glad that Angela was already in the car, hunkering down and pretending that she was unaware of what was going on.

The row escalated rapidly, as Victor closed with Pierre and tried to drag him away from his mother and father. Although the visitor had kept silent until now, he resisted Victor's physical force and told him to behave himself.

This further inflamed the aggressor, who began shouting at him to go and continued to pull at his arm. Pierre shook him off, his self-control obviously weakening under the provocation. The climax came when Victor swung a punch at the other man, catching him on the shoulder. Pierre pushed him away, in a last attempt to distance himself, but this made things worse, as Victor followed up with a heavy blow in the stomach, which made Pierre grunt with pain. This was too much for his self-restraint and he landed a fist squarely on Victor's nose, which immediately began to bleed profusely. He staggered back and almost fell into Richard's arms, as the pathologist had decided that he had better try to dampen down the rumpus.

His first reaction was to pull out his handkerchief and offer it to Victor, who automatically clapped it to his nose, then thrust it back as he pulled out his own.

‘I'm going and I'll not be back while that impostor is here,' he screamed emotionally, though it was somewhat muffled as he staunched the dribble from his bruised nose. Without another word, he almost ran to his car and sped away in a shower of gravel.

Angela was about to get out of the Humber, her better nature overcoming her reluctance to becoming embroiled in a family fracas. She thought she had better see if there was any female comfort she could offer the distressed Emily Dumas, but Richard, after a quick word with her husband, came back to the car and slipped into the driving seat.

‘Louis says it would be best if we left them to cope with their embarrassment alone,' he explained and with some half-hearted waves from the group at the door, they left the unhappy house with a rather guilty sense of relief.

It took Angela almost the whole of the next day to put the samples through a wide battery of grouping tests and Sian and Moira had left by the time she went into Richard's room with a sheaf of papers in her hand. He looked up from his microscope, where he was going through some slides prepared by Sian that day.

‘Have you worked your magic to a satisfactory conclusion, Doctor Bray?' he asked, being in one of his frequent whimsical moods.