Grounds for Appeal

SIXTEEN

On the first day of Christmas week, there was a development in the efforts of the Birmingham police to move forward their investigation into the Winson Green murder, as it had become known. A period of frustrating stagnation had occurred since the head had been matched to the bog body. Attempts to find Mickey Doyle’s former gangsters and winkle information out of them had proved futile. A couple of minor thugs had been unearthed who had once been associated with his felonies, but they steadfastly denied knowing anything about the bizarre corpse, other than that, years ago, the head had occasionally been exhibited during drunken revels at the Barley Mow.

Then on that Monday, a letter addressed ‘To Whom it May Concern’ arrived at the police headquarters and rapidly filtered down to the detective chief superintendent. After reading the short message, he hurried to the ACC’s office and within an hour, a conference was being held in his room, to which DI Trevor Hartnell had hastened up from Winson Green.

Several other senior CID men were present and their chief lost no time in passing around copies of the letter that had arrived in the morning’s post. Eyebrows were raised as they scanned the brief note and a DCI muttered, ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ as his comment on the news.

‘May be a red herring, of course,’ cautioned the chief. ‘There may have been more than one Batman tattoo in Britain at that time!’

He cleared his throat and read the letter aloud, to impress it on his listeners. ‘He says, “I am an antiques dealer in Ludlow, having been in business there for many years. Yesterday, I happened to see in a copy of the Birmingham Post, which was wrapped around a delivery, a request for any information about a man with a Batman tattoo, of which there was a sketch in the article. I recall seeing a man in late 1944, who had an identical tattoo on his upper arm. I could give some further details if they were of interest to you… Yours sincerely, Bertram Tomlinson.”’

He looked around at his audience for a response.

‘Seems that the Chief Constable’s idea about publicity paid off,’ offered a DCI from the Division adjacent to Hartnell’s.

‘But why the hell didn’t he give us the details he mentioned?’

Lively speculation followed, but the chief super cut it short with a decisive order. ‘Hartnell, you’re still the prime investigating officer, so get yourself down to Ludlow straight away to see this chap. I’ll fix it with the Shropshire force, to tell them you are on their territory. Squeeze what you can from this fellow and let me know what you find.’

Inside another hour, Trevor Hartnell was in a plain black Ford Consul with Sergeant Rickman driving him south-west towards Kidderminster and onward to Ludlow, which was almost on the Welsh border. Hartnell had never been there before and was impressed by the medieval feel of the little town, perched on a hill alongside a huge castle, its narrow streets abounding with half-timbered buildings. Tom Rickman manoeuvred the Ford through the congested lanes to find Broad Street, which was the address on the copy of the letter which Hartnell held on his knee.

‘Tomlinson’s Antiques… there’s the place,’ he pointed out. Broad Street lived up to its name as there were some empty parking spaces and, moments later, the bell inside the double-fronted shop tinkled as they went in. A gloomy cavern, half-filled with furniture and scattered remnants of past years, led back to an area partitioned off by frosted glass panels. As they approached, a figure came out warned by the bell. It was a cadaverous old man, stooped and slow-moving. Fancifully, Trevor felt he had been transported back into a Dickens novel — the shopkeeper was not actually wearing woollen mittens and round spectacles, but he did have a long, shapeless brown cardigan over a waistcoat.

The policemen displayed their identifying warrant cards and Hartnell explained that they had come in response to his letter, thanking him for his public-spiritedness. Bertram Tomlinson seemed amazed at the rapid reaction and invited them into his glassed-in den, which was awash with papers and documents overflowing from a large desk. He found two hard chairs for them and sat behind the desk, after they had politely refused his offer to make them a cup of tea.

‘We were most interested in your statement that you recall seeing a man with that unique tattoo, sir.’

Tomlinson’s scraggy head bobbed, his thin grey hair becoming even more dishevelled. ‘I had no idea it was something called “Batman” until I read that newspaper on Friday,’ he said.

‘It’s from an American cartoon character, sir. But tell me, in what circumstances did you see this device?’

The old man explained that towards the end of the war, he was visiting the weekly market in Castle Square in the centre of the town, always on the lookout for articles for his shop.

‘Most of the stalls were for produce and used clothing, but there were some bric-a-brac dealers who sometimes had items of interest to me. This day, I saw a nice Georgian card table and, rather to my surprise, the stallholder accepted a low offer that I made without too much haggling.’

‘Was he the man with the tattoo?’ asked Rickman.

‘No, he was a heavily built man with a strong foreign accent. I paid cash for it — twenty pounds, I recall — but as it was too awkward for me to carry away, the man offered to drop it from his van when they closed up for the day.’

He went on to describe how the purchase was delivered to Broad Street just after five o’clock. ‘It was a very hot day and when the van arrived outside, the driver got out and carried the table into the shop. After exerting himself, he took off his shirt to cool down and as I gave him a half-crown tip for the delivery, I noticed this very odd tattoo on his arm.’

He paused and frowned. ‘That was not the end of the story, because a few weeks later, a policeman came around with a list and photographs of recently stolen goods and one of the items was the card table. It was part of a robbery from a large manor house near Oswestry. There were many such thefts in those days, I’m afraid.’

‘There still are, sir,’ replied Rickman, rather bitterly.

‘So what happened then?’ asked Hartnell.

‘The police took the table away, and though I eventually had a few pounds compensation from an insurance company, I certainly came off badly.’

The detectives were beginning to think that they were also getting a poor return for their journey from Birmingham, but the DI tried to squeeze as much as he could from the old dealer.

‘The man you bought the table from, was he also in the van?’

‘Yes, in the passenger seat. The tattooed man did the driving and carrying.’

‘Can you recall anything about the van, sir?’ asked the sergeant. ‘Its make or even its colour?’

Bertram Tomlinson gave a crafty smile and reached for a battered notebook that lay amidst the confusion on his desk.

‘I can do better than that, Officer!’ he said as he opened the dog-eared book at a point where a piece of paper marked the page. ‘I can give you the registration number!’

‘The crafty old fox! I’ll bet he suspected that his Georgian table was stolen, if it was that cheap. Pity for him that he hadn’t sold it on, before it was circulated,’ said Tom Rickman, as they drove back towards Birmingham.

‘Just as well he was suspicious of the seller,’ observed Hartnell. ‘He was afraid that the chap would do a runner after being paid, so he took down the registration of the van parked alongside his stall.’

‘Amazing that he’s still got the number, but I saw that he had all his purchases and sales written down in that old book. I doubt it tallies with the one he shows to the Inland Revenue!’

The detective inspector looked at the notes he had made in the shop. ‘I hope the number will still get us somewhere. It’s over eleven years ago, according to Tomlinson’s records. The van may well have been scrapped by now, though the name of the registered owner at that time should be on record somewhere.’

‘I don’t recognize the index letters, do you, guv?’ replied the sergeant. ‘EJ 2652 isn’t a local one, anyway. I know most of those in the Midlands.’

When they got back to Winson Green, Trevor Hartnell got straight on the telephone to an inspector he knew in the Traffic Department, who rang back an hour later.

‘Trevor, that number originated in Cardiganshire. I chased up the Licensing Authority there and the van was a 1939 Bedford 30 hundredweight K-Model, registered to a Jaroslav Beran in Aberystwyth.’

Hartnell and his sergeant had a hurried consultation with their Divisional DCI, who on hearing the latest news, telephoned their boss in headquarters. He wanted instructions on how to proceed, as this looked like another issue that crossed police-force boundaries.

‘The Welsh lads had better follow this up,’ directed the chief superintendent. ‘The ball seems to have bounced back into their court for the moment. Who the hell is this Jaroslav chap?’

‘It’s a Czechoslovakian name, sir. We had a few Czechs in the army when I was serving. He probably stayed behind at the end of the war.’

‘Well, get on to your contact in Aberystwyth and follow it up! Maybe this van is still around somewhere. If you can find it, it had better be impounded for the forensic lab to give it a going over.’

The DCI relayed this to Hartnell, who, though it was getting late in the day, managed to find Meirion Thomas still at his desk in Aberystwyth. After telling him what they had just discovered, he added a caution. ‘Of course, it may all be a wild-goose chase! We can’t be sure this chap with the tattoo is our lad from the bog.’

A chuckle came over the wires from West Wales. ‘I’ll put money on it being him! If he was associated with Jaroslav Beran, he must have been involved in something illegal. Beran is “known to us”, as they say!’

He went on to explain that the Czech had several convictions in the past for receiving stolen goods and had done two stretches of six months and eighteen months in Swansea Prison.

‘I nicked him myself the last time,’ he said. ‘We tried to get him for the actual burglary, but he wriggled out of it on some legal technicality.’

‘Any connections with Birmingham that you know of?’ asked Hartnell.

‘Not specifically, but it was suspected that he was on the fringes of a gang who came down from the Midlands in the Forties, knocking off isolated country houses. They were probably also involved in a bit of sheep rustling during the black market days.’

‘Is he still around your neck of the woods?’

‘Haven’t heard of him since he came out of Swansea a few years back, but the probation people must surely have kept tabs on him for a bit. He used to have a sort of bric-a-brac shop down in a back street here, obviously fencing some of the stuff that was nicked elsewhere.’

Hartnell digested this information. ‘No hope of identifying this driver chap, the one with the tattoo?’

Meirion Thomas, sitting with his feet up on a chair, staring out at the sea, shook his head at the telephone. ‘It’s a long time ago. I was only a DC then. I can ask around with the older or retired CID men, but that would have been before he first got arrested, so he wouldn’t have come to our notice all that much.’

‘What about this van, then? Thankfully, this dealer in Ludlow took down its registration, otherwise we wouldn’t have had this break. Is it likely to be still around? Plenty of pre-war vehicles are still on the road.’

The local DI swung his feet down to the floor, ready for action.

‘I’ll check that with our County Road Tax Office — they’re in the same building as us, as it happens. Unless they’re too busy with their Christmas parties, I’ll ring you tomorrow about it. And I’ll get on with trying to find this damned Jaroslav fellow.’

After he had rung off, he clumped down the stairs and followed some passages to the other side of the big building, which still seemed reluctant to shed its atmosphere of an old hotel.

As it was past five o’clock, he expected everyone to have gone home, but found a middle-aged man and a couple of young ladies busy decorating the main office, standing on the public counter to pin up paper chains to the ceiling beams. A cardboard Father Christmas stood on a filing cabinet and a sprig of mistletoe hung from one of the lights. A bottle of Cyprus sherry was surrounded by three half-empty glasses on the counter and it seemed from their jovial and cooperative manner as if the Yuletide festivities had already started.

One of the girls found another glass and pressed a sherry upon Meirion. As he had no intention of more detecting that evening, he accepted, then announced his mission, laying on the urgency of the quest, as it ‘was related to a murder investigation’. As the Borth body was the first murder in the area for several years, they knew perfectly well what he was referring to and, with rather giggly excitement, the other young lady took his piece of paper with the registration number and went across to a long bank of metal cabinets, with scores of small drawers, each carrying index numbers.

Within a couple of moments, she returned with a card and laid it on the counter, topping up his glass at the same time.

‘There we are, Inspector! That’s all we’ve got on EJ 2652. Merry Christmas!’

He studied the details on the card, which gave the specifications of the vehicle and the list of owners since new. There were six and the last but one was Jaroslav Beran. Meirion pointed to this final name, and asked the girl, who was hovering over the counter, consumed with curiosity, ‘Does this mean he sold it on to the last chap?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, in July 1952. The current registered owner is Myrddin Evans of Ty Ganol Farm, Comins Coch.’

‘Does that mean he still has it?’

The clerk shrugged. ‘Can’t tell from that. There’s no scrapping notification and no further transfer of ownership, but often they don’t bother to tell us if it’s been taken off the road.’

‘You can’t tell if it’s still got a current Road Fund Licence, then?’

She shook her head. ‘You’d have to see the vehicle for that — or at least look at the logbook, to see if it’s been stamped to show a current payment.’

With seasonal greetings all round, he thanked them and went back to his office. First job tomorrow, he thought, was to go up to Comins Coch to see if this damned van is still there.