Grounds for Appeal

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.

‘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.’

‘Any other foreigners?’ ventured Rickman. ‘We know about the Czech, was he the only one? What about Americans, for instance?’

Franklin scratched his bristly head. ‘Half of them were Irish, but there was a Pole as well — and they used to talk about a bloke they called “The Yank”, but I can’t recall seeing him. I think he was one of Doyle’s collectors on the protection rackets.’

This interested the two detectives, but in spite of further probing, it was clear that Olly’s memory was not going to come up with any more details. When they left him in peace to enjoy his bail and to wonder what was in store for him when he was hauled before the magistrates the following week, Hartnell and his sergeant went back to Winson Green station and sought out the chief inspector.

‘All we could get from Franklin was the fact that one fellow he remembers from the Doyle days was known as “Yank”,’ reported Trevor.

‘But he says he can’t recall what he looked like and wasn’t sure he ever saw him, sir,’ added Rickman. ‘He thought he might have been involved more as an enforcer, rather than an armed robbery man.’

The DCI mulled this over. ‘It might fit with what we heard about the head being shown as a warning to anyone tempted to rip off Mickey Doyle, I suppose.’

‘And a Yank is more likely to know about Batman,’ said Hartnell. ‘So what d’you want to do about it?’

What the CID top brass did was to send both of them back down to Aberystwyth very early next day.

The three-hour drive got them there before mid-morning and Meirion Thomas, who Trevor had warned of his coming, gave them a substantial canteen breakfast while Trevor told him of the rather vague information they had dragged out of Olly Franklin. The local DI had been tempted to order Welsh laver-bread to go with the eggs, sausage, bacon and beans, but decided that boiled seaweed might hamper the cordial relations between the two police forces.

‘Any memories of a dodgy American around here in those days?’ he enquired as he attacked the food.

‘That’s the problem,’ said Meirion. ‘It was so long ago, I wasn’t even here then. And during and immediately after the war, the country was awash with Yanks.’

Hartnell sighed. ‘We’ll just have to play it by ear, then. Perhaps if he thinks that we know more than we really do, he’ll throw in the towel.’

The Welsh inspector doubted it. ‘Not if he thinks he’s being put in the frame for the murder. The prospect of a long drop at the end of short rope is a powerful incentive to keeping his mouth shut!’

James Brown, the former Jaroslav Beran, was not pleased to see them again, when they sat across the table from him in the dismal interview room. With his rather inert solicitor alongside him, he ranted in his fractured English about illegal imprisonment, threatening to sue everyone from the Queen downwards. Tom Rickman sat slightly behind the two detective inspectors and stared intently at the prisoner. As soon as there was a break in Beran’s tirade, the sergeant pointed a large forefinger towards the man.

‘I remember your face; they called you “Jimmy” around the boozers!’ he boomed. ‘When I was a beat constable in Handsworth, I helped nick you one night for drunk and disorderly. You were one of Mickey Doyle’s gang of thugs.’

Brown-Beran scowled, but made no reply, as the sergeant turned to Hartnell.

‘It’s him right enough, boss. A real nasty bit of work, he was.’

The solicitor opened his mouth to protest, then decided to close it again. Now Trevor Hartnell began the proceedings, referring to some brief notes before him.

‘Brown — or whatever you want to call yourself — you’re in deep trouble! Known to have been a criminal associate of Mickey Doyle in Birmingham, you’re found living within sight of a possible murder scene. In a van that belonged to you, we’ve found human blood, of a rare group that matches the dead body — and its head was found in the same part of Birmingham as that which witnesses say it was displayed by Doyle.’

He paused to let this sink in. ‘Now we have reason to suspect that the murdered man was another one of the same mob that you ran with, known as “Yank”, who seems to have vanished from Birmingham at about the time you came here.’

The DI was massaging the truth a little, but nothing he had said was actually false, and the lawyer found no objection to offer.

‘You attempted to escape from police questioning, which doesn’t fit well with your protests of innocence, so before you dig yourself deeper into the shit, I suggest that you tell us what you know.’

Beran chewed hard on his lower lip, staring down again at his big hands clasped before him on the table.

‘I want speak with this lawyer,’ he said abruptly.

Trevor Hartnell agreed, hopeful that this heralded a change of attitude. The police went into the corridor for a smoke, leaving him alone with the rather ineffectual young man who was supposed to be advising him on his legal rights.

‘Think he’s going to cough, boss?’ asked Tom Rickman.

‘He’s obviously thinking of it, or he wouldn’t be trying to find out from his brief which is the best way to jump.’

Meirion was scornful. ‘He won’t get much help from that chap — he’s hardly the smartest egg in the nest!’

The consultation was certainly short, as a few moments later, the constable who was standing inside the door of the interview room poked his head out to call them back inside.

The podgy, bespectacled solicitor addressed them as they sat down again.

‘Mr Brown is willing to make certain facts known, on the understanding that he denies any part in the death of the man found in Borth Bog.’

The Aberystwyth DI answered him, being the person technically the custodian of Jaroslav Beran.

‘We’ll hear what he has to say, but he can’t qualify it in any way. Anything he tells us will go on the record, whether to his favour or otherwise.’

This was another way of saying there were no deals on offer, and he turned to the Czech.

‘Right, just tell us what you know about this business. The sergeant here will be writing down all you say.’

Tom Rickman put his notebook and pen on the table before him and the solicitor had a yellow legal pad at the ready as Beran grudgingly began his story.

‘OK, I did some jobs for Doyle when I lived in Birmingham. I knew some other guys there; one was the Yank, as we called him.’

‘What was his name?’ interrupted Hartnell. ‘Was he really an American?’

‘We knew him as Josh Andersen, though God knows if it was his real name. Said he was from New Jersey.’

‘A deserter from the US forces?’

Beran shook his head.

‘He was a sailor who jumped ship in Liverpool in ’forty-two. Said he wasn’t going risk being killed on another convoy trip. So he just melted into wartime England.’

‘And like you, he turned to crime, working for Doyle?’

Beran stared sourly at Hartnell.

‘Not much crime, no heavy stuff. For two years, he was collector for Doyle, going round for protection money, tart’s takings and the cash from his gaming clubs.’

‘So where did you fit into all this?’ demanded Meirion.

Jaroslav hesitated; this was where he was entering dangerous territory.

‘Just before end of war, Doyle was easing off on the violent stuff like armed robbery and raiding shops. He went more for the black-market rackets and stealing from big houses out in countryside. He sent me down here to run a front business, with furnitures and stuff, so as to have an extra outlet for what was stolen.’

‘Like your shop here in Aberystwyth?’ suggested Hartnell.

‘Yeah, before that, I was moving around, like in fairs and markets, to be harder to spot by you bloody police.’

His accent became more marked as he became agitated, and he broke off to fumble in his pocket for a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. When he had drawn down his first lungful of smoke, he continued at a rush.

‘After a while, must have been late ’forty-four, Josh appeared here and I had to take him as assistant. I don’ know why, but Doyle wanted him out of Birmingham. I think police were making it too hot for him over something to do with protection money, maybe some punter complained too hard. Anyway, he stayed with me for couple months, then one day vanished back to the big city.’

He glowered at Trevor Hartnell. ‘You must know about his troubles, if you bobbies were breathing down his neck.’

The DI only wished he did and made a mental note to urgently get the records searched for the activities of a Josh Andersen eleven years earlier.

‘What happened next?’ growled Meirion Thomas, only half-willing to believe what Beran was telling them.

The Czech picked a shred of tobacco from his tongue as he considered his answer. He was getting perilously near the point of no return.

‘I rented cottage and a barn ten miles away, where stolen stuffs were stashed. Doyle paid the rent and one of his guys came down now and then to bring me new heists and pick up the money I made by sales. I also arranged for them to buy black-market food from farms, and spot places to steal animals, maybe fifty miles around. I used the van for all that.’

‘You were Doyle’s agent, then?’ summarized Hartnell. ‘But we haven’t heard a word about any dead body yet, so get to the point!’

This made Beran angry. ‘Look, you want me to talk, so I talk! And I already done two stretches for dealing in stolen goods, so you got no reason to bring that up again! Anything else like black market is years ago, and you got no evidence, mister!’

The detectives were unimpressed by his outburst, though the lawyer moved himself sufficiently to hold up a warning hand to his client.

Trevor Hartnell continued. ‘What about this Josh Andersen? How did he come to be dead, eh?’

Jaroslav seemed to deflate and he sank back on to his chair, then crushed out his half-smoked cigarette on the edge of the scarred table.

‘I said he had gone back, but a month later, two guys from Handsworth came late one night to my house. They had old Mercedes, which they said they’d nicked from a car park in Dudley. In boot was a body, trussed up like chicken, but with no head. They didn’t say anything much, except Mickey Doyle ordered me to get rid of it real good. They just dumped it in my back garden, and said that if it ever turned up again, Doyle would have me killed. Then they drove off and left me with the bloody thing.’

In spite of his earlier scepticism, Meirion Thomas felt that there was a ring of truth in the Czech’s voice.

‘So what did you do then?’

Beran looked sideways at the solicitor, who turned his palms up in despair, then plunged on with his confession.

‘What could I do? The guys went away and left me. I heard later they torched the Merc miles away, there must have been a pick-up car there for them.’

‘Are you telling us you buried the body on your own?’ grated Meirion.

‘Sure I did, I had no choice! I dragged it further into the yard, covered it with sacks and kept the dog away. Next day, I went walking on the bog and worked out a route to a place that seemed OK. I did not want risk taking it far, in case I was stopped.’

‘So you used the van, did you?’ snapped Hartnell.

‘Sure I did! It was too far to carry it all the way. Next night was dark, no moon. I lifted it into back of van, drove half mile on road, then dragged it down through field to bog. Spent bloody two hours digging hole with shovel, dropped it in, filled up and went home.’

His hands were shaking now, as he played with his cheap lighter, made from a brass bullet casing.

‘And you expect us to believe that?’ barked Meirion.

Beran shrugged indifferently. ‘Take it or leave it. I got nothing else to tell you.’

‘You killed him, didn’t you?’ snapped Hartnell. ‘I’ll buy the part about you burying the body, but all that about the two men and the Mercedes is a fairy story.’

Jaroslav shook his head, like a bull confronting matadors.

‘Why I do that? I hardly knew the Yank, he was just a pair of hands sent down to me to get him out of the heat in Birmingham, so they said.’

‘When did you stop working for Doyle?’asked Trevor.

‘When I got nicked over some of his stuff from house robberies. Long time after this dead body shit, he didn’t want anyone once they’d been fingered by you police.’

The interview ground on, going back over the story for dates and places, though Beran was conveniently vague about details. Eventually the solicitor, who had been silent most of the time, declared that his client had had enough for one session and they broke up the interview.

Upstairs in the DI’s office, the three detectives were joined by Gwyn Parry and they reviewed what they had so far.

‘He seems determined not to tell us who actually strangled this Josh fellow and cut off his head,’ said Hartnell. ‘But his admissions are enough to charge him as an accessory to murder, as well as all the stuff about obstructing the coroner and illegal disposal of a body.’

‘Do we believe in these two mystery men from Birmingham?’ asked Meirion.

His sergeant pointed out that the head had been found a hundred miles away, so perhaps Beran’s claim to have been in Cardiganshire when the killing took place, possibly had some validity. ‘And we should be able to trace police and fire service records if a Merc was burned out between here and the Midlands around that time.’

They kicked the evidence around for a time, until Meirion decided he had better go and tell David John Jones what had taken place.

‘It’s up to the brass to decide what happens next — especially who runs this prosecution, us or your lot, Trevor?

Hartnell pondered this for a moment. ‘I’ll be ringing my boss in a minute, but I think it has to be a Birmingham case from here on. You’ve got an unlawful burial, but it looks as if the murder was in our patch.’

The local DI nodded his agreement. ‘I’m sure you’re right, and it’s not our problem. But who the hell strangled him? Beran seems to have been down here, so either the two hoods who brought the corpse killed him — or even Mickey Doyle himself.’

‘And until Spain signs an extradition treaty, we’ve not got a snowball’s chance in hell of finding out,’ said Trevor Hartnell with an air of finality.