Grounds for Appeal

FOUR

After a hearty Welsh breakfast at seven o’clock, they said goodbye to the amiable Mrs Evans, and in their working clothes once more, set off in the Humber, which had been parked all night in the road outside. When they reached the scene, all the players from the previous day were there, with the addition of the deputy chief constable, who in such a small police force as Cardiganshire, only held the rank of superintendent. David John Jones was a tall, dark man with the deep-set eyes of an Iberian Celt and though he was perfectly civil to them, Richard had the feeling that he was rather suspicious of outsiders from Monmouthshire on his patch. However, when the pathologist spoke to him in his native language, he loosened up and informed Richard that if this turned out to be a suspicious death, Scotland Yard may have to be called in, as their minuscule CID was not manned or equipped to run a murder investigation. This was a standing arrangement made by the Home Office to assist smaller constabularies.

They moved across to the excavation, where some officers had removed the coverings. Underneath, the hole was still partly full of water, though as the body had already been in a waterlogged swamp for an unknown number of years, another night’s soaking should make no difference. The pump had been started and the level was dropping quickly. As they waited, Richard asked what facilities were available for him once they had got the body out of the marsh.

‘There’s a decent mortuary at Aberystwyth General Hospital,’ replied Meirion Thomas. ‘The whole place was rebuilt just before the outbreak of war. That’s where the coroner’s cases are sent.’

‘You’ve told the coroner, Meirion?’ demanded David Jones.

‘Yes, sir, last night. He said to keep him informed about what we find today.’

Soon the pump had sucked the water down to the level of the sump and the remains were once again exposed. Richard courteously invited Eva Boross to be first in the hole, as she had the most experience of digging artefacts from the ground.

‘Looks much the same as we left it, but some of the peat underneath has washed away while under the water,’ she reported. ‘Best plan is to clear all around now, then undercut the peat until we can slide the whole thing on to that door.’

It took an hour to carefully isolate the long rectangle of peat supporting the body, Priscilla and Richard taking turns to relieve Eva of the back-breaking task. Then a couple of PCs manoeuvred the door alongside and gently, the block of peat and its macabre cargo were slid across on to its firm support.

As the door was manhandled to the surface and laid on the large tarpaulin, the Deputy Chief stared at the body with a frown on his saturnine features. ‘It’s a very dark colour! D’you think he’s black?’

‘All those foreign bog bodies were like that,’ said the archaeologist. ‘It’s the tannin in the peat that does it.’

The detective sergeant was whispering something to his inspector and Meirion turned around to look. Up on the road, there was now a small crowd of onlookers and he saw one with a camera.

‘We’ve got an audience already! I’ll bet the Cambrian News has got wind of it by now.’

The DCC scowled. ‘Damned nuisance, they are! I’ll bet if you found a body in the middle of the Sahara, there’d be people popping up from behind rocks inside half an hour.’

‘I can’t examine him properly here, especially with those folks watching, even though they’re a good distance away,’ said Richard Pryor. ‘Better cover him up until we can move him.’

The edges of the tarpaulin were lifted up and folded over the remains, then secured with cord. Two brawny constables then carried it away like stretcher-bearers to the larger of the two police vans parked up on the road.

As soon as they had left, Richard stood with Priscilla and Eva Boross, looking down into the now-vacant hole in the peat.

‘Definitely no head, unless it’s still buried in the peat well away from the rest of the body,’ he said.

The archaeologist agreed. ‘To be on the safe side, I feel we should ask the police to clear the peat away for a few feet all around where the body was, even if it means making the hole a lot bigger. You never know what you might find.’

They collected their kit together and walked back to the cars, where, as David Jones had suspected, a young reporter from the local paper was with the dozen onlookers, ready with his camera and notebook. The detective inspector went over to him and had a few words, which seemed to satisfy him. Wellingtons came off again and Richard was glad that he had lined the floor of his car boot with old newspapers, which caught the worst of the mess.

They followed the police van back to Aberystwyth where its cargo was taken to the mortuary behind the hospital in North Road. The porter who acted as part-time mortuary assistant looked askance at the peat-stained bundle that was carried in to his clean post-mortem room, though at least it didn’t smell, like some of the drowned bodies belatedly recovered from the sea or the river.

Sergeant Parry, with that facility that policemen have for cadging from local institutions, took the three scientists off to the doctor’s dining room, where they were served with tea and sandwiches. Home-cured ham and fresh salmon were very welcome, especially at a time when the austerity of post-war rationing was only just disappearing.

By the time they got back to the mortuary, the porter and two policemen had unwrapped the body, and now the door lay on a slab, already shedding black peat on to the surrounding floor.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ apologized Richard, but the porter, a fat man with a shining bald head, had become philosophical about the debris. ‘Don’t worry, doctor, I’ll hose it all down when you’re finished.’

Richard took a long red-rubber apron from a hook on the wall and hung it from his neck by a chain, another chain hooking it around his waist. Priscilla gave him some rubber gloves from his case and stood by with their camera, to add their own record to those taken by the police photographer. Meirion Thomas, Gwyn Parry and Eva Boross formed the audience, plus a couple of policemen who stood with white enamel mugs at the back of the room, drinking tea made by the mortuary man.

‘Right, let’s get on with it,’ said Richard, advancing on the body. He had a bucket of water and a sponge and began by gently cleaning the back surface of the trunk. Wrinkled and almost black, the skin was leathery down to the lower part of the buttocks, where it frayed off to expose the bones of the thighs. The lower parts of the legs and feet were still embedded in peat and when he removed it, they virtually fell apart into a collection of loose bones, ligaments and tendons, all stained brownish yellow. At the other end, removal of more peat revealed the bare end of the spine at mid-neck level, with two loose vertebrae not connected to anything.

While more photographs were being taken, Eva asked if he thought it was male or female.

‘We keep calling it “him”,’ replied Richard. ‘It’s so distorted that it’s hard to tell yet, until we can turn him — or her — over.’

The piece of cord was hanging loose and Priscilla used a pair of forceps to pick up the end for a closer look.

‘That bit we had with the core sample must be a single strand of this — there are three, twisted in a loose spiral.’ The DI, true to his farming origins, said that it looked like binder twine, a hemp or sisal cord used to tie up bales of hay.

The archaeologist’s main concern was the date of the remains, though she had more or less given up hope of it being very ancient. ‘Anything to suggest its age?’ she asked hopefully.

Richard shook his head as he carried on digging away at surplus peat. ‘Nothing yet, but the problem is I don’t know how much being buried in an acidic bog full of tannin affects the rate of decay.’

‘How long would a body last in ordinary soil?’ asked Eva, who professionally had never had to deal with anything but ancient deaths.

‘Depends on many factors, like the type of soil, especially acidity, wetness and temperature,’ he replied, as he continued to ferret away at the encroaching peat. ‘Left on the surface, there’s often not much left after a year except bones, but animal predators like rats, foxes and insects are responsible for much of that. Buried, the corpse will last much longer, but again depending on whether or not it’s in a sound coffin.’

‘A couple of cases I saw when I was with the Met, still had cartilage on the joints and some tendons after a year,’ offered Priscilla.

‘Sure, but five years certainly sees off all the soft tissues, if they’re not buried. Doctor Boross, do you know what the old bog bodies were like internally after all that time?’

The archaeologist, virtually a chain smoker, tapped the ash from her latest Gold Flake into the big porcelain sink.

‘Quite good organ preservation in some, I recall. Even the stomach contents were identifiable, but some had very pliable bones, due to the acid water decalcifying them.’

Richard tapped the exposed thigh bone with a wide knife that he was using to dig out the peat. ‘These are exceptionally hard, I must say! So again that’s against our friend here being from the dawn of history.’

It was when he started sponging down the shoulders and upper arms that this speculation was abruptly confirmed. The arms were still tucked under the body, but on wiping the slimy coating from just below the right shoulder, Richard stopped and bent to peer more closely at the dark grey, wrinkled skin.

‘What the hell’s this? Priscilla, there’s a torch in that case, can you bring it, please.’

They all clustered round as she aimed the beam at where his finger was pointing. Very faintly, there were darker marks under the surface and when he smoothed out the wrinkles between a finger and thumb, they saw the blurred outlines of a tattoo.

‘I don’t think Batman was around in the Iron Age!’ he said, with a tinge of disappointment.

After their session in the mortuary, they adjourned to the DCC’s office in the old police building on the promenade. It was now late afternoon and Richard and Priscilla had a long journey ahead of them back to the Wye Valley, but they needed to take stock of what they had learned so far.

David John Jones sat behind his DI’s desk as they drank the inevitable cups of tea. The two from Tintern had been offered a meal in a local hotel, but as Richard decided that they would stop somewhere on the way home, they held their discussion straight away.

‘So we’ve got a murder on our hands,’ said the senior officer, with a sigh of resignation. ‘We’ll have to get the Yard in straight away. This is beyond us. I’ve only got one ranking CID officer for the whole of Cardiganshire — and we’ve already got a clutch of burglaries and two sheep-stealings to cope with.’

Richard nodded his understanding. ‘We’ll do all we can to help with the forensic pathology side, though of course, the Home Office lab in Cardiff must look at any physical evidence, like that cord that was used to strangle the fellow.’

The post-mortem had not been all that helpful, with such an incomplete and decayed body to work with, but there seemed little doubt that the ligature that had been wound twice around the neck was the cause of death. A length of similar cord had tied both wrists together in front of the body, even though the underlying skin and bones had disintegrated inside it.

‘First thing is, we need to know who the bugger was!’ said Meirion Thomas in his forthright manner. ‘No fingerprints, as he had no fingers left. All we’ve got so far is a flaming tattoo!’

‘What’s this Batman business?’ demanded the DCC, who was hardly up to date with modern trends.

‘Apparently he’s a character in Yankee comics and films, sir,’ said Gwyn Parry.

‘At least it can give us an earliest date for this chap,’ declared Richard. ‘Though how you discover when the Batman character was first published, I’ve no idea.’

Their earlier doubts of the sex of the body had been solved by the pathologist’s brief study of the pelvic bones, which were largely exposed in the collapsing corpse. The front of the cadaver was in a far worse state than the back, with hardly any skin left and all the organs degenerated, including the genitals. With no head, sexing it was down to an interpretation of the bones, but both Richard and Priscilla were in no doubt of its maleness — added to which was the fact that women rarely went in for tattoos.

‘Have we any idea of his height, doctor?’ asked the detective inspector.

‘Looks about average from his bones, but Doctor Chambers here is the real expert. No doubt she’ll need to take some accurate measurements of the leg bones when we get back to base.’ Privately, he knew he could have done it equally well himself, but he wanted to give Priscilla as big a role as possible.

Superintendent David Jones looked quizzically at his two CID staff.

‘Any outstanding missing persons in the last few years?’ he demanded.

‘Problem is, sir, we don’t know how many years are involved,’ replied Meirion. ‘No one comes to mind from this part of the county, but I’ll have to go through the records.’

‘And you can’t even hazard a guess as to the time this fellow died, doctor?’ persisted the deputy chief.

Richard shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t want to mislead you by picking a figure out of the air. I’m sure he’s been in that bog more than a few years — but it could be ten or even twenty, perhaps much more.’

He turned to Eva Boross, who had the inevitable cigarette in her fingers. ‘Any possibility of the depth it was buried in the ground being helpful — or something to do with the vegetation at that depth?’

The Hungarian also shook her head despondently. ‘I doubt it, but it might be worth me asking the botany people at the university. The body could never have sunk that deep from the surface in a few years, so it must have either been put into a hole dug in the peat — or there may have been a pool there then. The bog changes all the time, according to rainfall and changes in underground water.’

They talked around the apparently insoluble problems for a little longer, then the meeting broke up.

‘I’ll have to go and tell the Chief Constable what’s happening,’ muttered David Jones. ‘I’ve no doubt he’ll contact Scotland Yard tomorrow. Meirion, you can let the coroner know what’s going on.’

With mutual thanks and promises to keep closely in touch, Richard and Priscilla made their escape, saying goodbye to the archaeologist, with whom Priscilla already seemed to have made firm friends. It was beginning to get dusk as they drove up into the hills on their way home across Mid-Wales, with some of the unknown body’s bones wrapped in newspaper in a margarine box in the boot.

‘I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,’ complained Richard. ‘Sandwiches and endless cups of police tea are fine in their way, but I could do with a square meal.’

They found a hotel in Builth Wells able to satisfy their pangs of hunger. It was an old-fashioned hostelry in the main street, a gloomy place with everything varnished a dark brown, but it had a dining room and quite an extensive menu. The food turned out to be surprisingly good, even though they seemed to be the only patrons that evening. Once again, Priscilla marvelled at the quality and choice on offer, considering that wartime food rationing had only ended the previous year. Over oxtail soup, roast beef and apple tart with fresh cream, they went over the events of the past thirty-six hours.

‘I’ve really enjoyed it, Richard, thanks so much for letting me come,’ enthused Priscilla. ‘I thought mysterious strangled and beheaded bodies were only found in London and the big cities, not in a little place out in the sticks like Borth! What on earth can it be all about?’

Richard grinned at her. ‘You English people, you think you have a monopoly on violent crime! There’s as much intrigue and vendettas in rural areas as in any city, we’re just better at concealing it.’

They went into the adjacent lounge for coffee and Richard ordered a couple of brandies to go with it.

‘So what happens next?’ asked the auburn-haired biologist. ‘There seems little more we can do to help identify this fellow.’

‘We urgently need the head, though God knows what state it would be in. At least we had a bit of bog tanning to preserve the trunk. We’d not have seen that tattoo but for that.’

‘There’s no doubt about him being strangled, I suppose?’

Richard warmed the brandy glass in his hand. ‘There was that double ligature tied in a knot and what was left of the larynx had a crack through the cricoid cartilage. Of course, he might have been shot through the head as well, but as we haven’t got it, we can’t tell!’

‘And the poor chap’s hands were tied together,’ said Priscilla, with a shudder. ‘A nasty, sadistic sort of case.’

‘More like some gangland killing,’ agreed Richard. ‘But there are not many gangsters in sleepy Cardiganshire.’

Eventually, they reluctantly dragged themselves away from the fire in the lounge and Richard went to find the landlord to settle the bill. Priscilla offered to pay her share, but Richard waved it aside.

‘Like last night at Mrs Evans’, we can legitimately charge it to the partnership as expenses. The police or the coroner will foot the bill eventually.’

Before they left, Richard used the coin telephone in the hotel corridor to ring Garth House. When he pressed Button A, he was strangely happy to hear Angela’s calm tones, reassuring him that all was well and that she was looking forward to seeing them arrive home.

‘It’s not a bog body, but it’s a murder, though heaven knows when it happened,’ he told her. ‘We’ll tell you all about it in about an hour and a half.’

The rest of the journey seemed to take longer than that, as he peered down the tunnel cut by the headlights through the dark countryside. After her good meal and a brandy, Priscilla soon dozed off and only woke when the Humber revved up the driveway to the house. Angela had tea and biscuits ready for them and they sat in her lounge for a while, giving her a detailed account of their activities in Cardiganshire.

‘So you’ve no idea who he was or when he was killed?’ she asked at the end.

Priscilla raised her hands in mock despair. ‘Not a clue, Angela! At least the only one is that he had this Batman tattoo. Have you any idea when that idiotic business began?’

The other woman shook her head. ‘I’ve just about heard of it. Isn’t it an American comic strip or something? Perhaps the dead man was a Yank?’

‘Well, that’s not our problem,’ said Richard, yawning mightily. ‘Let the police follow it up — probably your pals from Scotland Yard.’

He immediately felt that he might have said the wrong thing, for Angela was still bitter about the defection of her former fiance in favour of another woman — and he was a detective superintendent from that same famous institution. However, she made no sign that it had registered, though he knew that Angela was adept at concealing her feelings.

‘Time for bed, folks,’ suggested Priscilla and soon Richard drove her the short distance to Tintern Parva, where she had comfortable lodgings in a bed and breakfast establishment used mostly by summer walkers and holidaymakers.

Angela waited up until he returned, then they both made for the stairs. ‘Did you enjoy your night away with our glamour girl, Richard?’ she said without a trace of sarcasm. ‘I think Moira was afraid that you’d be led off the path of righteousness!’

He gave her one of his famous grins. ‘Yes, we had a romantic drink in the local pub and then a passionate meat and two veg in Mrs Evans’ den of sin!’

‘No, somehow I don’t see you as a lecherous seducer, Richard,’ she said, as she left him at the upper landing.

As he went towards his own room, he wondered if he detected a hint of disappointment in her voice.