Bernard Knight - Grounds for Appeal

The message about the case conference with leading counsel also carried the news that the Appeal had been listed for early January, so Richard had resolved to go soon to the libraries of the medical schools in Bristol and Cardiff. He wanted to check that he had read everything available about the estimation of the time of death, so that he could not be wrong-footed if it came to a contest in court. He had just read an important article that had been published earlier in the year, originating from Ceylon, but wanted to make sure that nothing even more recent had slipped past his notice. Richard knew that Doctor Angus Mackintyre was one of the dogmatic old school of ‘It is so, because I say so’ philosophy, but he did not want the opposition to find even one chink in his own argument. Even if not relevant to the issue, he knew that once an expert witness is shown to have a weakness, it can be used to denigrate the rest of his evidence.

However, he was distracted a little when, the next day, he was waylaid by Jimmy in the backyard, who told him that his crony who sometimes worked in the Glamorgan vineyard had spoken to his boss there about Richard’s interest in establishing a similar project. The owner, Mr Louis Dumas, said that he would be happy to show Doctor Pryor around his estate and Jimmy had brought a crumpled piece of paper with a telephone number and an invitation to arrange a meeting. Richard was delighted, as his volatile imagination saw him soon being admitted into the arcane brotherhood of vintners. He phoned that evening and made an appointment to go down to visit Monsieur Dumas on Saturday of the following week — he already mentally applied the French title to him, after hearing the slight but definite Gallic accent over the telephone. When he told Angela later, she could not resist teasing him in her quiet way.

‘Monsieur Dumas, no less! I suppose we’ll end up having to call you the Count of Monte Cristo!’

She was not to know that this new contact was to lead to something more complicated than just growing grapes.

After the ACC in Birmingham had spoken to David Jones and agreed to launch an investigation into the missing head, he discussed it with his Head of CID, a chief superintendent, who next day called the DCI for the Division in which Winson Green and Handsworth were situated. The order trickled down this chain of command until it reached those officers who would actually have to do the work.

A copy of the slim file on the headless body arrived from Aberystwyth and eventually landed on the desk of a harassed inspector at the police station in Foundry Road.

Trevor Hartnell was an experienced detective, but had only been in this division for about three years and had never heard of this elusive head. However, the name Micky Doyle was well known to him as one of the local gangsters who was slippery enough never to have been successfully prosecuted.

Hartnell called his sergeant and four detective constables into his cubicle in the dreary CID room and explained the situation to them.

‘The brass in headquarters want us either to find this bloody cranium or prove it’s all a fairy story. The best lead we’ve got is what this snout in Handsworth said, about it being in the old Barley Mow.’

His sergeant, a burly bruiser named Tom Rickman, stroked the jowls under his chin.

‘That’s long gone, for a start. The Co-op have built a shop on it now.’

‘Have you ever heard of this yarn, Tom?’ asked the DI.

Rickman was dismissive. ‘Yeah, but it’s just a bit of the daft gossip that gets dredged up now and then, when folks have a few too many pints.’

One of the younger DCs had been scanning a copy of the file, updated with local information. ‘That grass over in Handsworth mentioned the landlord of that pub, guv’nor. That seems fairly definite, doesn’t it?’

The inspector nodded.

‘That’s what you lot have got to follow up. Find this landlord, if he’s still around. Ask anyone you can think of, if they’ve any knowledge of this whole business. The chief super is keen to get this sorted, as he says he’s got the ACC on his back.’

After a few more minutes discussing shift rotas and other bits of housekeeping, the team broke up and went their various ways, Tom Rickman heading straight for the place where the demolished pub had once stood.

His tall, broad figure strode along the depressing streets of the area, where rows of shabby red-brick houses were interspersed with small workshops and warehouses. Many of the faces he passed were West Indian, who were coming in increasing numbers to work in the factories.

A few Asians were beginning to appear as well and Rickman, born and bred in Birmingham, wondered what it would be like here in thirty years’ time.

He strode on, his creased fawn raincoat belted tightly around his beer belly, a brown trilby pulled down to his prominent ears. On a corner just ahead, he saw the magic word ‘Co-op’ in large letters above the door of a shop. On each side, running up for fifty yards into each side street, were some new utilitarian maisonettes, the whole development built on ground once occupied by the old public house.

The detective sergeant stood on the opposite corner for a few moments, looking across as if he was looking into the past when the Barley Mow was still there. He remembered it as it was five years earlier, though by then it was well past its prime. He recalled its windows being boarded up before the bulldozers came to flatten it, together with an acre of adjacent terraced houses, making way for this cheap and nasty new development. No doubt a few brown envelopes had changed hands to ease planning permission, he thought cynically.

Crossing the road, narrowly being missed by an almost silent electric milk-float that came around the corner, he went into the shop, which was one of the new breed of self-service places that were springing up. A Caribbean girl was stacking bottles of Camp Coffee on a shelf and he asked her where he could find the manager. She pointed to a raised cubicle with glass windows looking down on the single till, where another girl was checking items produced from a wire basket by a customer.

Rickman went up a couple of steps and after tapping perfunctorily on the door he went in to find a middle-aged man in a brown warehouse coat peering suspiciously down at the transaction at the till down below.

‘Got to keep an eye on them,’ he muttered obscurely, as he turned to meet the visitor. The sergeant identified himself, but made no effort to show his warrant card, his usual practice unless challenged.

‘Have you been here since this place opened, sir?’ he asked. Like many people questioned by a policeman, the manager looked anxious, wondering which of his minor indiscretions was being probed. However, after he had admitted to being there since the place opened two years earlier, he was relieved to hear that the sergeant’s interest was in the previous building.

‘I remember the Barley Mow well,’ he admitted. ‘A damned rough place. I never drank there, even though I’ve lived within half a mile of it all my life. What’s all this about, Officer?’

‘Just routine enquiries, sir. Tell me, what happened to the cellars of the old pub? Are they still under the shop?’

The man shook his bald head. ‘No, they filled them in with all the rubble they had from knocking it down. This is the only floor we’ve got, as there’s a new storeroom built on behind.’

That’s one line of enquiry knocked on the head, thought Rickman, recalling the mention of the elusive head being kept in the cellar. ‘What about the last landlord, is he still around — or even still alive?’ he asked.

This time, the manager’s head wagged up and down.

‘Olly Franklin? The brewery gave him another tenancy when he lost this one. I don’t know where he went. It’s a wonder he got another pub, though.’