Bernard Knight - Grounds for Appeal

‘Well, I think we’ve more than earned a gin and tonic and a decent lunch somewhere!’ said Richard firmly, taking his partner’s arm as they made their way back to the black Humber.

Markby Road in Winson Green was one in a series of long parallel streets lined with terraced houses, branching off Handsworth New Road like ribs from a spine. They were tidy dwellings, most with small front bay windows and were a cut above many of the streets in less attractive parts of the area.

At ten o’clock that morning, the two detectives drove their grey Standard Vanguard slowly down the street, looking at the numbers on the doors. They found No. 183 almost at the end, a slightly shabbier house, but otherwise indistinguishable from scores of others. Sergeant Rickman had to park outside the house next door, as there was an old green van in front of their destination. It was a large Bedford of pre-war vintage, with ‘Franklin’s Fish and Chips’ painted on the side and a tin chimney poking from the roof.

‘Looks as if he’s swapped inn-keeping to become a chippie,’ grunted DI Hartnell, as they went through a rusted gate into the small concreted area in front of the door. There was no bell or knocker, so Rickman rapped on the glass pane with the edge of a half-crown coin.

After a delay, a large shadow appeared inside and a disgruntled face appeared in the gap when the door was opened a bare six inches. Long experience told the sergeant that a direct approach was best in these circumstances and he thrust his warrant card towards the beefy, red features.

‘Oliver Franklin?’ he said briskly. ‘Police, we’d like a word with you.’

The door opened a little wider, revealing a very large, pot-bellied man dressed in baggy trousers and a zip-fronted corduroy lumberjacket. He had a round, flabby face with sagging pouches under his watery eyes and a bulbous red nose. His coarse cheeks had the scars of old acne and Hartnell thought that he had rarely seen such an unattractive man.

Franklin glared at the officers with undisguised dislike.

‘Bloody rozzers, is it? Look, if it’s about the van out there, I sent for the tax disc last week, but bugger all’s come back yet.’

The sergeant put a large hand on the door and pushed it further open. ‘Nothing to do with your licence — not yet, anyway.’ There was a hint of a threat in his words.

The detective inspector spoke again. ‘We’d better come in, sir, unless you’d like to answer some questions on your doorstep.’

‘Or down at the police station,’ added Rickman, menacingly.

Olly Franklin got the message that these particular coppers were not ones to be messed with and opened the door wider.

‘Come on then,’ he growled grudgingly and shuffled back down the passage, his swollen feet encased in plaid slippers, the backs trodden flat by his heels. They squeezed past an old-fashioned bicycle propped against the stairs and walked down the worn linoleum to the kitchen at the end of the passage. Franklin went to stand with his back to a blackleaded fireplace, in which a small pile of coal was burning with more smoke than heat.

‘What’s all this about, then?’ he demanded, standing with his brawny arms folded defiantly across his chest.

Hartnell took his time in answering, looking around first at the gloomy kitchen lit by a grimy window that looked out on to a brick wall. The room had a table and chairs, the former carrying a couple of used teacups and a half-full bottle of milk, together with several newspapers opened at the racing pages. There was another door in the corner leading into a scullery, from which came an intermittent chopping noise.

‘Who’s that in there?’ he asked, being cautious about who might overhear their conversation.

‘Only the missus, cutting spuds for today’s frying,’ grunted Franklin. ‘I hope you ain’t going to keep me long, I got a living to make!’

‘You don’t make it now from being a licensee, I hear,’ said the sergeant. ‘Fish and chips pays better, does it?’

‘Does it hell!’ snarled Olly, his face suffusing with anger. ‘One pub knocked down from under me, then the bloody brewery fired me from the other, thanks to you lot who objected to the renewal of my tenancy.’

‘That’s partly what we’ve come about, your career in the local pubs,’ said the detective inspector.

‘What the hell for, that was years ago? Water under the bridge!’ snapped Franklin.

Hartnell decided to chance his arm a little. ‘We’ve been hearing that you were a bit too pally with Mickey Doyle,’ he said. ‘There’s a real villain for you!’

Olly’s hooded eyes flicked from one to the other. ‘Mickey Doyle? What the hell’s he got to do with anything? Haven’t seen him in years, honest.’

His denial sounded genuine to the detectives, but Hartnell persisted.

‘So you say, Olly. But we want to know about the famous head you used to keep for him.’ Again he was making a guess, but it seemed to strike home, given the confused flush that spread over Olly’s unlovely features.

‘What head would that be?’ he growled unconvincingly. ‘I don’t know nothing about no head!’

‘The head you used to keep in the cellar of the old Barley Mow,’ snapped Tom Rickman. ‘Did you take it with you to the other pub when you moved?’

‘I dunno what you’re talking about,’ replied Franklin, but the slight quaver in his voice and the way his piggy eyes flicked from one officer to the other gave the lie to his denial.

‘Listen, we know you had a head pickled in a bucket,’ rasped the DI. ‘Whose was it — and where is it now, eh?’

‘How the ’ell would I know who it belonged to? And anyway, it weren’t in a bucket.’ The former publican was not over-endowed with intelligence and his reply caused the two officers to grin at each other in triumph.

As Franklin slumped on to one of the hard chairs, a woman suddenly appeared at the door from the scullery.

‘Best tell them, Olly! That bloody thing has plagued us for years.’ His wife was a hard-faced woman with straggling grey hair falling about her shoulders. She wore a faded wraparound pinafore and her thick legs ended in a pair of man’s boots. In one hand she carried a wicked-looking knife and in the other, a large King Edward potato.

‘Tell us what, missus?’ demanded the sergeant, seizing the moment.

‘About that ’orrible thing in the shed out the back,’ she grated. ‘I told him, he should have got rid of it down the council dump years ago.’

Trevor Hartnell stepped towards Franklin and grabbed him by the arm. ‘Come on, Olly, show us where it is.’

Muttering under his breath and giving his wife a poisonous glare as he passed her, the man led the way through the scullery, the floor piled with pans full of raw chipped potatoes. The back door opened into a small yard cluttered with junk, where a heap of coal lay next to a dog kennel, in which a grubby Alsatian was chained. The houses were all back to back, with no lane separating them from an identical street beyond. A dilapidated shed stood against the dividing wall, with a rusted car engine leaning against its side.

With leaden feet, Olly took them to its door and went in first, throwing an empty potato sack with what he hoped was a nonchalant gesture over a pile of new-looking cartons of Gold Flake cigarettes which lay on a workbench. The rest of the space was filled with a chaotic collection of tools, discarded domestic items and assorted junk.

‘Go on, show them, Olly!’ shouted his wife, waving her knife dangerously as she stood behind the policemen, as they stood in the doorway.

Reluctantly, he pulled aside a broken Ewbank carpet-sweeper, a gas-mask case and an ARP steel helmet.