Bernard Knight - Grounds for Appeal

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.

After the first few days of January had come and gone, it felt in Garth House as if the festive season had never been. A faint air of anticlimax hovered over the staff as they settled down to pick up their routines.

Sian’s microscope sections of the heart in the ‘road rage’ dispute had allowed Richard to confirm his previous suppositions. The thrombus in the coronary artery was seen to be at least several days’ old, certainly well before the incident with the truck. This fitted with the suggestive results of the TTC experiment that there was infarction of the heart muscle, tissue damage which had to be well in excess of the one-hour interval between the altercation on the road and the time of death. Having explained all this to the Hereford coroner, that worthy was able to placate the relatives sufficiently for them to abandon their intention to bring a legal action against the other driver.

Angela and Richard had two other matters coming up for their attention. In a few days, they would be going to the Royal Courts of Justice for the Millie Wilson Appeal — and soon after that, they were to investigate the intriguing case of the vintner’s Prodigal Son.

On the tenth of the month, they found themselves at Newport railway station, waiting for the Red Dragon express to Paddington. Jimmy had driven them down in the Humber, as they would be staying in London for at least one night, depending on how the case went.

When the train thundered in behind the famous Caerphilly Castle engine, they found their seats in a First Class carriage, booked by the ever-efficient Moira.

There were four other people in the compartment, so they were unable to talk shop. Richard was in one of his restless, expansive moods that Angela was coming to recognize. She thought he was like a big schoolboy, excited at a journey by train to ‘the big city’.