Bernard Knight - Grounds for Appeal

‘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.