Having lived and worked in Singapore for almost a decade, such a bloodthirsty situation was not all that strange to Richard, as the antics of the underworld Chinese and the Triad wars were more than capable of such excesses. He thanked Meirion for ringing and said that presumably this was pretty much the end of the matter, as far as they were concerned.
‘What’s left of the body is going back to Birmingham, so I suppose you’ll be closing down your end of the investigation?’ he suggested.
‘Nothing more we can do — in fact, there was virtually nothing we could do before, as we’ve not had a whisper of information this end,’ said the DI. ‘At least the Yard isn’t coming back here. I doubt a big force like B’rum will need them, either.’
Richard was glad to hear that, for he didn’t want Angela upset by the unexpected arrival of Paul Vickers, as had happened some months ago.
After he had told Meirion about Doctor Chambers’ good fortune in getting a job in Aberystwyth — perhaps the one good thing to come out of the bog body discovery — he wished him well with his sheep-rustling investigations and rung off. Almost immediately, it rang again, Moira having left it switched through from her office.
This time, rather to Richard’s surprise, it was Louis Dumas, from the Vale of Glamorgan. After a few conventional greetings, the vineyard owner rather diffidently wondered whether he could call to see the doctor.
‘I’d be very interested to see the ground you are using and to look at that new vine stock you said you had recently planted,’ he said. ‘But I must admit that I have another reason for wishing to meet you again.’
He cleared his throat nervously. ‘I have a private, family matter which concerns me and after hearing what kind of investigations you and your associates are involved in, I wondered if I might have your advice. It is possible that I might need your professional services.’
Richard was intrigued and made encouraging noises, hoping to hear the nature of Monsieur Dumas’s problem.
However, the Frenchman was rather reticent. ‘It is difficult to explain over the telephone, doctor. Would it be at all possible for me to come up to see you, perhaps this weekend, if you are not going away?’
Richard, conscious of the kindness and hospitality they had shown him at St Mary Church, readily agreed and they arranged that Louis would call at Garth House on the coming Saturday afternoon, two days away.
Richard reported all this to Angela and she was as intrigued as he about the nature of Dumas’s problem.
‘Either he’s being sued for fathering an illegitimate child and wants a paternity test — or he wants his wine analysed to see how much alcohol is in it,’ she suggested, with a rare show of facetiousness that she might have caught from Richard.
Her partner shook his head solemnly. ‘No, I reckon he’s murdered someone, buried him under his vines and wants to know how he can dispose of the body!’
If they had but known it, something near the truth was in one of those light-hearted suggestions.
The Assistant Commissioner (Crime) of Birmingham City Police had pulled out all the necessary stops when, after discussions with other senior officers, he had considered the news delivered by the CID from Winson Green. He instructed his Detective Chief Superintendent to use whatever resources were needed to follow up this bizarre homicide and a number of Headquarters staff were immediately set to research the background of the wartime gangs and Michael Doyle in particular. Some records from wartime had been destroyed in the blitzes and others seem to have vanished, but there was enough information to put together an overview of the situation ten to twelve years ago, added to by personal recollections of some older officers who had been around at the time. Due to retirements and transfer to other divisions or even other forces, these were not numerous, but overall, when the Head of CID had a meeting with a few divisional detectives later that day, they had a general picture of the villainy that had abounded a decade earlier. Trevor Hartnell was one of those present and though only an inspector, his central position in the case so far caused the others to defer to his more immediate knowledge.
‘Do you reckon that this chap Blair has anything else to tell us?’ asked the chief.
‘Yes, he’s holding out on something, sir,’ said Hartnell.
‘But probably he’s trying to distance himself from having been one of Doyle’s outfit. I don’t think he knows who the dead man was or what happened to him. He says it was before his time and I suspect he’s telling the truth there.’
‘No chance of getting Doyle back, I suppose?’ asked one of the DCIs from an adjacent division.
The chief superintendent shook his large head. ‘Not a hope! We’ve been down that route before and it’s a dead end. No extradition with Spain, that’s why all these damned crooks make a beeline for it.’
‘What was it that sent him scooting down there?’ asked another chief inspector, who was relatively new to the city.
‘It had been building up; we were gunning for him,’ said the chief. ‘The final thing was when one of his men decided to save his own skin by squealing about a series of big house robberies in Worcestershire and the Welsh border. For the first time, we had a chance to hang them on Doyle, but he got wind of it and scarpered to Malaga.’
The DCI scratched his chin thoughtfully.
‘He operated down in Wales as well? Any possible connection with the body being found down there?’
The Chief was dubious. ‘A possibility, I suppose. But the crooks from our fair city have always had long arms and the big houses and sparse population down there have always been a happy hunting ground for them. Burglary was the main occupation, though in the days of food shortages, they fed their black-market rackets with a lot of rustled sheep and even cattle from Mid-Wales.’
The discussion went on for a time, but no definite plan of action was drawn up, apart from the exhortation to find and grill as many former members of Doyle’s nefarious outfit as possible. In the meanwhile, the ACC decided on issuing a press release which would give all the details they had, including the Batman tattoo, with the hope that someone in or around the huge city might turn in some information that would help identify their mysterious corpse.
In expectation of the visit of the Dumas pair on Saturday, Moira had made a jam-and-cream sponge for them, one of her specialities. She was an excellent cook, mainly because she enjoyed the kitchen so much. Richard and Angela had talked about her talents many times, deciding that her late husband must have been a lucky man for the short time he was married to Moira, before the tragic accident.
Their visitors arrived on time, Louis driving an MK VII Jaguar, which confirmed Richard’s conviction that his income was derived from far more than the profit from a small vineyard. Angela entertained Emily Dumas in her pleasant lounge overlooking the valley, while Richard took her husband on a tour of his ‘estate’ to proudly show off his two rows of recently-planted vines. While Louis Dumas politely admired them and commented on the excellent south-east-facing site, the two women chatted quietly, avoiding the mysterious subject which had brought them to Garth House that day. Angela found her companion a gentle and charming woman, but as Richard had sensed, she felt that there was an underlying sadness in the French woman.
When the two men returned from the hillside, Richard’s head full of wise advice on the arcane mysteries of viniculture, Angela went off to make tea and returned with a trolley complete with their best — and only — tea service, of Noritake china brought back from Singapore by Richard. Sandwiches were made with local salmon from the Wye, covertly produced by Jimmy with a meaningful wink, followed by Moira’s classic sponge.
When the ritual hospitality had been completed, with every sign of genuine appreciation on the part of the pair from St Mary Church, Angela stood up to push the tea trolley towards the door.
‘If you have something confidential to discuss with Richard, perhaps I should leave you in peace?’ she offered. Immediately, Louis jumped to his feet and raised his hands in a Gallic gesture.
‘No, please stay, Doctor Bray!’ he pleaded. ‘From what I understand of your expertise here, you may well be able to advise and perhaps assist.’
Quite happy to hear what all this was about, Angela abandoned her trolley and sat down again in one of the armchairs, the two visitors occupying the settee, with Richard in the remaining part of his late aunt’s three-piece suite. Louis sat forward, his hands clasped between his knees as he broached the sensitive reason for his visit.
‘I am afraid we have a family problem. It goes back a long way — in fact, about twenty-five years!’
His story was quite long and Angela found it very sad, certainly explaining the unhappiness that both Richard and she had sensed in the pair opposite.
