Army during the first part of the war, but he was invalided out in ’forty-two, on account of being accidentally shot in the foot.’
‘Did it himself, I’ll bet,’ grunted the DCC. ‘That’s an old dodge. But someone must know where the damned man is?’
‘He’s certainly not around here. That farmer who has his old van thought he had moved to Bow Street, but there’s no mention of him being there in the county records. I’m waiting to have a call back from someone in the Parole Board in Swansea. They must surely have kept tabs on him, or he’d be back behind bars by now.’
When he went back to his own cubbyhole of an office, there was indeed a call from Swansea, with interesting information about the missing man.
‘He changed his name, that’s why you can’t find him,’ said a man identifying himself as Beran’s probation officer.
‘Can an ex-con do that?’ demanded the DI.
‘Yes, he can these days. He claimed that his foreign name was a hindrance to him getting a job and like many of his Czech and Polish ex-forces friends, he wanted an English-sounding name. As long as we could still keep track of him, we had no reason to object, so now he’s officially called James Brown. We’ve got an address for him, it’s Gelli Derwen, Llancynfelyn, near Borth.’
The detective inspector almost fell off his chair with astonishment. Llancynfelyn was within bowshot of the part of Borth Bog where the body had been buried. In fact, it was there that the police vehicles had parked when they went to dig it up.
He hurried back to David Jones’ room with the news.
‘This fellow has to be involved, somehow! It’s far too much of a coincidence that the tattooed bloke drove Beran’s van years ago in some crooked scheme involving stolen goods from houses robbed by Midland gangsters.’
The DCC, usually a placid man more concerned with staff rosters and overtime claims, became almost animated.
‘You’re right, bach! But why the hell would he go back to live on the edge of the bog?’
‘Morbid interest or a guilty conscience?’ suggested Meirion. ‘So what do we do now? Bring in Birmingham — or even the Met?’
David Jones scowled. ‘Nothing those London blokes can do that the Midlands and ourselves can’t. Best tell Birmingham straight away — and you’d better get the forensic people to go over that van you told me about.’
Once again, Meirion beat a retreat downstairs, where he first phoned the liaison officer at the Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory in Llanishen, on the outskirts of Cardiff. They already knew about the case, as they had dealt with some of the material from the bog exhumation, but Meirion explained the new developments and the DCI who acted as a go-between between police forces and the lab, promised to come up next day with one of the scientific officers, to have a preliminary look at the old van.
The next call was to Trevor Hartnell in Winson Green, who was still nominally the Investigating Officer in the death of the tattooed man. He was delighted to hear of the progress made in Aberystwyth and wanted to be in on any interview with Jaroslav Beran, presumably now to be known as ‘James Brown’.
‘At least it’s less of a mouthful — and we can call him Jimmy,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ll talk to my DCI and probably the chief super first, but I’ll have to come down there. Can’t get there until tonight, I’m afraid.’
Meirion could see a risk of his Christmas going down the pan, but there was nothing new in that for a policeman.
‘No problem, he’s been here for years, so another day won’t matter. He’s hardly likely to do a runner after all this time.’
That same Tuesday afternoon, a violent altercation took place at the side of the main A49 road between Hereford and Leominster, a few miles north of the city.
An elegant two-tone Alvis saloon was pulled up close behind a large green Post Office Telephones van which had extending ladders secured to the near side.
The driver of the GPO vehicle descended from his cab and stomped angrily back to the car, where the driver had wound down his window, ready to engage in a shouting match.
‘What d’you mean by blowing your bloody horn at me all the time?’ snarled the man from the van, a large, pugnacious fellow dressed in dungarees.
The car driver, a portly man in his fifties, glared red-faced up at him. ‘Because you cut me up back there, pulled right across in front of me. I want to see if you’ve scratched my offside wing!’
The van man put his hands on the roof of the Alvis and bent down so that his face was almost in the window opening.
‘Don’t be damned silly, mister. I had to pull in because of oncoming traffic, but I didn’t come within feet of you!’
Another higher-pitched voice came from inside the car, where a woman was sitting in the passenger seat.
‘Oh yes, you did! I’m sure I heard a scraping noise as you passed!’
The car driver pulled at his inside door handle and tried to open it against the bulk of the GPO man.
‘Get out of the way, I want to see if there’s any damage,’ he snapped, his fleshy face now suffused with angry indignation. He struggled out and pushed past the bigger man, who was at least a dozen years younger, and half a foot taller. Bending down near the front of the sweeping front wing, he stared at it, then ran a hand over the lower offside edge.
‘Yes, I thought so!’ he shrieked. ‘Those are new scratches. Now the whole wing will have to be resprayed!’
It was the van driver’s turn to push him side, as he bent to make his own inspection.
‘I didn’t do those. They must have been there already. There’s none of my green paint in them. I told you, I didn’t come near your damned car!’
‘You must have!’ screeched the Alvis driver. ‘I’m going to have a look at your nearside.’ He padded away between the vehicles to the grass verge and scanned the side of the van. With a howl of triumph, he pointed to the skirt of the rear part of the body, where low down behind the rear wheel, the green panelling had a comb-like series of grey lines. ‘I told you so! You did scrape across my front. Those are the same colour grey as my paintwork!’
The van driver ran a perfunctory hand across the offending area of metal.
‘Get away with you! Those were there before. You’re just a bloody troublemaker. I’m off, can’t waste time with the likes of you.’
Without further ado, he walked round the front of the green van and opened the driver’s door. Almost gibbering with righteous anger, the tubby Alvis-owner hurried around him and, reaching into the cab, snatched the ignition keys from the dashboard.
‘You’re not going until we settle this!’ he said quaveringly, holding the bunch of keys defiantly behind his back.
‘Give me those flaming keys, blast you!’ roared the other man, who was not used to being crossed by posh little men who criticized his driving skills. He advanced on his antagonist, who made the mistake of throwing the keys into the winter undergrowth of the verge, where they vanished into a tangle of brittle stems and briars.
‘You can look for them once you’ve admitted being in the wrong and given me your name and address,’ retorted the car owner, his voice almost squeaking with tremulous emotion.
With a howl of rage, the GPO driver gave him a push in the chest, which sent him staggering back against the gleaming radiator of the Alvis. He lost his balance and slid down to sit momentarily on the chrome bumper, then slowly subsided on to the road surface, where he toppled over and lay still.
At this, his wife erupted from the front of the car, followed by another woman who had been sitting in the rear seat. They crouched over the fallen man, whose face was now pale, with sweat beading his forehead, in marked contrast to the purple enragement of a few moments earlier.
‘You’ve killed him!’ screamed his wife. ‘Get an ambulance!’
EIGHTEEN
