solution.
That same Wednesday was proving a busy one for the usually placid Aberystwyth CID. Trevor Hartnell had arrived following a very early start from Birmingham and, after a late breakfast in the canteen, was going off with Meirion Thomas to seek the elusive Jaroslav Beran, now officially known as James Brown.
The local sergeant, Gwyn Parry, was detailed to accompany the pair that had arrived from the forensic laboratory in Cardiff to look at the old van in Comins Coch.
He sat in the front of their Morris Oxford estate, the rear luggage space filled with the paraphernalia needed at a scene of crime. When he piloted them to Ty Canol farm and led them into the weedy wilderness behind the cowsheds, the two men from Cardiff looked with distaste at the rusting van filled with mouldering agricultural devices.
‘What are we supposed to be doing with this?’ asked Larry McCoughlin, the liaison officer. ‘It’s full of junk.’
‘There’s a faint possibility it was used to move a dead body, maybe around ten years ago,’ explained Parry. ‘Can you find bloodstains after all this time?’
‘Depends on where they are,’ replied Philip Rees, the biologist. ‘Not much chance if they were exposed to the weather for all that time, but if some has seeped into protected cracks, we may get lucky.’
He was just going to ask if they were supposed to shift hundredweights of stakes and fencing wire, when the sound of a police Land Rover was heard coming into the yard and two uniformed constables appeared.
‘I thought that might be a problem,’ said the detective sergeant. ‘So I’ve organized some muscle for you.’
The back of the Ford van was soon cleared and the floor became visible, albeit cracked, dirty and covered with an assortment of debris.
‘Made of nine-ply board, that!’ growled Myrddin Evans. The farmer had come to watch the desecration of his vehicle and his scowl deepened as Philip Rees levered up the rotting floor with a case-opener.
‘I’ll be putting a claim for compensation, mind!’ he threatened. ‘Damaging my property like this.’
Gwyn Parry grinned at him. ‘You do that, Myrddin. About five bob should cover it!’
With McCoughlin holding the floor away from the battered side panels and the rusted bearers underneath, the forensic scientist scraped off sludge and debris from along the edges of the plywood. Then he dug a sharp probe into the cracks in several areas of the floor and removed more concealed material, which he put into some specimen tubes. With a few circles of filter paper which he pressed against suspect areas, he did some magic with fluids from bottles out of his case and then viewed the results with interest.
‘We’ve got a positive screening test for blood here. That’s by no means conclusive, and it might well be animal, but I’ll take this stuff back to Cardiff and get back to you tomorrow.’
The two uniformed constables found a tarpaulin in the back of their vehicle and spread it to protect the floor of the van before putting Myrddin’s fencing materials back inside.
‘We may need to have that bit of floor taken down to Cardiff, depending on what’s found,’ said the scientist. ‘Until then, it should be OK like this, given it’s already been sitting here for years.’
As they all drove away, leaving a bemused farmer wondering what all the fuss was about, a few miles away Meirion Thomas was pulling up in the CID Vauxhall outside a small cottage near Llancynfelyn. Trevor Hartnell got out the other side and was rather overawed by the surroundings, which contrasted so greatly with the seedier part of Birmingham where he spent his working life. Below the road, the ground sloped down to the great expanse of the bog, beyond which the sea sparkled in the sunshine. Looking the other way, the purple line of the hills formed the horizon, whilst near at hand, the whitewashed bwythyn of Gelli Derwen was like something from a Grimm’s fairy tale, against its background of trees.
They walked towards it and closer inspection took some of the romance from the scene, as the walls were stained with green mould and the window frames showed peeling paint over rotting wood. The front garden was overgrown and a rusty bicycle was on its side near the corner of the single-storey cottage. The door was set between the two small windows, inside which were yellowed net curtains.
There was no bell or knocker, so Meirion rapped on the upper panel. A dog began barking and was followed by a muffled curse and a yelp.
‘At least somebody’s home,’ said Hartnell, feeling in his breast pocket for his warrant card.
There was a rattle of a chain and then the door was pulled open, the bottom grinding against uneven floor tiles. A beery, unshaven face appeared, an unwelcoming scowl fixed in place.
‘Who are you? What you want?’
The heavy features, chin and cheeks part-hidden by several days’ growth of stubble, glowered at them. Trevor, accustomed to such meetings over many years, was certain that one glance had told the man that these were two police officers standing on his doorstep. They both flashed their proof of identity at him and his dark eyes under the beetling grey bows seized upon Hartnell’s card.
‘Birmingham? What you want coming from there?’
His central European accent was still strong.
‘We want to talk to you, sir. You are James Brown, formerly Jaroslav Beran?’
‘Don’t use that name no more. James Brown is me.’
‘Can we come in and talk, Mr Brown?’ said Meirion, easily. ‘We’re hoping you can help us with our enquiries.’
That ominous phrase seemed familiar to the Czech and his scowl deepened even more.
‘Never let us go, do you, once we’ve been inside? But I done nothing, you ask my parole officer.’
‘We already have, sir,’ retorted the local DI. ‘Now can we come in and talk, please? Unless you want to come down to the police station instead.’
Reluctantly, Brown dragged the door open wider and without a word, turned away to lead the way into the room on the right of a short passage. As Hartnell followed him, he got a glimpse through the other door, where greyish sheets were tumbled on an unmade bed. A dog began whining somewhere in the back of the cottage as the two detectives went into a living room, where a small log fire smouldered in the hearth. Facing it was a sagging settee covered in American cloth and a couple of hard chairs stood by a table near the window, on which was a pre-war Marconi radio and a couple of half-empty bottles of whiskey and gin. The floor was covered in faded linoleum, worn right through near the fire and at the door. Both officers were large men and Brown was also over six feet and equally broad-shouldered, so the small room seemed full of bodies.
‘What you want with me?’ repeated the householder, not inviting them to be seated.
Meirion pulled a notebook and consulted it. ‘You used to own a Ford van, registration number EJ 2652?’
Surprise tinged with unease passed over Brown’s coarse-skinned face. He raised a hand to his head and scratched his cropped, bristly hair in a classical gesture of puzzlement.
‘Sure, years ago I did. What’s the problem, you just discovered I made parking offence?’
His attempt at levity or sarcasm fell flat.
‘What did you use it for?’ asked Hartnell.
Brown failed to see where this was leading and his beetle-brows came together like two hairy caterpillars above his eyes.
‘I had business in Aberystwyth, everybody knows that. I carried furnitures in it.’
‘Sometimes stolen furniture?’
James Brown made a sweeping gesture of annoyance.
‘Christ, why you bring that up again? Look, sure there were some misunderstandings; I got landed with hot stuff. But I paid twice in the prison for that, now for years I am clean!’
‘Did you carry anything else in that van apart from furniture?’ asked Meirion.
The man looked shiftily from one officer to the other.
‘It’s a long time ago. Sure, I used to move all sorts of stuff, sort of transport business for others when they wanted small things moved.’
‘Did you ever carry meat of any sort?’ persisted Hartnell.
This was a difficult one for their victim. Rationing in Britain had only finished very recently — ironically, long after it had been abolished in Germany. To admit to carrying meat was tantamount to owning up to black-market activities — or even rustling, a crime well established in West Wales.
‘No, I never carried no meat! Look, why you asking me all this?’
