Grounds for Appeal (6 page)

‘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.

‘What the hell's this? Priscilla, there's a torch in that case, can you bring it, please.'

They all clustered round as she aimed the beam at where his finger was pointing. Very faintly, there were darker marks under the surface and when he smoothed out the wrinkles between a finger and thumb, they saw the blurred outlines of a tattoo.

‘I don't think Batman was around in the Iron Age!' he said, with a tinge of disappointment.

After their session in the mortuary, they adjourned to the DCC's office in the old police building on the promenade. It was now late afternoon and Richard and Priscilla had a long journey ahead of them back to the Wye Valley, but they needed to take stock of what they had learned so far.

David John Jones sat behind his DI's desk as they drank the inevitable cups of tea. The two from Tintern had been offered a meal in a local hotel, but as Richard decided that they would stop somewhere on the way home, they held their discussion straight away.

‘So we've got a murder on our hands,' said the senior officer, with a sigh of resignation. ‘We'll have to get the Yard in straight away. This is beyond us. I've only got one ranking CID officer for the whole of Cardiganshire – and we've already got a clutch of burglaries and two sheep-stealings to cope with.'

Richard nodded his understanding. ‘We'll do all we can to help with the forensic pathology side, though of course, the Home Office lab in Cardiff must look at any physical evidence, like that cord that was used to strangle the fellow.'

The post-mortem had not been all that helpful, with such an incomplete and decayed body to work with, but there seemed little doubt that the ligature that had been wound twice around the neck was the cause of death. A length of similar cord had tied both wrists together in front of the body, even though the underlying skin and bones had disintegrated inside it.

‘First thing is, we need to know who the bugger was!' said Meirion Thomas in his forthright manner. ‘No fingerprints, as he had no fingers left. All we've got so far is a flaming tattoo!'

‘What's this Batman business?' demanded the DCC, who was hardly up to date with modern trends.

‘Apparently he's a character in Yankee comics and films, sir,' said Gwyn Parry.

‘At least it can give us an earliest date for this chap,' declared Richard. ‘Though how you discover when the Batman character was first published, I've no idea.'

Their earlier doubts of the sex of the body had been solved by the pathologist's brief study of the pelvic bones, which were largely exposed in the collapsing corpse. The front of the cadaver was in a far worse state than the back, with hardly any skin left and all the organs degenerated, including the genitals. With no head, sexing it was down to an interpretation of the bones, but both Richard and Priscilla were in no doubt of its maleness – added to which was the fact that women rarely went in for tattoos.

‘Have we any idea of his height, doctor?' asked the detective inspector.

‘Looks about average from his bones, but Doctor Chambers here is the real expert. No doubt she'll need to take some accurate measurements of the leg bones when we get back to base.' Privately, he knew he could have done it equally well himself, but he wanted to give Priscilla as big a role as possible.

Superintendent David Jones looked quizzically at his two CID staff.

‘Any outstanding missing persons in the last few years?' he demanded.

‘Problem is, sir, we don't know how many years are involved,' replied Meirion. ‘No one comes to mind from this part of the county, but I'll have to go through the records.'

‘And you can't even hazard a guess as to the time this fellow died, doctor?' persisted the deputy chief.

Richard shook his head. ‘I wouldn't want to mislead you by picking a figure out of the air. I'm sure he's been in that bog more than a few years – but it could be ten or even twenty, perhaps much more.'

He turned to Eva Boross, who had the inevitable cigarette in her fingers. ‘Any possibility of the depth it was buried in the ground being helpful – or something to do with the vegetation at that depth?'

The Hungarian also shook her head despondently. ‘I doubt it, but it might be worth me asking the botany people at the university. The body could never have sunk that deep from the surface in a few years, so it must have either been put into a hole dug in the peat – or there may have been a pool there then. The bog changes all the time, according to rainfall and changes in underground water.'

They talked around the apparently insoluble problems for a little longer, then the meeting broke up.

‘I'll have to go and tell the Chief Constable what's happening,' muttered David Jones. ‘I've no doubt he'll contact Scotland Yard tomorrow. Meirion, you can let the coroner know what's going on.'

With mutual thanks and promises to keep closely in touch, Richard and Priscilla made their escape, saying goodbye to the archaeologist, with whom Priscilla already seemed to have made firm friends. It was beginning to get dusk as they drove up into the hills on their way home across Mid-Wales, with some of the unknown body's bones wrapped in newspaper in a margarine box in the boot.

‘I don't know about you, but I'm starving,' complained Richard. ‘Sandwiches and endless cups of police tea are fine in their way, but I could do with a square meal.'

They found a hotel in Builth Wells able to satisfy their pangs of hunger. It was an old-fashioned hostelry in the main street, a gloomy place with everything varnished a dark brown, but it had a dining room and quite an extensive menu. The food turned out to be surprisingly good, even though they seemed to be the only patrons that evening. Once again, Priscilla marvelled at the quality and choice on offer, considering that wartime food rationing had only ended the previous year. Over oxtail soup, roast beef and apple tart with fresh cream, they went over the events of the past thirty-six hours.

‘I've really enjoyed it, Richard, thanks so much for letting me come,' enthused Priscilla. ‘I thought mysterious strangled and beheaded bodies were only found in London and the big cities, not in a little place out in the sticks like Borth! What on earth can it be all about?'

Richard grinned at her. ‘You English people, you think you have a monopoly on violent crime! There's as much intrigue and vendettas in rural areas as in any city, we're just better at concealing it.'

They went into the adjacent lounge for coffee and Richard ordered a couple of brandies to go with it.

‘So what happens next?' asked the auburn-haired biologist. ‘There seems little more we can do to help identify this fellow.'

‘We urgently need the head, though God knows what state it would be in. At least we had a bit of bog tanning to preserve the trunk. We'd not have seen that tattoo but for that.'

‘There's no doubt about him being strangled, I suppose?'

Richard warmed the brandy glass in his hand. ‘There was that double ligature tied in a knot and what was left of the larynx had a crack through the cricoid cartilage. Of course, he might have been shot through the head as well, but as we haven't got it, we can't tell!'

‘And the poor chap's hands were tied together,' said Priscilla, with a shudder. ‘A nasty, sadistic sort of case.'

‘More like some gangland killing,' agreed Richard. ‘But there are not many gangsters in sleepy Cardiganshire.'

Eventually, they reluctantly dragged themselves away from the fire in the lounge and Richard went to find the landlord to settle the bill. Priscilla offered to pay her share, but Richard waved it aside.

‘Like last night at Mrs Evans', we can legitimately charge it to the partnership as expenses. The police or the coroner will foot the bill eventually.'

Before they left, Richard used the coin telephone in the hotel corridor to ring Garth House. When he pressed Button A, he was strangely happy to hear Angela's calm tones, reassuring him that all was well and that she was looking forward to seeing them arrive home.

‘It's not a bog body, but it's a murder, though heaven knows when it happened,' he told her. ‘We'll tell you all about it in about an hour and a half.'

The rest of the journey seemed to take longer than that, as he peered down the tunnel cut by the headlights through the dark countryside. After her good meal and a brandy, Priscilla soon dozed off and only woke when the Humber revved up the driveway to the house. Angela had tea and biscuits ready for them and they sat in her lounge for a while, giving her a detailed account of their activities in Cardiganshire.

‘So you've no idea who he was or when he was killed?' she asked at the end.

Priscilla raised her hands in mock despair. ‘Not a clue, Angela! At least the only one is that he had this Batman tattoo. Have you any idea when that idiotic business began?'

The other woman shook her head. ‘I've just about heard of it. Isn't it an American comic strip or something? Perhaps the dead man was a Yank?'

‘Well, that's not our problem,' said Richard, yawning mightily. ‘Let the police follow it up – probably your pals from Scotland Yard.'

He immediately felt that he might have said the wrong thing, for Angela was still bitter about the defection of her former fiancé in favour of another woman – and he was a detective superintendent from that same famous institution. However, she made no sign that it had registered, though he knew that Angela was adept at concealing her feelings.

‘Time for bed, folks,' suggested Priscilla and soon Richard drove her the short distance to Tintern Parva, where she had comfortable lodgings in a bed and breakfast establishment used mostly by summer walkers and holidaymakers.

Angela waited up until he returned, then they both made for the stairs. ‘Did you enjoy your night away with our glamour girl, Richard?' she said without a trace of sarcasm. ‘I think Moira was afraid that you'd be led off the path of righteousness!'

He gave her one of his famous grins. ‘Yes, we had a romantic drink in the local pub and then a passionate meat and two veg in Mrs Evans' den of sin!'

‘No, somehow I don't see you as a lecherous seducer, Richard,' she said, as she left him at the upper landing.

As he went towards his own room, he wondered if he detected a hint of disappointment in her voice.

FIVE

N
ext day, they got down to the job of examining the material they had brought back from Aberystwyth.

The bones were laid out on a large sheet of brown paper on the big table in the laboratory and everyone, including Moira, was keen to see what could be discovered. They all stood around expectantly, the morning sun lighting the exhibits through the wide bay window.