‘I don’t quite follow you, Mr Evans,’ said Crippen. ‘Did he cause any trouble?’
Again there was a pause, but shorter this time.
‘Only when his boozing started to interfere with his work. By then, it was none of my business – I’d given the place over to Aubrey and Jeff – but I warned them! We lost some customers over it, and we’ve got plenty of competitors. Not delivering on time is a serious business. These days since the horses went, a farmer without a tractor is worse than losing the use of his legs!’
John Nichols was busy writing in his notebook, though more formal statements would have to be taken from everyone later.
The detective inspector brought the questioning around to more immediate matters. ‘You know, of course, that Littleman was strangled and then an attempt made to cover it up?’
The older man nodded. ‘Must have been somebody from his past – or his present! God knows what he was up to in Brecon after he left here every day.’
‘And you’ve no idea what that might have been? Did he ever let drop anything to you about his private life?’
‘Naw, did he hell!’ exclaimed Mostyn contemptuously. ‘Tight-mouthed bugger, he was!’
The rest of the interview was barren of anything useful, and soon the father went back to the kitchen for another cup of tea and to discuss his interrogation with Aubrey and the others.
Arthur Crippen stared out of the small parlour window across the muddy yard to the large milking parlour and the cow pen alongside it.
‘Like the woman, I reckon our Mostyn could tell us a bit more if he had a mind to,’ he said ruminatively.
Nichols nodded. ‘I got the same impression. Think this Littleman was making a nuisance of himself with the two wives?’
His superior shrugged. ‘It bears keeping in mind. We’ll be having another go at them later on. Now where’s that damned kid Shane. He’s the last one, until we start visiting the neighbours, wherever they are.’
As if in answer to his question, he saw a red David Brown Cropmaster drive into the yard, pulling a filthy muck spreader. The tractor itself was not much better, caked in mud and manure. It stopped near the cattle pen and the driver vaulted off, a lanky youth in soiled dungarees with a woollen bob-cap on his head.
‘Here he is. Better late than never,’ grunted Crippen.
There was a short delay, obviously caused by Betsan forbidding the boy to enter the parlour in such a state. When he put his head around the door and hesitantly entered, he was in a check shirt and brown trousers, with only socks on his feet, his muddy boots having been confiscated.
He sat nervously on the chair between the two police officers, his narrow, wary face regarding them suspiciously. He had an untidy shock of mousy hair hanging over his ears and neck. John Nichols, a former military policeman, grinned to himself when he thought of the National Service haircut that Shane would soon have to endure.
‘You’re waiting for your call-up papers, I hear?’ he said easily.
The young man shook his head. ‘I’ve had me papers already. Got to go to Brecon Barracks at the end of the month.’
This was where the regimental headquarters of the South Wales Borderers was situated.
‘Now then, lad, you were the one who found Tom’s body?’
The DI made it more of a question than a statement of fact.
Shane scowled. He had seen plenty of police films where the finder was always the main suspect.
‘That don’t mean I had anything to do with it,’ he muttered.
‘Not saying it was, Shane. I just want to get things straight for the record. Now the body was just as we saw it when we came later, was it? You didn’t touch anything?’
‘No bloody fear! I took one look and ran like hell to me bike!’
‘You worked with him every day,’ said the sergeant. ‘How did you get on with him?’
Shane Williams suddenly became animated. ‘He was a bastard! I hated his guts!’ he snarled.
Nichols raised an eyebrow at his inspector, but Crippen seemed unmoved.
‘Why do you say that, Shane?’ he asked softly.
‘He was always at me, complaining and shouting. Sometimes he pushed me around, when he’d had a few too many.’
‘Drunk, you mean? Was he incapable, sometimes?’
‘Not incapable enough not to clout me across the earhole if I didn’t fetch him something quick enough!’ whined the youth.
‘You were a sort of apprentice. Didn’t he teach you anything?’
‘Only how to keep out of his reach whenever I could,’ answered the boy cynically. ‘I learned bugger all about machinery from him. All I was was a gofer – go for this, go for that!’
‘What about when Jeff Morton was there? He did a lot of the mechanical work, didn’t he?’
The young man sneered. ‘Tom was clever. He never had a go at me when Jeff was there. He could cover up his boozing, too, when either Aubrey or Jeff was around. They don’t know the half of it.’
‘Why did you stick it, then? Didn’t you complain to the others?’
Shane seemed to pull himself more upright from his usual slouch. ‘Nah, I’m not a sneak! Anyway, I’m leaving the bloody place in a few weeks.’ He suddenly realized the changed circumstances. ‘That’s if I’ve still got a job here now – and that sod’s gone anyway.’
Crippen fixed him with a steely eye. ‘Are you glad he’s dead, Shane?’ he demanded.
The lad slumped again. ‘I hated his guts, but I never wanted him croaked,’ he mumbled.
Sergeant Nichols changed direction once again.
‘You were with Littleman every day. Did you ever learn anything about his life away from the farm? Anything that might have a bearing on his death?’
Shane stared suspiciously at the detective. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘Do you know what interests he had outside work, apart from drinking? Did he mention women, or gambling or anything like that?’
An almost lecherous grin appeared on the youth’s face. ‘He was fond of the dames, I reckon. I saw him eyeing Betsan and Rhian when they happened to come down to the barn. That wasn’t often, but sometimes they were in the pickup or Land Rover with Aubrey or Jeff.’
‘Is that all? Just looking at them?’ snapped Crippen, but Shane just shrugged. Then he added another snippet.
‘I saw him in Brecon a few times, on the weekend, like. I used to go for a few pints with my pals sometimes and I saw him twice in one of the pubs, with women.’
‘Anything odd about that, then?’ asked Nichols.
‘It was a different girl each time, half his age and pretty tarty, both of them.’
‘What about gambling?’ asked the inspector, not too concerned with accounts of sitting in pubs with loose women.
‘He was mad on the pools, spent an hour every week filling them in. And he was always reading the racing news in the paper and marking things with a pencil, so I suppose he was having a flutter on the gee-gees or the dogs.’
As they had with the other witnesses, the two officers got virtually nothing more out of him and Shane slouched off to his muck-spreading, as there was no work in the barn until the forensic team and the police had finished with the place.
After yet another cup of tea and a slice of fruit cake supplied by Betsan Evans, the two detectives thanked the family for their hospitality but warned them that they would have to have their statements taken down and signed later that day.
Back in their black Wolseley, Nichols drove down to the barn in time to see the two from the forensic laboratory before they left for Cardiff.
‘Not a lot to find, Mr Crippen,’ admitted the liaison officer. ‘We’ve taped all the parts that might be involved and found a few fibres on the hook of that hoist.’