‘I don’t know nothing — well, hardly nothing,’ growled the red-faced man opposite. ‘There was just this old drum in the pub cellar and I got stuck with it.’
‘You could have gone round the nick next day and reported it,’ snapped Hartnell.
Franklin sneered at this. ‘Oh yes, I’m likely to have done that, after Mickey Doyle told me to hang on to it. That would earn a beating or even a shiv across my face.’
‘Well, you’re here in the nick now, so you may as well cough for us,’ snapped Hartnell. ‘Why did Doyle want you to keep the thing?’
Olly stared down at the scarred table-top for a long moment, then sighed and leaned back in his chair.
‘OK, I’ll tell you what I know, but it ain’t much, honest. And it was years ago now.’
Rickman opened his notebook and poised his pencil in anticipation, as the other man began to speak.
‘Look, you know as well as I do that Mickey Doyle was a villain — and he ran a gang of villains. You knocked off a few of them now and then, but others just popped up in their place.’
The DI nodded. ‘We know that, what’s your point?’
‘He was into all sorts of things — theft, protection rackets, running tarts, illegal gambling — though I never heard he was into drugs. Then until things eased off after the war, black market was the big earner and Doyle was a big player in that.’
‘Thanks for the lecture, Olly,’ said the sergeant sarcastically. ‘Now tell us something we don’t know!’
The chippie scowled at him. ‘I’m getting to that, ain’t I? There was one thing about Mickey, he was a stickler for discipline among those who worked for him. He was a big bugger and I’ve seen him punch a guy to the floor in the pub, just for some fault in working the rackets. I even heard he had some guy’s legs broken years ago, for holding back some of the loot in a black-market scam.’
The two detectives waited, as Olly seemed to be painfully approaching something of use to them.
‘So where does this head come into it?’ demanded Hartnell.
‘It was before my time at the Barley Mow, but I heard that one of his thugs was actually topped for trying to rip Mickey off, big time! I don’t know how, nor who, nor if it was Mickey himself that did it, but he ended up dead.’
‘When was this?’ rasped Rickman, lifting his pencil.
‘Must have been when the war was still on, but towards the end. Anyway, what I heard from gossip between the villains in my bar was that part of this fellow’s job was to go round the illegal gambling joints run by Doyle and collect the takings. Turned out that he had a fiddle going on with some of the guys who ran the dens, so that they creamed off a part of the collection for themselves.’
‘And Doyle eventually found out?’ said Hartnell.
‘Yes, so the story goes. Mickey had him done away with, but as a warning to the rest of his foot soldiers, he had the head kept and used to display it now and then to keep them in line.’
The sergeant threw down his pencil. ‘Sounds a bloody far-fetched yarn to me!’ he growled. ‘Like something out of a Mickey Spillane novel.’
The former licensee shrugged. ‘You asked me, mate, so I’m telling you what I heard. Doyle wouldn’t let me get rid of the thing in case he wanted to use it again.’
Trevor Hartnell fixed Franklin with his hard blue eyes.
‘And you say he used to parade this horrible thing in front of his men in your pub?’
Olly nodded his ponderous head. ‘A few times, when I first went to the Barley Mow after the war. He used the function room upstairs for a booze-up now and then. It was usually after they made a good haul after some big heist. I remember one was after they had nicked a couple of lorry-loads of sheep from somewhere down in the country — couldn’t get much good meat during rationing.’
‘Did you see him showing off this head?’
‘No, he didn’t let anyone in the room. I had to leave a barrel of beer and a stack of food and spirits in there for them.’
‘And you claim you’ve no idea who this bloke was that he had topped?’ demanded Hartnell.
Olly shook his head and replied vehemently. ‘Not a clue — and I damned well didn’t want to know, either! Keep a tight mouth anywhere around Mickey Doyle, that was the golden rule.’
‘So who would know, Olly?’
The burly publican toyed nervously with the lid of a cocoa tin that served as an ashtray on the table in front of him.
‘Well, Doyle himself, I suppose. I don’t know who’s in his gang these days, I keep well clear.’
‘Mickey did a bunk to the Costa del Sol last year, Olly, things were getting a bit hot for him here. And there’s no extradition from Spain. So who else can we ask, eh?’
Franklin looked furtively around the room, as if some criminal eavesdropper might be lurking in a corner.
‘The only bloke from the old days still around is Billy Blair,’ he confided.
Tom Rickman threw down his pencil with a clatter.
‘Billy Blair! Well, at least we know where to find that bastard! He’s a quarter of a mile away, inside Winson Green Prison.’
FOURTEEN
Richard Pryor took the call from Aberystwyth in his room and, after listening for a few moments, called out to Moira in the office next door. They had no intercom, but a good shout seemed to work equally well. When her neat, dark head appeared around the door, he asked if there were any local cases for him the next day.
‘There’s a sudden death at Chepstow, doctor, that’s all.’
‘I can leave that until Wednesday, can’t I?’ he reassured himself and, speaking into the phone again, arranged with Meirion Thomas to meet him in Birmingham the next day. The DI had already confirmed that noon would be a convenient time for them to descend on the mortuary there and after some amiable banter in Welsh, Richard put the phone down and followed Moira back to the laboratory, where the three women in his life were regaled with the news he had just had from the Midlands.
‘They’ve found the missing head!’ he told them. ‘In some chap’s shed in Birmingham, of all places.’ When he had repeated the sparse information that he had heard on the phone, he asked Angela if she would like to come with him in the morning when he went to examine it, but she gracefully declined.
‘No thanks, Richard. I’ve seen many horrid things, but unless you really need me, I think I’ll pass on looking at a ten-year-old head in a bucket!’
Later, he wondered if his astute partner had realized that it was possible that her former fiance, Paul Vickers, might also be present, as he was also involved in the investigation of the bog body.
Richard retired to his room to look at a road atlas to see the best way to get to Birmingham, as this was a part of the country which was unfamiliar to him. It was a good excuse for him to have a few minutes with one of his favourite books but he soon exhausted his quest, as the route from the Wye Valley was all too obvious.
‘Up to Ross, then Malvern, Worcester, Bromsgrove and then into B’rum,’ he murmured to himself.
When they assembled in the staff room for their afternoon tea and biscuits, Jimmy Jenkins came in from the vineyard where he had been hoeing the last of the weeds from around the roots before winter set in. When he heard that ‘the doctor’ was off to Birmingham next day, he immediately volunteered his services as a chauffeur and Richard could find no reason to disappoint him. Jimmy had acted as his driver from time to time, usually on long journeys and, despite being such a laid-back character, was actually very alert on the road.
They both agreed that it would be best to allow at least three hours for the journey and so at half-past eight next morning they set out, stopping in Monmouth to fill the Humber’s tank with National Benzole. Jimmy was incensed by the recent price increase, which took a gallon up to four shillings and threepence.