As DI Hartnell and Sergeant Rickman waited in the cold outside the wicket gate in the massive main doors, the inspector asked Tom if he knew Blair, as the convict had been incarcerated before Hartnell had arrived in this part of the city.
‘Yes, a real toerag is Billy Blair,’ growled the sergeant. ‘One of Doyle’s gang from way back. He’s done a couple of stretches before, mainly for assault and obtaining money by menaces. This time he’s doing six years for robbery with violence. He must be getting near time for release; he lost his chance of parole because of an attack on a warder.’
‘Sounds a nice chap,’ said Hartnell sarcastically, as the door opened and they began the laborious process of being admitted, with much signing of passes and jangling of keys as they were escorted through half a dozen gates and doors.
Eventually they came to an interview room, the bleakness of which made their similar facility in the police station look like a luxury boudoir. The bare concrete chamber was divided in half by a heavy wooden counter, above which was a high barrier of steel mesh.
A few hard stools stood on their side and as they sat down, a door opened in the far wall beyond the screen and a sullen-looking warder led in a man in grey prison overalls, who he pushed towards a single stool opposite the policemen, before moving back to lean against the wall. ‘This is your William Blair,’ he announced in a surly voice.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Hartnell and this is DS Rickman,’ began Trevor.
‘I know that bastard Rickman, he nicked me once… and I got off!’ sneered the convict, setting the tone for the interview. He was a wiry, pugnacious-looking man of about forty, with cropped blond hair and a square, ugly face, which had a scar running down from the left eyebrow, part closing the eyelid in a permanent droop.
‘We just want to ask you a few questions, nothing to do with why you’re in here now,’ continued the DI, trying to avoid antagonizing the man.
Billy Blair looked at him suspiciously through the wire.
‘Why should I bother? What’s in it for me?’
Hartnell shrugged. ‘If you’re helpful, it’ll be noted on your record. I hear you’ve already lost your chance of parole, but a few Brownie points can’t do you any harm.’
The prisoner continued to glower at them. ‘Whadd’yer want to know?’
The sergeant had less patience than his senior, especially as Blair had got off to a bad start by insulting him.
‘We want you to tell us about this head. The one that used to be in the old Barley Mow.’
This must have been about the last question on earth that Blair had expected and his genuine surprise was apparent to the two detectives. But he rapidly covered up and growled his denial of any knowledge of the matter.
‘I don’t know what the ’ell you’re on about!’
‘Come off it, Billy!’ snapped Rickman. ‘We’ve just taken it from Olly Franklin’s shed.’
Blair’s face suffused with anger. ‘That fat, drunken bastard! Was he the one who set you on to me?’
His tone suggested that if he was at liberty, Olly would rapidly suffer for his treachery.
‘Never mind about that! Tell us about this head,’ demanded the inspector.
‘Never heard of it! Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ replied the convict, defiantly.
‘Listen, Billy, we’ve not only got the head, we’ve got the rest of the body too. It’s a murder investigation now and at the moment, you’re the only one in the frame for it.’ Hartnell was not averse to stretching the truth when it seemed useful.
Blair’s red face rapidly paled at this threat.
‘Don’t be bloody silly! What would I know about that?’
Tom Rickman took up the questioning again.
‘Come off it, chum! You were one of Mickey Doyle’s lads before you were locked up. He’s done a runner to the Costa del Crime, so you’re the next best thing.’
Blair’s small eyes flicked from one officer to the other as he sized up his position. ‘Doyle’s mob broke up a coupla years ago, after I came in here.’
‘This bloke’s been dead a damned sight longer than that,’ snapped Hartnell. ‘He copped it when you were still on the loose, so unless you start talking, we might be looking at you for a Murder One — or at the least, an accessory to murder.’
‘You’re trying to stitch me up, ain’t you?’ snarled the other man.
‘Tell us what you know about this head,’ said the DI implacably.
‘Look, I heard about this head years ago, like all the other guys did in this part of Birmingham,’ he said in an attempt to be dismissive. ‘And yeah, it was in the Barley Mow at one time. I’d forgotten all about it; it was no big deal.’
‘No big deal!’ said Rickman in derision. ‘A feller’s head in a bucket of meths?’
Now that they had prised his mouth open, the convict seemed more willing to speak.
‘It was a gag that Mickey Doyle used to pull,’ he said sullenly. ‘When he got the lads together for a few pints, he would get Fred Mansell, the previous landlord, to bring this tub up from somewhere. Then he’d haul it out by the hair and show it to the room, saying that he had plenty more tubs for anyone who crossed him up. Everyone was half-pissed by then, including Doyle. It was a bit of a joke, really, a sort of tradition.’
Even the hardened CID men thought that waving a murdered man’s head about was hardly a ‘bit of a joke’.
‘So why did this charming old tradition come about, Billy?’ asked Hartnell, but Blair seemed to be having second thoughts about being helpful and sat sullenly on his stool beyond the screen.
The detective inspector looked across at his sergeant and gave a slight wink with the eye away from the screen.
‘Tom, he’s admitted knowing about the head, so if he’s not going to tell us any more, I think we’re obliged to charge him with being an accessory, just for starters.’
Rickman nodded gravely. ‘Sure, boss. At least we won’t have to drag him down to the station, as he’s already banged up here.’
Hartnell turned back to the glowering, but now very uneasy man on the other side of the barrier.
‘Last chance, Billy! Two things and I’ll let you off the hook for now. First, why did Doyle hold these frightener sessions? And who was the dead chap, anyway?’
Blair shifted on his stool and, after some thought, came to a decision.
‘Look, I was never at one of these shindigs at the Barley Mow, right? We all heard about them, but it was before my time. I never saw the bloody head, so I don’t know who it belonged to.’
‘But you must have heard the gossip, being one of Doyle’s mob,’ retorted Rickman. ‘What was he trying to prove?’
Blair shrugged. ‘It was a frightener, like I said. I did hear that this bloke had been a collector for Doyle, going around for the takings from his gambling joints and knocking shops, as well doing pick-ups from the protection rackets. There were a few of these guys, but this one was caught ripping Doyle off big time, so he had him creased as a warning to the others.’
They were getting somewhere at last, thought Trevor Hartnell.
‘And hoisting his head out at these booze-ups was a way of reminding everyone, is that it?’
Billy made a face and shrugged again. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, mate! But it seems to fit the bill.’
‘And you’re sure you don’t know who it was?’ rumbled the sergeant. ‘There must have been a whisper going around, some of the gang are bound to have known him.’
‘You’d better ask them then. I told you, it was before my time.’
Blair decided to seize up at this point, having come too close to incriminating himself in these old felonies. He refused to say any more and after another five minutes of fruitless badgering, the two police officers called it a day.
‘You’ll be hearing from us, Billy,’ promised Hartnell as they left their stools. ‘Don’t think you’re walking away clean from this affair.’