The Deputy Chief Constable, who was nominally in charge of the CID, was called in by Meirion Thomas as a more senior back-up to their discussions. David Jones quickly pointed out that neither had those owners ever been fingered by an antiques dealer in Ludlow as having employed a driver with a Batman tattoo identical with one found on a corpse buried very near Beran’s place of residence and whose blood group tallied with those found in his old van. To clinch the last point, Meirion made a phone call to Ludlow and next morning sent a police car post-haste to the town, which brought back Bertram Tomlinson, who positively identified Beran as the man who had sold him the stolen card table and whose delivery man was the fellow with the distinctive tattoo on his shoulder.
Meirion promptly charged Beran with receiving stolen goods, which was enough of a holding offence to satisfy the solicitor and keep him in custody for at least a few days until things were sorted out after Christmas.
He was housed in the station cells and refused police bail, given his propensity to escape on motorcycles.
‘He’ll have a Christmas dinner there, anyway,’ said Gwyn Parry, philosophically. ‘Though I don’t think we can run to paper hats.’
‘What about that poor bloody lurcher?’ asked Meirion, a confirmed dog lover.
‘No problem! That PC we took with us says he’ll take it home with him. If everything pans out, I doubt Jaroslav Beran will see the outside of a prison for many years, so probably Constable Lloyd will have got himself a free dog.’
As expected, there was a hiatus in most forensic activities over the Christmas period, but by the middle of the week, things slowly started moving again.
Richard’s long weekend in Merthyr had not been interrupted by police calls after all and on Wednesday morning, he was back in Chepstow mortuary dealing with four sudden deaths and a traffic fatality. At Garth House, Moira came in to make him his lunch and leave a pie for him to warm for his evening meal. He had told her not to bother with typing the reports until next day and as he had already given Sian an extra day off, he was alone in the big old house. The weather had turned cold and grey, but it was dry, with a cutting east wind. They had no central heating and he couldn’t be bothered to light a fire in the staff room, even with the attraction of their new television set. Instead, he spent the time either in the kitchen, warmed by the big coke-fired Aga, or in his study where he had an electric fire.
It was here that in the afternoon he took a phone call from Aberystwyth. It was DI Thomas, who gave him an update on what had been happening both there and in Birmingham.
‘I had a talk with Doctor Rees from the Cardiff forensic lab. He said there was no more they could do to refine that blood type from the floor of the van, mainly due to the long time since the sample was shed and the effects of the weather. I suppose your lady, Doctor Bray, would say the same thing?’ he asked hopefully.
‘She’s away this week, so I can’t definitely speak for her, Mr Thomas. But I suspect she’d say that if the Home Office scientists can’t do any more, then no one can. Mind you, I think they were very fortunate to get even a blood group out of that stuff, after all this time in those conditions.’
‘I suppose there’s nothing more that can be done in the pathology line to narrow down the identity?’ asked Meirion hopefully.
‘Can’t see what, really,’ said Richard sadly. ‘We had no joy with finding anyone with that marble-bone disease, even though it’s very rare. Presumably it wasn’t bad enough for him to complain about it, so there may be no medical record of it anywhere. That suggests that he might not have been in the Forces, as probably a medical officer would have picked it up.’
‘Maybe he was foreign, like this Czech chap we’ve got in custody,’ suggested the inspector.
‘I wonder if a dentist might be able to help,’ mused Richard. ‘I’m not an expert on teeth, but I understand that some dental work, like fillings and bridges, can be recognized as having been done abroad.’
So far, because there was not the slightest hint as to who the bog body was or even where he might have come from, no forensic dentist had looked at the teeth to match them with a prospective individual. There were a few dentists, usually in hospital or university practice, who offered forensic expertise in addition to their usual duties, but the subject was only just beginning to become recognized as a separate speciality.
‘I can probably find an expert who might take a look at the teeth in that head. I’d have to discuss it with the Birmingham coroner first, as he’d have to pay him a fee.’
Meirion said that he thought it was worth a try.
‘Unless we can get this Beran fellow to spill the beans, we’re stumped. Without an identity, it’s virtually impossible to bring anyone to trial for his death.’
After they had finished speaking, Richard rang the Dental School in Bristol University, hoping to find someone to give him advice, but as he had half-expected, everywhere there was shut down for the rest of the week.
He looked at his calendar and confirmed that New Year’s Day was the following Sunday.
‘Thank God, life gets back to normal on Tuesday,’ he murmured, after realizing that the New Year holiday would be pushed on to Monday. His eye moved further along the calendar and saw that the Appeal was written in for 10th January, just a couple of weeks away. He decided to start revising all the notes and data he had prepared for his evidence, as he needed to be word-perfect to make any impression upon the three Lord Justices of Appeal.
He was deeply immersed in this for the next hour until the telephone again rang. Rather to his surprise, it was Louis Dumas, speaking from his house in the vineyard. After some rather strained small talk about the holiday season and the cold weather, Louis came to the point.
‘After failing to get my son Victor to consent to meet Pierre Fouret, my wife and I have decided to go ahead with the blood tests without his agreement. Are you still willing to proceed with them, doctor?’
Richard heard the resigned sadness in his voice and suspected that, as Angela had forecast, Christmas in the Dumas household had not been very merry.
‘Certainly, if that is definitely what you want. I must emphasize again, though, that the blood tests can only positively exclude Maurice being your son. They can never confirm it, even though the results may be very persuasive.’
Louis confirmed that he understood this perfectly.
‘It is mainly the desire of my wife, doctor. She says she cannot rest until we have done all that is possible to resolve this matter. She says she would prefer to know that he is not our true son, rather than be forever in doubt.’
As he seemed firmly committed to the decision, Richard agreed and they went on to arrange the practical details. He explained that because of the visit to London the following week, it would have to be when they returned and they fixed on the following Tuesday.
‘As you know, my partner Doctor Bray is the expert in this field. We could come down to you at St Mary Church to take the blood samples, if that would be convenient for Mr Fouret, as well as yourselves.’
Louis confirmed that his putative elder son was still in London, returning to Canada in a few weeks’ time, and that he had made it clear that he would be willing to come down to provide a blood sample at any time.
Richard put the phone down after polite good wishes for the New Year, though he wondered how happy it would be if the tests excluded Pierre Fouret from being a Dumas. With a sigh, he took down the calendar from the wall above his desk and wrote in the appointment for that January day.
In Birmingham, the detectives were also stirring themselves after the Christmas paralysis. DI Hartnell had had a meeting with his Chief Inspector and the head of CID, to report his visit to Cardiganshire and the arrest of Jaroslav Beran, as they preferred to call him.