‘He’s just on a holding charge of receiving, based on the identification of the guy from Ludlow, but it’s not going to keep him locked up for long unless we get something a bit stronger on him.’
‘I’ve still got men looking out for any former members of the Doyle gang,’ said the chief superintendent. ‘But they seem to be keeping their heads well down. I suspect that they’re still wary of Doyle’s long arm, even though the bastard is in Spain.’
‘No hope of getting anything out of Doyle himself, I suppose?’ asked the DCI, pessimistically.
‘Not a chance! That’s why he’s sitting tight on the Costa del Crime. But what about this publican who had the head in his shed? Have we taxed him with knowing anything about Jaroslav Beran?’
The two CID officers from Winson Green looked at each other. ‘No, we haven’t had a chance to see him since this Beran fellow surfaced,’ said Hartnell. ‘We’d better have a word today.’
‘He’s out on bail, after being charged with obstructing the coroner and all that stuff,’ said the chief. ‘Anything else I should know about?’
‘The DI in Aberystwyth told me he spoke to the pathologist today. He suggested getting a dentist to look at the teeth of our head to see if there was anything useful there that might tell where he was from. He’s going to have a word with our coroner about it.’
The head of CID sniffed. ‘Sounds as if we’re scraping the barrel now, lads. What a way to end the year. I’m sorry now that anyone ever dug this bloody body up!’
It was a sentiment that the two officers from Winson Green echoed as they made their way back to their dismal part of the city.
‘I’d better get around to see Fat Olly and try to put the frighteners on him again,’ said Trevor Hartnell. ‘I’ll pick up Tom Rickman at the station and go round there now.’
An hour later, he and his sergeant were knocking on the door in Markby Road. It was snatched opened by Olly’s wife who stood glaring at them, her long grey hair straggling about her face and shoulders. Trevor’s impression was of a bad-tempered Old English Sheepdog, which was heightened when she opened her mouth to bark at them.
‘You’ve got a damned cheek coming round here again, when you got my husband into such trouble!’ she snarled, lacing her complaint with a few choice blasphemies. The officers ignored her tirade, as after so many years on the city streets, to them abuse was like water off a duck’s back.
‘We need to talk to your husband,’ said Tom Rickman impassively. ‘Either here or back down at the station.’
Her response was cut short by the former licensee appearing in the passage behind her, his corpulent body dressed in a grubby vest under a shapeless brown cardigan. Unshaven and bleary-eyed, he was an unsavoury sight, but he pulled her out of the way and confronted the two policemen.
‘What’s it this time? I’m on bail until next Thursday.’
‘A few questions about the old days, Olly,’ said Hartnell. ‘We’d better come in, unless you want another trip downtown.’
Reluctantly, the fat man waddled back down the passage to the kitchen, where his wife vanished into the scullery after a poisonous glare at the detectives. Preferring not to sit down in the scruffy room, the two officers stood to confront Franklin.
‘Did you know a chap called Jaroslav Beran when you were running either of the pubs?’ demanded Hartnell. ‘He was a foreigner, had been in the Czech army.’
Expecting a sullen denial, Trevor was surprised when Olly nodded his head, the wattles under his chin bobbing up and down.
‘Yes, “Johnny B’rum” they called him, easier to say. Real rough bugger, Johnny was, always in fights.’
‘What did he do? Any sort of work?’ asked Rickman.
Olly leered. ‘Work? Not many of Doyle’s boys did any work, other than thieving or coming the heavy on anybody Mickey didn’t like.’
‘So he was one of Doyle’s gang,’ confirmed the DI. ‘What happened to him?’
Franklin shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘Dunno, he just disappeared, years ago. Mind, that’s what happened to them all, they came and they went. Some got banged up in jail, others went off thieving somewhere else, I suppose. Mickey didn’t keep them around long enough for them to become serious competition to him.’
‘When was this Beran fellow around, d’you remember?’
Olly stared at the ground for inspiration. He didn’t mind answering this sort of question, which seemed remote from his own troubles with the police.
‘I came here in ’forty-four, he was here then. Can’t recall when he went, must have been a year or two later.’ He suddenly looked up at his interrogators. ‘You’re not thinking he was the bloke with the head, are you? Couldn’t be, nothing like him! I know the head was a mess, but it wasn’t Jimmy.’
Hartnell waved a hand at him. ‘No, this chap is alive and well. But did he have any special crony in those days, a chap quite a bit smaller than him?’
Olly shook his head slowly. ‘Not that I recall. There were up to a dozen of Doyle’s mob who used to come to the pub. I didn’t know the names of most of them — safer not to be too nosey, in fact.’
‘Any other foreigners?’ ventured Rickman. ‘We know about the Czech, was he the only one? What about Americans, for instance?’
Franklin scratched his bristly head. ‘Half of them were Irish, but there was a Pole as well — and they used to talk about a bloke they called “The Yank”, but I can’t recall seeing him. I think he was one of Doyle’s collectors on the protection rackets.’
This interested the two detectives, but in spite of further probing, it was clear that Olly’s memory was not going to come up with any more details. When they left him in peace to enjoy his bail and to wonder what was in store for him when he was hauled before the magistrates the following week, Hartnell and his sergeant went back to Winson Green station and sought out the chief inspector.
‘All we could get from Franklin was the fact that one fellow he remembers from the Doyle days was known as “Yank”,’ reported Trevor.
‘But he says he can’t recall what he looked like and wasn’t sure he ever saw him, sir,’ added Rickman. ‘He thought he might have been involved more as an enforcer, rather than an armed robbery man.’
The DCI mulled this over. ‘It might fit with what we heard about the head being shown as a warning to anyone tempted to rip off Mickey Doyle, I suppose.’
‘And a Yank is more likely to know about Batman,’ said Hartnell. ‘So what d’you want to do about it?’
What the CID top brass did was to send both of them back down to Aberystwyth very early next day.
The three-hour drive got them there before mid-morning and Meirion Thomas, who Trevor had warned of his coming, gave them a substantial canteen breakfast while Trevor told him of the rather vague information they had dragged out of Olly Franklin. The local DI had been tempted to order Welsh laver-bread to go with the eggs, sausage, bacon and beans, but decided that boiled seaweed might hamper the cordial relations between the two police forces.
‘Any memories of a dodgy American around here in those days?’ he enquired as he attacked the food.
‘That’s the problem,’ said Meirion. ‘It was so long ago, I wasn’t even here then. And during and immediately after the war, the country was awash with Yanks.’
Hartnell sighed. ‘We’ll just have to play it by ear, then. Perhaps if he thinks that we know more than we really do, he’ll throw in the towel.’
The Welsh inspector doubted it. ‘Not if he thinks he’s being put in the frame for the murder. The prospect of a long drop at the end of short rope is a powerful incentive to keeping his mouth shut!’
James Brown, the former Jaroslav Beran, was not pleased to see them again, when they sat across the table from him in the dismal interview room. With his rather inert solicitor alongside him, he ranted in his fractured English about illegal imprisonment, threatening to sue everyone from the Queen downwards. Tom Rickman sat slightly behind the two detective inspectors and stared intently at the prisoner. As soon as there was a break in Beran’s tirade, the sergeant pointed a large forefinger towards the man.