‘Big problem, I’m afraid,’ growled Bailey. ‘It looks as if we’ve brought you up to London for nothing!’
Richard stared at him in surprise. ‘You mean you’re not going to call us? Has there been an adjournment?’
Miss Forbes shook her head. ‘More than that, I’m sorry to say. Their Lordships, in their wisdom, have decided that they will not hear your evidence. Not today, not ever, unless we manage to get another Appeal sometime in the future!’
Angela was indignant, in her usual dignified way.
‘But that’s outrageous! This Appeal was Millie’s only hope. Why on earth have they refused to listen to us?’
Before the barrister could reply, the court door swung open and a very angry Paul Marchmont strode out. He was red in the face and his hair was dishevelled as he tore off his wig. Advancing on them, he began apologizing profusely.
‘I’m so sorry, doctors! Both for you and poor Millicent Wilson! Those silly old fools in there should be retired, before they do any more legal damage!’
Though Marchmont was known as a bit of a rebel, this was strong language even for him.
‘So what’s happened?’ asked Richard, perturbed that all his hard work seemed to have been in vain.
‘The three wise monkeys in there declared that this was an Appeal, not a retrial. Their argument, from which I could not budge them, was that your opinions could have been given at the original trial and is therefore not new evidence.’
‘But we were not involved at the trial,’ protested Angela. ‘We’d never even heard of Millie Wilson then.’
The QC threw up his hands in disgust. ‘I know, but this has happened before. The judges take such a narrow view of things and stick like glue to the rules. I tried to preach the “natural justice” sermon to them, but they were not impressed. Obviously, they had made up their minds not to hear you before we’d even started.’
‘I still don’t understand why our evidence was not good enough for them,’ persisted Angela stubbornly.
Marchmont waved his arms about in denial.
‘My dear lady, it was first class! Their blinkered argument was that as you are not putting forward any new discoveries made since last year, the same evidence could have been offered at the trial, either by you or by some other competent forensic experts. I could not deny to their lordships that all you have so diligently put forward in your excellent reports was available knowledge last year. The judges said that the fact that it was not so offered was the fault of the defence team and that was not a factor that concerned them.’
Richard was becoming as exasperated as the senior counsel.
‘So Millie will have to spend God knows how many years in prison because of some technicality seized upon by three elderly judges? Is there nothing that can be done for her?’
Marchmont mopped his brow with a flowing white handkerchief before settling his wig back on his head.
‘After their lordships have lunched, I’ll try to nit-pick a few points in the trial proceedings, but I know it will be futile. The success rate in criminal Appeals is abysmally low, as the judges’ mafia stick together and the Lords of Appeal fall over backwards not to find any fault with the way their brothers in the lower courts conduct their business.’
With more profuse apologies and commiserations — and a reassurance that all expert witness fees and expenses would be met — the lawyers left them to make their way out of the vast building. Richard was still seething with indignation at having done all that work in vain, but Angela was more concerned with their inability to have helped Millicent Wilson.
‘The poor woman will be devastated,’ she said, as they walked out into the Strand. ‘I don’t envy Douglas Bailey for having to break the news to her.’
In the open air, away from the inimical atmosphere of the courts, Richard’s mercurial temperament took an upswing.
‘Come on, let’s go and have a nice lunch somewhere, then get to Paddington and head back to civilization in Wales.’
Next morning at coffee in the staff room, they had to relate every detail of their abortive trip to Sian and Moira, who were equally incensed by the outcome.
‘They say the law’s an ass and now I quite believe them,’ said their fiery technician, her socialist hackles rising. ‘All those old judges, with their Eton and Oxford backgrounds, should be sacked and some younger ones appointed, who know what ordinary life is really like.’
Moira was more thoughtful about the debacle and got Richard to explain what had gone wrong. He repeated what the Queen’s Counsel had said to them.
‘What did he mean by “natural justice”?’ she asked, her growing interest in the law evident once again.
‘I’m not all that clear, but I think the general thrust is that, notwithstanding all the conventional rules of legal procedure, if a situation seems a flagrant disregard of common sense and fair play, then the rules should be circumvented… but you’ll be able to tell me more about it in a year or two’s time, when you’re a legal expert yourself!’
Their forensic debate was interrupted by the phone ringing in the office and Moira went off to answer it. She came back to tell Richard that the police in Aberystwyth wanted to speak to him and when he picked up the receiver, he found it was Meirion Thomas on the other end. They spoke for about ten minutes and when Richard went back to his cold cup of coffee, he had more news to tell his colleagues.
‘It sounds as if our Body in the Bog case has been wrapped up as far as it can go,’ he announced.
The others clamoured for the details, all having had a stake in the unusual case. Angela had done the original serology on the tissue from the borehole, Sian had prepared histology sections of the skin and the bone disease, while Moira had typed all the reports.
‘So who was he? And have they got the chap who killed him?’ demanded Sian.
Richard retold the chain of events which Meirion had described to him.
‘Some antique dealer recalled seeing a man with a Batman tattoo years ago. They traced his van back to Cardiganshire and found old blood stains in the back, of the same group as our corpse. The van belonged to a former Czech soldier, who was in a gang in Birmingham, then got moved to Borth to act as a fence for stolen goods and a lookout for sheep rustling.’
‘Extraordinary story!’ said Angela. ‘You wouldn’t believe it if you read it in a novel. They did pretty well to get a blood group from a van after a decade.’
‘You haven’t told us yet who he was!’ persisted Sian.
‘Some American seaman called Josh Andersen, who decided he didn’t want to be torpedoed in 1942 and ran off to become a gangster in the Midlands. It seems that he started pinching money from the gang boss, who had him rubbed out, as they say in Chicago.’
He went on to relate what DI Thomas had told him, about the Czech’s confession that he had been lumbered with a headless corpse for disposal.
‘A pretty tall story, that!’ observed Moira. ‘Have they charged him with the murder?’
‘Apparently not, though they’re holding him as an accessory for the time being. No doubt the Director of Public Prosecutions will have to sort it out. Meirion thinks that probably either the gang leader, Mickey Doyle, or one of his henchmen actually did the deed. But Doyle legged it to Spain several years ago and they can’t get him out.’
‘So why cut his head off?’ queried Sian with a little shudder of horror, even though she had known about it for weeks.
‘Retribution for trying to fleece his boss, apparently. This Doyle villain seemed to have taken grave exception to this Josh skimming part of the profits from his protection rackets, brothels and casinos, so he had him killed and then exhibited his head on festive occasions as a warning to the rest of his gang.’
They kicked the topic around for a time, squeezing every last bit of information from Richard, who only knew what Meirion had told him.