‘Could that have occurred in the hour between the incident and the death, doctor?’ asked the detective inspector, with a firm eye upon cause and effect.
‘I doubt it, as this looks firm and well established,’ replied Richard, cautiously. ‘But I’ll need to look at it under the microscope to make sure. That’ll take a few days, but I’ll try to get it done before Christmas.’
Mentally he kept his fingers crossed, as Sian would only have until Saturday to make the sections.
The last thing he did was to cut a number of incisions into the muscle of the heart itself, looking for evidence of infarction, but it looked normal, in spite of the blockage of the supplying artery.
The examination over, he stood at the sink to wash his hands and give a summary to the inspector and the coroner’s officer.
‘There’s no doubt that he had potentially fatal heart disease. This must have been developing for years and could have killed him at any time. But I’m well aware that he died within an hour of a stressful argument and a mild blow on the chest, which caused him to fall backwards.’
‘So did that lead to his death, doctor?’ demanded the CID man, with a terrier-like tenacity.
‘To be frank, I don’t know. I will have to do some tests to try to find out. If he has severe damage to his heart muscle which arose before the incident, then my opinion is that the argument and very slight physical trauma did not significantly contribute to death, which may have been inevitable. But I’m willing to bet that a lawyer might have a different view.’
‘So you don’t feel it’s justifiable to charge the van driver with causing the death?’
‘Let’s wait a few days until I do all that I can to clarify the situation,’ suggested Richard, not wanting to unnecessarily condemn a man to spending Christmas in police custody.
‘He’s presumably not going to flee the country over this, so if we hold our horses until we get all the evidence that’s available, it will be best for everyone concerned.’
As he drove home with his samples, including the complete heart in a large glass jar, he fervently hoped that some articles he had read recently in the specialist medical journals might help him to arrive at the most just solution.
That same Wednesday was proving a busy one for the usually placid Aberystwyth CID. Trevor Hartnell had arrived following a very early start from Birmingham and, after a late breakfast in the canteen, was going off with Meirion Thomas to seek the elusive Jaroslav Beran, now officially known as James Brown.
The local sergeant, Gwyn Parry, was detailed to accompany the pair that had arrived from the forensic laboratory in Cardiff to look at the old van in Comins Coch.
He sat in the front of their Morris Oxford estate, the rear luggage space filled with the paraphernalia needed at a scene of crime. When he piloted them to Ty Canol farm and led them into the weedy wilderness behind the cowsheds, the two men from Cardiff looked with distaste at the rusting van filled with mouldering agricultural devices.
‘What are we supposed to be doing with this?’ asked Larry McCoughlin, the liaison officer. ‘It’s full of junk.’
‘There’s a faint possibility it was used to move a dead body, maybe around ten years ago,’ explained Parry. ‘Can you find bloodstains after all this time?’
‘Depends on where they are,’ replied Philip Rees, the biologist. ‘Not much chance if they were exposed to the weather for all that time, but if some has seeped into protected cracks, we may get lucky.’
He was just going to ask if they were supposed to shift hundredweights of stakes and fencing wire, when the sound of a police Land Rover was heard coming into the yard and two uniformed constables appeared.
‘I thought that might be a problem,’ said the detective sergeant. ‘So I’ve organized some muscle for you.’
The back of the Ford van was soon cleared and the floor became visible, albeit cracked, dirty and covered with an assortment of debris.
‘Made of nine-ply board, that!’ growled Myrddin Evans. The farmer had come to watch the desecration of his vehicle and his scowl deepened as Philip Rees levered up the rotting floor with a case-opener.
‘I’ll be putting a claim for compensation, mind!’ he threatened. ‘Damaging my property like this.’
Gwyn Parry grinned at him. ‘You do that, Myrddin. About five bob should cover it!’
With McCoughlin holding the floor away from the battered side panels and the rusted bearers underneath, the forensic scientist scraped off sludge and debris from along the edges of the plywood. Then he dug a sharp probe into the cracks in several areas of the floor and removed more concealed material, which he put into some specimen tubes. With a few circles of filter paper which he pressed against suspect areas, he did some magic with fluids from bottles out of his case and then viewed the results with interest.
‘We’ve got a positive screening test for blood here. That’s by no means conclusive, and it might well be animal, but I’ll take this stuff back to Cardiff and get back to you tomorrow.’
The two uniformed constables found a tarpaulin in the back of their vehicle and spread it to protect the floor of the van before putting Myrddin’s fencing materials back inside.
‘We may need to have that bit of floor taken down to Cardiff, depending on what’s found,’ said the scientist. ‘Until then, it should be OK like this, given it’s already been sitting here for years.’
As they all drove away, leaving a bemused farmer wondering what all the fuss was about, a few miles away Meirion Thomas was pulling up in the CID Vauxhall outside a small cottage near Llancynfelyn. Trevor Hartnell got out the other side and was rather overawed by the surroundings, which contrasted so greatly with the seedier part of Birmingham where he spent his working life. Below the road, the ground sloped down to the great expanse of the bog, beyond which the sea sparkled in the sunshine. Looking the other way, the purple line of the hills formed the horizon, whilst near at hand, the whitewashed bwythyn of Gelli Derwen was like something from a Grimm’s fairy tale, against its background of trees.
They walked towards it and closer inspection took some of the romance from the scene, as the walls were stained with green mould and the window frames showed peeling paint over rotting wood. The front garden was overgrown and a rusty bicycle was on its side near the corner of the single-storey cottage. The door was set between the two small windows, inside which were yellowed net curtains.
There was no bell or knocker, so Meirion rapped on the upper panel. A dog began barking and was followed by a muffled curse and a yelp.
‘At least somebody’s home,’ said Hartnell, feeling in his breast pocket for his warrant card.
There was a rattle of a chain and then the door was pulled open, the bottom grinding against uneven floor tiles. A beery, unshaven face appeared, an unwelcoming scowl fixed in place.
‘Who are you? What you want?’
The heavy features, chin and cheeks part-hidden by several days’ growth of stubble, glowered at them. Trevor, accustomed to such meetings over many years, was certain that one glance had told the man that these were two police officers standing on his doorstep. They both flashed their proof of identity at him and his dark eyes under the beetling grey bows seized upon Hartnell’s card.
‘Birmingham? What you want coming from there?’
His central European accent was still strong.
‘We want to talk to you, sir. You are James Brown, formerly Jaroslav Beran?’
‘Don’t use that name no more. James Brown is me.’
‘Can we come in and talk, Mr Brown?’ said Meirion, easily. ‘We’re hoping you can help us with our enquiries.’
That ominous phrase seemed familiar to the Czech and his scowl deepened even more.
‘Never let us go, do you, once we’ve been inside? But I done nothing, you ask my parole officer.’
‘We already have, sir,’ retorted the local DI. ‘Now can we come in and talk, please? Unless you want to come down to the police station instead.�
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Reluctantly, Brown dragged the door open wider and without a word, turned away to lead the way into the room on the right of a short passage. As Hartnell followed him, he got a glimpse through the other door, where greyish sheets were tumbled on an unmade bed. A dog began whining somewhere in the back of the cottage as the two detectives went into a living room, where a small log fire smouldered in the hearth. Facing it was a sagging settee covered in American cloth and a couple of hard chairs stood by a table near the window, on which was a pre-war Marconi radio and a couple of half-empty bottles of whiskey and gin. The floor was covered in faded linoleum, worn right through near the fire and at the door. Both officers were large men and Brown was also over six feet and equally broad-shouldered, so the small room seemed full of bodies.
‘What you want with me?’ repeated the householder, not inviting them to be seated.
Meirion pulled a notebook and consulted it. ‘You used to own a Ford van, registration number EJ 2652?’
Surprise tinged with unease passed over Brown’s coarse-skinned face. He raised a hand to his head and scratched his cropped, bristly hair in a classical gesture of puzzlement.
‘Sure, years ago I did. What’s the problem, you just discovered I made parking offence?’
His attempt at levity or sarcasm fell flat.
‘What did you use it for?’ asked Hartnell.
Brown failed to see where this was leading and his beetle-brows came together like two hairy caterpillars above his eyes.
‘I had business in Aberystwyth, everybody knows that. I carried furnitures in it.’
‘Sometimes stolen furniture?’
James Brown made a sweeping gesture of annoyance.
‘Christ, why you bring that up again? Look, sure there were some misunderstandings; I got landed with hot stuff. But I paid twice in the prison for that, now for years I am clean!’
‘Did you carry anything else in that van apart from furniture?’ asked Meirion.
The man looked shiftily from one officer to the other.
‘It’s a long time ago. Sure, I used to move all sorts of stuff, sort of transport business for others when they wanted small things moved.’
‘Did you ever carry meat of any sort?’ persisted Hartnell.
This was a difficult one for their victim. Rationing in Britain had only finished very recently — ironically, long after it had been abolished in Germany. To admit to carrying meat was tantamount to owning up to black-market activities — or even rustling, a crime well established in West Wales.
‘No, I never carried no meat! Look, why you asking me all this?’
Ignoring this, Meirion went off on another tack.
‘You live within sight of Borth Bog. You must know about the body found there recently.’
Brown grabbed the back of one of the hard chairs and Hartnell tensed himself slightly — but the man was only leaning his weight on it.
‘Sure, I heard something about it.’
‘Come on, it’s almost on your doorstep!’ snapped Trevor. ‘You must have read or heard that he was man with a Batman tattoo on his shoulder?’
Brown shrugged. ‘I don’ recall, no.’
‘Who used to drive your van when you were in business?’ asked Trevor, smoothly.
Brown stared at him suspiciously. ‘I had a few guys, different times.’
‘And what was the name of the one with a Batman tattoo on his shoulder?’
The Czech stared blankly at Trevor Hartnell.
‘What the hell you talking about, mister?’ he demanded aggressively. ‘You come here, push into my house and talk bloody nonsense!’
‘You had an assistant — or more likely, an accomplice — about ten or eleven years ago,’ interposed Meirion. He drove for you and carried furniture for you, when you had the shop in Aber. We want to know his name.’
‘I don’ remember. I had plenty working for me then,’ replied Brown, stubbornly.
‘We can find out, if you won’t tell us,’ said Meirion complacently. ‘Didn’t you keep records, paying their tax and National Insurance?’ He said this with his tongue in his cheek and was rewarded with a scornful laugh.
‘You making joke? This was in war still, nobody did those damn things. I just paid cash in the hand.’
The local DI nodded. ‘OK, have it your own way. Your shop was in Vulcan Street, wasn’t it? We can soon ask around that area, plenty of people can still remember ten years back.’
Brown shrugged and stayed silent.
‘How long have you lived here?’ asked Hartnell.
‘Since before end of war — except when I was on holiday in Swansea.’ Again the attempt at humour fell on deaf ears.
‘Where were you before that?’
‘In army, Czech battalion. I got invalided out, now live on little pension.’
Meirion seized on this straight away. ‘I looked up your Probation Service records. You left the military in 1942, but you didn’t come here until 1944. So where were you in between?’
James Brown looked from one to the other, in a troubled, hunted fashion.
‘I was here and there… travelling to get job.’
Trevor Hartnell took a chance.
‘You were in Birmingham, weren’t you? Ever heard of Mickey Doyle?’
‘I was in Midlands sometimes, yes. Who this Doyle fellow?’
From then on, the Czech stubbornly refused to admit anything, denying any knowledge of Birmingham gangs or any involvement in organized crime. Eventually, the two detectives decided they were wasting their time until they had better evidence and left the cottage, with a promise — or a threat — that they would be returning, probably the next day.
Their farewell from Brown was a final bellow at the whining dog, then the door was slammed behind them.
‘Nice chap!’ remarked Trevor, as they walked back to the car. ‘I’ll bet he was up to something back in my manor in Birmingham. I’ll get a check run on him now that we’ve got a name.’
As Meirion drove away, he looked down at the bog, where there was still a muddy scar where the body had been hoisted from the peat.
‘Too much of a coincidence for this fellow to be here, within spitting distance of where we found Batman,’ he said ruminatively. ‘And we still haven’t even got a name for him!’
‘You haven’t put the heart in formalin, doctor,’ admonished Sian. She was looking over his shoulder as he sat at the big table in the bay window of the laboratory, where the light was strongest.
He had a large stainless-steel tray in front of him and, wearing a pair of rubber gloves, was using a forceps and scalpel to cut small postage-stamp-size squares of heart muscle and coronary artery. These went into pots of formaldehyde-saline, to fix the proteins in the tissue, ready for Sian to process them into sections for viewing under his microscope.
‘No, and I’ll tell you why in minute, Sian. Meanwhile, can you get these blocks processed and give me fibrin stains, an acridine orange and a PTAH, as well as the usual H and E stains, please.’ These were special stains, intended to reveal different defects in the heart muscle.
‘What’s the problem with this case, doctor?’ said the technician, being as insatiable as usual in her search for knowledge.
‘There’s a thrombus in the descending branch of the left coronary artery and I’m anxious to know how long it’s been there. The family are claiming that the shove in the chest that this poor man suffered was the cause of his coronary episode and hence his death.’
‘And was it?’ she demanded, always ready to take the side of the downtrodden masses, even though this particular victim was a rich brewer with a very expensive Alvis motor car.
‘Well, his coronary artery disease certainly wasn’t, as it must have been there for years. And I don’t think the thrombus was either, as he died within an hour of the squabble. But I’d like to know if his heart muscle was already damaged from lack of blood supply, which is why I’ve got the heart in this tray.’
Sia
n looked at the organ phlegmatically, unlike Moira, who though she had got used to typing descriptions of unpleasant things, was not keen to view them in the flesh.
‘Why have you already sliced across it?’ she asked.
‘I want to try some new techniques that I’ve read about in the pathology journals, mainly from the other side of Europe,’ he explained. ‘The trouble with conventional histology is that it can’t show the very early stages of cell death in the heart muscle, just by staining fixed tissue.’
Sian was already ahead of him. ‘You’re into histochemistry, then. But we haven’t got the equipment. You need frozen sections and all sorts of fancy reagents.’
He nodded, pleased at her quick mind and wide knowledge of what was going on in the technical world.
‘There are some cut-price methods being tried, where a large slice of tissue, as opposed to little bits for the microscope, can be processed for enzyme content.’
She settled on a stool next to him and put her chin in her hand, prepared to listen to his explanation.
‘We’re doing enzymes now in my biochemistry course. But how can that help you with this problem?’
Richard settled back to give a lecture, always ready to impart knowledge to those who wanted to hear it.
‘Muscles need energy and they get this through turning carbohydrates and other nutrients in the blood into carbon dioxide and water, using enzymes, especially the dehydrogenases.’
Sian nodded, in a slightly superior manner. ‘Yes, the Krebs cycle and all that!’
‘Well, those enzymes are inside the muscle cells, but if those get killed or injured by cutting off their blood supply, as with a coronary thrombosis, then the enzymes leak out through the damaged cell walls.’
Again his technician was ahead of him. ‘That’s the basis of the SGOT tests we used to do in the hospital. The enzymes became raised in the serum, because they were leaking out of the heart.’
Richard gave one of his impish grins. ‘I don’t need to tell you anything, do I, Einstein? So you’ll appreciate that if the enzymes increase in the blood, they must decrease in the muscle — and that’s where these tests are useful.’
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