‘Sorry to disturb you so late, Doctor, but we’re in a bit of a spot. We’ve got a shooting and no pathologist to attend the scene.’
He went on to explain that their regular Home Office pathologist from Oxford was already out on a double murder that would keep him occupied until late next day.
‘My old friend Trevor Mitchell had told me about you and suggested that if we ever needed a backup, you might be able to help us out,’ he added.
Richard was only too happy to oblige, as he was keen to get a foothold in the Home Office work. He asked the Gloucestershire officer for more details.
‘We’ve got a chap shot dead in a car in a forestry area between Ross-on-Wye and Gloucester. It looks like a suicide, but the DI that was called is not happy about it, mainly because the deceased is a known villain from London. We can fill you in more when you get here.’
He gave some directions to Richard, suggesting that the best route was up to Ross via Monmouth, then down on the A40 towards Gloucester.
‘I’ll have a police car waiting for you on that road a couple of miles before you get to Huntley village. He’ll lead you to the scene, as it’s hidden away up some country lanes.’
With a promise to be there within an hour, Richard ran upstairs and tapped on Angela’s door.
‘Are you in bed or decent?’ he called.
She was not in bed, but was in a dressing gown when she opened the door.
‘What’s this, Richard? Are you desperate enough to come knocking on a lady’s door in the middle of the night?’ she quipped.
He quickly told her about the phone call. ‘Do you want to come?’ he asked. ‘Be like old times for you.’
She agreed readily. ‘Give me time to get some clothes on. I’ll see you downstairs in five minutes.’
The Humber’s headlights were soon carving a passage through the slight mist that filled the valley as they drove. There were few other cars on the road and at Ross, they turned east towards Gloucester. Some miles down the A40, Angela spotted the illuminated roof sign of a police car parked in a field gateway. They slowed to a crawl until the big Wolseley flashed its headlights at them and Richard pulled up alongside.
‘We’ll go on a short way, Doctor and then turn left,’ called the driver from his open window. They followed him for a couple of miles through a sleeping village called Dursley Cross and then along narrow roads with woods on either side.
Angela was looking at a folded road map by the light of a small torch. ‘There’s a huge area of woodland here, must once have been part of the Forest of Dean.’
After another half mile the brake lights of the police car came on and he slowed to turn left into a bumpy track which went deep into the trees, seen dimly in the reflected light of their headlamps. A few hundred yards more brought them into a clearing, where two other police cars, two unmarked cars and a plain van were parked.
The other driver came across to them as they were retrieving their bags from the back seat.
‘We’ll have to walk a little bit now, sir,’ said the officer. ‘The way we came in isn’t the direct way to the scene, but we didn’t want to drive over any tyre marks.’
Another uniformed bobby was standing guard over the cars and took their names down on a clipboard.
‘I’ll take you through, I’ve got a decent torch here,’ said the police car driver, leading the way.
Walking through the forest was an eerie experience, as soon a glow appeared ahead where portable lights had been set up. A dense mist was hanging at head height between the trees and the dim light revealed only the straight black trunks of the larches on every side. The macabre effect was heightened when they overtook two men in black carrying a coffin through the ghostly scene, presumably the duty undertakers coming from the van parked in the clearing.
When they reached the lights, propped on tripods over car batteries, they saw a dark-coloured car at the end of a barely visible firebreak running through the wood.
Around it were half a dozen men, two of them in uniform. One of the others came to meet them as they approached.
‘Good of you to come, Doctor! And you, miss’ he added to Angela, assuming she was his secretary.
‘She’s a doctor too,’ explained Richard with a grin. ‘Doctor Bray, formerly of the Metropolitan Police Laboratory, until I stole her away!’
The superintendent introduced himself as Tom Spurrel, another large man, as most of Gloucester police seemed to be. Another officer approached them and Spurrel explained that he was Brian Lane, the DI who first attended.
‘The situation is this, Doctors,’ the superintendent began. ‘There’s a dead man in that car, shot through the neck. The gun’s on the floor and it looks like a suicide – but maybe that’s what it’s supposed to look like.’
‘You already know who he is, you said?’ asked Pryor.
‘Well, we know who the car belongs to and from the description we had over the phone from the Met, there seems little doubt that the chap is Harry Haines, a toerag from South London.’
‘Harry Haines? I’ve heard of him,’ exclaimed Angela. ‘Wasn’t he a villain from New Cross way, who got off on a murder charge a few years back? Some fight between rival gangs, that ended in a shooting. We had material from it in the Met Lab.’
Spurrel nodded in the gloom. ‘That’s him, his mob ran protection rackets and a bit of prostitution and drugs.’
‘So what the hell’s he doing in a Gloucestershire forest?’ asked Richard.
The detective inspector, Brian Lane, answered. He was as tall as Spurrel, but leaner with a saturnine face.
‘We’ve heard that his mob have been trying get in on the nightclub and dog racing scene here, to extend their protection scams. Same as what’s happening in Tyneside and Manchester, the London boys are wanting to muscle in on the local action.’
‘That’s why we’re cautious about accepting it as a suicide,’ broke in Tom Spurrel. ‘Why would he come all the way down here to top himself?’
Both the detectives wore belted raincoats and wide-brimmed felt hats, more reminiscent of the forties – or American B-movies, thought film buff Richard.
‘Want to have a look now?’ offered Spurrel. ‘The forensic lab in Bristol is sending someone over, they should be here soon. We called them a couple of hours ago.’
‘And there are officers coming down from the Met, to definitely identify this chap,’ added the DI, as they walked to the car, sitting silently in the ring of lights. It was an almost new Rover P4/90.
Going round to the driver’s side, Richard and Angela saw that the front door was wide open and a man sat there, his head lolling backwards against the top of the seat.
‘Is it alright to go nearer?’ asked Pryor, looking down at the ground. It was covered with a spongy mat of pine needles and there seemed no chance of footprints being left.
‘Go ahead, Doc, we’ve got all the pictures. Just keep your fingers off anything but the body.’
Richard gingerly moved nearer and stood right against the door pillar, holding a large torch that Spurrel had handed to him. The man inside was dressed in a fawn check suit over a white shirt with no tie. He was thin and wiry, looking about forty years old, his brown hair cut short.
His mouth was open and blood ran from both corners, as it did from a wound in the front of his neck, just under the chin. There were runnels of dried blood on each side of the bristly skin of his neck. His hands lay on his lap and on the floor between his feet, there was a pistol.
Richard looked carefully at the corpse, his eyes running over every inch, from the crown of his head to the toes of his expensive brown shoes. Then he stepped back a pace and turned to the waiting onlookers.
‘You’re right, it’s no suicide!’ he said. ‘And he wasn’t shot here, either.’
The two senior detectives and three other officers who had gravitated to the group, looked at Pryor as if he was some Old Testament prophet.