“Katrin, thank you. I’m not sure what the exact significance is, but I’m sure it’s an important breakthrough.”
“There’s one other thing.”
“Yes?”
“She had a close relationship with a young girl, who may have been her daughter, or an adopted daughter. The girl was a toddler at the time of Elida’s disappearance. The newspaper articles don’t say much about her, but I’ve tracked her records as far as I can. I’m not absolutely certain of this, but I think that she’s the same person who appears in accounts of digs that were carried out by Claudia McRae in the 1950s.”
“What makes you suspect that?”
“It’s the name. The girl’s name was Abigail. It was an unusual name to choose for a girl of any nationality at that time, but almost unheard of in Norway. The newspaper account refers to her as Abigail Berg. The name of the young woman who took part in the 1950s digs was also Abigail.”
“Was her second name Berg?”
“No. It was ..”
“Let me guess: McRae?”
“No, Tim, you’re jumping the gun, as usual. It was Maichment. Abigail Maichment.”
“Should the break-down truck tow the car off the standing now, sir?” asked Juliet. “It will be getting dark soon.”
“What? Oh, yes, please. I’m sorry to have kept everyone waiting. And, Juliet, thank you for sending those papers to Katrin. It’s helped her to unearth some fascinating stuff – I’m not sure what it all means yet, but we can talk about it later. Let’s get on with this now.”
The break-down truck driver had fixed a large hook attached to a rigid bar under the tow-bar of the old Citroen. He was a short, stout man and he stumped across to Tim and Juliet with a rolling swagger.
“Any chance of getting into the vehicle to release the hand-brake?” he asked. “It’s been left in first gear, as well. There’ll be no give in the wheels if I just tow it as it is. Could cause some damage.”
“We don’t have the keys, and there’s no time to get them,” said Tim. “See what you can do with it like that. If there’s any damage, it’ll be my responsibility. I don’t want to break into it unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Whatever you say.” The man shrugged and climbed back into his truck. He started edging it forward. At first the car didn’t budge; it just rocked from side to side a little. The truck-driver increased the revs, but it continued to resist, whilst the truck’s wheels failed to get a purchase. He climbed out of his cab again and headed for the small knot of policemen who were watching.
“D’you think you guys could give it a push from the front when I give the word? Just to get it moving.” Tim watched, amused: here was a citizen not to be fazed by blue uniforms. The policemen sprang into action and lined up in front of the bonnet, probably feeling sheepish at not having themselves thought to offer help.
“Cheers!” the driver shouted, giving them the thumbs-up. He got back into his cab and wound down the window. He yelled across to Tim and Juliet.
“I’d get out of the way if I was you. I might not be able to control a sudden move forward. I wouldn’t want to squash you!”
It was Tim’s turn to look discomfited. He and Juliet stepped back several yards.
The truck driver increased the revs gradually while the policemen pushed. As he had predicted, after a few moments the truck gave a sudden lurch, tugging the car with it. The three policemen struggled not to fall flat on their faces. They grinned, dusting off their hands.
“D’you want me, gov’nor, or can I go?”
“I’d be grateful if you’d stay,” Tim said. “We shouldn’t take too long. We’re going to dig here to see if we can find something that may have been buried. If there’s nothing there we’d like you to move the car back to where it was again – as near as you can, anyway.”
The man shook his head.
“Not sure about that,” he said. “I’ll do me best, though. I’ll have to charge for the time, like, if I stay.”
“Of course.”
Tim inspected the area that the car had occupied. The earth looked newly turned over. It was packed down at the edges, where the car wheels had stood, but soft in the middle. It was bare of weeds or grass.
The policemen fetched shovels and started digging at once. The soil yielded easily; soon they had dug down to a depth of several feet. Tim was beginning to fear that he and Juliet had initiated a wild goose chase when one of the officers paused and stood up straight. He had been standing in the hole that they’d made, trying to clear away the loose earth that had fallen in from the sides. He was wearing heavy-duty rubber gloves so that he could scoop out the debris with his hands. The others peered down at him.
“There’s something here!” he said. “I’m not sure what it is. It feels like some old sacking.”
“Let me see,” said Tim. There was not room enough for them both in the hole, so the uniformed officer clambered out. Disregarding the effect on his suit, Tim jumped in. He knelt and brushed away at the sacking with his bare hand. He uncovered quite a large expanse, enough to see that it was part of a piece of oiled sackcloth of the kind sometimes used to wrap tools. It appeared to be in good condition. He thought that he could also detect an unpleasant smell rising from the dug ground, though the whole garden was wet and dank, so it could just have been part of a more pervasive odour.
“I think we need the SOCOs here now,” he said. “If we dig any deeper ourselves we may destroy some valuable evidence. Juliet, can you get them here as soon as possible?”
Juliet Armstrong took out her mobile. Tim returned to the breakdown truck driver.
“I don’t think we’ll need you again today,” he said. “Thank you for waiting so patiently. We won’t keep you any longer.”
The man surveyed the knot of people standing around the hole with ill-concealed curiosity.
“I can stay if you like,” he said.
“Thank you, but that really won’t be necessary,” said Tim.
Patti Gardner and Jo, her assistant, arrived less than half an hour later. As they donned their white suits and laid out the range of small tools like surgical instruments, Tim reflected that their work had a lot in common with that of archaeologists. It was ironical that they were now about to use archaeological-type techniques to dig up what he’d wager would prove to be the body of an archaeologist.
Patti and Jo scraped and dusted. Darkness was beginning to fall and the policemen were now taking it in turns to shine their torches into the hole. One of them approached Tim. He was flapping his crossed arms over his chest.
“It’s blooming cold out here,” he said. “I could do with a cuppa.”
“What do you suggest? That we break into the house and help ourselves?”
“We could use some help now,” Patti called across. Tim and Juliet hurried over to her, followed by the policeman.
By widening and lengthening the hole they had exposed a large area of the sackcloth material.
“There are several thicknesses of this, apparently in good condition,” said Patti. “My guess is that it hasn’t been here long – a few weeks at most. There’s obviously something wrapped up in it. We don’t know what it is, but it’s something quite heavy. I want you to help by digging underneath it so that we can use ropes to haul the whole lot out.”
It took another hour to accomplish this task. Darkness had fallen; the temperatures were dropping further. They were all chilled to the bone and tired. Nevertheless, the atmosphere was charged with a kind of macabre excitement. Tim himself almost hoped that Claudia McRae’s remains would be found here. It would get Thornton off his back, for one thing; the case would turn into an open-and-shut one, for another, since Guy Maichment would hardly be able to assert his innocence. Establishing his motive would be a bit of a conundrum, though.
They had passed the ropes under the mass of sackclot
h and were levering it out of the hole. The smell was getting stronger. Tim could no longer blame his imagination – everyone was suffering from the stench. Juliet was holding her gloved hands over her nose. Tim improvised with a paper napkin that he found in his coat pocket.
They laid the damp and noisome package on the mud track. Patti and Jo were wearing masks. Jo had spares which she passed around. One of the policemen held his hurricane lamp aloft so that it cast an arc of light over their spoils.
The sackcloth did not appear to be tied or fastened. It had been wrapped around what it concealed several times and folded over at both ends. Patti knelt beside it, then sat back on her haunches to consider.
“If this contains a decomposing body, we are likely to damage it considerably by rolling it over several times in order to remove it and preserve the sackcloth intact. Although I’m reluctant to damage any kind of evidence, I therefore think that I’m just going to cut it so that we can see what’s there.” She looked at Tim for approval. He nodded.
Patti produced a large pair of shears and made an incision in the centre of the mass. She slit it upwards to the end furthest from her. She repeated the process by cutting two further layers of cloth. Jo helped her to fold back the flaps that she had created. She was kneeling closer to the stuff than Patti at this point. She shone her torch into the aperture.
“Christ!” she said, falling back against one of the policemen’s legs. He bent to hold her steady.
“What is it?” asked Tim.
“I’m sorry,” said Jo. “It takes a lot to shock me. But I think you need to look for yourself.”
Patti silently passed across latex gloves and Tim eased them on. He took the shears from her and clipped the cloth back further. They were all expecting his action to reveal a body; they were not disappointed. However, the corpse now lolling partially exposed from its sackcloth shroud was not that of an elderly woman. It was unmistakably male: the remains of a man who had been lying dead for at least a week, perhaps several weeks, but no longer; a man who had been all but decapitated.
Chapter Forty-Eight
“Do you remember the reported break-in at the house in Chapel Lane?” Superintendent Thornton fixed Tim with a flinty eye.
“Of course I remember,” said Tim. “It was only yesterday. Juliet Armstrong was detailed to interview Alex Tarrant, the woman who lives there. I met both her and her husband myself. I’d actually met her for the first time a few weeks ago, when I first started work on the McRae case.”
“Yes,” said the Superintendent, “you did. You told me. You also said that the daub on the kitchen wall made you think – with good reason, I might add – that the break-in was connected in some way to Claudia McRae’s disappearance and that therefore Mrs Tarrant might be in danger. Or is my memory playing tricks?”
“No, sir, that is correct.”
“So why wasn’t she given police protection?”
“We thought about it. But she went to stay with friends in Holbeach – is still there, as far as I know. So we thought the risk was minimal. I saw her earlier today, as a matter of fact, at the Archaeological Society. She seemed in good form. Nothing’s happened to her, has it?”
Tim asked the question with a growing sense of foreboding. He knew almost before he spoke what the answer was going to be.
“She’s disappeared, that’s what’s happened to her. That was her husband on the phone. He was expecting her back at the friend’s house by about 6 p.m. this evening and she hasn’t turned up. He’s tried calling her mobile, but it’s switched off. Naturally, he’s terrified that she’s been hurt.”
“It’s barely 7 p.m. now,” said Tim, flicking his wrist so that he could see his watch. “It’s a bit early to . . .”
“No, DI Yates, it isn’t ‘a bit early to’ anything. You know as well as I do that we’re looking at a pattern here: daub on the wall followed by abduction. It may not be exactly the same pattern, I grant you – but perhaps something went wrong yesterday. Perhaps the intention was to kidnap her then, and whoever was after her was thwarted in some way – maybe by those neighbours arriving. Whatever the answer, I think that we should be under no illusion that Mrs Tarrant is in danger now – and we’d better find her double quick. There’s already been enough muttering over the ineptitude of this force in discovering any clue that might lead to the discovery of Dame Claudia, but at least when we were notified of her disappearance she’d been gone for several hours. Assuming that Mrs Tarrant was safe at work until at least 5 p.m. and that she hasn’t just wandered off somewhere – which is highly unlikely – if she is being kept against her will, it must be somewhere local and her kidnapper can only have a head start of just over an hour. He – or she – must be a person that we know about, if only we can work out who it is. I expect you to do that, Yates. Pronto. And to find her. I want that woman reunited with her husband before the end of the evening. Is that understood?”
“Yes. Understood.”
Tim’s heart sank. Thornton was right to blame him for putting Alex Tarrant in danger. In truth he had intended to send a policewoman to look after her for a few days, despite the staff shortages, and it had simply slipped his mind. If she were in danger now, it would be his fault.
“And Yates?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I suggest that you find this Guy Maichment while you’re at it. It seems to me that he holds a lot of the cards here. Friend of Roy Little or not, I want to hear what he has to say for himself. For a start, we want to know whether he knew about that body you’ve just found.”
“I’ve requested a warrant . . .”
“You have. And I’ve got it for you. Now you’d better go away and get on with it before Mr Tarrant arrives. He sounds as if he’s in a fine state and he’s clearly not feeling very well-disposed towards you. I can’t say that I blame him, either. I’ll deal with him.”
“Thank you. But I would like to see him anyway – he may have some vital information for us.”
“I very much doubt it; he hasn’t seen his wife since the morning and he says that she was perfectly all right then. But you must let me be the judge of what he says. If he tells me anything of importance, of course I will pass it on immediately. You don’t need to see him now. There will be an opportunity for you to apologise to him later.”
“Yes, sir.”
For once in his life, Tim was unable to think clearly. He went back to his office and sank down into his desk chair. He felt drained. He would have put his head in his hands if he hadn’t been aware that Andy Carstairs was watching him with undisguised curiosity.
“Are you all right? Would you like some tea?”
Tim jerked his head up suddenly: Juliet! Juliet had to come back to the police station immediately. Between them they had assembled many pieces of the jigsaw, but they hadn’t put them together. He hadn’t paid enough attention to all the background stuff that Juliet had gathered and he hadn’t had the opportunity to relay Katrin’s messages about the Norwegian journal articles. Then there was Andy’s work with the looked-after children and the drugs gang. He was suddenly certain that the two cases were connected.
He pulled his mobile out of his pocket to speed-dial Juliet’s number. Before he could complete the action, the gadget glowed yellow and the same number appeared on his screen.
“Juliet?” he said. “I was going to call you. I need you here. Now.”
“I’m not sure that . . .” she sounded breathless, but Tim was in no mood to find out why.
“I said I need you here, now. It’s an emergency. Alex Tarrant has disappeared.”
“Oh, no . . .”
“Juliet? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. But it’s the dog-handler . . .”
“What? You aren’t making much sense. Can you get back here now, or not? Presumably there is still a police car there that can bring you. What does the dog-h
andler have to do with it?”
“The Alsatian got a scent. He kept on trying to lead his handler out of Guy Maichment’s garden. Apparently he’s quite a young dog and . . .”
“Get to the point.”
“He led the handler to a spot close to the gravel pits. He found a shoe there . . . and a walking stick. Close by one of the pits, the one that’s used as a fish farm.”
“And?”
“They belong to Dame Claudia. I’m quite certain of it. In the most recent photograph that we have of her, she’s wearing the same shoes and the stick is propped up beside her.”
“So you think that she was pushed into the pit? Or that her body was dumped there?”
“I think that it’s likely. We’ll have to get it dredged.”
“Well, get the Peterborough cops onto it, will you? It’s time they took responsibility for some of this case. I still need you to come back here. It’s even more important now. Whoever is holding Alex Tarrant is probably the same person who took Dame Claudia to that pit. We’ve got to find Mrs Tarrant before they harm her, too. And we’ve also got to find that little shit, Guy Maichment – always assuming that he and the kidnapper aren’t one and the same person. And there are some things that I need to tell you – stuff that I’ve found out that may or may not help. I need you to put your mind to linking up all the evidence that we’ve got, so come with a clear head.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
One of the policemen from Peterborough drove Juliet back to the police station. She arrived at her desk breathless and uncharacteristically dishevelled. There were spatters of mud on her coat and the soles of her shoes were caked in black loam.
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