‘Surely, it has been given a high-status burial?’ Peter said. ‘You can see where it was despatched. Ed found a cut in the animal’s neck bones.’
The professor stood, favouring his better leg, and stepped over to Molly. He smoothed his finger over the vertebra. ‘Indeed.’
Peter stepped forward to look. ‘We were thinking about the story of Gelert and Llewelyn.’
Conway raised an eyebrow and we subsided. Clearly he didn’t agree with our suspicions of a great dog, dying to save his master. Or slain to accompany him into the next world, like some Egyptian king’s hound.
‘Let me get your sister’s sketch off to my friend, and we will see,’ he said. ‘I should like to know what landscape features and settlements were here in the Bronze Age.’
I rattled off the little I know, supported by Peter. Between us we could contribute information about the many known barrows and the main road through the forest, said to predate the Romans. Peter naturally contributed the most to the discussion, which became lively. But I saw the professor turn his eye again and again to the strange well head.
‘I see there is a void at the top of the stones,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it would be possible to see inside.’ Peter told him a stepladder from the house could be used to get a look at the interior with a torch.
With some excitement, Peter and I ran back to the house to get the equipment. He vanished upstairs and returned with an electric torch he had received on his birthday, exactly for the purpose of excavating tombs. He checked it worked, the batteries were good, and he added it to our supplies along with a length of rope and a short piece of plank in case we needed a solid platform for the ladder. We felt like two schoolboys off on an adventure, and our excited speech alerted Mr Chorleigh in his office. He decided he should come and see too, and it was quite a party that walked through the woodland back to the barrow.
Professor Conway was standing on top of the ‘well head’, inspecting the grasses that grew half over it. ‘Perhaps you should start by excavating this top stone. It seems solidly set in the grass but when I stamp, I detect some hollow sounds. Have you thought about digging around it?’
Since we had brought the ladder and Mr Chorleigh wanted to see inside as well, he was soon persuaded to climb down and look inside the cut side of the barrow instead. Above the two stones that formed the upright was the top slab, projecting out a few inches. Although the whole was overgrown, the gap was just visible, a dark slot perhaps three feet wide and ten or twelve inches high. We carried the ladder over; it was easy to prop the feet firmly into the softish ground and get the gardener to help me steady it. It was agreed that Prof Conway should climb up first, as he would be able to interpret the void from his superior knowledge. He climbed up five steps, leaning towards the letterbox-shaped hole at the very top.
‘It is a small cavity, maybe a yard deep,’ he said, brushing away hanging mosses and grass and dropping them down to me. ‘Hand me my stick, will you, Mr Masters?’ I passed it up to him, and he probed the back of the hollow, then used Peter’s torch to look into the space. ‘There is a lot of moss growing in the lighted area,’ he mused. ‘It appears to incline down at the back. There is an internal architecture of some sort dividing the two, like two chimney flues, one behind the other.’ He climbed down carefully, taking care with his bad leg.
Peter was up next. The space was roughly box-like. Peter managed to rest his arms on the entrance and wiggle his head inside. ‘The prof’s right,’ he called back. ‘There’s another small channel running down the back, like a gullet.’
When I clambered up, I found it disturbingly so, like a stone giant’s throat. The cavities were divided by a rough septum that seemed a natural layer rather than contrived. I guessed that over millennia, water had forced its passage along a softer stratum in the rocks, which had been lifted to vertical by some ancient upheaval. I could see the walls were of hard limestone; perhaps the carved-out area was a mudstone or chalk layer, eroded away by a natural spring. I put my theory forward, and Prof Conway concurred.
‘These slabs of stone may have been erected to contain clean drinking water,’ he said, tapping the top stone with his stick again. ‘I think these walls could have contained it, like a prehistoric water cistern.’ He looked around at Mr Chorleigh. ‘These natural springs were much prized, and often worshipped. This would be an extraordinary discovery.’
Even Peter’s father looked interested. ‘And the name of the barrow? It’s known locally as Hound Butt, but the earliest map we have calls it Wolf Butt.’
Conway nodded. ‘Is it clear which of the two is called Hound Butt?’
Peter shook his head. ‘There are two earthworks shown, but just as low mounds. They are drawn as the same size on the old map, but it is not accurate.’
Prof Conway smiled at us all. ‘A real mystery. Tell me, Mr Chorleigh, who would you recommend as a local folk historian? Someone who has lived in the area for a good many years.’
Peter’s father thought for only a moment. ‘Old Bessie Warnock, I suppose,’ he said. ‘But she’s not well regarded around here. She must be eighty years old, if not more.’
Molly managed to get a few words out, although I think she was still shy of Professor Conway. ‘She was ninety last year. Mother and I took her a basket on her birthday.’
Her father barked a laugh. ‘I’ll bet she was ungrateful. Miserable old besom, I’ve had her up before the bench a dozen times for grazing her stock illegally.’
‘Not now, Father,’ Molly interrupted. ‘She’s given up her animals.’
‘Except her poultry,’ he said. ‘Her geese are forever chasing people around the green.’
‘Perhaps Miss Chorleigh would come with me to interview her,’ the professor asked. ‘I often find good information comes from local elders.’ He smiled at her.
‘Mr Masters?’ she asked. ‘Will you come, too?’
Peter clapped his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’ll come as well. We’ll all walk up after tea.’ He seemed to have shed his anger or dismay at the letter and was quite his old self.
27
Tuesday 26th March, this year
A new morning, a fresh pile of leaves at the lab. In the plastic bags the dampness had condensed and fed a network of fine moulds. Even Jazz’s enthusiasm was fading as they sorted through more stacks. ‘Trent’s at the briefing for the sleeping bag murder,’ she said, holding up a leaf then dropping it. ‘This is a needle in a haystack. With no guarantee of a needle.’
Sage snagged her glove on a leaf, not for the first time, and was tempted to throw the whole lot in the bin. As she disentangled the spine of the holly leaf from her glove, she noticed a tiny drop of blood in her glove. ‘Shit.’ She peeled off the glove to have a look, but it had barely broken the skin, just enough for one tiny droplet. It gave her an idea.
‘Jazz, start looking at the spines. We need something that will highlight blood.’
‘What are you thinking?’
Sage held up her hand. ‘We’ve said all along they probably wore gloves, right? So while we’re looking for fibres and hairs, we don’t expect to find fingerprints, although we have to check. But what about blood? These spines are like steel needles, they go through anything.’
‘Could we spray with luminol to speed up the search?’
Sage shook her head. ‘I think that would dilute any evidence. Anyway, it’s not good for DNA testing, and we need to keep looking for fingerprints, just in case. A high intensity light source should help, though.’
Jazz looked at the pile of bags they had already sorted. ‘Do we have to go through them all again?’
‘I honestly think that you would have seen a blood spot, looking for a fingerprint. But check all the spines back and front from now on.’
It took another two bags then Jazz shouted out. A minute smear of something dark red on a spine, and on a leaf stacked with it, another drop.
Sage started recording, photographing under different light sources, before she
called the forensic team.
‘Could it be animal blood?’ Jazz was leaning on the back of Sage’s chair as she meticulously labelled the specimen pots she needed.
‘It could be. Maybe from the dog that found her body, or a wild animal. But those leaves were gathered from the lee of the shed, and then placed in distinct layers. What’s the chance that a dog or some other animal deposited blood on a leaf inside a stack without disturbing the top layer?’ She checked the plan of the grave from where they had taken the leaves in bags. ‘These leaves came from the leg area, where the body was still covered.’
‘But the blood could be River’s.’
Sage nodded slowly, focusing for another shot. ‘Very unlikely if she was already dead. DNA will tell us for sure. But I think her body was laid out very carefully, then she was covered with leaves, like a shroud – from the top of the stack by the stables. Then other layers, these older ones which are a bit mushy and stuck together, were added on top. If this leaf came from that layer – which we think it did – then it probably never touched River’s body directly.’
‘I don’t understand what he was doing.’ Jazz leaned back, looking over at the bags. ‘It seems mad to kill someone then cover them up with so much care.’
‘It is odd.’ Sage looked back at Jazz. ‘But I do kind of understand about the leaves. I wouldn’t want to put earth straight on the face of someone I cared about.’ She filled in the form for the bloody leaf sample with as much location information as she could.
The door banged open and Sage waved at Martin, the SOCO she’d met at the burial site, who walked along the examination table.
‘What have you got? Lenham wants to put a report together from the burial.’
Sage held up her own ruined glove. ‘I caught myself on one of the holly leaves, and wondered if our killer did too. Jazz found traces of blood on the spine of one.’
He glanced down through the camera lens that Sage had fixed to a stand. ‘I thought you and Trent were insane, preserving and bringing all those leaves in. The rest of my team are just glad they don’t have to look through them.’
She shrugged. ‘It could be River’s blood but it’s unlikely. It could be the person who handled the leaves.’
He smiled at them. ‘Great work.’
‘We found this, too.’ Sage held up one of the pieces of plastic she had found in its glass vial.
‘Interesting, another one. How many?’
‘Three so far.’ Sage handed him all the small tubes. ‘We put them in glass so you can analyse them. We found one at the grave, too.’
‘I remember, we wondered if it was off one of our suits. Is that a blue strip running through this one? I’ll let you know what we find. Well done, both of you. Back to work – let’s find a fingerprint as well.’
‘No pressure then,’ Sage said.
He laughed. ‘Well, a signed confession would be good, too. Keep looking.’
Work progressed slower now they knew what they were looking for. Another tiny piece of tape turned up; Sage held it up to the light. ‘You’re going to think I’m going mad,’ she said. ‘But this smells funny, sort of medical. It’s longer, too.’ Another cautious sniff suggested something mentholated. The odour was fleeting, but she noted it down anyway. Jazz took it and cautiously smelled it.
‘What do we call the smell?’ Sage asked.
‘Like mouthwash?’ Jazz suggested.
Sage looked down the microscope at the specimen. It had a faint blue stripe down the middle. ‘Could it be dental floss or tape?’
‘It could be.’ Jazz waved at the computer. ‘Why don’t you ask the chemists?’
By the afternoon, the plastic tape had been confirmed as a type of dental floss, nylon coated with polytetrafluoroethylene, flavoured with an artificial menthol compound found in mint. Amazingly, the crime lab had stock samples on file from a local company, Burdeck and Young. DCI Lenham came down to get the details of where and how they had found them.
‘Do they help your investigation?’ Sage showed him the couple of pieces they had found since the lab results. ‘That’s four – no, five in total, found under the leaves. You heard about the blood we found?’
‘Of course. You two have to keep this completely to yourselves,’ Lenham warned them. ‘But we’re interviewing someone who works at Burdeck. We’ve taken his DNA for comparison along with Chorleigh and all River’s family and friends.’
Sage handed over the last of the samples.
Jazz squeaked with excitement. ‘Oh my God, can you tell us who?’
‘Not officially.’ He smiled at her. ‘But River’s stepfather Owen Sloane works with plastics. Sage already brought him to our attention. He did live with River so she may have been exposed to the tape before. But since her body was stripped and cleaned, the plastic almost certainly came from the person who buried her.’
‘Have you confirmed he was Jimmy Mac?’ Sage asked.
‘He was born James Owen Macintosh but took his stepfather’s name after he got a record for getting involved in animal protests.’
‘I met him, at the morgue. He seemed so upset. But he’s not necessarily the person who killed her?’
‘Not unless we’d found plastic in her wounds, no, we can’t be sure,’ Lenham said. ‘Which we didn’t.’ He shrugged. ‘But the vast majority of people who bury a body also kill them. He’s being questioned again right now.’
‘Which would put Alistair Chorleigh in the clear.’
‘Which is my other reason for coming over. He’s left a message for you. Apparently he’s found a book you were looking for.’
‘Brilliant.’ She turned to Jazz. ‘Can you do these last two bags? I’d like to follow this up.’
Lenham waited until she had packed up her bag and phone, and he walked her out to her car. ‘Is the professor going with you? Chorleigh is still a suspect, at least until that blood DNA comes back.’
‘Felix is working on Lara’s belongings, the ones they found after she disappeared. We’re looking into the water found in the camera case.’
‘OK.’ He tapped the car bonnet. ‘Just watch yourself with Chorleigh. Sober he’s just pathetic, but drunk, he’s a different man.’
She glanced at the clock in her car. ‘It’s two-fifteen. I’ll be fine, and you know I’m going. I’ll just let him know I’m on my way.’
* * *
Sage drove through the forest, the afternoon sunshine dotting the road ahead. She had to slow for a couple of ponies on the verge, and again as a buzzard defiantly stopped traffic each way to drag some squashed furry thing off the road. Apart from being excited to see the book, she needed to landscape the site of the Bronze Age man and wolf, if that’s what it was. She had sent photographs to an osteologist friend, but there wouldn’t be enough money from her university budget nor Trent’s for a DNA analysis on something unconnected with the investigation. Hopefully the osteologist would be able to tell her more about the deterioration and possible age as well as species of canid.
She parked her car alongside Alistair Chorleigh’s, and he was waiting by the door as she crunched over the drive. He managed a small smile.
‘How are you?’ she asked.
‘Better now they’ve stopped questioning me. Maybe they are looking at someone else. It’s horrible being suspected of this girl’s murder.’
‘So you’ve found the book and the notes?’
‘They were on the desk in my father’s study. I don’t touch anything in there normally. The police must have moved them onto the desk; I was going to put them back in the drawer.’
She stepped into the kitchen, which was at least warmer than the draughty hall. Hamish made a fuss, jumping out of the basket to greet her and sitting on her foot when she settled at the table.
‘Here.’ Alistair dropped a parcel in front of her. It was packed in oiled card and stank of linseed. She could only hope the sketches weren’t impregnated by it, but when she opened the folder everything was protected by layers of
paper. She gently opened the package, to find a leather-bound book darkened with age and with a film of white powdery mould on the cover, on top of a stack of folded sheets of paper.
‘You haven’t looked inside yet?’
‘I was waiting for you. Do you want some tea? Or coffee, I have coffee.’ He was eager to please, knocking a cup from the draining board into the sink.
‘Coffee would be lovely. Black, please.’ The milk had been none too fresh the day before. She gently removed the book and laid it on the covering. Beneath it was what looked like fine tissue-like paper packets, she remembered her grandmother using something similar to send letters to her sister in Australia when she was a child. It had the faintest blue pigment and inside each was a heavier sheet, creased into what looked like quarters. She opened the first one and unfolded the paper inside.
It showed something in fine pencil, and it took a few seconds to see it was a site plan from above, with the area of the excavation marked with comments. ‘Finer sand’, ‘pot A–D’, ‘small rock fragments’. The dig had only just started, by the look of it, just after the turf had been removed and the covering layers scraped away. She had to squint to read the faint inscriptions, in tiny writing. It was fascinating, she couldn’t wait to enlarge the image and see it properly. She took it over to the window to get a photograph.
She carefully unfolded the next plan, which had a partially laid-out skeleton in the diagram. The drawing was a lot finer but somehow Sage knew the artist wasn’t so knowledgeable about the archaeology. The first drawing had been made with an eye to the stratigraphic context. But the second picture was of the face of the animal she had excavated herself, the powerful features standing out from the earth. The tip of the canine’s snout rested at the skeleton’s side, just under his arm. Had he really been buried with the animal that killed him? Or was he attacked by a wild animal and maybe his dog had defended him?
She started unwrapping more papers, carefully placing each on its cover sheet. More plans showed different parts of the dig. The pictures were jumbled; some showed later stages of the dig, some earlier. Finally, two smaller papers just folded in half.
A Shroud of Leaves Page 23
