JT01 - In The Blood

by Steve Robinson

  Standing over it they could see that the lid was covered with engraved lettering; several names and dates appeared around a central inscription.

  “Now lie with them in death,” Tayte read aloud.

  “Cryptic,” Hayne said. He set the torch down on the sarcophagus lid with the beam facing the ceiling. Dull light spread and faded across the room, re-introducing the angel who continued to watch them through unsettling eyes. Beyond the point of light directly above them, the room was barely illuminated; it was like looking through a dark veil.

  Around the inscriptions were the names of the interred: James and Susan Fairborne, their children, Lowenna and Allun. Tayte scanned the dates and their ages at death, confirming that Lowenna had died in 1803 at the age of seventeen, giving further credence to Emily Forbes’s story. Yet something about that story bothered Tayte.

  “Lowenna’s child was to remain in the family,” he said, as much to himself as to Hayne. “She would have known where her aunt and uncle lived and from what I’ve learnt about Lowenna, I’d say she was a very determined girl.”

  Hayne’s eyes remained on the sarcophagus, taking in the details, saying nothing.

  Tayte shook his head. “I just can’t believe she’d kill herself and leave her child like that - her lover’s child. Hendry’s murder must have been hard to take, sure, but leaving the child? How could she make that decision?”

  Hayne looked up at last. “Believe me,” he said. “It happens.”

  Tayte couldn’t argue the point. Checking the dates further, he was not surprised to learn that Lowenna’s brother, Allun, died just two years later. After reading Lavender Parfitt’s death record at Simon’s flat, he’d already formed his opinion about what had become of Allun; that he died soon after Lowenna just confirmed it.

  Were they both murdered? Lowenna’s death made to look like suicide?

  Tayte had no trouble convincing himself that he was right. He now knew that James Fairborne left no heir from his marriage to Susan Forbes. None of his immediate family were alive to contest his will and that made things very convenient for the man who claimed to be his brother. He wondered for the first time whether this man had also ensured that was true of James’s family by his first marriage to Eleanor.

  “Now lie with them in death,” Hayne said, still pondering the meaning. “It’s almost like there’s something missing. Something only the person who wrote it understood.”

  Tayte rolled the words around in his head and suddenly got a buzz along his spine. “They’re here!” he said, grabbing the torch and throwing Hayne into darkness as he flashed the beam down at the earth, scattering a confusion of bugs.

  “Who’s here?”

  “All of them,” Tayte said. “The family I came to find.” The torch beam continued to scan the ground. “Now lie with them in death. It can’t be about the people in the sarcophagus with James. Of course he’s lying with them. That only leaves his first wife, Eleanor and their children. Apart from a sister and brother-in-law, James had no other family in England.”

  Hayne watched the focused torch beam cut across the earth like a laser. “You think we’re standing on them?” he said. He picked up his feet like he was checking his shoes for gum.

  “It makes perfect sense,” Tayte said. “Stick James Fairborne in here with all his family, out of the way and forgotten, while this other man who took everything James had keeps the penthouse.”

  “But the inscription,” Hayne said. “It reads more like some sort of punishment.”

  Tayte had to agree that it intrigued him, like whatever had happened in life meant that he now had to lie with them in death. He could as yet only guess what that might be. He moved around the sarcophagus and continued to scan the ground towards the far wall. Every fruitless sweep gave him cause to question his thinking and when he reached the wall, having seen nothing but earth and scurrying bugs, he was close to despair. It wasn’t until he drew the beam back along the base of the wall that he saw something that gave him hope.

  Pale light-starved ivy covered the wall. Strands of almost translucent runners tangled across it like bloodless veins carrying life to colourless leaves that looked wet and pallid in the torchlight. Tayte went closer and Hayne followed the light with him.

  The torch beam fixed on a spear-like point, leaning away from the wall about a foot from the ground, like it had cut itself free from its ivy bonds. Tayte dropped to his knees and began to tear the ivy away. He held his breath as the stone point became wider. Then he put the torch between his knees and with both hands he snapped the rest of the ivy away to reveal the tip of a thin grey headstone. It bore an inscription, but the ivy had so completely covered it that when he tore the runners away its tendril marks stained the surface like lichen.

  Tayte began to dig at the earth with his bare hands, shovelling soil away from the headstone. Whoever was buried here had been given a proper burial and he could only imagine why the room had been filled with earth. Someone had since tried to hide them, only the soil had compacted and sunk over time. It occurred to Tayte that all this must have been done before the sarcophagus in the middle of the room had been set in place; before James Fairborne had died.

  Tayte kept digging. He was about a foot down now. The engraved lettering here was free of ivy marks and barely worn, but it was clogged with dirt and still difficult to read. When he thought he’d revealed enough, he stopped. He sensed Hayne was right over his shoulder as he took up the torch and shone it into the hole. He brushed away the dirt and random letters appeared at first, like an anagram. When they took form the word that appeared was, ‘Katherine’.

  Tayte scraped at the ivy to his right. He felt a hard edge and quickly cleared the ivy away to reveal another forgotten headstone. Then he did the same to his left with identical results. “They’re all here!” he said.

  Hayne began to dig with him and as Tayte returned his attention to Katherine Fairborne’s headstone, the date he was looking for began to appear. The first part he already knew from her birth record. What Tayte wanted to know was when she died. If his suspicions were right he didn’t need a death record to tell him how she died. He dug his nails into the engraving and with each scrape a part of him hoped he would be proved wrong. He made out the words, ‘Died’ and, ‘October’ and he knew he was right. A moment later he confirmed it.

  “Katherine Fairborne died on October 23rd 1783,” he said. He shone the torch at Hayne then pushed the beam down into the hole he was digging, lighting up the headstone and a fresh set of engravings.

  Hayne brushed at the loose soil. “Eleanor Fairborne,” he said. The date was the same. It was the day the Betsy Ross arrived in the English Channel off Cornwall’s rugged coast and fell foul of the treacherous Manacle Rocks.

  “They didn’t make it,” Tayte said. His words felt hollow. What excited him, though, in light of everything he now knew, was why anyone would go to such lengths to hide the fact.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  When Tayte and DS Hayne emerged from that long forgotten chamber inside the Fairborne mausoleum, Manning was not waiting for them. No doubt he’d planned to return with the proper authority to turn them off the premises, but he would have returned too late. As soon as Tayte had found what he was looking for, the pair slipped out into the fresh evening air, filling their lungs with headland ozone to clear the lingering decay that Tayte could still taste. The smell of the place had crawled deep into the fabric of his clothes and would not let him forget his visit in a hurry.

  As Hayne’s silver BMW left Rosemullion Hall, a car approached along the access road and pulled over to let them pass.

  “Late arrival?” Hayne said to Tayte as they drew level. He gave a courtesy flash, lighting up the other car and its driver. “That’s funny,” he said. “I could have sworn that was Sir Richard Fairborne.”

  “Odd that he would arrive late to his own party,” Tayte said as they turned onto the main road, heading for Helford Passage. He didn’t dwell on it. His tho
ughts were still back inside the mausoleum.

  With Hayne’s help Tayte had found six headstones in all; six graves for a family someone wanted history to forget. The headstones for Clara and Jacob Daniels were found against the wall opposite where Tayte had first discovered Katherine’s. Next to Katherine lay her mother, Eleanor, and her younger sister, Laura. Little George Fairborne was laid to rest close beside his mother and Tayte had hovered over the dates on that headstone longer than he’d had time for, wondering what fear that five-year-old boy must have known before he came to rest there.

  “None of them made it,” Tayte said, thoughtfully. “Except James Fairborne.”

  “So that’s it then, is it?” Hayne said, turning onto Old Church Road. “They were all killed in a shipwreck? All except the father?”

  “Sure looks that way,” Tayte said, but he wasn’t convinced. “But why hide it?” he added. The question was still turning in his mind. “Why try and erase them all from recorded history and hide their bodies? And the Betsy Ross memorial… Why was it desecrated?”

  To anyone who did not know everything Tayte had learnt since he’d arrived in England, the shipwreck and the loss of all those lives would have appeared as tragic as any of the hundreds of similar stories that abounded Cornwall’s maritime history. Tayte, however, knew enough to understand that it was not so simple. He recalled the Warden at St Keverne telling him that fifteen souls were buried where the Betsy Ross memorial once stood. Now he could add six more to the death toll; twenty-one souls. That accounted for the entire crew and all the brig’s passengers apart from James Fairborne. Tayte questioned the odds?

  The only thing that stopped him pointing the finger was motive. If James Fairborne had known he would be the only survivor that night, then what motive could an obviously wealthy man with a young and prolific family possibly have to cause him to embark on such a voyage of evil? The writing box knew - of that Tayte was certain. Lowenna’s dark discovery could only be that she’d learnt of her father’s involvement in the wrecking of the Betsy Ross that night in 1783; that he’d partaken in or even engineered some plot to rid himself of his family, and the proof of that still had to be in the box.

  Something had been overlooked.

  He recalled Lowenna’s note to Mawgan Hendry. It’s what is inside that counts, he thought. It wasn’t just about the child she was carrying as he’d supposed, or the letter Gerald Braithwaite had found. There was something else inside that box. To Tayte’s mind, with all that had passed, he could see no other explanation.

  But Why? That one question still troubled him. Tayte hoped to find some other truth - something that would absolve James Fairborne of all the unthinkable sins his mind had already convicted him of. Yet, he somehow doubted he would. Unless he recovered the writing box he knew he would never find the truth.

  “So this character calling himself William Fairborne,” Hayne said as they headed down Grove Hill. “He built a mausoleum around the old site, presumably to hide it. Why not just build over it? Less chance of anyone finding them if he had.”

  “I wish I knew,” Tayte replied. “He must have had his reasons.”

  Hayne nodded. Then after a pause he laughed and said, “I should think we’ll get a complaint in the morning for shifting that slab.”

  Tayte’s thoughts wandered to the impostor who put it there and the implications of what they had found behind it. There would be more than enough mitochondrial DNA in that room to prove that the man who inherited the Fairborne legacy was not who he claimed to be.

  “I’m sure that’s going to be the least of their troubles,” he mused. It was already the least of his. This night’s work was far from over and he was keen now to be elsewhere.

  The glowing red digits on his watch told him he was already out of time. In ten minutes he had to be at Durgan to meet Simon Phillips and he knew he would never make it; even if Hayne drove him straight there, which was out of the question. He just had to hope Simon wanted answers more than he cared about the rules of his game. And he had to hope he would give him enough time with the writing box to prove his suspicions - even if that meant destroying it.

  It was 8pm when Hayne passed the Ferry Boat Inn and pulled up outside the ferry kiosk at Helford Passage. Across a gloss-black river that was given away only by the stirring of shingle at the shoreline, the scant lights of Helford village and Treath looked distant above their reflections. Tayte jumped out of the car as soon as it stopped.

  “Thanks,” he said, “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.” He was already backing away as he watched Hayne half climb out of the car after him. Tayte forced a smile. “Lot of thinking to do tonight, and boy, do I need some rest.” He felt tense as he turned away and picked up his step, filling his lungs with the evening air, redolent of drifting honeysuckle.

  “Where’s your car?” Hayne called after him.

  Tayte turned but kept walking, palms sweating. “It’s just off some lane back here,” he lied. He threw a thumb over his shoulder to indicate roughly where he meant. “It’s not far. I’ll be fine.”

  Tayte could see the start of the coast path ahead. Not far to go. The gap was closing. Under his breath he willed Hayne to get in his car and drive away; he didn’t have time for explanations. He slowed his pace. He could almost feel Hayne’s professionally inquisitive eyes boring into his back. Then he heard a car door close and a familiar engine note start up. He didn’t chance a look. He heard the car pull away and as he reached the start of the coastal path, he began to run.

  Tayte arrived at Durgan out of breath and almost fifteen minutes late for his rendezvous with Simon Phillips. He’d jogged all the way there, passing no one as he followed the beam of Hayne’s Maglite along the coastal path, willing his sore legs to keep him going. He took another chestful of air and pushed against his knees, straightening himself up. He was standing in the centre of Durgan; a tiny junction with an old-style red phone box on one side and a stone-built public shelter on the other. Behind him, looming like storm shadows, the gardens of Glendurgan stretched away from the diminutive hamlet that nestled at the edge of the river.

  It was too dark and too quiet for Tayte’s liking. He looked around at the few stone fishing cottages he could see and noted that all were in darkness. As he made his way between two of the cottages, towards the river, he began to wonder if anyone actually lived in Durgan. He supposed that was why Simon had chosen the place.

  He followed a boat access ramp between high stone walls that continued along the beach like sea defence barriers. His torch picked up shingle ahead and he could soon feel it crunching underfoot. He shone the torch to either side of him, pushing light along the shingle as far as the Maglite’s limited power would allow before darkness overwhelmed it. To his right he could see that the beach petered out to what looked like rocks, and higher up to the shadows of surrounding foliage. To his left the beach was too wide to see where it ended.

  Tayte drew the beam back along the wall, picking out a few small boats. He made his way towards them. The first was a dinghy and beside that was a larger craft topped with a blue tarpaulin cover. When he reached them he knew that Simon had not waited. He could see now where the beach ended and there was no one out there. He’d blown it; that much was clear to him. He’d failed Amy for want of no more than fifteen minutes.

  As he turned away from the boat with the blue tarpaulin cover, distracted by thoughts that asked how the hell he was going to find Amy by high water now, he caught his shin and almost fell into the dinghy beside him. His hands instinctively came around to steady himself, swinging the torch around with them, splashing light into the boat like yellow paint. He startled and spun away again so hard that he slipped in the shingle and fell onto his elbows. What he saw in that brief flash told him that things were far worse than he could ever have imagined.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  In the darkness on Durgan beach, Tayte staggered to his feet, knowing that his problems had just become as serious as they get. He s
hone the torch back into the dinghy and this time he held it there. He glanced away briefly to check the time and registered with startling clarity that unless he found Amy within the next hour and ten minutes she would die. The problem was, he was now looking at the only man in the world who could tell him where she was and the face in Tayte’s torch beam was as ashen as the grey hooded sweatshirt he wore. The two glistening bullet holes and the dark stains on the man’s chest left Tayte in no doubt that he was looking at a corpse.

  Simon Phillips was dead.

  Tayte was too caught up in the moment to consider that whoever killed him might still be nearby. The realisation that this murder was still as fresh as the blood on Simon’s sweatshirt only registered when he heard the shingle crunch over by the boat access ramp. And there was Tayte, brandishing a torch in otherwise total darkness beside the body of a dead man. He might as well have had a flashing target on his chest.

  He flicked the beam towards the sound, which was closer now, maintaining the same steady tempo. He caught a glimpse of a dark trouser leg and the brief gleam of a shoe, and it occurred to him that anyone with an innocent reason for being there would have a torch of their own. Only then did he think to switch off the Maglite and run for cover. As the torchbeam died he heard the shingle stir excitedly then stop.

  “Mr Tayte?”

  Tayte flicked the torch on again and this time it shone straight into DS Hayne’s face, who raised a hand to shield his eyes from the glare. “It’s a serious crime to take a policeman’s torch without permission, you know.”

  Tayte came out from his cover and stood beside the dinghy. He was pleased to see that Hayne was smiling, though he knew it wouldn’t last.

  “What are you doing down here?” Hayne asked. “You weren’t very convincing when I dropped you off, so I followed you.”

  “I came to meet Simon Phillips,” Tayte offered. “Another exchange plan I couldn’t tell you about. Amy’s whereabouts for some information he wanted.”