The Deepest Grave: Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller Series Book 6 (Fiona Griffiths 6)

by Harry Bingham

  When Jones is done, Jackson says, ‘OK, good. That’s very organised. Thank you.’

  Jones, who doesn’t yet know that Jackson’s interrogation technique is mostly based around saying nothing at all, is a bit non-plussed. ‘OK, good’: that’s the case review?

  Jones darts off into another spatter of Action Lists and task management speak.

  Jackson says nothing. Nods. Moves his eyebrows.

  Once Jones has finally finished – though I’m near certain that there are bullet points still dribbling into his beard – silence finally enters the room.

  Jackson rotates a thick finger round the rim of his empty coffee mug.

  Eventually, he says, ‘That is very organised, but we don’t have a suspect, do we? Or any credible leads?’

  Jones can’t bring himself to agree. He hurtles off into a discourse about parts of the case that are still incomplete, where there is still more work to be done. Jackson does nothing to stop the hurtle and another five minutes of my life pass into dust.

  Silence.

  Jackson still unreadable. Jones reorganising his papers.

  Jackson: ‘So. No leads.’

  He asks Deryn Powell for his comments. Powell says, ‘Well, there are more bits and pieces still to come in, but I’m not expecting much.’

  ‘How long till you’ll have everything?’

  Powell shrugs. ‘About a week. Depends on the lab, mostly.’

  Jackson and Sian Ryder have a short discussion of personnel, data and action management. A few niggles, as there always are. Nothing that can’t be, and isn’t being, sorted.

  Eventually, Jackson’s heavy gaze settles on me.

  ‘Fiona, you are being uncharacteristically silent.’

  That is, I realise, the sort of thing people do come out with, but they don’t think it through, do they? If I say, ‘Yes, sir,’ then I’m not being silent, which means I’ll be speaking a lie.

  If I say, ‘No, sir,’ then I won’t be trapped into lying to a superior officer, but I will be contradicting him for no good purpose. Between a rock and a hard place, that’s me.

  The barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us to the barbarians; between these two means of death, we are either killed or drowned.

  I stay silent.

  ‘Fiona?’

  I say, ‘Um.’

  ‘Are you able to do human-speak today, Fiona? Is there a translation available?’

  ‘Well, um . . . the thing is.’

  Then, since that is a broken-arsed non-sentence if ever there was one, I take one more run at it.

  ‘Look, I think we do have leads here. It’s just they’re of a sort we’re not used to, and aren’t sure how to follow. Take, for example, those spears in the chest.’

  Jones, uncomfortable at the fact that Jackson is allowing me to run free without bridle or bit, instantly starts flashing his Powerpoint charts around. RITUAL KILLINGS IN THE UK 1995–2015 and MURDERS INVOLVING SWORDS, SPEARS AND OTHER ‘CLASSIC’ WEAPONS.

  No one says anything and when he shuts up, Jackson’s gaze returns to me.

  I say, ‘Those spears, they weren’t just any old spears, the actual spearheads are more than twenty centuries old.’

  Sure enough, Katie, working with a lab here in Cardiff, has established that the spearheads are genuine Iron Age artefacts, probably from the first two or three centuries before Christ. Fancy things to stick into a body that’s already dead.

  Jackson says, ‘OK, agreed . . .’

  ‘And ritual killings? Is that really what we’re looking at?’ My finger circles the date on Jones’s blessed Powerpoint chart. ‘1995–2015’. In a case that seems to hark back to the Dark Ages and beyond, I’m not sure that figuring out what some Middlesbrough weirdo got up to in 1997 is going to help us much.

  Jackson: ‘OK, so: alternative angles?’

  ‘Um, something like the Kirkburn Sword, maybe?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, this wasn’t something I’d heard about either, but . . .’ But I did some work of my own alongside all the boring stuff I was doing for Bleddyn bloody Jones, ‘And, there’s a sword they dug up in Yorkshire about thirty years ago. The sword was about the same age as those damn spearheads of ours and, according to the British Museum, no less, this sword is “probably the finest Iron Age sword in Europe”. OK, now that in itself doesn’t mean anything, only get this. The man they dug up with the sword had three spears buried in his chest. It wasn’t a ritual killing, or at least that’s not what people think. It looks like it was some way to bury an honoured warrior. But if you want to find a case that looks like ours – three Iron Age spears in the chest – then that Kirkburn burial is arguably as good a fit as we’ve got.’

  We talk a bit more about that. The Kirkburn warrior appears to have died naturally and though he was buried with a fancy sword, no one had bothered to lop his head off with it.

  Jones fusses around with his Powerpoint charts, but Jackson ignores him.

  ‘Fiona, let’s suppose you’re right. Suppose this killing in some way references this Yorkshire thing, or even just Iron Age burials in general. What do we do with that? It’s not like we’ve got people running around with woad on their faces any more.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And we can’t go back in time and arrest someone from twenty-three centuries ago.’

  ‘No.’

  He’s right about that. Definitely correct.

  Jackson: ‘So?’

  ‘So, um.’

  Then, since I can see Jackson is about to do his translation-into-human thing again, I forestall him.

  ‘So, look, I don’t know. I don’t have an answer. But I do think that our clues are going to come from the historical angle. Looking at the things Charteris was interested in. The things that the hill fort was starting to reveal. Somehow those things mattered enough to someone that they were prepared to kill Charteris. And not just kill her, but kill her in this way.’

  I bite my lip.

  Literally and figuratively.

  The thing is, if you kill someone in these extravagant ways, you’re usually trying to send a message. So when the Ku Klux Klan strung people up from trees, they were carefully sending a message. To black people: stay in your place. To white people: this is the way we run things here. None of that civil rights nonsense, or else . . .

  A loathsome message, brutally delivered.

  But clear. Horribly clear.

  And if this stagey presentation of Charteris’s corpse is aimed at sending a message, then who the hell is its target audience? And what’s the message?

  The single thing that disturbs me most about this enquiry so far is the idea that we’re the intended audience: we, the police.

  That’s not a good thought. Like, beneath these dark waters, yet darker waters flow.

  But I don’t say any of that. Don’t even finish thinking it, when Jackson cuts in.

  ‘Bleddyn. Fiona Griffiths here thinks that we should examine the historical aspects in more detail. What do you think about that?’

  When it finishes speaking, Jackson’s face assumes a remarkable stillness. ‘Glasslike’: that’s the conventional descriptor, I think, except that there’s nothing of glass there at all. His expression has the solidity and impenetrability of rock. Cliff walls, rising into mist.

  Jones spends a moment or two trying to read Jackson’s face, but he might as well seek to read a slab of Snowdonian rhyolite.

  Those crags, those mists.

  And after a while, he visibly gives up the attempt. This is his enquiry, his decision. A decision shaped, perhaps, by Jackson’s earlier terse summary. That is very organised, but we don’t have a suspect, do we? What I offer is scarcely the type of lead that Jones would choose to pursue, but he wants to stay in the game. Maintain control of this enquiry in the hope that something turns up.

  His face ripples and says, ‘Yes, I think that it would be a good idea if Fiona . . .’ He waves his hand at me, permissively but vaguely
, then takes another stab at the end of his sentence. ‘If Fiona maybe takes a look at – what? – Iron Age killings and things of that type . . .?’

  He stares at me, not quite sure what I’m proposing and his confidence fading with every word.

  Jackson waits for long enough to mark the fact that Bleddyn Jones himself has made his choice, and made it unforced and of his own volition, then he leans forward, grinning.

  ‘Bleddyn, mate, you’ve no bloody idea what she wants. None at all. Neither have I. But if you want a word of advice from an officer who’s had to work with this one in the past, then just give her her head. A little freedom of action. Only a little, mind, because before you know it she’ll be running off God knows where doing God knows what. But if she wants to look at Iron Age killings or, I don’t know, old hill forts or whatever, then let her do it.’

  Jones, still not quite understanding how he’s been negotiated into this outcome, just nods.

  Jackson, speaking to Powell and Ryder in turn, says, ‘Deryn? Sian?’

  They nod. Shruggy nods of the like-we-give-a damn variety.

  Jackson pauses a microsecond, then opens out into a full-beam, full-wattage smile.

  ‘Well, that’s terrific. Splendid. Bleddyn, you and your team are doing a fabulous job. Keep it up. Well done all.’

  We unstick ourselves from the fake black leather of Jackson’s giant sofa and tumble out of his office into the wide open spaces of the corridor beyond.

  Jones, still slightly dazed, says, ‘So, Fiona, then you’ll . . . You’ll . . .’

  ‘Yes, sir. Of course. I’ll get going at once.’

  5

  The next day, a sparkling one.

  A high blue sky. A buoyant sun. The sea a sparkle of silver and blue.

  I sit on a damp green bank and smoke a roll-up. I’m not a smoker, not really, but I’m trying to reduce my appetite for cannabis, and for some reason the tobacco acts as a partial substitute, even if this particular cigarette does have a little Pentwyn resin crumbled along its length.

  Sweet resin, Welsh winds.

  I’m a little earlier than I said, but it’s not long before I hear the sound of approaching feet.

  Katie appears. Sees me up here on my bank. I raise a hand and smile welcome.

  She approaches.

  Impressively torn black jeans. Black cowboy boots, well-used. Dark vest-top worn under an almost military khaki shirt. A chunky necklace. One of those broad-brimmed Aussie-style hats with a leather band. Some multi-coloured wristband that probably communicates something to do with music or some charitable cause or event or something else that I would know about if I knew anything about that kind of thing.

  The look has attitude and personality and toughness, without quite dipping into angry hippy counter-culture.

  Also: she walks with a ski stick, a mobility aid not a fashion statement.

  She comes up the bank towards me. Sits beside me.

  I say, ‘You hurt your ankle?’

  ‘No.’

  She volunteers nothing further. I say, ‘Anything you want to talk about?’

  ‘No.’

  That’s fine with me. I offer her my tobacco pouch, but she says, ‘No,’ more gently this time.

  I put my pouch away and she loosens up a bit. Actually physically loosens. Stretches out, decompresses.

  I continue smoking. We’re close to the sea here, very close, but these hills, these trees are so enclosing, they create their own little world. Their own deep pond of time.

  Katie: ‘Have you guys got anywhere?’

  ‘The official answer? We are actively pursuing a number of lines of enquiry.’

  ‘But you have nothing? In reality, you have nothing?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So you want to talk about Roman pottery? That’s one of your “lines of enquiry”, is it?’

  There’s something so needlessly snippy in the way she says that, I can’t help laughing.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m afraid it is.’

  Katie looks apologetic – then fierce – then juts her jaw at a green horizon.

  While she’s busy cycling through whatever twenty emotions she’s picked out for the day, I get out my iPad and bring up the list of finds downloaded from the project website.

  I say, ‘Right, I know none of these things looked all that interesting to you when you found them, but that was before Gaynor was murdered. And since she has been murdered and your finds were stolen, we have to take a second look.’

  So we do.

  Start picking through the list.

  *

  Pottery fragment, rim piece, 2cm x 5cm, prob. local manufacture

  Pottery fragment, 4cm x 9cm, possible southern Europe origin (?)

  Nails x 12, varying condition, Roman-style, poss local origin.

  Button, horn, 1cm

  Seal box (lid), 3cm x 3cm. Figure of bear (?), wolf (?), heavily scratched and poor condition.

  Coins x 4. Varying dates 2nd/3rd century. (?) Variable condition.

  Bronze wire, 7 cm. Very fine craftsmanship. Probable use in jewellery. Post-Roman (?)

  And so on.

  Katie dismisses everything in turn.

  ‘No. Look, these things aren’t rare in themselves. They’re just not. Take that seal box. If that had been in good condition – lid and box, no buckling, no scratching – then it might retail for maybe a hundred and fifty pounds, something like that. As it is, you couldn’t even sell it on eBay. These things are of interest because of where we’re finding them, not their rarity.’

  All through the list, the same thing.

  The only thing that gives Katie pause is the lump of rock down by the corner of the Portakabin.

  Carved stone fragment. Probable part of a cross. Condition consistent with early medieval period. Stone of non-local origin.

  ‘I mean, that surprised us, the fact that the stone wasn’t local. But still. You could think of any number of explanations.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, these Dark Age British were Christian. Suppose that a saint with important local connections had died in some other part of the country. They might want to relocate the relics. Bones, a skull, or a memorial cross. Something sanctified by the saint himself.’

  I say, ‘So, I don’t know, let’s say someone grows up here, then goes round the country healing the sick or whatever. When he drops dead, the people back here want a piece of him.’

  ‘Exactly, yes. And of course there was plenty of fraud and forgery. The most popular medieval saints generated enough sacred bones to make two or three whole bodies.’

  ‘And you know all this how? I mean is it just archaeology?’

  ‘Digging up physical evidence is a key part, yes, but manuscript sources are just as important. Hopefully, when you put manuscript sources together with physical evidence, you start getting a reliable – or almost reliable – picture.’

  I ask other questions, but turn up nothing of value.

  I also ask Katie to show me the dig itself in detail. It doesn’t take long. The main part of the site is only about sixty metres in either direction. The site has already been explored once, so Charteris’s project was only ever about adding depth and texture to what was already well understood in scholarly terms. With Charteris dead, Katie tells me that the whole project is probably doomed.

  ‘You can’t take it over?’ I ask.

  ‘No.’

  Katie’s ‘no’ is abrupt, almost rude, but I don’t enquire further.

  Instead, she stands where a Great Hall once stood. Waves her arms as she reconstructs the way things were. She has her ski stick loose in her hand as she does so. Whatever her mobility issue is, it doesn’t affect her each and every minute.

  She shows me the dig too. Rectangles of ground pegged out with orange string. One of the trenches still has little plastic markers showing where the most recent finds were located.

  If there’s a clue here, I’m not seeing it.

  Bac
k to the Portakabin. Look at that lump of old stone, lost in its tangle of wet grass. I ask why it, alone of all the finds, was left out of the cabin.

  ‘It’s heavy,’ says Katie, doing her stupid-question voice. ‘We worried it would break the shelves.’

  ‘And if we get this thing into a lab, would you be able to tell me where it came from? I mean, specifically, not just “somewhere in north or mid Wales”.’

  ‘Well that’s a question for a geologist, really. But yes, I can certainly find out.’

  ‘Yes please.’

  That leaves us the problem of how to shift the rock into Katie’s car. I can’t lift it on my own and she doesn’t offer to help. So we wait around until a dog-walker passes by and we prevail upon him to do the manly thing, which he does, eyes crossed with effort. We thank him by smiling prettily in my case, and looking skinny but somehow warlike in Katie’s.

  Katie says she’ll get the stone’s origin defined as soon as she can.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Sorry, by the way. I was a bit sharp.’

  I shrug. Give her another smile: they’re free.

  And, strangely, for all Katie’s jerkily variable fierceness, I think she’s already helped. We’ve already checked the Police National Computer for other archaeologists suffering violent deaths.

  Nothing.

  Historians suffering violent deaths.

  Nothing.

  Thefts of archaeological materials.

  Yes, a few hits, but nothing of interest.

  But I wasn’t thinking properly. Katie’s earlier comment about the importance of manuscript sources made me realise there is a whole category of crime we just haven’t looked at.

  Thefts of manuscripts? Piles of old paper? I never thought to check.

  I drive, too fast, back to the office.

  The rest of that day, a Thursday: nothing.

  Friday, ditto.

  Work Saturday and Sunday, both. Take orange juice and some vaguely healthy salad box into the office at nine. Sip, work and nibble, till the streets outside are sunk into some neon orange gloom.

  Sip, work, nibble – and get nothing.

  On Monday morning, frustrated and losing confidence, I try a search I’ve tried before, wanting to double-check myself. The screen fills with results and, up at the top, this: