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

by Harry Bingham

  Eighteen beads left.

  And nothing is for ever.

  22

  In Oxford, our investigation tapers to a point where I’m no longer needed, so – unwanted everywhere – I end up back in Cardiff.

  Jones doesn’t want me either, but he knows that his limping enquiry needs whatever help I bring, so I’m allowed to continue working, although ‘on a short leash’, as Jones creepily puts it. He makes a gesture as of a beardily annoying man jerking a dog lead, and I have this horrible idea that that’s how he likes to imagine me. On all fours. Collared, leashed and muzzled. Thighs and buttocks a-tremble at the sight of my master’s boot.

  We maintain a chill politeness, but barely.

  It’s clear enough now, even to Jones, that the Reasonably Local Nutter theory is dead. We have two historians, both murdered. A whole web of other clues, other data, which murmurs of conflicts past. Dark Age battles against a Dark Age foe.

  We failed to find Oakeshott’s Round Table associates in Oxford, but they’re out there somewhere, so we look everywhere we can. Historians and archaeologists. Anyone with an interest in early Dark Age Britain. Our interviews take in Cardiff and Oxford, but also Cambridge, London, Durham, York, Bangor, Bristol, Kent.

  Carr wants me to lead those interviews, and Jones agrees, accepting that I’m the right person for the job. That’s good enquiry management, that is, except that because he doesn’t trust me, he hobbles me. Orders me – in writing, no less – to ‘avoid confrontation and to maintain a polite and professional demeanour’. In the event that I actually discover something like a lead, I am to ‘take no further action without consulting the Commanding Officer’.

  Moron.

  But still. Even working in this Jonesian way, our data accumulates. Working sometimes with a DC up from Cardiff, at other times with a DC supplied from Oxford, I collect universities like postage stamps. Stone quadrangles and church bells. Modern campuses and artificial lakes.

  Door after door. Face after face.

  Bland, unprobing questions. Bland, unhelpful answers.

  And then – Durham.

  It’s a sodden May day. Rain chases us up the A1, with me impatiently at the wheel. An almost painfully eager DC from Oxford, a Paul Compton, is in the car with me, an Interview Plan on his iPad, a bunch of research notes in a bundle on his lap.

  We reach Durham. The cluttered streets and puzzling topography of what is claimed to be England’s third oldest university.

  Find a place to park.

  Search under the falling rain for the right door to the right building. By the time we find it, Compton and I, both underdressed, look like a pair of Jack Russells scattering water after a walk.

  Our interviewee, Alden Gheerbrant, has a cheerful, Georgian, book-lined room. Bookshelves and panelling. Everything white. A busy enough desk, but also a carpet, a fireplace, sofa and chairs. The guy is a specialist in early medieval warfare. Weapons. The archaeology of violent death.

  He has long, dark, curly hair. A wide smile. Greets us with a public schoolboy’s easy, elastic, dislikeable charm.

  ‘Find me all right, did you? Here, do you want to put your wet things down? There’s a towel in there if you want to dry off. Tea OK? Or do detectives always have to drink strong, black coffee?’

  He manages, somehow, to convey that our wetness is amusing. The sort of solecism that chaps like him would never commit.

  I hesitate a moment.

  Stop still, trying to catch the scent.

  Some politeness is just affable. Some automatic. Some genuine. And some plain deceitful.

  The smiler with the knife under the cloak. The cattle-shed burning with the black smoke.

  Do I smell smoke here? Or am I just too hungry for a breakthrough?

  I don’t know. But that comment about detectives tells me that he’s a little on edge. And that laughing, too-confident politeness: I don’t trust that. Don’t trust it at all.

  So I ditch Compton’s stupid interview plan. Form a new one of my own, which I proceed to implement in a manner which will ‘avoid confrontation’ and ‘maintain a polite and professional demeanour’.

  I use the little shower room that Gheerbrant indicates. Dry my hair off with a towel. Go back into his room, still fluffing. My hair is short enough that, if I don’t use a comb, I end up looking like a punk princess on Valkyrie Night.

  I don’t use a comb.

  ‘Do you have a radiator I can use? These things are soaked.’

  Kick off my stupid black court shoes. Put them on a radiator. Pick at my wet tights. Grimace.

  Say sorry.

  Get out my voice-recorder.

  Drop it.

  Say sorry.

  Try to set the recorder up. Can’t. Ask Compton to help. Watch as he does it. Mouth ‘yikes’ at Gheerbrant and pull a face.

  We get started, or sort of.

  Compton starts off introducing time, date, names of those present for the recorder. Thanks Gheerbrant for his time. Starts to ask the most basic questions. Things to do with Gheerbrant’s current position. His research interests. His degree of acquaintance with the two murder victims.

  As Compton talks and Gheerbrant answers, I look through Compton’s notes, which are well researched, well put together.

  Look through them.

  Drop them.

  A page falls into my mug of tea and I fish it quickly out, popping the dripping corner into my mouth so as to keep drops from the carpet.

  Thanks to my bold and resourceful action, the carpet is spared any drips, though my skirt is not quite so lucky. I stand up, dabbing at the tea with Gheerbrant’s towel. Poor Compton, unprepared for any of this, sits there with his hand shielding his mouth and a look of alarm in his eyes.

  We soldier on.

  Compton follows his interview plan, which sounds like it should be the right thing to do, except that if you adhere to these things too closely, you can’t help getting overly mechanical.

  Which is good. Which is ideal.

  I want to see Gheerbrant relaxed. Confident. Unguarded. If he sees me as an idiot and Compton as a junior officer robotically ticking the boxes on some pre-made interview sheet, he’ll be less defended. Less cautious about offering up any micro-tells.

  And the tells are there. The tells are there.

  His easy charm is interrupted by darting eye movements. His eyes hold smilingly on Compton, before flicking attentively to me, then smilingly back again. But his gaze is shot through with a wintry calculation. No smiles, no warmth, no summer.

  That, and one other thing.

  Compton asks, as his Interview Plan requires him to ask, ‘And you knew Gaynor Charteris, of course. When exactly did you last see her?’

  Gheerbrant does nothing exactly wrong. Nothing. But he puts his hand to his mouth, a gesture of self-reassurance. And then – artificially, I think, with awkward timing – stands up with an apology for not having offered us more tea. Stands with his back to us, banging around with kettle and teabags.

  Time-wasting, I think.

  Gathering his thoughts.

  I make a circling gesture to Compton, telling him silently that we’re to swap roles. He nods, relieved to see that his buffoon of a boss isn’t quite as inept as she appears. I point to my eyes, then at Gheerbrant’s back. I mouth, ‘Watch him. Watch him.’

  When Gheerbrant turns again, he sees that we’ve swapped roles. A look of caution dances in his eyes. A temporary hesitation before that muffling, blanketing charm returns.

  I find the wrong place in the Interview Plan and start about five questions back.

  ‘Didn’t we already go through that?’ asks Gheerbrant.

  I gape.

  Consult briefly with Compton, then announce, ‘We just want to double-check some things. Sorry.’

  So. We burble through some of the things we’ve burbled through before.

  Gheerbrant, who started this interview leaning forwards, long fingers nervously moving over coffee cup, paper and cushi
ons, is now thrown back in his sofa. He has his hand over his mouth again but this time, I think, the hand conceals amusement, not insecurity. Amusement at me. My incompetence.

  If he had any anxiety before we started all this, that anxiety has all but evaporated. In its place, confidence. The single most dangerous emotion he could have. The rope that will snare him.

  We get to The Question.

  I ask The Question.

  ‘So, we’ve caught up with ourselves at last.’ Little laugh. Apology-smile. ‘I think you were about to tell us when you last saw Gaynor Charteris.’

  His answer comes out as smooth as poured cream. French silk gliding over a naked thigh.

  He tells us something about a conference. An academic get-together. ‘It would be easy to check,’ he says.

  ‘And that was your last contact with her?’

  A momentary pause. Then, ‘Yes. Yes it was.’

  ‘No phone calls. Email. Nothing like that?’

  ‘No. I didn’t know her that well. And of course, she was down in Cardiff. I’m up here. It’s quite a drive.’

  ‘Of course.’ I roll my eyes at the drive. The roadworks and the rain.

  As I do that, I write two dates on a sheet of paper. The date of Gheerbrant’s last conference sighting of Charteris and the date of the latter’s death.

  I pass him the sheet. Not because he needs the information, but because I want his hands occupied and away from his mouth.

  I ask, ‘And did you talk to anyone about her? In the period between your conference and her death?’

  ‘Uh – that’s a question. I’d have to think.’

  He thinks.

  Holds my stupid sheet of paper in both hands and thinks.

  When dogs look at human faces, they exhibit what’s known as ‘left gaze bias’. That is, their eyes drift leftwards, because the right side of the human face is more likely to display the person’s authentic emotion, while the left side tends to be under closer conscious control – which is to say, more likely to lie.

  Because I know this, I’m careful, when interrogating, to display left gaze bias myself. I try to filter out the deceitful left side of my subject’s face and watch only the truthful right.

  On this occasion, Gheerbrant wears a crooked smile. The left side of his mouth has a sort of fixed grin. A kind of default, holding-at-bay politeness.

  The right side isn’t like that. It’s ruler-straight. And his eyes have an almost frowning intensity.

  The moment doesn’t last more than a second. Gheerbrant almost shakes himself. Puts the paper down. Wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. Grins – but still lop-sidedly – and says, ‘Gosh, you know, it’s hard remembering exactly.’

  Having given himself permission to pause, he pauses. Thinks hard. There’s no dissembling in his face now. It’s a frown of concentration. More concentrated, more effortful than anything he’s done so far in this interview. Beside me, I feel the prick of Compton’s glance. He’s seeing what I’m seeing. Wondering what I’m wondering.

  I put no more pressure on the question than Compton had placed on any of his – and when Gheerbrant didn’t have a ready answer to one of Compton’s questions, he would just toss his hand and say, airily, ‘Oh, I don’t know, I should think . . .’

  This time, he thinks hard. Too obviously. Then he says, still cautiously, ‘I don’t believe I did, no. But I do speak to a lot of colleagues. It’s possible that I’m missing something.’

  We continue.

  In other circumstances, perhaps, I might lean on Gheerbrant’s exposed weakness. Apply pressure to see if I could force the break. But my throat is still circled by Jones’s invisible leash and, in any case, it’s sometimes better to hold your knowledge of a lead away from the suspect who’s provided it.

  But, of course, I don’t believe his answer. He knows perfectly well whether he spoke to anyone about Charteris. Knows perfectly well that he did. What drove him into that frown of concentration was his attempt to figure out whether we’d be able to detect his lie. What the consequences would be for him if we could.

  Professional criminals handle those things better. They’re less stressed by lying. More aware of police resources and limits. But Gheerbrant is no professional criminal, no more than Oakeshott and Charteris were.

  He told us a lie. Got stressed by lying. Let his stress show. The first wrinkle of an edge we’ve found since Oakeshott’s murder.

  We bumble on.

  I play the goof a little more. Drop papers. Get flustered. Accidentally stop recording and have to go back a couple of questions when I notice the error.

  Gheerbrant is almost openly laughing at me now. Exchanging smiles and wrinkled eyebrows with Compton.

  And when we, properly this time, switch off the voice recorder, collect shoes from the radiator, thank Gheerbrant for his time, and make ready to go, he’s laughing, joking, thinking he’s won.

  Because he’s a warfare- and weapons-man, he has various knick-knacks around the place. An antique spear-tip. A notched bone. A fragment of leather. Something which I think may have been chain mail.

  Also a blade. A knife.

  Clearly modern, unlike the other things. A strangely patterned surface, like some map of deep-sea contours. Depths and shadows.

  I pick it up. No investigative impulse there. Just curious.

  ‘Damascus steel,’ says Gheerbrant, his mood still up, ebullient. ‘Pattern welding, to be strictly correct. This is a modern piece, but the Celts used similar techniques. You fold alternating layers of steel into rods, then twist them together as you forged the blade. It’s those different layers of metal which give you that contouring, and if you were really good at it, you managed to lay hard steel over a softer iron core. That way your sword combined the springiness of iron and the sharpness of steel.’

  He encourages me to test the blade for sharpness and I do. Run my fingertip across it. The edge has that whisper of evil that all really sharp objects possess. That tracks each ridge and valley of my fingertip. That could open a flesh-wound with the merest twitch of the handle.

  ‘Who made this?’ I ask, just to say something.

  And then – a weird, temporary hesitation. A sudden sucking-in of that ebullience.

  The change in mood is sharp enough that Compton, packing up our papers, glances across to see what’s up. And I don’t know. Don’t know what’s up. Gheerbrant collects himself and bats away the question. ‘Oh, I’m not sure. Probably American.’ He starts telling me about the American Bladesmith Society which is, no doubt, a fine institution, but is not, I think, an outfit that should cause Gheerbrant to get flustered.

  I realise something.

  Dummkopf.

  Ich bin ein Dummkopf.

  I almost laugh at the obviousness of the whole thing. The crudity of the clues that were laid. Truth is, I think I’ve been slow in putting this whole thing together, but it doesn’t really matter. Not if you get there in the end.

  We gather our things. Say goodbye.

  By the time we get outside, the rain has ceased, at least briefly, and a rainbow’s temporary shine gilds the streets.

  I walk away from Gheerbrant’s building. Not to the car, just away. I don’t want him watching us.

  When we’re out of sight, I stop.

  Compton says, ‘The car’s that way,’ raising his voice at the end of the sentence to make it sound like a question more than a statement.

  ‘Yes.’

  He says, ‘Maybe get a sandwich before we go back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Above us, a couple of pigeons perch heavily on a cherry tree, sending a shower of silver raindrops onto the black asphalt below. I don’t move.

  Compton says, ‘Is it me, or was that a bit weird?’

  I have one of those things. Out of body. Out of time.

  We’re in sight here of Durham Castle. An eleventh-century fortification built over an older original. For the moment I can’t tell where I belong. What month, what year,
what hurrying century.

  A modern blade.

  Hardened steel over springy iron.

  Pigeons showering silver in the rainbowed air.

  I don’t try to force anything. Don’t try to find the right century. Don’t try to figure anything out. Just stand here knowing that castles and rainbows, pigeons and centuries will all find a way to settle in the end.

  And when they do – when, finally, I become aware of Compton’s tediously twenty-first century presence chattering at my elbow – I know that everything’s going to be OK.

  Charteris. Oakeshott. Arthur.

  Everybody.

  I feel a sudden closeness to Gaynor Charteris. I’ve not felt her close to me for some time, but I have that sensation now and it’s a good feeling. Comforting.

  I want to tell Katie. I didn’t know what the thing is and now I do. And it was always obvious. Duh!

  I tell Compton, yes, that was a bit weird.

  We eat a sandwich and drive back south.

  23

  Compton writes up the interview. He concludes:

  Subject seemed mostly at ease and relaxed, except in relation to two questions (see above) where subject appeared tense and concentrated hard before answering. Interviewing officers were of the opinion that subject was concealing information of relevance to the enquiry. Recommendations: consider possible follow-up.

  It’s not that we suspect Gheerbrant of being the killer. Apart from anything else, his two alibis are rock-solid: a faculty meeting in Durham that ran all through the day of Charteris’s death. Lecturing in Edinburgh the night that saw Oakeshott stabbed and drowned.

  And yet, and yet . . . there’s something.

  I think it. Compton thinks it. And Jones and Carr, bless their sainted inspectorial heads, think so too.

  We do the basics. Get metadata on Gheerbrant’s phones, his email accounts. Peek at his bank statements. His tax returns.

  There’s nothing strange, nothing awry.