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

by Harry Bingham

  But, because I make a pest of myself, we also get the phone companies to provide us with data on calls made from the area covered by the masts local to Gheerbrant’s cottage, a few miles outside Durham.

  We look at calls made or received by unregistered, no-contract phones.

  Only one such number shows up. Just one. The call location appears highly consistent with Gheerbrant’s cottage.

  And that phone, that very phone, made calls to Oxford and to Dinas Powys.

  On the very night of Oakeshott’s death, the phone received a call from, it would seem, that same bit of dirty canalside where Oakeshott met his end.

  The evidence is undeniable.

  It looks like Gheerbrant used an unregistered mobile to call both Charteris and Oakeshott. He received calls from them both, including one from Oakeshott just an hour or two before he was murdered.

  All this amounts, in police terms, to a big, fat, golden gotcha. Carr thinks so and Jones does too. So we’re all ready to hit Gheerbrant hard, fast and nasty, when—

  Good news. Bad news. Good news. Bad news.

  Bad news.

  We find our killer.

  Or, to be more precise, he finds us. A local Oxford thug. Known to the police. Previous convictions for assault. Suspected involvement in low-level drug-dealing, car-crime. Tattoos running from neck to ankle.

  Shaven head. Heavy brow. Gold rings. Leather jacket.

  He’s picked up by regular uniformed police for a suspected domestic assault against his black-eyed, badly bruised girlfriend. His T-shirt is stained with her blood and, as part of the routine forensic follow-up, his jacket is also analysed.

  And yes, that jacket is caked in the blood of his beloved, but the side-seams hold traces of other veins, other injuries.

  Oakeshott.

  The man, Antony Wormold, is cautioned and interrogated on suspicion of murder.

  He has no alibi.

  He makes a sworn statement that he wasn’t down by the canal that night of 11 April. Not that night. Not any time that he could remember. A sturdy ‘no’ to any questions that mattered and lots of silence to the ones that didn’t.

  But the canal terminates in central Oxford, an area well covered by ordinary city centre CCTV. And we have footage of him walking to and returning from Hythe Bridge Street, at the butt end of the canal. Thames Valley’s own, really good, forensics lab also manages to extract mud from one of Wormold’s shoelaces. You can’t normally tell much from mud, except that there used to be an ironworks fronting the canal and that particular section of footpath is notably high in various industrial by-products. Lo and behold, the mud on Wormold’s shoe shows strong traces of just the right mixture of by-products to place him on that particular section of footpath.

  In Carr’s pithy summary, ‘The lad’s fucked. The blood alone would almost do it. The CCTV and the mud are clinchers.’

  Wormold is charged with murder.

  Bail refused.

  Court date set.

  The clanking machinery of justice, that strange steampunk conveyor, starts to roll Wormold down a road that will terminate with the iron door of a maximum security cell.

  Which is where he belongs.

  Carr, feeling he has his man, pulls back from everything else. He says, ‘Those interviews with academics. They didn’t actually lead anywhere, did they? And if we’ve got our killer, we’ve got our killer.’

  That kind of thinking makes me want to hit my head against something thick and hard. I assemble my evidence. Pat it into a metaphorical pile and shove it across a metaphorical table at Carr and Jones.

  The seal-box lid.

  The Dyfi stone.

  The thefts from Bangor and Llanymawddwy.

  The phone calls made to Dinas Powys and Oxford by a phone surely belonging to Alden Gheerbrant.

  And those other things too. The decapitation. The Iron Age spears. These damn Round Table conspirators, middle-aged professors playing at spies. The fact that one of those professors was killed on the very evening that I burst into his room and started smashing his glassware.

  ‘What,’ I want to yell, ‘do you think is going on?’

  Carr, who knows me better now, says calmly, ‘Who, in your opinion, stabbed John Oakeshott and threw him into the canal?’

  ‘Wormold.’

  ‘Do you have any connection between Antony Wormold and this guy Gheerbrant.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And there might be any number of legitimate reasons why a Durham historian should be talking to his colleagues around the country, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I mean, that is in fact what you would expect a Durham historian to do? It’s his job, right?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  No one is interested in my buts.

  Obviously, we do what we can to check Wormold’s whereabouts on the day of Charteris’s murder, but Wormold was at work, in a mail sorting office, on both the fifteenth and sixteenth of March. It’s certainly possible that, sometime during the night of the fifteenth/sixteenth March, Wormold tootled down from Oxford, murdered Charteris in that bizarrely exotic way, before returning to Oxford to punch his girlfriend, sort mail, deal drugs and do all those other things that made for a satisfying Antony Wormold day. But if Wormold drove, he didn’t drive his own car, which doesn’t appear to have left Oxford. And then – why? Wormold could just have killed Oakeshott for a pocketful of cash. A stupid late-night argument. But the whole exotic staging of Charteris’s death doesn’t seem Wormoldian in the slightest.

  So, as Carr’s Oxford enquiry detaches from us and steams away, Jones and I are left with all the questions we started with. All the questions and none of the Wormolds.

  I persuade Jones that we need to take a second crack at Gheerbrant. He has nothing else to run with, so he agrees.

  We make a date with Gheerbrant. Drive north.

  Three hundred miles. A five-hour schlep, by far the longest time we’ve spent together since the whole written warning, short leash thing.

  We can’t bristle at each other the whole way, so we maintain a taut, unimpeachable politeness. If we talk, we talk mostly about the case.

  Birmingham.

  Nottingham.

  Sheffield.

  Stop for fuel. Coffee for Jones, a crumbled blueberry muffin for me.

  Leeds.

  Durham.

  Tilting sun, pale skies, and the Durham Constabulary HQ. A gleaming white building with glass enough to catch this sloping, northern light.

  We find Gheerbrant in the lobby. He, like us, is collecting a stupid plastic badge. He introduces us to a woman next to him – grey wool dress, glasses, an air of intelligent self-possession.

  ‘This is Miranda Speyman. I’m a bit of a novice with these things, so I thought I should get a lawyer. I hope that’s OK.’

  Jones and I exchange glances. Short of some really strange circumstances, no entirely innocent person ever hires a lawyer. But we say nothing.

  A uniform takes us to the interview room. Sorts out drinks. Arranges the recording equipment.

  I lead the interview, so that Jones can stay silent and observe. Come storming in, if the need arises.

  We get started.

  This time, Gheerbrant doesn’t fool around. Doesn’t bother to try out his charm, his flighty ebullience. Because he’s more cautious, those micro-tells, so interesting in the first interview, aren’t really available for inspection today.

  But we have a job to do and do it.

  ‘Dr Gheerbrant, you told us that you last saw Gaynor Charteris at an academic conference in Norwich that ran from the seventeenth to the nineteenth of February. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Dr Charteris was murdered on or around the fifteenth of March, approximately one month after that conference. Did you see Dr Charteris at any point in that time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you speak to her by phone in that period?’

  ‘No.’

 
‘What about email? Text? Anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  We go over the same questions in relation to John Oakeshott. Ask repetitiously enough that Gheerbrant won’t be able to squirm away from his answer later.

  Then, ‘How many mobile phones do you own?’

  An uncomfortable pause, terminated by Gheerbrant’s terse, ‘One. You have the number.’

  ‘Can you tell us anything about a mobile phone with this number?’

  I show him the number of that unregistered mobile, the one that’s made calls from somewhere near Gheerbrant’s house to both Dinas Powys and that Oxford canal.

  ‘No.’

  That answer is clearly rehearsed, but still seems to cause him anxiety.

  I confirm his answer. Snap away at the same issue, pinning him down.

  Then, ‘Can you explain why a mobile phone with that number made calls to Dinas Powys, Gaynor Charteris’s home area, from a location at or very close to your home?’

  ‘No.’

  His lips move in a circle, pushing that round ‘O’ out into the space between us, but no actual sound emerges.

  I say, ‘For the benefit of the recording, can I confirm that your answer was “no”?’

  He nods. ‘Correct.’

  It is a ghost of Gheerbrant who speaks the word.

  ‘The same mobile phone was used to make and receive calls to and from Oxford. To a part of the city that included John Oakeshott’s home and the canalside where he was killed. Do you still claim that the phone was not yours?’

  His mouth moves on emptiness.

  A dry silence. A whisper of dead grass.

  He tries to speak – can’t – sips some water – says, ‘Can I have a moment, please? I’d like a private word with Miranda.’

  Jones and I exchange glances. We don’t have Gheerbrant under arrest. If he chooses to get up and walk out of the room, we can’t actually stop him. His alibis for the two relevant dates remain as solid as the rock under Durham Castle.

  Jones says, ‘Fine. Take your time.’

  We leave. Find the canteen. I get water and a salad box. Jones gets something designed to clog his arteries, poison his gut and silently devastate his liver.

  ‘He’s going to break,’ says Jones.

  Maybe.

  Gheerbrant having a lawyer isn’t all bad news, because lawyers have a dual role. Yes, they are there to protect and defend their clients, but they are also, always, officers of the court. That means they can’t lie or collude in a lie. Gheerbrant can certainly use Miranda Speyman to choose which parts of the truth to present. He can use her to help him figure out how to present it and understand what the consequences may be. But she can’t knowingly lie to us or help him to do so.

  An hour passes. Jones adds two cups of black coffee to the various calamities already facing his liver. Then we get a call from Speyman inviting us back.

  We go down.

  Speyman says, ‘My client would like to correct aspects of his comments so far.’ Then, with a sharp nod at her client, tells him to proceed.

  He does.

  Speaking clearly, but jerkily, Gheerbrant says, ‘That phone. It’s mine. I spoke to Oakeshott and Charteris. I was not involved with their murders. They were my friends. Friends and colleagues.’

  There are tears in his eyes. Some self-pity there, for sure. A release of stress and the relief of truth-telling. But perhaps there’s something left over for his dead colleagues.

  Decapitated and speared. Stabbed and drowned.

  I say, ‘You spoke to them about what?’

  ‘Academic matters mostly.’

  ‘Matters relating to Britain as it was in the Dark Ages?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Matters in which you all had a shared interest?’

  ‘Exactly. Yes.’

  ‘And what specifically? What exactly was the topic of those conversations?’

  ‘That’s confidential.’

  I jerk my head upwards in surprise. Jones the same.

  I pull back a bit from the table. It’s Jones’s call how to respond to that.

  He says, ‘Sorry, Dr Gheerbrant, just for a moment there, I thought you said, “That’s confidential”.’

  Good old-fashioned police sarcasm. I always like that.

  Gheerbrant doesn’t react. Just, ‘That’s correct.’

  Jones: ‘You are aware that your two friends were murdered? Nastily, brutally, savagely murdered. The information you hold is quite likely key to locating, arresting and prosecuting their murderers. You understand that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I mean, I’m not a clever man, myself. Not university, like you. But killing people is bad, right? It’s a good idea to put killers behind bars, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So now might be a good time to help out. Tell us what you know.’

  Gheerbrant just deflects that question, if it was a question, sideways and down. He says nothing.

  Jones pauses. Tries to read Gheerbrant’s face. Speyman’s too.

  ‘Just a minute.’

  He beckons me with him out of the room.

  ‘Get a search warrant,’ he says. ‘Home, office, car, everything. Get a team together and have them move as fast as possible. I don’t want Gheerbrant disposing of anything when he gets out of here.’

  I nod.

  Our liaison in the Durham Constabulary is a DI Paul McGinn. I brief him swiftly. He assembles a team – by sticking his head into a kind of common room area and yelling – and dials through to the duty magistrate.

  We do what we need to do to get the warrant – sensible applications are seldom refused and certainly not in a case with a double murder dangling at its heart. We’re all done within about thirty minutes. McGinn’s team moves out.

  I go back to the interview room.

  Jones says, ‘All done?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Search warrants OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  This is theatre, of course. I’ve kept Jones informed by text and he knows the state of play perfectly well.

  ‘Home, office, car, everything?’

  ‘Yes. The teams will be arriving any minute now.’

  ‘Instructions to be thorough, yes?’

  ‘They’ll rip everything to shreds if they have to.’

  Jones looks at Gheerbrant. ‘I’ll have your phone, please.’

  I flip a copy of the warrant across the table at Speyman, who inspects it, then nods. Gestures her client into handing over his phone.

  ‘And your wallet.’

  He passes that over too.

  ‘And please turn out your pockets.’

  Gheerbrant does.

  Receipts. Some loose change. Keys. A length of string. A folded letter, with a Durham University letterhead.

  Jones takes the receipts, the keys, the letter. Gets Gheerbrant to identify each key. Calls a uniform from outside to have each key checked against the relevant lock.

  There’s meant to be a written record of what we seize, but Jones just spreads it out on the table under the video camera’s gaze, lists each item in his tiresome monotone, then sweeps it all up again and hands it to the waiting officer.

  Gheerbrant watches his keys, wallet and documents leave the room. He pockets the change and the string.

  Silence. Drained and empty, like the concrete bottom of an old pond.

  Jones turns a disappointed face on Gheerbrant.

  Says nothing. Does nothing. Just looks.

  Maybe Jones sports that horrible beard as an interrogation tool. Perhaps suspects end up confessing simply to avoid its stare.

  ‘Home and office,’ says Jones sadly. ‘Uniformed officers. Squad cars. Everyone watching. Neighbours, friends, colleagues, students. Maybe the local paper too, you never know. Those things can destroy people, you know.’

  Jones lets the silence press at Gheerbrant.

  Under the old common law of England and Wales, a prisoner couldn’t be tried unless that pri
soner voluntarily submitted themselves to the court’s jurisdiction by entering a plea of guilty or not guilty. If a prisoner refused to enter a plea, he was forced to submit to peine forte et dure, an Old French term meaning ‘hard and forceful punishment’. That punishment consisted of being stretched out on a hard floor, loaded with weights of iron and stone, as much as the body could bear. The punishment was continued until the prisoner entered a plea, or died.

  I think of that old, merciless system now.

  There’s something crushing Gheerbrant.

  This weight of silence. This press of questions. The knowledge that even now his life is being broken apart under the public gaze.

  That weight of stone and iron, and still he tells us nothing.

  ‘Aren’t you frightened?’ asks Jones. ‘Scared that someone will do to you what they did to your friends?’

  Gheerbrant doesn’t answer.

  ‘It’s OK to say yes. We’re here to protect you. But we need to know who we’re protecting you from. We need those people behind bars.’

  Nothing.

  Those subjected to peine forte et dure were given a modest amount of barley bread to eat for the first day of their punishment, but no water with it. Thereafter, they were given nothing but foul water, as much as they could drink.

  Gheerbrant has no bread, but he fiddles with a horrible plastic cup of coffee, still two-thirds full.

  He suddenly stares at the coffee as though baffled to find himself still here.

  There is no iron weight pressing on him. No cords spread-eagling him on a hard prison floor. It’s as though he’s suddenly stunned by his own liberty.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’

  He stands up.

  Leaves the room.

  Goes.

  24

  McGinn’s search teams report back, excited.

  The team at Gheerbrant’s house have found a stash of weapons. A working crossbow. Various swords and blades. A couple of axes. Numerous arrowheads. Spearheads, very like those plunged into his former colleague’s chest.

  ‘We’ve got your killer,’ concludes the team leader. ‘It’s like a warehouse for psychos.’

  Alas, not. We inform him that since Gheerbrant is the country’s leading expert in ancient weaponry, his collection is nothing more than we’d have expected. Sorry.

  The data offers more hope of breakthrough. The Durham guys are straight to work on phones and hard drives. Promise to share everything as soon as they’ve extracted files.