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

by Harry Bingham

  Not much was taken from that numismatics store. About fifty coins in total. I took about a dozen. The thieves took the rest. The things we stole were rare, certainly. Impossible to replicate. But their open market value was nothing at all in relation to the Renoir. Melted down, that quantity of precious metal might buy you a cheap second-hand car in poor condition. Perhaps not even that.

  So I lose. My theories discarded, again.

  Matthews shifts the focus of discussion.

  ‘OK. So then you get down to the basement. You see evidence of stone dust. You hear music being played continually, which suggests to you that some noise-generating activity is being concealed.’

  ‘Yes. I assumed a tunnel, but couldn’t be certain. They made a vague show of pretending they had some air duct thing going, but I didn’t buy into that. In any event, I communicated my suspicions to Dr Kerrigan.’

  Kerrigan, I now know, did come out and report my observations in full to the siege team. That team decided to take the intelligence at face value. Even Blathering Bleddyn, I understand, advised strongly in favour of taking the tunnel hypothesis seriously. For all the problems I’ve had in working with him, he’s never been stupid or lazy or incompetent. Really, my problems with him amount to just two: his by-the-bookishness and that damn beard.

  Matthews again: ‘OK, and the team do everything they can to find the mouth of that tunnel. But . . .’

  But: they didn’t find it.

  The National Museum sits in a little cluster of capital city-type buildings. Our own police headquarters for one, but City Hall, the crown court, the university and so on. It hardly seemed credible that the crown court had been used as a base from which to dig, but nothing was ruled out. So every sewer was investigated. Every building. Whole warrens of underground storerooms and cleaning cupboards were searched and checked. In the time available and working partly at night, my colleagues tried to scope out every square metre of ground in an ever-widening circle round the museum’s eastern boundary.

  That circle reached to around more than two hundred and thirty metres by the time I, so wearily, climbed those stairs to meet the fireflies dancing on my chest.

  Alas, the thieves had gone more than seventy metres better. The tunnel exited in the cellar of an ordinary terraced house in Llanbleddian Gardens, the far side of the railway line. Another day’s work and we might have cracked even that, but – it was not to be.

  Matthews continues with the debriefing.

  We check e-fits.

  Go through distinguishing marks, accents, any inadvertent communications.

  We went through all this last night, but here we are, going through it all again.

  There are alerts out everywhere. We’ve alerted the Metropolitan Police’s ‘art-fraud unit’ which acts as a national centre of expertise. Since, however, that unit comprises one full- and one part-time officer, I suspect that the depth of national expertise may not be very great.

  We’re winding up.

  I have, I notice, eaten most of my croissant, without even making much mess. I lick my finger and lift one golden patisserie flake from my skirt. Hermione Peters catches my eye and squeezes a smile at me, I don’t know why.

  Then Jones says, ‘Just one other thing.’

  One other thing.

  Not a phrase to strike dread, really, except that when it emerges from that mouth, that beard, I feel an internal clenching, as if my internal organs, my soft viscera, were all suddenly huddling for comfort.

  Jones: ‘Fiona, I’m sorry to raise this, but feel I have to. When you requested permission to act as Dr Kerrigan’s nurse, I gave you explicit instructions. Do you remember what they were?’

  I nod.

  He says ‘Well?’ – or, actually, says nothing, but his beard and eyebrows collude in a kind of ‘well?’-like thing.

  I say, ‘You said, “You will take orders from Dr Kerrigan. You will do exactly as she instructs. I don’t want you taking the initiative.” That’s not quite word for word, but not far off.’

  ‘Yes. And what actually happened?’

  ‘We were faced with an unexpected situation. We weren’t expecting to evacuate a hostage.’

  ‘Fiona, did you do as Dr Kerrigan instructed?’

  ‘No.’

  Peters, who looks somewhat startled by this interchange, says, ‘Bleddyn, I think Fiona showed a lot of courage—’

  ‘Oh, she has courage, all right, I don’t doubt that.’

  ‘And she did get the hostage out.’

  ‘Dr Kerrigan also offered to take the place of that hostage. She showed as much courage as Fiona did and I placed her in command.’

  I say, ‘Sir, Dr Kerrigan is married. I’m not. And as a police officer, it’s my duty to protect civilians, Dr Kerrigan included.’

  There’s a temporary stalemate. But it’s a three against one thing and – for once in my career, for maybe the first time in my whole blessed career – the three are on my side, not against me.

  I don’t gloat. Don’t dance around the room shouting Olé! Just fix a mild smile on my face, look modestly downwards, and smooth the fabric of my forget-me-not dress.

  But Jones doesn’t accept his defeat. Doesn’t buy in to my whole mild-’n’-modest shtick, which is a shame, really, as I so seldom get it out.

  He says, ‘Fiona, you are in many ways an exceptional officer. I’m happy to state in front of these—’ he waves his hand at Matthews and Peters and, I think, wants to say ‘gentlemen’, except that Hermione Peters’s presence forces him to retreat to an awkward-sounding, ‘good people.’

  ‘I’m happy to state that you have always shown yourself intelligent, committed, hard-working, resourceful and courageous. But you are also erratic. You are not governable. You do not reliably obey explicit commands and I’m not sure you and I will be able to continue working together.’

  There’s a moment of shocked silence.

  Hermione Peters actually does a kind of double-take. Like, she needs to check that she is indeed watching Bleddyn Jones reprimand a junior officer who gave herself as a hostage to a trio of dangerous gunmen and who also, almost, thwarted their extravagantly planned get-away.

  She even starts to say, ‘Bleddyn, what Fiona did was—’

  But he interrupts. There’s something slightly shaky in his intensity, like this is the final eruption of a lava flow that has been boiling underground for too many weeks.

  He says, ‘Fiona, I think you went over to the museum yesterday wanting to engineer an opportunity to get in there. I think you took advantage of the situation to make it happen.’

  And this time, the shock is palpable.

  The various armours I wore at the start of all this – young woman in pretty dress, siege survivor, person generally short of sleep and TLC – are somehow incompatible with the shell he just lobbed.

  And, I realise, he’s gone too far. My armour is stronger than his shell.

  I could swat him down. Possibly even make his acting headery of Major Crimes impossible to sustain.

  But what I find myself saying is, ‘Yes, sir. You’re entirely correct. I thought we needed a set of police eyes down there. I thought that was the easiest way to make it happen.’

  Jones, triumphant, says: ‘And did you, in any way – in any way at all – discuss that with me first?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you had in mind, did you, that you have already received from me a written warning that drew explicit attention to your erratic behaviour?’

  I say, ‘No,’ then clarify. ‘I mean, yes, I know you gave me that warning, but no, I wasn’t particularly thinking about it when I decided to go down into that basement.’ I shrug. Pretty off-white ferns rise and fall on my shoulders. ‘I just thought it was important to go, that’s all.’

  Matthews exchanges glances with Peters, who has her eyes wide with surprise.

  Matthews, who, back when he was a mere DCI, had some past experience of me, gazes at me thoughtfully. Then says, ‘OK, Fiona. Th
is is a serious issue. It’ll need discussion. But not now. You’ve had a tough night. So go home. Get some sleep. Take tomorrow off. And, both of you, we’ll pick this up on Tuesday.’

  Nods of assent from me and Jones. Two combatants circling towards their final showdown.

  I go. As the door softly closes, I hear the swift buzz of adult conversation rise behind it.

  But phooey to all that. Today is my day off, is it not?

  HEROIC SIEGE SURVIVOR CELEBRATES FREEDOM WITH BLUE DRESS

  EYEWITNESSES REPORT ‘OFF-WHITE FERNS AND FORGET-ME-NOT BLUE’

  Dress Said to Remain Unflaked Despite Croissant Encounter

  Go to the lifts. Am about to hit the button that says, ‘Ground floor. Exit. Home. Bath’, when I think, the hell with it.

  Codicology and Palaeography.

  I move my finger down an inch and hit the button for the basement.

  34

  The basement, that loathsome place.

  No gunmen in this one, but something almost worse: the exhibit rooms, where evidence collected from crime scenes is securely retained. I used to work down here once and hated it, but I do still keep on good terms with Laura Moffatt, who runs the place. Thanks to that friendship, and a little judicious thieving, I know the access codes.

  I locate the room I’m after. Enter it. Check the log. Locate the evidence bag that contains the Llanymawddwy vellum.

  Take it.

  There’s a forensic light kit knocking around as well. Grey plastic carry case. ALS lamp. Full set of filters. CSIs aren’t allowed to leave equipment in a vehicle overnight, so they often use the exhibits rooms as secure dumping grounds instead.

  More fool them.

  I take the box.

  Leave.

  Walk up to Katie’s house. One of her housemates lets me in – they know me fairly well by now – and I go on up.

  Katie’s there, lying on her bed, reading. She’s wearing many-pocketed light khaki trousers and a none-too-new singlet in a very pale green. Her version of hot-weather wear.

  She rolls to greet me. Says, ‘So. They found a Plan C.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Raid the National Museum of Wales.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Probably easier than Buckingham Palace, when you think about it.’

  ‘Much easier, yes.’

  ‘And they did find gold, did they? All the TV could talk about was the paintings.’

  ‘The paintings were minor. Worth a few hundred grand, if that.’

  ‘And the gold?’

  ‘The tunnel went out through the numismatics store. And yes, they helped themselves.’

  ‘Bugger it. Sod it. They’re one step ahead of us.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  I open my bag. Dig around amongst the travel-deodorant and the tissues and the teabags and keys and the phone. Retrieve a dozen ancient coins, four of them gold.

  ‘Plan D,’ I say. ‘Like Plan C, except without the guns.’

  ‘You took these?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Stole them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Katie clambers off the bed. Goes over to her desk. Puts the coins on a sheet of white paper. Brings the desk lamp up close. Inspects them under a magnifying glass. Presses the tip of a pair of compasses into the metal.

  ‘This looks like the real deal,’ she mutters, but continues to check each coin one by one. Both sides. The unmilled edge.

  When she’s done, she pushes back. Stares.

  She’s happy about the gold, but there’s a sadness there too.

  I ask her about it, and she says, ‘Well, the fucking Ph.D. is finally fucking fucked.’ She tells me that she hasn’t been able to find a senior archaeologist to lead the Dinas Powys dig. The dig has been cancelled. And she’s ditched her Ph.D. too. Given up. Dropped out.

  ‘So: the number one item on my do-it-before-you-die bucket list is a fail.’

  I ask her if she actually keeps a list. If she actually has one written down.

  The answer to that is yes. She shows it to me.

  ‘Get my Ph.D.’ is the first item on the list. Ringed and underlined. Other wishes include ‘Live independently until I really, really can’t.’ ‘Don’t cut my hair off.’ ‘Have amazing sex with someone I won’t hate afterwards.’ A few other things, mostly boring ones, like ‘Go to Venice’ or ‘Read Tolstoy.’

  The book on the bed is War and Peace.

  I read the list. Ask if Katie wants tea.

  She says no, coffee. I say I’m crap at making coffee. She tells me exactly how to make it and I repeat, like an imbecile, what she just said and she stares at me, as though I’m an imbecile, and says, ‘Yes. Like that. Coffee.’

  So I go, imbecilicly, downstairs. Make coffee the way she says. The whole cafetière and ground coffee thing. Peppermint tea for me.

  I don’t freak out. Don’t dissociate. Am neither more nor less nuts than my general average.

  Go back with the drinks.

  Say, ‘Do a different Ph.D.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, the Dinas Powys one is screwed, I can see that. But I don’t know if your bucket list thing has to mean that particular Ph.D. thesis or if it could be some other one.’

  ‘What? Like retrain as a nuclear physicist?’

  ‘Well, no, you’re an archaeologist, obviously. But what about something on the illegal antiquities trade?’ I point down at the glitter of coins. ‘That’s got to be a hot topic.’

  Katie stares at me.

  ‘Like a case study? You mean, use all this? Everything we’ve been doing?’

  ‘Yes. A case study. Exactly.’

  She looks tigerishly at me for a moment, thinking hard. Looking for an objection and finding none. Then she punches me quite hard, but also nicely, on my upper arm.

  ‘That is a fucking good idea, Fi.’

  Her breath comes out jerky for a moment, before she gets it back under control.

  I say, ‘I can be your criminal investigations consultant. I’ve never been a consultant before.’

  That remark recalls herself to herself.

  She says sharply – correctively – ‘You can be my slave, slave.’ Then adds, agreeably. ‘But you can have an honoured place in my household.’

  I bow at her graciousness.

  Eye her Anglo–Saxon neck for the coming chop.

  We talk about coins and gold and early Celtic techniques for spinning gold into wire.

  Our jeweller is an amateur archaeologist in Ipswich, Marianne Hadleigh. She’s close friends with our blacksmith, Peter Burnham, and Katie swears they are both totally trustworthy.

  I’ve met them both and I agree.

  I do wonder, out loud, if I should have taken more gold.

  Katie says, no, I took enough.

  Her attention starts to turn to the things I brought with me. My forensic light kit. The vellum.

  ‘Slave?’

  I tell her about the maps and manuscripts poster. The design that overlaid one image with another. Handwriting lying over a map.

  ‘A palimpsest. What if our vellum is a palimpsest?’

  Katie stares at me, open-mouthed.

  There really is something of the warrior queen about her. Her cargo pants. Her almost military singlet. She’s skinny, yes, and getting skinnier, but if you subtract the disease from the human, you’re left with someone intensely physical. Like those flyweight or bantamweight women boxers. Bare-armed, clean-muscled, small-breasted. And always, always those frank, unfrightened eyes.

  She reaches for the evidence bag with her right hand. Her grip fails, so she tries again, more carefully. She still doesn’t have a proper grip, but swivels her hand so that the bag is rolled round her hand as much as it is held by it.

  I could help, but don’t.

  She opens the bag. Spreads the vellum.

  Desk lamp. Magnifying glass.

  She peers at the damn thing as close as she can. Up close, at an angle, through the glass and not.
We did all that stuff before. Saw nothing then. See nothing now.

  She pushes back.

  ‘Look, I can’t see anything, but there is an oddity here.’

  I look a question and she explains.

  ‘OK, so vellum is animal-skin. Stretched out, scraped, cleaned. It’s a good writing material, but expensive. From about the twelfth century, paper mills became more common. They could mass-produce their product and you didn’t need to kill a sheep or a calf. The price of paper fell and supply boomed.

  ‘But that wasn’t the only technological development. In the remoter parts of Europe, the standard ink was, for centuries, pretty simple. You took soot from a lamp, whisked it up with some animal glue – boiled horse, basically – then mixed the two together. The glue kept the soot stuck to your vellum and, with luck, your writing would remain clear for generations.

  ‘Those were the plus points, but there were negatives too. The glues involved just weren’t that good and they especially weren’t much good in damp or humid climates. If the vellum was damp, the soot could just fall off.’

  She gazes at me, checking I’m following her reasoning.

  I think I am.

  I say, ‘And Llanymawddwy. I mean, lovely place and all, but . . .’

  She says, ‘But a Welsh church? In the hills? That’s about as damp as you can get without actually being in a river. Those old-fashioned inks would have had a terrible time. So, from about the twelfth century onwards, the carbon blacks came to be replaced by inks made with iron gall. Those new inks kept forever, damp Welsh churches or no.’

  She gestures at our bit of vellum. Its iron gall writing still glows bright and clear a full eight hundred years later.

  ‘So,’ I say, slowly following her logic, ‘that’s the oddity, right there. We’ve got old technology vellum, but a new technology ink.’

  Katie nods. ‘Yes. You can’t be too linear about these things, but on the whole I’d expect to see vellum marked with carbon blacks, paper marked with iron galls. This particular document has those things the wrong way round.’

  I say, ‘So let’s say I’m a vicar at Llanymawddwy. I need to write something, but I’m in a remote and relatively poor part of the country. So yes, I could go out and buy some paper.’