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

by Harry Bingham

  She quotes some recent research papers and Yvain nods as she does so.

  He inspects the gold with particular closeness. ‘It is a good colour,’ he admits, ‘but you know, for this sword, we would really be looking for—’

  ‘Gold from Dolaucothi,’ says Katie. ‘I agree. We thought the same.’

  Yvain stares at her. ‘It is not so easy to get this gold. The Queen, maybe she has some—’

  ‘Or the Museum of Wales.’ Katie passes over a tiny sample of gold in a small ziplock bag. ‘We took ours from the same place as you took yours. That’s Dolaucothi gold, the real deal.’

  Yvain darts a look sideways at Mordred. Neither man says anything, but it’s pretty clear we’ve just answered one of their big questions. If we’d just used some easy-to-source modern gold, our sword would look pretty feeble beside theirs. As it is, we’ve got the right gold, have passed all the tests so far – and we’ve got the jet beads ‘found’ at Dinas Powys, which their sword lacks.

  Atkins, leaning up against the cavern wall, grins over at me. I think he’s enjoying this, yes, but he’s also signalling a ‘You’re doing well, keep going.’

  And, for all his enjoyment, his professionalism is spot on. His hands never move from his gun and he keeps himself well back from the cave entrance. If anything kicks off in here, then his colleagues outside will have a clear line of fire.

  Yvain returns to the sword. Asks questions about the horn, the glass, the jet, the everything.

  So far at least, Katie’s knowledge and our sword seem to be standing up to scrutiny. Or more than that, even. At one point, Yvain found a tiny fragment of leather lodged in a crack where the blade of the sword meets the hilt. He was about to brush it away and Katie had to stop him.

  ‘That’s scabbard leather,’ she says. ‘The right age, of course.’

  ‘Scabbard leather?’ says Yvain. ‘Oh yes, scabbard. He makes a gesture as though drawing a sword. ‘I thought they were wood, mostly, but yes, also leather, of course.’

  Mordred doesn’t look happy at that response and Katie too is surprised.

  An actual weapons specialist, an Alden Gheerbrant, would have known exactly how Celtic scabbards were put together. Even Katie – an expert in this period, though not specifically its warfare – clearly regards that kind of knowledge as basic. All of a sudden, Yvain looks a little out of place. A historian, yes. One familiar with the period, yes. But those things don’t quite add up to true expertise and Katie may just have found the guy’s limits.

  She doesn’t comment, though. Just passes him another ziplock bag containing a fragment of leather.

  ‘Here’s our source material. You’re welcome to test it. In fact, here are samples of all our source materials.’

  She passes over a Tupperware box containing everything Mordred and his friends could want, then reaches down by her feet to pick up a stack of paper. Spectrography results. Radiocarbon data. Ultrasonic analysis. All genuine results, all highly supportive of the sword’s theoretical antiquity.

  And she does. She does pick them up OK.

  But she reaches down right-handed and, as she is lifting the documents, her grip flutters and fails and the papers go tumbling down. She scowls, her annoyance visible through the mask.

  She tries again, fierce with concentration.

  Same result.

  One more time. She’s looking right down at her hand, trying to force the thing to open and close through strength of willpower alone.

  Alas, her body doesn’t work like that any more and, a few moments later, she’s forced to concede defeat and reaches across her body to pick the papers up, left-handed. She passes them across.

  She says nothing about what just happened. Nor does anyone else. But Mordred’s eyes are glittering and Yvain has his eyebrows raised and Katie herself is breathing fast and jerkily through an open mouth.

  I break the moment. Want to move swiftly away.

  I say, ‘This data. It’s all genuine. We’ve removed laboratory names and other identifiers, but when you buy the sword, you’ll have full access to everything.’

  I push the reports across our milk-crate table.

  Yvain picks them up. Holds them. This is his chance to rip into the data, ask anything he wants to, but he doesn’t take it.

  He says nothing, does nothing.

  Atkins looks at me.

  He says, ‘Guys, there’s water here if you want it.’

  There’s bottled water standing on the cave floor, but he’s not asking about our fluid intake. The interjection was pre-arranged. He’s asking me if we should arrest these guys, yes or no.

  And the truth is, I just don’t know.

  On the one hand, we could scoop these guys up now. Arrest them both. Charge them both with conspiracy to murder. With fraud.

  We could make the fraud charge stick pretty easily, but we’ve got nothing solid to prove conspiracy to murder and I’d hate it if our big beasts got away with a relatively minor charge.

  But that’s not even my biggest hesitation.

  Whoever put this whole scam together had plenty of cash. For the gang to get to this point, they needed to dig two tunnels, fake some documents, and construct a fake sword. That’s a heck of an investment for a return that, though potentially colossal, is also seriously high risk. Putting all that together, you’d have to guess that the guy commanding this operation must be worth a good few million.

  Is that guy Mordred?

  I just don’t think so. He doesn’t have that feel. That way he handled my search earlier: that was a man who was a security guy of some sort himself. Spy. Soldier. Special forces. Counter-terrorism. Something like that. When I put my hand to his mouth, to feel inside for concealed blades, he opened his mouth, knowing what was coming. Made space for my finger.

  A security expert knows to do that kind of thing. A multi-millionaire with a penchant for audacious criminal enterprise? Well, I just don’t think so.

  So I say, carefully, in answer to Atkins’s question, ‘Not for me, I’m fine.’

  No.

  It’s not my decision whether to make the arrests or not, but Jones and Jackson, listening in, will certainly take my views into consideration.

  Yvain takes some water. Katie and Mordred leave it.

  Time to finish.

  I say, ‘OK, you’ve seen the sword. You’ve got our data and our samples. So: payment. Twenty million dollars. How soon can you get it to us?’

  Mordred stares. He’s too controlled to be violent here – too conscious of Atkins’s shotgun – but I’ve almost never encountered a gaze that has so much murder in it. So much open threat.

  He says, ‘You’re police.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m a detective inspector. You’re also correct that constructing and selling a fake Arthurian sword is standard police procedure these days. Oh yes, and look at all these people who are rushing in here to arrest you.’

  There are no people, of course, but it’s still impressive that Mordred’s gaze doesn’t flicker.

  He continues his slow scrutiny of me. It’s like being stripped naked by some lecherous male gaze, except that here there’s nothing sexual. Not unless you count the patient consideration of extreme violence.

  ‘It would be very interesting to know,’ he says, ‘who told you about our plans.’

  ‘Yes, wouldn’t it just?’

  ‘There aren’t many of us and we’re very, very careful with our communications.’

  I say, merrily, ‘Really? You think you were careful? OK.’

  He’s silent a moment. Brooding.

  In front of us, Caledfwlch glitters. It feels like the most real thing in here. Arthur’s sword in Arthur’s cave.

  He says, ‘Twenty million.’

  Since that isn’t a question and couldn’t really be a request for clarification, I don’t answer.

  He says, ‘I have a counter offer.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘We walk out of here with the sword. You remove the
sale listing. And I don’t kill you.’

  That makes me laugh out loud. Mostly, it makes me laugh because each of our camping lanterns contain concealed recorders and we couldn’t really ask for a better send-me-to-jail statement than the one he just made.

  But I also relish the cheek of it.

  ‘Mordred, mate, we’re the one with the shotgun, remember?’

  ‘I will find you and I will kill you. Or you can give me the sword and delete the listing.’

  I pretend to think about that a bit.

  ‘Hmm, OK, so let me just get this straight. My option is worth – what did we say? – twenty million dollars. Your way is worth exactly no money at all. And I’m meant to be scared because – help me out here – you’re going to go rushing round the countryside looking for a couple of girls in ski masks called Gwenhwyfach and Gwenhwyfar.’ I think about all that a little longer and conclude, ‘I think we’ll go with my option. Sorry.’

  Mordred doesn’t say anything.

  Just stares at me, at Katie, at Atkins in turn.

  Katie and I are mostly concealed by our masks, of course. But they still reveal mouth and eyes. And our general builds are distinctive too. I’m small and Katie is a naturally skinny woman made skinnier by illness. Mordred stares at us. Learning us. Memorising us.

  He does the same with Atkins too. I don’t think Mordred has any chance of placing Atkins, but his slow scrutiny is just as absorbed, just as detailed.

  Then he turns back to Katie.

  Says, ‘Got a problem with your hand, have you?’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  Then he reaches out. Deftly, swiftly, he hooks her mask up over her face.

  I say, ‘Fuck you, Mordred,’ and Atkins jabs the man sharply with the butt of his gun, tipping him sideways off his stool, and forcing him to lose his grip.

  For a moment, just a moment, Katie sits, revealed.

  A pale queen in this cave of shadows.

  A queen with a nose piercing. A spray of visible tattoos at her ear. Long dark blonde braids, previously tucked up inside the mask, but now swinging free.

  I drag her mask back down. Mordred rights himself. Atkins steps back. Katie and I push back from Mordred’s reaching hand.

  Mordred himself says nothing. Is trying, I think, to commit Katie’s image to memory. Ink it in place.

  I say, in order to distract him but also because it matters, ‘Mordred, mate, just so you know, you can find us and kill us. You go right ahead and do that. But just so you know, we can’t remove the listing, because we don’t have access to it. The only person who knows how to delete the listing isn’t even in the country. So you know what? On the whole your option versus my option thing? I’ve still got to say, I prefer mine.’

  We glare at each other some more. And then – then we’re done.

  I toss the eye masks back over the table.

  ‘Put these on, please.’

  They put them on.

  ‘Hands behind your backs.’

  They do as I ask. Yvain, nervous and compliant. Mordred with a roll of his shoulders and an extra brutishness in his jaw.

  I’m very careful not to get in the way of Atkins’s shotgun – I don’t want to block his freedom of action – but, crouching low, I snap the two men’s wrists into handcuffs. The cuffs aren’t police issue. They came straight from Amazon. And, in a further departure from police practice, I interlink their arms, so the two men are locked together.

  Katie takes the sword and the felt cloth. Atkins collects up our camping lamps.

  I remove both men’s eye masks. Dangle the handcuff keys in front of their faces. Then toss them into the deep gloom of the second chamber.

  We hear the sharp tinkle of metal on stone, then nothing.

  The keys are small and the floor is a mess of loose stone. Mordred and his buddy will be able to find the keys if they look long enough, though they may need to wait till the light of dawn gives them something to see by.

  We leave them to it.

  Atkins exits first. Then Gwenhwyfar and Gwenhwyfach.

  Queenly sisters, bearing the sword of Arthur.

  44

  Jackson says, ‘Any intentional application of force to the person of another is an assault. The use of handcuffs amounts to assault and is unlawful unless it can be justified as reasonable, necessary and proportionate.’

  I say, ‘It was reasonable, necessary and proportionate. I thought he was a fuckwit.’

  Jackson laughs. We’re not really meant to cuff people’s hands behind their backs, but the law bends a bit in these undercover situations and, anyway, Jackson doesn’t care.

  We’re in a pub on the outskirts of Monmouth. Me, Katie, Atkins. Jones and Jackson here to meet us. The pub is, aside from us, mostly empty. Comfortable. Smells of spilled beer and woodsmoke and chips and vinegar.

  Katie has a pint of bitter, only an inch or so drunk. Atkins has the same drink, but he’s halfway down already. Jones is drinking mineral water only: letting us know he’s on duty, obeying rules. Jackson obeys rules too, but his version of them has a ‘beer after eight’ rider attached and he is currently about a pint and a half in to the exercise of those freedoms.

  Atkins puts his phone away and says, ‘OK, so I’ve just spoken with the team.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The two men are still in the cave, still cuffed. They don’t look like getting out any time soon, but we’ll get a call as soon as they’re free.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘We obtained entry to Mordred’s vehicle. We’ve collected prints. DNA sample capture looks OK too.’

  ‘Electronics?’

  ‘No. No phones. No laptop. Nothing useful. But the boys did find a RAKSA iDet.’

  Jackson raises his eyebrows to imply that men his age should not be expected to deal with small electronic things with stupid names.

  Atkins explains. ‘A radio frequency detector. Top of the range. It’ll pick up phones, DECT, wifi, any type of recording device, tracking beacons, any kind of radio transmitter.’

  Jackson says, ‘So? You’re saying we can’t track the vehicle?’

  ‘Not electronically, no.’

  ‘Fabulous. Just fabulous.’

  ‘We can do it the old-fashioned way.’

  He means with blokes in cars. SO15 has resources and experience there which we can’t match.

  Jackson looks at Atkins, at Katie, at me, at Jones.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘Decision time.’

  Arrest the buggers or leave the buggers?

  Jones says, ‘Fiona, Mike, this Mordred character. How did he strike you? Is he at the head of all this?’

  I glance at Atkins, letting him go first.

  He says, ‘OK, I don’t have all the background here, but the guy spoke like a boss. He was definitely in command. But he doesn’t seem like a money man. He’s a fixer. An engine room guy. That means there’s someone else at the head of all this. I can’t be sure, but I’d certainly bet that way.’

  I agree with that and say so.

  All four pairs of police eyes swivel to Katie.

  She says, ‘What? I’m fine.’

  I say, ‘Yes, you’re fine now. But let’s just say we let Mordred go. We get Atkins’s boys to run a good old-fashioned surveillance operation. Multiple cars. Multiple bodies. Spy movie stuff, basically. With a bit of luck, we track the guy back to his lair. Track him to wherever he has his phone and his laptop and his landline. We listen in. We watch him. When we have everything we want, we arrest him.’

  Katie shrugs. ‘That sounds good. So . . .?’

  ‘He might only need to make one phone call. One. He calls some Antony Wormold character on an untraceable line. He says, “Find a young, female archaeologist with a dodgy hand, a nose piercing, and some tattoos. Then kill her. Oh yes, and if you can find a small Welsh friend of hers, then please kill her too.” That could be all it takes. And sure, in theory, we can just barge in and arrest Mordred, but who’s on the other end of that line? We
might not be able to find out. It might be too late.’

  A bit sulkily, Katie says, ‘He only saw my face for about two seconds. What’s he going to do? Put “girl with nose piercing” into Google?’

  Jackson laughs.

  Jones too. He strokes his beard and says, ‘Well, there’s Facebook. University websites. Professional associations. LinkedIn.’

  I say, ‘Tattoos, nose piercing, hand-related disability. Hair colour and length. Eye colour. Height and build. Face. Approximate age. Known archaeological expertise. Probable specialism in Dark Age Britain. English accent. Quite likely Oxbridge.’

  Atkins says, ‘Project websites. Academic conferences. Lists of Ph.D. students and graduates. Friends’ and family Facebook pages. Twitter. Instagram. Pinterest.’

  I say, ‘Archives, don’t forget them. Things like the Wayback Machine. Sites that basically photocopy the internet, so even if you take down pages, the old versions are still out there somewhere.’

  Jackson says, ‘Then the old-fashioned stuff. Electoral roll. Phone directories. Utility records. All those things, they still work.’

  Katie doesn’t say anything exactly, but her face does a kind of oh fuck thing.

  Exactly. Oh fuck.

  For now, Mordred and Yvain are still thrashing around in that cave. But, sooner or later, they’ll get themselves free and, when they do, we have a decision to make.

  Jones is first to declare his hand.

  ‘Look. We can’t pansy around. We arrest the two men. Hunt down this Ivor Williams character. Find his two friends. Arrest Gheerbrant. Search properties. Seize electronics. Interrogate the hell out of everybody. That guy Gheerbrant, he’s not a real pro. Stick a conspiracy to murder charge under his nose. Tell him what life is like for pretty boys like him in a Category A prison. He’ll wet himself and tell us everything. Same probably goes for that guy Yvain.’