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

by Harry Bingham

  ‘George, would you be OK carrying a gun?’

  In church, no. In hospitals and private homes, no. Most other places, yes.

  I like that. Like him. Bowen is the kind of Christian who’ll visit the sick, bury the dead, christen the new-born, and marry the lovers, but who will also, if the need arises and not otherwise, blow the heads off bad guys.

  ‘Take care, George. And use both barrels.’

  I can hear his chuckle following me down the phone.

  As we’ve been talking I’ve been walking round the house, double-checking doors and windows. No sign of forced entry. No hint of struggle.

  But if they learned where Katie was, learned who she was, they might also have her phone number. Called her up. ‘Excuse me, Miss Smith, you’re wanted for a few things at the Kempston police station. Would you mind very much if we borrowed you? Meet you out front in five?’

  I think Katie never quite believed we were right to be so paranoid.

  And it’s my fault. Mine.

  I went to bed. I should have stayed up. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

  But my thoughts don’t linger on my failures. They turn to the what nexts.

  Gheerbrant, dead.

  Katie, missing.

  Bowen, OK or OK for now.

  I call Jones.

  He is as happy and peaceable and unfrightened as I am. We exchange pleasantries about the Met. We do not swear. We do not express a wish to murder everyone in SO15. We are sunnily optimistic about resolving the entire case very soon.

  And, when we’re done not-swearing and not-wanting-to-murder-people, Jones says, ‘Fiona, what the bloody hell is going on here? We thought we were on top of this.’

  Yes. We did. I did.

  I say, ‘Well, Gheerbrant first. I think that’s obvious. Mordred couldn’t believe we’d just figured the whole thing out for ourselves. He assumed someone must have leaked their plan. And Gheerbrant was the obvious source. The only gang member who’d come under police interrogation, police pressure. And he was an academic not a professional crook. So Mordred decided the guy was probably guilty and, even if he wasn’t, he was a weak link that might as well be eliminated.’

  Jones agrees and, with that, we dismiss Gheerbrant’s dangling corpse from our thoughts.

  So.

  Katie.

  Jones tells me that they’ve pinged Katie’s phone. It’s not responding. It’s either switched off, or out of battery, or some bad guy has ripped the battery out of the phone, broken the SIM card and left its parts scattered in a dustbin.

  Jones says he wants me to come to Cardiff and enter protective custody myself.

  I say ‘maybe’ to that.

  Jones interprets that response as ‘maybe’. In reality, it means ‘no chance’.

  Patrick and Romilly, Katie’s parents, are hovering at the door. I tell Jones I need to go. Say I’ll call him back.

  The two parents are white-faced and frightened. It’s me that’s frightening them. The blackness of my own foreboding.

  I ask, ‘Katie. Are there medicines she needs? Is there anything she takes that would cause a crisis if she went without for twenty-four, forty-eight hours?’

  The answer is scattered. A bit random. But still basically a no.

  Good.

  ‘Romilly, sorry, is there a wood near here? And do you have any chocolate?’

  Katie’s dad tells me where to find a wood. The mother produces a bar of Lindt chocolate, apologising in case I wanted something else.

  I didn’t want something else. I just wanted chocolate.

  I take it. Say, ‘I’ll be in touch. I’ll keep you posted.’

  Drive off.

  Down this prosperously quiet street, the big houses and electric gates. Past a village shop and a golf course.

  Reach some woods.

  The place is no doubt full of stockbrokers and kids on bikes at the weekend, but it’s empty enough for now. I walk into its green interior till I find a part I like. Smooth columns of beech rising into a green and bird-songed canopy. Threads of sunlight dandle down and pick out jewels on the forest floor.

  I sit. Open up my little box of joints. Pick out the fattest.

  Light up.

  Breathe.

  Think.

  Katie didn’t recognise Yvain or Mordred, and it seems highly unlikely that her path would have crossed with Mordred’s at any point.

  But Yvain? Katie is a striking-looking twenty-something woman. Yvain is a somewhat plump middle-aged guy who was probably never a beauty. Maybe those two did meet at some academic conference, and Katie just didn’t remember Yvain, whereas Yvain did remember her.

  That’s very possible.

  Smoke.

  Yvain. Who is he? Gheerbrant was their weapons guy. Yvain was clearly a historian and a scholar, but he didn’t even have Katie’s level of expertise in the analysis of ancient artefacts. Yet he fits in here somewhere too. He wasn’t a random choice.

  Smoke.

  Last night. Katie and I were sleeping in the same house. We’d both make good hostages, so why take Katie and leave me?

  That question is easily answered. They must have known or suspected that I was a police officer. That I’d be a lot less likely to hop into an unmarked car with a Polite Young Man. Which makes sense. If they’d found out about Katie fast enough to locate her parents’ house, they’d probably have found out about me too.

  Detective Sergeant Fiona Griffiths, Katie’s friend.

  Not good.

  I smoke the joint right down to the nub and, as I stub the thing out on the sole of my shoe, realise I have a very bad feeling.

  Call my father.

  He starts to do his welcome-blather, but I cut him short.

  ‘Dad, we’ve got a thing at work. A possible security compromise. You’re OK, yes? And Mam?’

  ‘Your mam? Yes. She’s fine. She’s downstairs now.’ I can feel his auto-blather ready to switch on. But this is him in action-mode now, and he keeps the blather nipped short.

  ‘And Ant? And Kay?’

  ‘Don’t know, love. I’ll find out.’

  ‘Get them home. Keep them there. If you need Uncle Em or someone to help out, then fine.’

  Uncle Em: not actually an uncle, but an old friend and former colleague of Dad’s. A henchman, you might say, except that the term reeks of trilby hats and comic books. In any case, Uncle Em would know how to keep things tight, keep security sharp, and administer violence if necessary. By using his name, I was, in effect, telling Dad that I cared more about keeping my sisters safe than I did about whether Dad obeyed every jot and tittle of the law.

  A micro-pause is enough to register that Dad has heard my message. Then ‘right you are, love,’ and he’s gone.

  I dandle my phone.

  Alden Gheerbrant, weapons guy.

  Ivor Willliams, tunnel man.

  This case has mostly been about swords and tunnels, but not only that. Not only that.

  I light another joint.

  Smoke more slowly.

  Dad texts: ‘Ants fine. Chasing kay xx.’

  I call Mike Atkins.

  ‘Fiona, hi.’ He speaks like a tired, busy man. No sleep, I’d guess. ‘Hold on. I’ll take you somewhere quieter.’

  A door bangs. The noise level drops.

  ‘OK, look, we fucked up. I’m sorry. That’s the first thing. Sorry.’

  He starts telling me about how they’re going to put things right. Pictures issued to all forces. Checks on mainline rail stations and airports. Blah blah.

  I interrupt. I’m not interested. If Mordred is smart enough to shake a multi-vehicle, multi-operative surveillance, he’s also smart enough not to walk into the world’s most obvious police traps.

  ‘What happened? What exactly happened?’ I ask.

  Atkins tells me that Mordred just drove into London. No evasion tactics. No strange route choices. Just drove from the cave to the M4, then east to London.

  ‘About four in the morning, they st
op off at an airport hotel near Heathrow. They have coffee. Shower. Breakfast. No rush.’

  ‘Phone calls from the hotel?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  ‘Then, let me guess, it gets to about seven o’clock . . .’

  ‘Yes. Seven thirty . . .’

  ‘They enter the underground system.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They head for central London. Your officers think, “Shit, last thing we want is to be following these guys in rush hour, but at least they’re not playing games.” So, it’s a case of so far so good, as far as you folks are concerned.’

  ‘Yes. They go right into the centre of town. Peak of the peak as far as rush hour is concerned. We’ve got twelve bodies on the ground at this point . . .’

  ‘But they’ve got about a million commuters on their team. They start arsing around on Tube trains. Getting on, jumping off, switching trains, all that. You guys can’t use your radios, because you’re below ground. Yes, you’ve got CCTV, but there are too many people for that stuff to be useful.’

  ‘Exactly. They’re pros, or rather Mordred is.’

  ‘Do you mean that literally? I mean, you think Mordred has some kind of surveillance background?’

  ‘Um. Some kind of training, yes. Police, security services or military. But if he’s police or military, then he was or is in some kind of special unit. No regular copper has that kind of know-how.’

  I look down.

  A little beastie with fifty legs and rings of brown armour-plating is crawling up my shoe and onto my bare leg. I hold a twig in its way, so he stops crawling and waves his antennae around, trying to figure out his counter-move.

  I say, ‘Last confirmed sighting?’

  ‘Kings Cross.’

  ‘Tube or railway?’

  ‘Tube.’

  ‘Any idea where they might have gone from there? I know you can’t be sure, but best guess.’

  ‘Um, we had guys up on the mainline station. I thought they’d probably make a break for the first train out of town, but we didn’t see anything. We’ve been sorting through the CCTV, haven’t found anything yet. So I think we cut that off.’

  ‘What were his options on the underground?’

  ‘OK, the railway station sits on top of four Tube lines. Northern, Piccadilly, Victoria, and the Circle/Hammersmith/Metropolitan one. I don’t think they were on the Circle line. Ditto Victoria and Piccadilly. It is possible they got onto the Northern Line. But we’ll have to check. We are checking.’

  He starts telling me how fantastic their automated face recognition stuff is these days. But if you do the basics right – look down at your feet, take a jacket off, or put one on, or wear a hat, or sunglasses – then the best automated yadda-yadda in the world won’t do squat.

  I say, ‘Above ground. Could they have just walked out into the street? Did you have operatives out there?’

  ‘We had to scramble everyone we had just to try to keep tabs on them below ground.’

  I say, ‘OK. Um.’

  There’s a pause.

  The creepy crawly thing managed to evade my stick and is now heading over my knee with every intention of going up my skirt.

  I say, ‘I think not, buddy,’ and sweep him gently to the ground. He wriggles a bit in protest, then decides he likes Leafworld better than Thighworld and crawls off to continue his brown and armour-plated life.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Euston station. That’s close, isn’t it?’

  ‘Euston? Yes. Five minutes by foot. Not even.’

  ‘How long before you had eyes there?’

  ‘From when we lost them? Maybe fifteen minutes. Twenty at the outside.’

  ‘And those eyes would have been on the ticket barriers, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK. Good. Look, Mike, can you find out for me which trains were present in the station during that fifteen minute window? Anything that left the station, or anything that was sitting at a platform waiting to depart. Just text me when you know.’

  A short pause. Atkins is an inspector in the elite SO15 Counter-Terrorism command and that command is housed within the Metropolitan Police, which is obviously about thirty times better than the next best force on the planet.

  And I just gave him an order.

  But he doesn’t object. Just says, ‘Fine. Will do.’

  We sign off.

  I dig around with my stick looking for my armour-plated friend. Can’t find him.

  Light another joint, though I’m not sure if I want to smoke it.

  Start smoking it.

  Text from Dad. ‘Kay last seen by friends getting into palegreen pasat saloon on parkplace aprox 9.40 this morning driver unknown do you have tv?’

  He’s a bit dyslexic, my dad, and seldom texts for that reason.

  I call Jones. Tell him my sister may have been taken. Get him to start pulling CCTV for Park Place.

  Jones seems very disturbed. Shocked. Also, in a good way, organised and bullet-pointy and effective.

  I hear myself saying, ‘The CCTV. Use Jon Breakell. He looks like an idiot, but he’s brilliant with that video stuff.’

  Jones wants images to circulate and I send him to Kay’s Instagram page.

  He says, ‘Do you want to go public on this? Televised appeals and all that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And what about a . . . I mean, in normal circumstances, we’d appoint an FLO.’

  FLO: Family Liaison Officer.

  I say, ‘If you do, you’d better appoint two. Maybe even three.’

  ‘I’m sorry? Three?’

  ‘Dad will probably kill the first one. Maybe the second one too.’

  ‘So no FLO?’

  ‘No.’

  My dad’s idea of a nightmare: losing one of his daughters.

  My dad’s idea of a nightmare squared: losing one of his daughters and having a police officer semi-permanently stationed in his home.

  Jones says some other things, but I don’t really hear them.

  Then he says, ‘You’re OK, are you? This must be a shock.’

  Is it? I suppose.

  I say, ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘And look, Fiona, I’m not having a go at you, but where exactly are you? Mr Smith told me you drove off. You were looking for some woods, apparently?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘In a wood?’

  I look around. Trees, leaves, sunlight. I don’t know how big a wood has to be before it’s a forest. I don’t think it’s one of those things where you have rules.

  ‘A wood, yes. You know, trees and things.’

  Jones’s preoccupations can be perplexing at times. I ring off.

  Katie didn’t recognise Yvain, or didn’t think she did. And when the two of them spoke, there was nothing to suggest familiarity.

  But, but, but.

  I call Matteo at the Oxford lab.

  Ask him if he has any French co-workers. ‘About fifty. Wears glasses. Silver hair. A bit plump.’

  ‘No, no. One or two young guys, my age, maybe, but . . .’

  I ask about his ‘customers’. The people who use the lab.

  Matteo’s answer is a bit slower there, more cautious. The lab is one of the leading facilities in Europe and its user base is highly international.

  The lab had a sign-in system, though. I ask Matteo to pull the data. Everyone who entered the lab on any day that Katie was in Oxford.

  ‘And do it right now, please, Matteo. This is urgent.’

  He tells me yes.

  Hangs up.

  You don’t always notice these things, but the bars of sunlight entering the canopy from above are tinted a kind of bluish silver. The air is full of pollen, or dust, or the soft hang of water vapour. From a branch, about a dozen feet from me, a spider abseils on a rope spun of her own silk.

  The tensile strength of cobweb silk is comparable to that of high-grade steel.

  Funny the things you know and can’t remember lea
rning.

  My joint has burned out. I think I forgot to smoke it.

  I relight it.

  Get a text from Atkins.

  Various trains out of Euston, but including one to Chester. Journey time about two hours.

  Text Atkins. Ask him to get CCTV images from Chester station. Any cars leaving the car park there. Also the same thing at Bangor, if possible. Chester will be large enough that it’ll be fairly well covered by security cameras. Bangor – well, you never know, but you have to try everything.

  Smoke a bit more.

  I think maybe summer is my favourite season. I used to think it was autumn, or maybe spring, but it could actually be summer. I’ve got on a bluebell-coloured skirt today. Good mood wear.

  I call Aled Owen, the cathedral librarian from Bangor.

  He sounds instantly scared when he knows it’s me, but I’m super-nice.

  Ask him if he has a list of visiting scholars, or a sign-in book, anything like that. ‘That’s yes or no, remember, Aled.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, we do.’

  I give him the dates I care about. Ask him to get me the names of anyone who visited around those dates.

  He promises speedy compliance.

  I say, ‘And Bangor University. Does it have a department that specialises in old manuscripts? A codicology institute or—’

  Owen, bold man, interrupts me.

  He says, ‘Yes. They do an MA course in Arthurian literature. And various specialisms in medieval codicology, palaeography, that kind of thing. If you want, I could—’

  ‘Aled?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry, I went on there, didn’t I? I meant yes. Yes. That’s what I meant to say. Sorry.’

  ‘Aled?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Aled. You are a beautiful man, and a good man, and one day I will build you a halo out of crumpets and boysenberry jam.’

  He doesn’t quite know what to say to that, but he promises to get me the list. I ask who heads up the codicology department at Bangor Uni and he tells me.

  Delyth Rowland. Gives me her phone number too.

  I tell him his halo will be big and very crumpety. He sounds puzzled, but mostly pleased.

  We ring off.

  My joint has gone out again, but I don’t relight it.

  Get down on my hands and knees and see if I can find any interesting insects.

  I can’t, but I do find some beech nut husks that smell of leaf mould and chalk and the tiny lives of very small things.