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

by Harry Bingham

  ‘What?’

  Bowen explains. ‘Aubrey Beardsley. A late-nineteenth-century illustrator. Died young, but his first big commission was a series of illustrations for Le Morte d’Arthur. The death of Arthur. This farm has an Arthur reference right there on its gatepost. I think we’ve found our man.’

  I say good. Tell Bowen to keep it up with the leaflets.

  Make some arrangements with Jones. With Dad.

  He says, ‘Are you sure, love?’

  I’m not sure, no. How could I be? All you can do with a thing like this is bet on the probabilities. Hope the wheel spins your way.

  Kay taken.

  Katie taken.

  Dad opens the door for me.

  I get out.

  Tuck a gun into my waistband, which isn’t particularly comfortable but makes me feel all gunned-up and cowboyish.

  Take Caledfwlch. In this evening light, it shines gold and red and a fiery silver.

  Dad kisses me.

  Hugs me. One of those crushing hugs, that will, one day, break all my ribs, collapse my lungs and send me, bubbling feebly, to the nearest Accident and Emergency unit.

  I give him an ‘it’s going to be fine’ grin, though we both know that I can’t know and that it might not turn out fine at all.

  I go to the gate.

  Climb carefully over and head down the track towards the farm.

  Brocéliande.

  A forest, an oak tree, a grave, a trap.

  50

  The farm track, dry and dusty in this evening sun.

  Meadow saxifrage and some kind of trefoil. A few random poppies. A thick hedge to my left. On the right, a field, mown for hay. Beyond that, fields. A fair-sized wood. A scramble of wild plants marking, I guess, the line of the River Derwent.

  Saxifrage has little white flowers, like a child’s drawing, but threaded with green. I pick some. Tuck them behind my ears.

  Put the sword down as I do all that. It’s quite heavy and I think maybe I’m a bit tired.

  Walk on.

  The farm comes into view.

  A handsome stone farmhouse. As many farm buildings as you’d expect. Barns for hay, for overwintering sheep. Stores. Tractor sheds. Whatever a medium-sized farm in Derbyshire needs.

  A forge too, I’ll bet. A home-made amateur thing. The place where Mordred acquired those burns. Iron hot from the forge. Straight-edged marks. Fiercely red.

  Did he make his damn sword himself? Maybe. Probably. I’m guessing yes.

  I walk up to the door.

  The knocker is a woman’s brass head in a tangle of leaves. I slam it down. Hard. Two or three times.

  First, nothing. Then a little loudspeaker by the door says, ‘Lay the sword down. Put your gun on the ground. Raise your hands. Do not move.’

  I say, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’

  I don’t put the sword down. Don’t drop the gun. Don’t raise my hands.

  The loudspeaker wonders whether to get into an argument with me, but I’ve got a gun and I’ve got Caledfwlch, so the stupid bit of tin can fuck right off.

  Across the yard behind me, footsteps.

  I turn.

  It’s Mordred, of course, with a very business-like machine pistol pointed straight at me. The gun is a nasty piece of kit. A pocket-sized machine gun, in effect.

  I say, ‘You don’t make yourself easy to find, Mordred, old son. You are not at all easy to do business with.’

  He says that thing again. About putting guns down and stuff.

  He’s wearing a mike that’s connected to the loudspeaker, so I hear the same thing from two different sources.

  I put my sword down. The gun too.

  Hold my hands up and apart.

  Mordred moves my weapons, then frisks me.

  I’m still wearing my very nice bluebell-coloured skirt. A blue and white striped top. A perfectly good fashion choice when I woke up this morning, but less good now that I’ve got Mordred’s hand between my legs.

  Oh well.

  It moves away. The search is business-like not pervy.

  I say, Happy now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So this is where you say, “Do you want a cup of tea?”’

  Mordred says, ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘Yes, please. That would be lovely.’

  Mordred opens the front door. He has a gun in each hand, and we can’t exactly leave Caledfwlch lying on the ground, so I say, ‘I’m going to pick up Caledfwlch now,’ and do so.

  Walk through the door, under the stare of those gun barrels.

  Stone-flagged hall. Handsome staircase in dark wood. On the left, a door into a kitchen. More stone flags. An off-white, vaguely classical kitchen. Dim brass fittings. A range cooker. No sign of kids. No wife.

  ‘Family place this, is it?’ I say.

  He stares at me. Something evil glitters in the stare. Then, ‘Yes. It was my father’s. I rent the land out now. The barns and everything. But I kept the house. I couldn’t part with that.’

  This doesn’t look like a Derbyshire farmer’s kitchen, though. Its ancestry is more Kensington and Chelsea, than Peak District. More World of Interiors than Farming Monthly.

  I put the sword on the table. Take the saxifrage from behind my ear.

  ‘Do you have a vase for these? They look nice, but they keep falling out.’

  He finds me a vase.

  I arrange the flowers. He makes me peppermint tea, using a tea bag from my bag. I think he wants something stronger, something alcoholic, but he fights the impulse and restricts himself to ordinary tea.

  We sit at a table that probably wants to be thought of as a rustic oak table, but just looks like the kind of very expensive designer piece that no actual countryman would ever have.

  We look at the saxifrage.

  I say, ‘Those flowers are bisexual, did you know that? They’ve got male parts and female parts. Look.’ I show him.

  He looks, but doesn’t comment.

  Caledfwlch lies between us, but he tweaks it over towards his side. Possessively.

  I tweak it back again. Say, ‘Twenty million dollars. That was the deal.’

  Mordred laughs.

  He says, ‘You’re police.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. Yes. I’m Detective Sergeant Fiona Griffiths. As you know because you abducted my sister and my friend, Katie Smith. If you knew enough to take them, you certainly know what I do for a living.’

  The kitchen has broad Georgian windows looking out over a small garden, a field, and a curve of silver water.

  ‘Look, Mordred, you work in the international security field, if that’s the right term for it. Leaman Brown, anyway. So presumably you know quite a lot about police forces. Things like, “Do police raids usually commence with lone saxifrage-wearing females arriving at your front door, or do they usually commence with a few truckloads of armed officers waving assault rifles?” I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the saxifrage option is relatively unusual.’

  He laughs again.

  A laugh of release, even. He asks me to stand and face the wall, hands up and out.

  I do as he asks and allow him to search me properly. He was working one-handed the first time and still worrying that I might attempt some judo move against him, or some stunt like that.

  He’s feeling more secure now, and searches me two-handed this time, looking for concealed microphones as much as weapons. My skirt comes with a matching fabric tie that joins in a bow at the front. The belt itself is thin enough and flexible enough that it can be easily searched, but Mordred’s fingers keep returning to the knot of the bow, trying to figure out if there’s some complicated bit of electronics in there.

  I undo the bow. Pull the belt off. Let him feel it, every inch.

  His fingers decide that the fabric thing is just a belt. He scans me with his RF scanner, the same raksa iDet that he had in the car.

  The iDet agrees with me that my belt is just a belt. That my bra is just a bra.


  He tells me I can sit again, and I do. He gets himself a can of beer.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘I went to see de Boissieu in Rhyd ddu, and put electrodes on his balls until he told us where you live.’

  ‘He doesn’t know where I live.’

  ‘I used really big electrodes.’

  Mordred laughs. Waits to see if I’m going to tell him more. Isn’t fussed when I don’t.

  He does note, however, that I have the name and address of ‘Yvain’. And Mordred’s own address and place of work. I’m already far further ahead than he had imagined possible.

  He says, ‘And you have or you have not passed your information on to your colleagues in the police?’

  ‘What do you think? I mean, what the fuck do you think?’

  I gesture out at his empty courtyard.

  I let him gaze at the non-hordes of non-police officers, and say, ‘The police service pays me thirty grand a year and I hate my job. This whole Gaynor Charteris thing – well, I figured out that if you could play this game, then I could play it too. And maybe not have to work in the police service any more.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And I met Katie. She had the expertise I needed. And, I don’t know if you know this yet, but she has motor neurone disease. She’s dying. She doesn’t really have much to lose and when I put the idea to her, she just said, fuck it, let’s do it.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And my Dad.’

  Mordred nods. ‘Tom Griffiths. Yes. I looked him up. He has previous.’

  I say, because I know Dad would want me to, ‘Allegedly. He was never convicted.’

  ‘So that’s your team? You. Katie Smith. Your Dad.’

  ‘And one of Dad’s IT guys offshore. I don’t understand any of that stuff.’

  I need to give Mordred the idea that there’s someone else, someone unreachable, because otherwise Mordred would probably figure he just needs to kill me, kill Katie, kill Kay, kill my dad, and he’s golden.

  Mordred drinks his beer. Stones. That’s the brand.

  He says, ‘You’ve presumably got some idea about how you see all this working.’

  ‘The way it works is this. I give you my sword. You give me twenty million dollars and Kay and Katie. Then we all fuck off out of here. You sell your crappy fake Excalibur to some Chinese zillionaire. And we all live happily ever after.’

  ‘Or I kill you and the hostages and keep the sword and not pay you twenty million dollars. Remind me what’s wrong with that option.’

  I nod.

  Say, ‘Do you have a phone I can use?’

  He’s watchful, but nods. Pushes a phone over the table to me.

  I say, ‘I’m calling my dad.’ Show him the number as I dial. Say, ‘OK?’ before I connect the call, then do so on his nod.

  He’s OK with me using the phone, but his hand is on his machine pistol now. He shifts position a little so he can keep an eye both on me and the courtyard outside.

  I move slowly. No sudden moves. Put the phone on speaker.

  One ring. Two rings. The ringtone too false and bright for the moment.

  Dad answers in his normal yelling way.

  ‘Hello. Tom Griffiths here. That’s you love, is it? You must be with Alexander, then. Or, help me out here, Alex. I don’t know if you use Alex or Alexander. Mr Devine, even.’

  Mordred’s face moves. Says Alex is fine.

  As soon as we knew Mordred’s location, it wouldn’t have taken Jones too long to get a name to go with it. Dad’s welcome blather is just a way to make sure that Mordred – Devine – knows that we know every last thing about him now.

  Name. Address. Place of work. Occupation. Everything.

  Dad continues, ‘Now, look here, Alex. Fi told me you’d be calling. I expect you want to know what we’ve got planned.’

  Devine nods. His eyes are very watchful. Adds, quietly, ‘Yes, go on.’

  ‘OK, Alex, so you’ve got until six o’clock in the morning. At that point, I need the girls safe and the money. I don’t understand all this bitcoin business, we didn’t have that in my day, but if Fi tells me things are OK, then I’ll be happy. But if I don’t have everything by six o’clock, then I tell the police who you are, where you are, who you work for, everything like that. Fiona’s already asked – what’s the name of that outfit, Fiona?’

  ‘SO15.’

  ‘SO15, that’s right. She’s told that lot to assemble in Sheffield and await instructions. So they’re – what? – about twenty minutes away, I suppose. And obviously, I’ll have to tell them why you’re the one they want. So I’ll need to tell them about how you are responsible for the deaths of that archaeologist lady and those others too. We’ll also explain how your Excalibur is a total and utter fraud. And we won’t just tell the police, we’ll put it out there on the internet and pass the information on to every Tom, Dick and Harry out there. And before you say, “Tom Griffiths, you bugger, you don’t know the first thing about the internet,” I should tell you that we’re working with a fellow who knows all about that type of thing. I’m sorry, I’m rambling now, but you get the picture. I’m sure you do.’

  Devine does. Asks one or two questions, then rings off.

  He’s perplexed. Troubled by all this.

  Give the man a standard assault to deal with, and he’d know exactly where he stood. How to combat it. But the problem we’ve given him is wholly unexpected. Difficult to solve. Truth is, I think his easiest solution will be to give us some version of what we want. A version, I’d guess, that involves a lot less money than the twenty million I’ve demanded.

  He finishes his beer and I get him another. Go wandering round his kitchen, opening cupboards, looking for chocolate.

  Don’t find chocolate. Do find biscuits.

  I take the biscuits and start eating.

  Devine, curtly, ‘We aren’t paying you twenty million.’

  ‘Then you have a problem, Mordred, old son. Do you really not have chocolate in the house, or do you just have to hide it to stop yourself eating it?’

  Curtly: ‘I don’t have chocolate. Look, stay here, I need to make a call.’

  He goes outside.

  I take a biscuit and start exploring the house.

  I’m not looking for Kay or Katie.

  Devine is far too careful to have hostages in his own home. If I had arrived here as part of a police raid, he’d have opened the door in bewilderment, welcomed us in, and swept his arm around inviting inspection. That’s why the SO15 kick-the-door-down route wouldn’t work here. He’d just deny all knowledge of the hostages. Challenge us to find them. On the other things – the conspiracy to murder charge, the fraud – he’d just take his chances in court. At the moment, our case is still more circumstantial than solid.

  I go into the living room.

  Wide oak floorboards. A large and handsome fireplace. Two wide, luxurious sofas facing off over a coffee table. It’s all nice, but hotelly.

  And no dog. A place like this should have a dog.

  A long side-table carries a line of photos. Parents, mostly. Getting married. Here on the farm. On a beach somewhere, a British one. Devine and his father at a clay pigeon shoot. Devine in uniform. Grinning at the camera in a sandy sunshine. Iraq, I presume.

  No brothers and sisters, to judge from these pics. And, I notice, the mother seems to have disappeared by the time Devine is twelve or thirteen. Divorced, possibly, but something in the line of these photos, the way Devine referred to the farm as ‘my father’s’, makes me think that an early death is more likely.

  An orphan.

  A boy who fired shotguns, shoulder to shoulder with his father.

  A serviceman, who saw violent action in Iraq.

  Who tumbled into the lucrative and only dimly legal world of high-end security work thereafter.

  And who – somewhere, for some reason – developed an interest in Arthur. An interest, an obsession, I don’t know. But along with the photos, there’s a book
open on a stand. I was slow to notice the thing – more interested in the photos – but it’s Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, a first edition, dating to 1893. I’ve no idea if the thing is valuable or not, but it’s arranged there along with the family photos.

  Mum. Dad. Me. Arthur.

  I hear Devine coming through the front door. He finds me in the living room.

  I say, Well?’

  ‘We can pay you one million.’

  ‘The price is twenty.’

  ‘That’s too much.’

  He moves towards me. A muscle in his jaw tightens and loosens repetitively. There is something darkly savage in his eyes.

  I am suddenly very frightened. My whole strategy tonight relies on Devine making coolly rational decisions in a highly-charged situation.

  I move so there’s a sofa between me and him. He sees the move. Sees my anxiety. And he changes posture a little.

  The savagery is still there but the rationality returns.

  ‘Five million. We can give you five million tonight. And the girls. But that’s it. You either accept that offer, or I kill you. That’s what’s . . . that’s what’s been agreed.’

  He makes a kind of half gesture out to the yard. To the phone call he made there.

  I don’t say yes straightaway.

  Just watch Devine’s face.

  Lying is hard work. Literally. It uses more mental resources than simply telling the truth and my whole strange saxifrage-wearing and biscuit-eating strategy is, in part, designed to mop up those spare resources. Make it harder for him to deceive me.

  And I think he’s probably telling the truth here, or near enough. You never absolutely know, though, and Devine’s whole experience and training has equipped him for high-intensity situations.

  But in the end, I have only one option.

  I put my hand out.

  ‘It’s a deal.’

  We shake.

  We agree how this is going to work. He’ll take me to the hostages. Transfer the requisite number of bitcoins to my account. Release us all.

  The way he’s looking at this, we can’t betray each other. He can’t come and kill me afterwards, because I’ll release an ‘in the event of my death’ statement to the police, to the media, to everyone.