“Yes. He was great.” Her anxiety couldn’t stem her obvious pride. “It’s just . . . I don’t want to get anyone into trouble, but you told us at the end of last term that we had to do the right thing wherever we could.”
“Well remembered. We had a series of assemblies about the Good Samaritan,” Jim explained to Adam, who nodded. The diocese had been encouraging all the schools to explore the story. “So what do you want to tell us, Sophie?”
“Dad was saying last night that he was worried. He only joined the detectorists club when we moved here, and now he says he wishes he hadn’t. Too much infighting.” Sophie looked about her, as though checking whether they could be overheard.
“Sophie’s family moved into Culdover in January,” Jim clarified for Adam’s benefit, and thereby possibly for Robin’s; the headteacher was nobody’s fool and he’d recognised they could be steering into tricky waters. “Who are you afraid of getting into trouble? Your dad?”
“No.” Sophie appeared outraged at the suggestion. “The other people in the club. Some of them have children here. My friends.”
Adam put on his best reassuring smile and tried to ignore the voice that said Sophie’s dad had also told her about the Lindenshaw murders. Surely it was local gossip fodder and signified nothing? “I’m certain the police understand those sorts of things and can deal with them sensitively. They were at school themselves once.”
“I suppose so.” She still didn’t appear convinced.
“They do understand how hard it can be,” Adam assured her. Robin had experienced a rough time when he was this girl’s age. He knew how cruel children could be and how families could manipulate them to fight their fights, so he’d do his best not to let her get embroiled. “Tell us what’s concerning you, and we’ll pass it on to the right people. They won’t let on that it came from you.”
“Thank you.” Sophie produced a nervous, horsey grin, her face not yet grown to accommodate root teeth properly. She looked terribly young and vulnerable, like Robin must have done when he was being bullied. “Mum told Dad to go to the police himself, but he says there’s nothing to tell them.”
Adam raised his eyebrows. “Your mother clearly doesn’t agree.”
“Yes. She says the police would want to know that the detectorists club had a right old barney with the archaeologists, even if Dad hasn’t got to the bottom of what it’s about. He says that they all hate each other, on top of being a cross between The Big Bang Theory and Coronation Street.” Sophie frowned. “I’m not sure what that means.”
“Don’t puzzle over it. We’ll tell it to the police and they’ll sort it out.” Jim gave Adam a sidelong glance, obviously suggesting that he was the one who should pass on the information. “Let’s go and get you a ‘helping hand’ sticker. You’ve earned it.”
Adam returned to the staffroom, where he had some data to finish analysing, although his thoughts about the case kept interfering with his thoughts about assessing maths skills. If Sophie’s family had only moved to Culdover recently, that should mean they couldn’t be complicit in the crime, but that wouldn’t apply to the rest of this detectorists club, or any other parents with a connection to the villa site. He forced his mind back onto the job; the sooner he worked through this stuff, the sooner he could ring Robin and see what he made of things.
Fate, which clearly wasn’t satisfied with having connected Adam and his school to the latest murder, decided to intervene with his plans in the form of a lorry shedding its load outside the school just when the pupils were due to go home. By the time they’d assembled the children on the school field, marshalled traffic—the school run had caused gridlock—and got everything back to normal, Adam decided he’d simply save the news for when he got home.
As the afternoon had worn on, the potential importance of the information had appeared to diminish, although a discussion with Dilys over a post-crisis cuppa gave him pause, as well as giving him something juicier to report. Still, fallings-out happened all the time, didn’t they? They didn’t inevitably lead to murder, surely?
Adam was first home, grateful not to see Anderson’s car already in the drive. He’d a bundle of things to read through, the incident with the lorry having put everything back, but those could wait until he’d had a bite to eat. Robin had texted to say he’d be home at a reasonable time, so Adam wouldn’t have to make awkward how-do-we-not-mention-Helen conversation with their guest once he arrived.
Adam had barely got tea out of the freezer and into the oven when Robin came through the front door, greeting Campbell before looking for Adam, who’d returned to spreading his paperwork all over the table in the lounge.
“Glad to see you home in one piece. I heard about the lorry.” Robin ruffled his hair.
“It was like the M25 on Friday evening. Total chaos until your mob turned up and started organising people. I mightn’t have got home until Friday.”
They shared a kiss before Robin went upstairs to change his clothes, and Adam headed off to make them a cold drink and get ready for the daily debrief, albeit that wasn’t quite the debriefing he’d like to get involved in. The sound of Anderson’s car pulling up, then the arrival of the man himself, fiddling about opening the front door with the spare key, put an end to all chances of smooching.
Once Robin was inside a clean shirt and outside of a glass of diet cola, and they were both sitting in the garden enjoying the evening sun, he tapped Adam’s arm. “You look thoughtful. Out with it.”
“Out with what?”
“Whatever you’re trying not to tell me. Or want to tell me, but not quite yet. Even Campbell knows you’re hiding something.”
“Is it tattooed on my forehead?” Adam smiled, then knocked back the rest of his cola—this detective business was thirsty work. “You know the way your cases seem determined to drag me in? No matter how much I want to keep out of them?”
“Part of me wants to say ‘I don’t want to hear this.’” Robin rubbed his temples. “But go on.”
“The staff were talking about Culford Roman villa today. Not only the safety element. The two year-four classes are due to go there on a trip in a fortnight, and the teachers were getting their knickers in a twist about whether it would be cancelled and how they’d explain it to the kids.”
“That’s no surprise. Everybody in Culdover’s probably talking about it.”
“Yeah, it’s all over the playground too, so Jim held an assembly about it this afternoon. Cleared the air.”
“And?”
“And it turns out that one of the pupils is the daughter of a local metal detectorist.”
“Oh yes? Working on the Culdover site?”
“No, I don’t think so. It seems like there’s history—excuse the pun—there.” Adam rolled his eyes. “A bust-up between the detectorist community and someone else.”
“That could be useful information. It’s the first hint we’ve had of anything being awry up at the villa.”
“I think it’s more awry in the town.” He gave a résumé of what Sophie had told him, including the bit about The Big Bang Theory and Coronation Street, as it had seemed picturesque and was probably accurate. “I had a word with Dilys, who must have worked at the school since the Romans sent their kids there, and she says there are two groups in Culdover: the metal detectorists and the amateur archaeologists. There was a big falling out between them just before Sophie’s family moved here. Maybe the same sort of time that your victim was buried.”
“Right.” Robin nodded. “Thanks for that. I’ll get onto the trail first thing. We can set him”—he jerked his thumb in the direction of Anderson’s room—“to work this evening. Earn his keep by getting onto Google and seeing if he can find a contact name. Assuming these societies are up to date enough to be contactable via the web?”
“Hey, not everybody in the sticks is a techno-Neanderthal. They even have electricity in Culdover, believe it or not.”
“And they know how to use it? You amaze me. Hello!�
�� Robin waved as Anderson appeared at the kitchen door. “Fancy a drink?”
Anderson eyed the cola bottles, then shook his head. “I’m okay, thanks.”
Adam pointed at a chair, encouraging their guest to pull it over. “There’s a cottage pie in the oven, Stuart, if that works for you.”
“Perfect.” Anderson plonked himself onto the chair, flicked through his phone messages, sighed, and put the device away again. If the pantomime had been for his hosts’ benefit, the message got through loud and clear.
“Any news from Helen?” Adam asked.
“No. Deafening silence.”
Robin put down his drink with a thump. “Why don’t you take her a big bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates? Then tell her you’re a total bloody idiot who doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, and if she’d only tell you what you’ve been such a prat about, you’d apologise fifty times over.”
“Do you think that would work?” Anderson shifted in his seat. “It sounds too easy. I think she’d prefer I walked over hot coals.”
Adam, having spotted the signs that his lover was getting ratty at Anderson’s fecklessness, chipped in with what he hoped was a helpful, “Can’t you have a word with one of her friends, or somebody in her family? She might have vented to one of them, and you could get an inkling of what she’s angry about.”
Anderson winced. “Been there, done that. A few years back when she got miffed that I’d forgotten the anniversary of the day we met.”
If that was the sort of thing that caused ructions, no wonder the sergeant felt he was walking on eggshells. Before Adam could make any soothing noises, however, Robin snapped, “Oh, for goodness’ sake. Talk about mountains from molehills.”
“Look, she was going through a stressful time at work, and everything was getting on her nerves. She didn’t talk to me for two days, and when the dam broke I got a right rollicking, not just for the original offence—for which I’d apologised and produced said choccies—but for going behind her back and talking to Rosie, her best mate.” Anderson leaned forward, head in hands. “I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”
To Adam’s surprise, Robin moved across to give Anderson a hug, the first time Adam had ever seen more than a handshake or a friendly punch pass between them.
“Sorry to be a pain. You’ve got enough on your plate.” Anderson took a deep breath, clapped Robin’s shoulder, and disentangled himself. “Media briefing tomorrow?”
“I was trying to put that out of my mind.” Robin groaned. “Still not got a lot to tell them. I’m going to state that we have a possible identity for the dead woman, but that at this stage we’re not ruling anyone or anything in or out. Ask for the public’s help in working towards something conclusive, albeit without making ourselves sound like ineffective wimps.”
Anderson nodded. “Whatever I can do to help, let me know.”
“Funny you should say that.” Robin explained the task he had lined up. “Find me a contact and you can have an extra helping of cottage pie.”
“It’s a deal. I’ll do it now. Take my mind off . . . you know.” Anderson grimaced, then headed back into the house.
“Poor bloke,” Adam said once he was out of earshot. “I can’t help feeling sorry for him. He’s like a rudderless ship.”
“Yes. He’s not his usual ebullient self, is he?” Robin rubbed Campbell’s head. “But don’t feel too sorry for him. We don’t want a permanent lodger, do we?” He glanced over at Adam. “This is my safe place. Am I being a pain in the arse to him if I don’t want him—or anyone—sharing it for too long?”
Adam winced. “You’re a pain in the arse about plenty of things, but not this. We’ll give him till tomorrow, and if there’s no sign of progress, we’d better start the marriage guidance.”
“Deal.”
But would it prove harder to mend Anderson’s relationship or find the Culford villa killer?
Robin ploughed through Wednesday morning, checking in with his team before addressing the press about Becky Bairstow and neatly avoiding answering their inaner questions. He tried to contact Howarth to talk about the late-night site visit he’d made, but the man was at a conference in Paris for a couple of days and Robin didn’t want to tackle this by phone, wanting to see his face when he was confronted.
The time spent in the incident room was less productive, all the strands of the investigation being brought together but yielding little that was new. The lack of properties in close vicinity to Culford villa meant that house-to-house enquiries had produced very little, apart from vague mentions of vehicles using the lane to the site at odd times. The usual lines of enquiry also seemed to be drawing a blank.
Ben had talked to the editor at the Culdover Echo to get an address for the writer of the anonymous letters, but his initial success had turned out to be a bit of a red herring. The house in question had been demolished between the dates when the two sets of letters were written—a fact not picked up by an overstretched editorial team. The name they’d been given would no doubt turn out to be fictitious, the unnamed writer clearly having wanted to preserve that anonymity when they’d moved house, perhaps as a result of some of the reactions to the first batch of letters. Whoever it was wouldn’t have enjoyed an accusation of being a lunatic.
“Right. A . . . couple of contacts of mine gave me some interesting gen on Culdover.” Robin decided not to mention to his team that both Adam and Anderson had come up trumps; that would likely cause more resentment. “There are two societies in Culdover: one for archaeologists and one for metal detectorists.”
“Are either of them involved in the university dig, sir?” Ben asked.
“I don’t believe so, but Pru and I are meeting a contact for the detectorist society later, so we’ll find out. There’s been some sort of a fallout between the groups. Ander— And some of that’s been fought out online.” He’d been about to say that Anderson had dug up the dirt. “There are discussions in which a number of the comments have been deleted and odd references made.” He stuck a Post-it note with If we want doors opened, we’d better stick to doing it ourselves onto the board.
“Any idea what that means?” Alison asked with a barely hidden sneer.
Pru looked daggers at the constable. “That’s what we’re off to find out.”
Robin encouraged everyone to keep going because they were certain to get a break soon, although he wasn’t sure he believed that himself. He distributed some routine jobs, including getting Ben to identify and make contact with the student who’d done the dissertation about the villa, then set off with Pru to talk to the contact Anderson had turned up for the Culdover detectorist society.
Harry Tuckton—neat, bespectacled, wearing a tatty leather jacket and incongruous bow tie—resembled one of those middle-aged academics (or vicars) who tried to look trendy. He greeted Robin very correctly, treated Pru with exaggerated if somewhat wary gallantry, then offered them a chair. They’d arranged to meet in the foyer of the engineering company where he worked, out on the new industrial estate at the back of Abbotston. That openness suggested he had nothing to hide—or was pretending he had nothing to hide—and he certainly gave off an air of being pleased to help the police, perhaps benefiting from some sort of cachet of doing his civic duty.
They went through the introductions, and then Robin got stuck straight into the questions. “Have you had anything to do with the excavations at the Culford villa site?”
“No.” Tuckton almost snorted, clearly affronted at the fact. “It seems like none of the local ‘amateurs’”—he made the speech-mark signs with his fingers while deepening his disdainful look—“can be trusted with the place. So they bring in a busload of inexperienced youngsters who are probably high on heroin and leave them to make a mess of things. Such a waste.”
Robin, who’d not got that impression of the students, who’d seemed eminently sensible, totally sober, and very knowledgeable, wondered if Tuckton had actually met the people he was so quick to i
nsult. “What’s a waste?”
“Not making the most of our local knowledge. We have extensive maps of the local area, showing where items have turned up and into what eras they fall. We haven’t been allowed on the villa site, but we’ve conducted metal-detecting surveys of several of the local fields and dug test pits in a number of gardens, to put context to our finds.”
Tuckton might have an understandable grievance; that appeared, to Robin’s inexpert eyes, to be helpful information. “Didn’t they want those?”
Tuckton shrugged. “They took them, but I doubt whether they’ve made any use of them. They’ll have their own detectorists, I suppose, whom they’ll trust more than they trust us. Mind you”—his mouth crinkled into the hint of a smile—“in the case of the Culdover Archaeological Society, you’d be wise to have no confidence in them. Might as well get advice from the Culdover Allotment Committee, because at least they get some sort of useful output from their digging.” Tuckton smiled at his joke.
“We understand they—the Culdover archaeologists—meet at the Peatcutter’s Arms.” Pru, sharing more fruits of Anderson’s labours, smiled sweetly. “Do you meet there as well?”
“No.” Tuckton’s own smile vanished.
Her eyes widened, a picture of ingenuous ignorance. “Are the detectorists not part of that organisation?”
Tuckton, face drawn tight, sniffed again. “No. We once associated with them, having joint meetings and the like, but not anymore. Not since The Incident with The Woman. Now we drink at the White Hart. Proper beer. Proper food. No deconstructed bouillabaisse on a bed of whelk droppings.”
Robin and Pru shared a glance. What can of worms had they opened?
“I take it you don’t get on with the archaeological-society members?” Robin remarked innocently.
“You take it correctly.” Tuckton remained thin lipped. “All connections between us have been severed.”
“Why?”
“As I said, because of The Incident. The Woman. We’d had our doubts about them before that, and we certainly couldn’t trust them afterwards.”
Two Feet Under (Lindenshaw Mysteries Book 3) Page 6
