by Dana Cameron
Jane was silent.
“I see.” He tapped the notebook thoughtfully. “Since there were no official complaints, I’ll just suggest that you both mind your manners a bit better.”
“What?” Jane struggled with this, but finally had enough sense to keep her mouth shut. “Well, yes, of course.”
Greg and I both sighed with relief, but Jane didn’t keep her mouth shut for long.
“But how can you possibly tell that she wasn’t here?”
PC Whelton continued calmly. “Mr. Ashford says that the break-in happened between eleven PM and seven AM. I can assure you that Ms. Traeger was nowhere near here. So why don’t you tell me who else might be interested in causing you trouble?” He shot his cuffs, preparing to take down Jane’s statement, and I got a look at his watchband, which startled me.
Jane briefly mentioned George Whiting. I thought of Palmer.
“So just how can you claim that Morag wasn’t responsible for this?”
Oh, Jane, I thought. For heaven’s sake, think about what you’ve just heard!
“I give you my word, she was not involved.”
Jane was frustrated, but realized she wasn’t going to get any further. After the rather subdued end of the interview, the PC, typically, assured us that everything that was possible would be done, but then reminded us that it was unlikely he would be able to find anything out, given the lack of clues. “If we do find anything,” he said, closing his notebook, “it will be because someone else comes up with some information.”
I decided it wouldn’t do Jane any good to tell her that I’d seen a pentacle worked into the design of PC Whelton’s watchband. What good would it have done?
By this time, the crew had arrived and were informed of what had happened in the night. Jane told them that if they knew of anything, they should come to her immediately, but none came forth. Then she said, if they should hear of anything, she would be happy to take the bones back, no questions asked. The crew shuffled and looked at one another, but there was still no response. They had just enough time to get their equipment and notes from the shed when the dark sky opened up and it began to pour. After thirty minutes, Jane, thoroughly dispirited, dismissed the crew for the day and as they repacked the shed, Greg put the finishing touches on a makeshift tent of tarps and probes. The three of us squatted under the clear plastic, supported by my mammoth screen, Kong, and surveyed the damage to the vandalized grave shaft.
“Well, that was money well spent,” Greg said, trying to sound cheery. “I believe we could weather a hurricane with your screen here, Emma. Let’s see what’s here.”
It was every bit as bad as it looked. The rain buffeted the plastic, finding in every little tear an opportunity to funnel into the unit and make mud pies of what was left of my careful excavation. We scraped away the loose dirt as well as we could, and found a few small bones and teeth that had been overlooked. There were a few unidentifiable fragments of copper, possibly clothing fasteners that had been destroyed during the robbery.
“It was dark,” I said. “Whoever was here wasn’t very organized.”
“Right,” Jane said. “It wasn’t the bones they wanted so much as to confound me.”
“I’m not so sure of that, pet,” Greg said. “I had a look around with PC Whelton. This was the only burial that was bothered.”
“So?”
“Well, if it was meant as sabotage, would they have bothered with removing the bones? Why not just trash them, tip the loo over, collapse the other shafts? So I don’t think it was personal. I’m betting—and the PC agrees—that it was either kids who wanted the bones, or some nutter. They didn’t stay long, that’s for sure. So I don’t think it was personal. For some reason, they came straight here, to burial nineteen.”
Jane rested her head on her knees. “It sure as hell feels personal,” came her muffled reply.
Here was the point where I should have pointed out the fine old truism: Archaeologists aren’t interested in things, they’re interested in stratigraphy. We had the notes and the photographs, all we were really losing, really, was the information that would have been a part of the demographics—how many males, females, age at death, general health and diet, cause of death, that sort of thing. The fact of having found Mother Beatrice was really much less significant—technically. Emotionally, well, that was another matter. I was too depressed myself to trot out platitudes. It had been exciting to be on the trail of an individual, someone who’d had a local reputation. A woman of power and impact from a time when women were meant to go unnoticed.
Then Jane surprised me by trotting them out herself. “It’s only one burial, really, when you get right down to it. The rest of the site is in good shape.” She paused. “I just feel completely done in, that’s all. Absolutely knackered. It’s all been too much.”
We sat under the plastic, feeling thoroughly worn out and beaten, and listened to the rain pour down and turn the site into a minor imitation of the Somme. Then Jane giggled to herself. Greg and I exchanged a worried look.
“Picts and Romans,” she said.
I looked at Greg for an explanation, but now he was grinning too.
“Romans and Saxons,” he said back. He caught my eye and tapped at the tarp over our heads, which promptly dumped a pint of water down into one end of the destroyed unit. “Or sometimes, when we were very ambitious and had something we could burn, Britons and Vikings.”
“Ah,” I said. “Cowboys and Indians. Oscar made me arrowheads, spears, everything.” Now I grinned, remembering. “Mother hated it.”
“So what’s the plan now, Jane?” Greg nudged her.
“Oh, I’m going to sulk in my lab and wash sherds,” she said. “You lot can do whatever. I need a chance to regroup.”
“Where’s Andrew today?” I asked.
Jane frowned. “He had some work to do in his lab on the bones from that modern skeleton. You’d think he’d have finished by now. We expected him on site later today.”
So now Jane was interested in the report, I thought. “Where’s the lab? I had a notion I’d like to run past him. About the stratigraphy.” And the modern skeleton, I added to myself.
“Over at the U.,” she said. “That’s where I’m headed, if you want to join me.”
“Sure.”
We drove over to the University in Jane’s tiny cramped car and soon saw a modern looking campus of concrete geometry, the only color came from flyers advertising student activities, protests, and flat shares. Even these were tattered and drooping from the rain, hanging limply from the staples that held them to the notice board. Very few people were here during the summer term, and those who were out were hurrying from building to building. Jane parked and led me toward the science building, but instead of heading to the front door, she went around to the back, selected a key, and opened a basement door. It seemed to me that it was the same in England as it was at home: Archaeologists always got the basement spaces.
The rain ran down the steps and into a drain, but that being partially blocked, water ran under the basement door. Jane didn’t seem to notice, and I saw that there was another, newer drain just inside the door, which most of the water traveled into. The lowest shelf in the metal shelving in the storage section was fairly high off the ground however, I noticed, to prevent any damage from more disastrous flooding. Apart from that, the lab was actually pretty nice: lots of neatly marked acid-free boxes from previous jobs, and still room left for the current one. There were six tables spread out with artifacts in various stages of being cleaned and labeled, in two rows of three butted up end to end. At the head of these were a desk and bookshelf—Jane’s, presumably—like the royal table overseeing the lesser guests at a banquet. Everything was in immaculate order. There were two sinks fitted up with heavy-duty screens to the far side, and a fume hood, which, by the look of the disconnected plugs and conduits, probably wasn’t operational. The walls were festooned with posters showing various types of pottery, the regions of the d
ifferent tribes in Britain before the Romans, and a tattered poster for British Heritage showing a stately home and its grounds—it reminded me a bit of Jeremy’s place. This last poster had been further defaced by generations of hopeful young archaeologists, who’d drawn, in various levels of accuracy and believability, sketches of excavations on the grounds of the place. One discovered a pile of gold, another an intact Viking ship; the Eiffel tower poked out of another unit, and in another area, a perfectly executed section of stratigraphy, complete with roots and rocks, and at the very bottom of the pit, what looked like a crumpled sports jersey in maroon and blue. A tiny caption read “West Ham’s Hope.” I shrugged, not understanding, and turned away.
Jane dumped her rucksack onto her desk, flopped into her chair, and landed her feet on her desk before she rolled away too far. She hit a button on a battered radio and Stravinsky began to pour out at high volume. I wrinkled my nose—I prefer my classical stuff to predate 1850—and she obligingly turned the radio down. She leaned back and rubbed her forehead with her fingertips.
“I really am just going to sit here and think a while, Emma. If you want to see if Andrew’s in, his space is on the fourth floor on the left hand side. Take the lift up, you can’t miss it. Just knock before you go in—he’s a bit dodgy about visitors. And if you would tell him about our plans for the day, I’d appreciate it.”
“What time are you going to leave?”
Jane shrugged. “I don’t know. When a thought hits me, I guess. If you get bored before then, just catch the 257 bus—it leaves right from the front gate—and it will drop you off on Church Street, by the bridge, not too far from the site. I’ll come up and look for you, and if you’re not there, I’ll assume you’ve gone.”
“Okay. See you.”
I found my way through a dimly lit corridor to the lift, which, when I pressed the button, seemed to make more noise than necessary. When the fourth floor light went off and the doors opened, I saw that the rest of the building was cleaner, but still trapped in a funk of 1970s industrial utility, a nonaesthetic. Clearly, Marchester was one of the “redbrick universities.” I found the door on the left that said “Human Osteology Lab” and knocked twice. Hearing a grunt that might well have been Andrew’s version of a welcome, I pushed the door open and went in.
Unlike the lab in the basement, this room appeared to be used for storage, though I knew it must not be. No posters. No books that I could see, though Andrew must need them and I was really curious to see what he used for references. No paper or drafting tools, either. There was nothing that I could see besides rows of tables, stacks of more acid-free boxes, a bank of lockable storage cabinets, and a desk, with nothing on it besides a computer. No mouse pad, no pencils, no plants. Nothing. And if any room had ever needed music to soften the work done here, it was this place, and there was none. Those I know who regularly work with human remains are convinced that a certain respect, even reverence, is due to those individuals they study, but the bareness of this room seemed even to deny the humanity of those still living.
The only other piece of furniture in the room was a chair at the desk, and the only thing on that was Andrew, who was staring attentively at the screen. Seeing me he promptly turned the monitor off, so that I might not see his work.
“What do you want?” He made no pretense at all to be pleasant and more than ever, Andrew had the look of a funerary monument, cold, pale, hard-featured, and sorrowful. He also looked exhausted, and I had an unaccountable urge to stroke his head, as if some touch might thaw him, but I knew well enough that such a rude trespass would get my fingers snapped at.
“Jane’s called work for the day—”
He crossed his arms. “The rain should clear up later on.”
“Someone broke into the site last night.”
He sat up straighter. “Oh, Christ. Is Jane okay?”
“She’s upset, but I think she’ll be okay.” I looked at him. He hadn’t asked about Greg, his best friend, and he hadn’t asked about the skeletons, reputedly the object of his professional obsession. Remembering the photos of Julia in the darkroom and their close resemblance to Jane, I was stricken with a sick feeling that there was a very unpleasant, very logical reason that Andrew had been attracted to Julia. “Jane wasn’t there when it happened, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, of course not—”
I couldn’t tell whether he was agreeing with me or disputing something else.
Andrew settled back down. “What did they get into, the tool shed?”
I shook my head. “Worse than that. Whoever broke in tore up Mother Beatrice’s grave. Or what we assume was Mother Beatrice’s grave. Nothing but mud and a few phalanges left.”
He leaned forward and took several deep breaths, as though he had received a physical blow. “Oh, God. Any idea who might have done it? Why?”
“None so far. I was going to ask you the same.”
“I’ve not a clue.”
Well, so much for that. I guess I was surprised that Andrew was being this helpful.
I decided I needed to plunge into murky waters and find out exactly what was below the surface. “Before, in your room, you’d mentioned a distraction. Who was distracting you from Julia?”
He relaxed back into his chair. “None of your business.”
At least I knew it was a who and not a what. “No, it wouldn’t be if I wasn’t trying to help Jane.” I looked him in the eye. “It was Jane, wasn’t it?”
His expression told me everything. I recalled how vehemently Jane had denied meeting anyone after her row with Greg, the night of Julia’s murder. “Oh, God. You two were together the night of Julia’s—”
“No, it’s not like that!”
Andrew covered his face with his hands, then sighing, rested them in his lap as he stared at the empty desk before him. “It’s not like that at all. That night, I was out walking, waiting until I was to meet Julia back at her place. I was…trying to figure out just who it was I was in love with. It was a hellish night for me. When I saw Jane, wandering exactly the same as I was, it seemed to be some sort of sign. It was then, when she told me that she’d had yet another domestic with Greg, that I realized, after all these years, that I didn’t love her anymore. It was like chains falling away. I could leave at last. I would never have to worry over whether I would make a fool of myself and my best friend. It was over. Jane assumed I was drunk again by the way I just stood and stared at her, and I was, but it wasn’t booze.
“I told her, just go home, sort things out with Greg. I suppose I could have been a little more understanding, but she hadn’t known, I don’t think, how’d I felt all these years, and I wasn’t about to explain that I needed to find Julia immediately and tell her how much I needed her. So Jane gave me a few choice words about my selfishness that were truer than she knew and turned on her heel. I ran back to Julia’s apartment to wait for my girl to come home.”
Andrew inhaled suddenly, making a horrible noise that was half a gasp and half a sob. He held that breath until he controlled himself again. I realized how that room dwarfed him and how the faint smell of his aftershave seemed like too futile a gesture to establish a living presence in that cold place.
I swallowed. “So you weren’t the one Julia was going to meet at the Grub and Cabbage?”
Andrew shook his head. “No, I wasn’t going to see her until much later, at her apartment. When she didn’t show, I got worried. I mean, any other girl, if she gave me a miss like that, I would have figured she got tired or was pissed off at me or something. Not Julia. Stuck with anything until the bitterest end. When she didn’t show I began to get worried. And when she didn’t stop by the next day, I knew something was definitely wrong.”
“You don’t know who she was going to see there?”
“I have no idea, but maybe her parents would do. They were the last to see her before she died, I suppose. I didn’t like her going there by herself, though. Her parents are both barking mad, and her fathe
r is downright violent. Wicked temper on him. I personally wouldn’t want to do anything to get on his bad side. God knows how his wife gets on with him. I would have gone with Julia, but there was the small matter of how her father would react upon making the discovery that his only daughter was sleeping with a member of university staff, someone nearly twenty years her senior, and an archaeologist to boot. Any boyfriend at this juncture would have been a problem, I think, but I was definitely a nonstarter. She said she was meeting someone else after, and who that was, I didn’t know. It wasn’t like her to keep secrets, really. Keeping us a secret was troublesome to her.”
I thought about that, and then remembered the cut chain on the archaeological site.
“Did Julia have access to her father’s keys? I mean, to the construction site? I was wondering. The paper didn’t say whether the construction site had been broken into. If it hadn’t been forced, would the murderer have had his own key to the yard, or did he use hers?” The next question hung unasked between us.
“I knew she had the key.” Andrew rested his elbows on the desk now, interlacing his fingers and making a steeple out of his index fingers. “From when she worked for her dad. I don’t know who else might have known it, she wasn’t close with anyone, really. But everyone did know she’d worked for him, so…I think George Whiting is the most likely candidate, if you ask me, but I don’t even want to think about it anymore. All I can think about now is that if I hadn’t been so slow to sort things out, maybe she wouldn’t have felt compelled to see her parents. If I had realized I’d gotten over Jane long ago, if I had realized that I wasn’t just larking about with Julia as some sort of…gesture, this never would have happened.”
“You don’t know that—”
“Spare me. You don’t know anything at all.”
I was about to leave, then realized I’d better ask the other question that had been preying upon me. “What’s up with the pathology report on the modern skeleton—can I see what you’ve done? You promised I could.”
