by Ewart Hutton
‘Thanks, Mac.’ I closed the phone down. The elimination of an admittedly weirdo theory was, I suppose, progress of sorts.
I took off up the by-way. It was potholed, with grass growing up the middle, but it didn’t look too badly rutted. I drove very slowly, ready to make my retreat at the first sign of loss of traction, or drumbeats on the sump. I didn’t want to find myself explaining this distraction to Jack Galbraith.
I didn’t see the camp until I crested a rise. The dig, I assumed, was under the canvas enclosure that looked a bit like a bird-watching hide rigged up against a heather-topped earth bank. The camp comprised a rickety caravan, a few small tents and an old long-wheelbase Land Rover station wagon with QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY BELFAST on the front door panel. The flash modern intruder was Jeff Talbot’s four-wheel-drive crew-cab pickup.
Tessa came out from under the tarpaulin at the sound of my approach. She was wearing a sweatshirt, and dungarees with earth-stained knees, and her hair was pulled back with a red, knotted bandana. She had a tiny gardening fork in her hand, and dirt on her forearms where the sleeves were rolled up. She pushed her hair back with her wrist and a smear of dirt appeared on her forehead. She looked great.
But I was not exactly getting a great big warm smile of welcome.
And, lurching like I was, in my very ordinary car, on a terrain that was better suited to pack mules, it was going to be hard to casually announce that I was just passing and had decided to call in to say hello.
I caught sight of Jeff as I got out of the car. He was approaching from the campsite with a tray loaded with assorted steaming mugs. He, for one, was making himself useful. ‘Hi,’ he shouted over, ‘you should have told me you were coming, I would have driven you up the short way.’
‘Thanks, but it’s part of a circuit I’m doing. Trying to get an overview.’
‘What can we do for you, Sergeant?’ Tessa asked.
‘So this is the dig?’ I retorted enthusiastically, hoping that the way into an archaeologist’s grace was through her work.
Jeff raised the tray. ‘I’ll just take these in for the crew,’ he announced, ducking under the enclosure like one of the family.
‘I would have thought that you would have been very occupied by now,’ she observed.
‘This is my occupation, Dr MacLean. Some people call it being nosy.’
She almost smiled properly.
I gestured towards the tarpaulin. ‘Has your man in there still got his head and his hands?’
This time the smile broke through. ‘Yes, why do you ask?’
‘I’m just chasing possibilities. That maybe you had a collection of headless and handless bodies here, and someone had lifted one and dumped it down there.’ I nodded towards the wind-farm site, which was just visible.
She shook her head. ‘Sorry, but we’ve only got one here, and he’s still intact. I’d invite you in to have a look, but we’re pretty crowded at the moment.’
‘That’s okay,’ I said, not too upset about being unable to share close quarters with the ancient dead. ‘Do you know what it is that you’ve got?’
‘He’s not an “it”, he’s our Redshanks,’ she corrected, mock-affronted.
‘Yes?’
She laughed. ‘It was a colloquial name that was given to highlanders. From their red legs under the kilt.’
I showed my surprise. ‘Your guy’s a Scottish highlander?’
‘We believe so. Some of the stuff we’re turning up has a definite Western Isles connection.’
‘He’s a long way from home.
She nodded. ‘And I think that he came an even longer way round. My theory is that he was one of the Gallowglass. Pure happenstance. But it turned out to be wonderful for us when someone found the remains of a brass boss from a Highland targe here.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘A targe is—’
‘A targe is a small shield,’ I interrupted, ‘I know that, it’s the Gallowthingy, that I don’t get.’
‘Gallowglass. They were mercenaries from the Western Isles of Scotland who hired themselves out into the service of Irish Chiefs. We think this one could possibly have been a McNeil from the Mull of Kintyre.’
I looked around. Scrub grass, gorse and patchy heather, everything bent over like supplicants by the prevailing wind. If anything, this place was even more desolate than the spot where we had found our body.
‘What would a Scottish warrior working for an Irish Chieftain be doing dying in a godforsaken spot like this in the middle of Wales?’
She grinned at me. ‘Good question.’
An idea drifted in. The timeline spanned six hundred years. But could there be a Celtic connection?
3
The big, dark Ford saloon, with new mud on the polished bodywork, was parked at the construction site when I got back. Jack Galbraith was here. I got out of my car, checked my reflection in the window for rectifiable flaws, prepared my psyche for tension, and started off up the hill to the small canvas pavilion that they had erected over the grave site.
‘Glyn . . .’
DCI Bryn Jones was leaning out of the door of one of the site huts, beckoning me over. I forgot to take a deep breath of good clean air before I entered. They were both heavy smokers. They had already created the effect of a full-blown chip-pan fire.
‘Preening yourself, Capaldi?’ Jack Galbraith asked with a sardonic grin. I glanced out the window. My car was in full view. He looked pointedly at his watch. ‘Is this dereliction of duty?’
‘I was here earlier, sir. I left the experts to it. I’ve been out getting the feel of the locality.’
He picked up a sheet of paper and flapped it in front of me. It had the effect of diverting the smoke from both their cigarettes into my face. ‘Inspector Morgan has been bitching about you.’
‘Inspector Morgan doesn’t think I should be here, sir.’
‘Inspector Morgan doesn’t like the competition? Wants all the prettiest sheep for himself, does he?’
I tried not to smile. ‘I wouldn’t know about that, sir.’
He chuckled, pleased with himself, screwed the paper into a ball and aimed it in the general direction of a waste-paper basket, not caring where it landed. ‘Sit yourself down, Capaldi.’
Bryn had already taken the seat next to him, forcing me to sit opposite them, like the suspect under interrogation. They had an open laptop in front of them, connected to the SOCO camera.
They were both big men, but the spread of their bodies moved in different directions. Bryn Jones dark, squat and powerful, Jack Galbraith taller, his face more angular, the big head of swept-back hair betraying his underlying vanity.
‘Have the forensics people been able to tell us anything more, sir?’ I asked Bryn.
‘They think its male, and they think it’s middle-aged, and they’re not even going to attempt to tell us how long it’s been up here until they get it back to the lab.’
I nodded, keeping my pleasure at Evie Salmon’s continued existence to myself. I made a mental note to call her parents to confirm it for them.
‘And we’re the poor bastards who have to attempt to identify him,’ Jack Galbraith stated cheerfully.
‘The other hand was missing?’ I asked.
Bryn nodded. ‘And no trace or residue of any clothing. Every possible identifier has been removed. Only that plastic sheeting, which, after all this time, is next to useless.’
‘But at least we can discount suicide.’ Jack Galbraith chuckled facetiously.
‘Ritual killing?’ I offered.
Jack Galbraith snorted and shook his head contemptuously. ‘It’s a fucking hit. This place is just a dumping ground.’
I wasn’t quite sure whether he was referring to the actual grave or the entire locality he had assigned to me. ‘Will you be setting up an incident room, sir?’
Jack Galbraith grinned at Bryn. ‘I think Capaldi’s looking for some action.’
‘It’s going to be desktop to start with,’
Bryn explained. ‘Marry up all the stuff SOCO and forensics can give us and try to come up with an identity. Work the missing-persons route at the same time.’
‘You look crestfallen, Capaldi,’ Jack Galbraith commented.
‘It’s a crime scene, sir.’
Bryn leaned forward, but kept his tone sympathetic. ‘I know, but there’s nothing left here to investigate. Too much time has elapsed and the site has been devastated.’ He shrugged. ‘A place like this, if there were locals unaccounted for, we’d have known about it long ago.’
‘It’s a hit, Capaldi. As I’ve already said, this is just the rubbish dump.’ Jack Galbraith made a pistol using his thumb and forefinger and pointed it at me. ‘Dope? Gang related? Someone got caught fucking the wrong man’s wife? Who knows? I just know there’s nothing here.’ He clicked his thumb, mimicking a firing pin striking. ‘Kerpow . . . It’s a vanished legend. All those years ago someone drove out of somewhere, dumped a body in the boondocks, and then drove back to that place where things happen. The only thing that happens here is the fucking weather.’
‘You put me here, sir.’
He shot a smile at Bryn. ‘Is this a complaint?’ he asked me.
‘You put me here for this eventuality. To be in place when bad things happened.’ He was wrong. The tingle was telling me that there was a local connection here.
He gave me a wise, mock-patient look. ‘But I’ve just explained, the bad things didn’t happen here.’ He scrunched his eyes shut and took in a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ he said, resigned to it, ‘play my devil’s advocate. And don’t sir me every time. It gets tedious.’
I took in my own deep breath and almost choked on the smoke. ‘Why here?’
‘It’s remote, hard to get to,’ he came back at me quickly. ‘A fucking good place to hide a body. Until the Save the Planet Brigade decide to construct a wind farm.’
‘As you said, it’s hard to get to.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You would have to know it. And we’re talking about what was only a rough hill track in those days. I can’t see a hard man from Salford or wherever driving up it with a naked, dismembered corpse in the boot, just in the hope that he might arrive at somewhere convenient to dispose of a body. And he would have needed to be in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. And why travel so far out of the place where things happen?’
He glanced at Bryn. ‘Underline your point,’ he commanded.
‘They knew about this location. They had researched this. Or they were living here.’
‘Which makes them still around, does it?’
‘It’s a possibility.’
He looked over at Bryn again, who shrugged. He thought hard for a moment. ‘I suppose it works on a PR level. We’re seen to be doing something tangible. Okay, Capaldi, go and ask your questions. But I still say you’re wrong.’ He grinned. ‘And don’t step too hard on Inspector Morgan’s toes,’ he added.
‘Thank you, sir,’ I said gratefully. Mentally I had already hit the ground running.
PRIVATE – GOLDMINE – KEEP OUT
The sign had been daubed on the sheet-metal gate with red paint that had dripped and run below the letters like fake theatrical blood. It was written in English only, which seemed to me to be a bit imperialistic. It was also a bit daft if you valued your security and privacy, to advertise the fact that you were sitting on top of a goldmine. Literally.
Mrs Jones at Cogfryn had intrigued me. Nice Welsh farmers’ wives don’t generally finger their neighbours as potential killers. So what had these two done that had placed them beyond the pale?
Gerald Evans was in another valley, so I decided to start with Bruno Gilbert, the Gold Mine Man. And it was a goldmine. Deep boyhood mythologies kicking in from a time of innocence, before big holes in the ground, putatively awash with treasure, had accumulated sexual baggage.
I had remembered more of what Sandra Williams had told me about him that day in Dinas. He was a recluse. No one was quite sure whether he had been a schoolteacher or a civil servant, or whether he had taken early retirement or suffered a breakdown. He came into town for his shopping, scurried about with his head down, and ordered his goods by pointing.
He may have been pretty inept socially, but he had managed to construct a solid pair of gates. Which, despite repeated hammering and calling out, he wasn’t opening. Perhaps he just couldn’t hear me. Maybe he was mining a vein, or crushing ore, doing whatever it was that made the place qualify as a goldmine in his book.
I was conscious of time passing. Jack Galbraith could change his mind and haul me off this at any moment.
I studied the gate again. Three obstacles to progress: the gate, the barbed wire on top of it and the fact that I hadn’t been invited.
I got over the height issue by standing on the roof of the car. The coiled barbed wire on top was old, rusting and laced with cobwebs that had trapped leaves and thistledown. One good push would send it down like an uncoiling slinky.
On the other side of the gate, the track, flanked by a pair of rusted Morris 1000 Travellers, turned round a sharp bend out of sight. The hidden side of a sharp bend was always tantalizing.
This was where an invitation would have been useful. Technically what I was contemplating was illegal entry seasoned with criminal damage. But fuck it, I reasoned, a man who wasn’t even capable of asking a shopkeeper for his favourite cheese was hardly likely to have me dragged up in front of the High Sheriff.
I dislodged the barbed wire and jumped down, landing heavily, my heels kicking up two little geysers of dust. Everything about this side of the gate – the air, the vegetation – felt more desiccated. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a bird sporting fluff instead of feathers.
I called out Gilbert’s name again. No reply. No sounds of any activity. I walked round the bend in the track. Ahead of me, across a yard of massed junk, was a green timber shack, with a rusted corrugated-iron roof, which was in the process of deconstructing itself. The paint was peeling down to rotting boards, the roof was slumping, and a couple of the windows were falling out.
‘Go away!’
The voice made me jump. I hadn’t seen him. I turned to find him squatting in a niche in a bramble cluster that I discovered later had overwhelmed an old tractor. He had his head down and his fingers pressed to the sides of his brow.
‘Mr Gilbert?’ I asked.
He shook his head.
I bent my knees to lower myself to his level, my warrant card out. ‘Mr Gilbert, my name is Glyn Capaldi, I’m a police officer, I’d like to ask you some questions.’
He shook his head again.
He was an old man. Dressed in his usual shorts and a faded khaki shirt, both tattered, his arms and legs deeply tanned, but knucklebone thin. I couldn’t see his face, but his hair was grey and closely cropped in irregular patches as if it was growing out after a scalp infection. Then I realized that it was probably because he cut it himself, the angle of the mirror, and the way he had to crank the scissors, distorting things.
By not looking at me he was holding on to the pretence that I wasn’t really there.
I stood up briskly. ‘Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll have a look around. A setup like this must be fascinating,’ I declared chirpily.
‘No!’ He leaped up with almost alacrity. A definite crackle. A creaky old elf unfurling. His eyes were blue and scared. His face was lean and fissured, with a sparse dirty-white billy-goat beard accentuating the length of his chin. His expression was a definition of anguish. ‘You can’t! No one’s allowed in here.’
I took a couple of steps back to reassure him. ‘It’s all right, Mr Gilbert. I promise, I’ll stay back here, I won’t go any farther. But I do need to talk to you.’
‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘I know, it’s just a routine enquiry, I’m talking to everyone in the valley.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t have anything to do with the rest of the valley. I can’t tell you anything.’
‘Have you heard that we’ve discovered a body at the site of the new wind farm?’ I watched him carefully.
‘I don’t care. That has got nothing to do with me.’
He wasn’t even curious. As far as he was concerned it was news from a dead planet. He just wanted to be left alone to live the life internal that he had constructed around his tumbledown Shangri-La.
He looked at me defiantly. ‘She sent you here, didn’t she?’
‘She?’
He nodded in the direction of Cogfryn. ‘The one at the farm.’
‘Why would she do that?’
A smile almost broke through. ‘I used to have to chase her children off my land. They came trespassing, poking their noses into things.’
‘That must have been a long time ago.’
He nodded sagely. ‘It was, but none of them have ever forgotten.’
I thought about it as I drove back. Okay, no butchered and trimmed cadavers strung up on meat hooks, but the visit had been useful in a couple of respects. Now, having met him and seen his reaction, I was fairly certain that Bruno Gilbert had had nothing to do with the body we had found. And I now knew that Mrs Jones’s finking had been personal.
So what, I was now even more interested to know, was the grudge that she held against Gerald Evans, a man who was not even a neighbour?
I was twitching to brace Gerald Evans, but had to spend the next day frustratingly back up at the construction site to babysit the SOCO team, and oversee the removal of the body, which was now ready to be trucked back to the lab. I did manage to call the Salmons to give them the good news.
When I eventually got to The Fleece that evening I found that David Williams was no longer a happy man. His bounty had decamped. The wind-farm construction workers had been discharged and sent home or relocated until they were required again.
‘How long is this going to take your people to sort out?’ he grumbled as he pulled my beer.
‘No idea,’ I replied, slightly irked that I didn’t seem to be included among the people who were capable of sorting it out. I waved reflexively to the group of regulars at the far end of the bar.
Seeing them gave me an idea. ‘Who among that lot would know about the wind-farm site?’ I asked David.
