Dead People

by Ewart Hutton

  Because I kept coming back to it. How would a civilian, which is what Greg Thomas had been when the deeds went down, have been able to access and act on such secret and sensitive material as the new identities and locations of the victims? The needle kept swinging back round to that obstinate point.

  I felt like a recaptured escapee being brought back in under the jeering eyes of the camp guards. Fletcher had recalled the search parties. Groups of men hung around in small knots waiting for the coaches. In age and dress they were wildly different from the youths who had shared this space not that long ago, but both parties had the same sullen expression. They had obviously not enjoyed their day in the country. And, from the looks I was getting, I was the bastard to blame for that, which I had probably compounded by abandoning them.

  Fletcher was standing outside the door to the reception office with Greg Thomas and Trevor Horne. Both men stared at me as Fletcher registered my arrival and strode across the car park towards me. I got out of my car and turned my head away from them, not wanting my expression to betray anything.

  When I turned back, Fletcher was standing silently in front of me, making a show of looking me up and down. ‘Pretend that this is a hotel, Capaldi, and that you are our guest here.’

  ‘Why is that, boss?’ I could tell that he had been rehearsing this and that something clever was arriving.

  ‘So that as the manager of this establishment I can tell you to pack your bags and fuck off.’

  ‘You’re making a mistake, boss.’

  ‘That’s what they all say.’

  ‘Can we talk about this in private?’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

  ‘You’ll regret it.’

  His eyes lit up. ‘Don’t try threatening me, Capaldi. You’ve just been caught bang to rights in the dereliction of your duties. What were you doing anyway? Sloping off for a quick fuck? Having a couple of stiff ones with your lush-buddy in The Fleece? I promise you, the Union won’t be able to help you squirm out of this one.’

  ‘If you’re not going to listen to me, Kevin, I’m going to have to go directly to DCS Galbraith with this.’

  I saw the two violently opposing forces grab him at the same time. Fury at my insubordination and dread at the invocation of Jack Galbraith. He was a seriously torn man.

  ‘It’s vital that we talk in private, boss,’ I whispered, my tone offering allegiance and subordination again.

  It was probably the whisper that swung it. He stared at me curiously for a moment, and then swept away imperiously towards the barn. I followed him inside.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  I scanned to check that there was no one within earshot. ‘I know the identities of the bodies.’

  His face blanched, and it was his turn to check for listeners. ‘How the fuck do you know that?’ he asked in a low, choked voice.

  ‘An informant.’

  ‘Where did you find an informant?’ Surprise pitched his voice higher.

  ‘He found me.’

  His look turned wary. ‘This isn’t another one of your wild fucking hunches, is it, disguised as a legitimate source?’

  ‘This is on the level, boss.’

  He stared me down for a moment. ‘You can give me names?’

  ‘No, not yet. He refused to be that explicit. But he gave me the information to enable us to find out for ourselves.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘Those are the bodies of former Northern Irish paramilitaries. They were involved in some security operation that resulted in them being given a change of identity. Military Intelligence will be able to provide the original identities. They can then be cross-matched with living relatives. Their mitochondrial DNA will match that of the closest ones we can find in the female line.’

  ‘Northern Ireland!’ His expression skewed from puzzlement to bewilderment.

  I nodded. ‘DCS Galbraith will have to open up a direct line to the high echelons of the MOD to get access to the files. They’re probably not going to be very happy about it,’ I added, just to warn him that this was probably not going to be a particularly warm and friendly cross-cultural experience.

  ‘How the fuck did we end up over there?’ he asked, bemused.

  ‘Someone died over there, boss, and someone else took their revenge.’

  ‘Don’t go all fucking cryptic on me.’

  I wasn’t being cryptic, I was working myself back into it. Because the mental itch had suddenly stopped. I was beginning to realize how the killer could have tracked down his original victims. I had just remembered something that Mackay had told me.

  I also had a motive, but what spoiled it was some seriously fucked-up geography.

  Fletcher turned away from me to digest it. I imagined he was rehearsing his call to Jack Galbraith. And all that wasted time, effort and the cost of manpower on the Bruno Gilbert sideline was probably also running through his head.

  So much so that he wasn’t ready to give it up yet. ‘How reliable is this informant?’

  ‘Totally.’ I gave my invented informant an impeccable character.

  He frowned. His mind was racing. ‘Bruno Gilbert could have met them. Realized that these were the perfect victims, because they could be disappeared without any comeback.’

  ‘Did Gilbert have any connections with Military Intelligence?’ I asked, not unkindly.

  He shook his head. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment to balance his burden. ‘I’d better go and put that call in to DCS Galbraith,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘At least we’ll be able to dignify the victims with names now, boss,’ I called after him as he left the barn.

  I called Alison Weir in Carmarthen. I needed her to check something out for me before I confronted Greg Thomas. Otherwise, I could be alerting a guilty man and giving him a chance to flee.

  In the interim, I had time to act on Tessa. Try to find out what her role in this was, and, if nothing else, neutralize her.

  If I knew Fletcher, he would be making the best of a bad situation and moving up into Action Man mode. He would be striding into the fray, anxious to be seen as the guy who was on top of this case. The acolyte might have delivered the raw materials, but he was going to show how flare and élan went into producing the finished results.

  And I had a big headache in the shape of Tessa. He was not going to like her apparent role being introduced retrospectively. I would have to argue later that he hadn’t given me the time to bring her into the story.

  I had suppressed her because she had got to me. It may have been manipulated, but that small touch of near intimacy we had shared still meant something. I felt that I owed it to her to make sure she was treated with some sensitivity. I wanted to be the one to brace her, rather than some faceless plods using strong-arm hick finesse.

  I sneaked off the reservation before Fletcher could assign me to some bullshit duty. I commandeered Emrys Hughes and Friel as back-up. I told them to give me a five-minute start and then to follow me up to the dig in the Land Rover. And to stop anything that was coming down the other way in a hurry.

  Emrys would have protested, but he was confused. He had delivered me to Fletcher, relishing the prospect of mayhem, and was now wondering why I was still wandering around with my balls swinging free.

  The morning’s drizzle had kept the by-way up to Tessa’s camp nicely muddy, and the car felt as if it was trying to make a break for an independent existence as it slewed and bucked its way up the track.

  I would have seen the approaching Land Rover earlier if I hadn’t been concentrating so hard on keeping the car under control. When I did register it, it was only fifty metres away on the rutted single-lane track we were both sharing. And it was making better progress.

  Was Tessa making a break for it?

  I turned the wheel sharply and skidded to a slanting stop to present the widest barrier I could, and jumped out and held up my warrant card. The Land Rover stopped in turn. With the setting sun in my face I couldn’t
see who was driving. But it soon became apparent that the Land Rover had only stopped to change down into low-ratio four-wheel drive, as it slowly heaved itself off the track and started to make the wide, lurching curve that would take it round and past my blockade.

  I ran to intersect it, my feet splashing and slipping on the sheep-shit sludge at the bottom of the puddles between the grass and heather tussocks. How was I going to stop this thing? Jumping in front of it would be great pantomime, but short on results, and potentially lethal. It was at moments like this that I regretted that they didn’t issue us with huge .45 Magnum handguns.

  The window slid open. ‘I don’t want to stop or we’ll bog down.’ It was one of Tessa’s helpers behind the wheel, smiling at me nervously, not quite in control of the big vehicle. The other three of them were also smiling.

  ‘She’s waiting for you,’ she informed me as she went past.

  Was that a threat or a promise?

  *

  The Redshanks camp had an empty feel to it. It had the air of a place that had run out of its purpose for being there. Had I been duped? Could Tessa have been smuggled out in the Land Rover? I berated myself for not having stopped it when I had had the opportunity.

  The sun was dropping and lighting up the underside of the clouds above the western horizon with a vibrant burned-orange wash. From this elevation it was a beautiful sunset, the deep shade rolling across the valleys like something tangible. Of all the fucking evenings for the sky to get romantic, I reflected bitterly.

  I knocked on the caravan door and stood back so that I could keep the rear window covered as well. I was in a turmoil. She was taking too long to answer. If she was in there she must have heard my arrival.

  I was about to give up when the door opened. Tessa was in a baggy grey sweatshirt and black jeans, with a large towel on her head and an evolving look of surprise on her face. ‘Glyn . . . you’re early . . .’ She let the surprise morph into a welcoming smile. ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘What’s not fair?’

  ‘You caught me washing my hair. You weren’t meant to see the build-up. I was meant to be all primped, poised and perfect by the time you turned up.’ She stepped back from the door. ‘Come on in.’

  I walked in to the smell of water vapour and shampoo. She closed the door behind me. ‘Why the long face?’ she asked chirpily. ‘And where’s the wine you promised?’

  I turned to face her. ‘It’s over, Tessa.’

  She frowned. ‘That’s a bit presumptuous, isn’t it? When nothing’s actually begun.’

  She was good. Her expression read amusement over controlled irritation. She was also very lovely, I thought, as she unwound the towel from her head and let the damp hair drop. She rubbed it absently with the towel as she watched me. She wasn’t wearing a bra and her breasts oscillated with the movement. I wasn’t sure whether she was deliberately building that distraction into the picture.

  ‘You’re not Dr Tessa MacLean.’

  She raised her eyebrows and contemplated that statement for a moment. ‘So who am I?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think that you were planted here to keep an eye on the gravesite. That’s why you became buddies with Jeff in the beginning. Because there was always the possibility that the construction works wouldn’t disturb the bodies and everything could just return to normal. But when they were uncovered, you attached yourself to me, so that you could follow my progress and report back.’ She continued to watch me, deadpan. ‘You got me up here the other night with that story of the intruder.’ I stopped myself mid-flow. I had been about to say that the pointless pursuit in the snow had given him time to search my caravan, but that would have been achieved anyway, just by her calling me up here. So what had been the point of that?

  ‘And I suppose I engineered the theft of my Redshanks?’ she asked, her voice flat.

  I nodded, trying not to let her see that this was another thing that was puzzling me.

  ‘Am I being arrested?’

  ‘That depends on the extent of your involvement. It’s not too late to start helping us. You could begin by telling me who you’re working with?’

  She nodded reflectively. ‘Okay, where did we go wrong?’ She laced the question with an unexpected tint of mockery.

  ‘You should have lost the Northern Ireland connection.’

  She turned away and took an anorak down off a peg. It surprised me. And it disappointed me. I had been expecting more of a reaction.

  ‘You can dry your hair first. Change into something warmer.’ I was trying to be a nice guy.

  She gave me a withering look. At that moment I saw an intrinsic change in her. Something hardened. ‘Follow me,’ she commanded.

  She went out the door. I took a couple of quick steps to catch up, and then slowed down when I saw that she wasn’t trying to run. She was striding over towards the enclosure that had housed Redshanks.

  She held the flap open and fixed me with her eyes as I passed through. ‘I had hoped for more from you,’ she said regretfully, ‘but when you come out to the arse-end of the universe, what else can you expect but arses?’

  I was beginning to get a bad feeling about this.

  The light inside the tent was brighter than outside, and it was strangely quiet without the background noise from the small generator that had been keeping Redshanks’ temperature and humidity controlled inside his plastic bubble.

  Tessa opened a large box, took out some kind of an instrument, and whipped the cover off. It didn’t look archaeological. It looked like something that should be sitting on the bridge of a new-generation warship.

  She raised a flap at the rear of the tent and located the instrument on a peg on a small metal tripod. ‘Look through that,’ she ordered, her voice hard and cold.

  It was essentially a pair of high-intensity binoculars incorporating night-vision lenses. I adjusted the focus ring, and the door of the Barn Gallery at Pen Twyn leaped out at me. There was an eerie green tinge to the image. I turned to her for an explanation.

  She nodded at the binoculars. ‘That’s why I’ve been keeping tabs on you. You keep barging into my fucking investigation.’ She gestured with her head down towards the Barn Gallery. ‘Continually messing around with the Fenwicks.’

  I read the warrant card she handed me. She outranked me. Christine Stewart, an inspector with the Metropolitan Police Art Theft and Forgery Division. The bad feeling was now here to stay.

  ‘You kept giving us heart attacks every time you turned up down there. Were you going to give them the willies? Scare them off ? Make them wonder if this place wasn’t as safe as they thought it was?’

  I nodded at the binoculars. ‘That’s how you knew I had been there? Why you kept wanting to know what I’d been doing?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? Why didn’t you warn me off ?’

  ‘Because you’re not meant to know about this, even now. Local law enforcement is never informed of an operation in their area because it could change the dynamic of their dealings with the people under surveillance. I’m only showing you now to get you off my back. For good,’ she added portentously.

  ‘What have they done?’

  She thought about it, and then realized that the damage was already done. ‘They’re smuggling looted archaeological treasures out of Iraq. Sending them back in the containers that they ship their meat pies out in. They’re using this place for distribution.’ She gestured towards the wind-farm site. ‘Until your little lot erupted down there they thought that this out-of-the-way corner was as safe as it gets.’

  ‘If you know all this, why haven’t you rounded them up? Why haven’t you seized the shipments?’

  Her smile was pained. ‘We have, all the stuff has been intercepted and electronically tagged. Now we want to know who’s doing the buying.’

  I spread my hands out in front of Redshanks’s empty bubble.

  She understood the question. ‘He was our cover. It makes for great sur
veillance. An archaeological dig. How much more non-threatening and geeky can you get? A bunch of scatty bluestockings. We even exchange waves with them when we drive past the Barn Gallery.’

  ‘Is he real?’

  ‘It depends what you mean by real. As an object, yes. He’s a kit of parts that gets trotted around surveillance gigs. We invent a different background story to suit the particular situation.’ She chuckled mirthlessly. ‘I obviously chose the wrong one in this case.’

  I was even more confused. ‘But I was here when the forensic anthropologist inspected him. She verified his provenance.’

  She nodded, with more than a hint of superiority in the gesture. ‘Because she was shown a high-level Home Office directive when she was in here, instructing her to confirm that the lump of carbon fibre and nylon we were calling Redshanks was the genuine article.’

  I shook my head. ‘You’ve no idea what an awful coincidence this has been. Starting with your choice of dig site and the university you used for a front.’

  ‘Reflect hard and verify before you jump to conclusions in future, Sergeant.’

  I coloured at the rebuke. ‘I’m very sorry, and I promise you this won’t go any further.’

  ‘I know it won’t.’

  We heard the sound of the engines at the same time. Tessa’s team’s Land Rover crested the rise first, closely followed by Emrys and Friel’s. I winced inwardly. The girls had obviously been stopped and shepherded back up the hill. And I knew that if Tessa asked Emrys he would just look sulky and tell her that he had been following my orders.

  She groaned theatrically. ‘And now it gets even more fucking heavy-handed.’

  ‘I’ll get rid of them.’

  She gestured down towards the Barn Gallery. ‘And while you’re at it, why don’t you all jump up and down and wave before you go?’

  ‘Do you want me to go and see Gloria Fenwick and make up some sort of reason for us to be up here,’ I suggested helpfully, but already knowing that this attempt to rehabilitate myself was hopeless.

  She shook her head. ‘No, Sergeant Capaldi, I just want you gone.’

  I looked at her for a moment, a thought surfacing. ‘Did you know my history?’