Around 11.30 Alan decided it was time to make a quick recce. They pulled away and headed slowly towards the back of Flax Hole Depot, which had now closed for the night. He pulled up in a spot where they could observe the pattern of security patrols. As Indajit had already reported, they were confined to the depot itself, which was brightly floodlit. They waited for two patrols to go by.
‘Right,’ Alan said in a low voice, ‘patrols every half hour. That’s what I’d have expected. So the next one’s due at 12.30.’
‘But we’re not floodlit out here. Surely we’d be OK, wouldn’t we?’ Indajit asked. It was obvious he was keen to get started.
‘No,’ Alan was confident, ‘you’d be surprised how easy it is to spot movement at a distance, especially in low light. All they need is a glint off a shiny mattock blade. That’ll do it. So when the patrol’s out, whatever we’re doing, we’ll freeze. OK?’
They unloaded a mattock, a fork and a road-spike, which Alan tossed over the chain-link security fence. They’d spotted on the recce it wasn’t very secure at this point. Alan soon discovered why, as his boot crunched on an abandoned syringe. Druggies had been using the shrubs inside the fence, as cover. They clambered through a hole in the wire. Alan walked ahead, looking for the remains of the brick wall that had run beside their long-abandoned wet sieve soakaway pits. He soon found it. By this point, the landscaping had given way to scrub, and the older buildings that bounded the depot to the south, were fringed with hawthorn and elder bushes.
‘There it is,’ Alan called under his breath, pointing down at a ridge of bricks and mortar which had been bulldozed almost flat during the landscaping. Another cheap and nasty job, he thought, knowing full well that the landscape contractors ought to have removed the wall’s footings, not just flattened them. They continued for about thirty metres. Then Alan stopped and looked around him.
By now his eyes had become accustomed to the poor light. It took a couple of minutes to get his bearings. He could just make out the shadow of the Victorian warehouse and the main entranceway into the site. Yes, he thought, that’s about right. He tapped Indajit on the shoulder and whispered:
‘Pass me the mattock.’
Indajit handed it to him. But instead of swinging it, Alan used it like a pile-driver, vigorously thumping its head on the dry ground. After about a dozen thumps he stopped.
‘I think one of them’s here. It’s certainly sounds hollow and feels a tiny bit softer.’
‘Hollow?’ Indajit was surprised, ‘I didn’t expect that. Surely it can’t still be an empty hole?’
‘No, it’ll be full all right,’ Alan replied, ‘it’s just the high water content and softer filling can sometimes give a hollow, booming effect. It doesn’t always work, but here the clay’s so heavy, I think it will. Anyhow, there’s only one way to find out…’
Indajit was about to swing the mattock, but Alan stopped him.
‘Too noisy. We’ll use a fork. Much quieter.’
He drove down on the fork with his boot. It went in easily.
‘That’s softer than I thought. Much softer.’
‘Is that significant?’ Indajit asked.
Alan didn’t reply. For a few moments he shone a shaded torch and looked closely at the soil. He turned it off, but continued to finger the soil’s texture, lost in thought.
Then to Indajit’s evident surprise he put a tiny piece in his mouth. He closed his eyes and concentrated hard. There was smooth, buttery clay there. Next his tongue felt the slight abrasion of silt. Gently his front teeth encountered the grittiness of fine sand; for a bizarre moment it was rather like a wine-taster savouring a fine cabernet sauvignon. Then it was done. He spat it out, wiping his mouth twice on his sleeve. He looked up:
‘Yes, Indajit, it is significant. This stuff is a silty clay loam with a high organic component. That’s precisely what we were sieving. I checked the records carefully last week. So we could be in one of them.’
Indajit was now staring at him wide-eyed:
‘What, in one of the soakaways?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s hope it’s the right one…’ Indajit muttered, as he grimly trod the fork into the ground.
* * *
Twenty minutes later they both froze, as the expected security patrol passed in front of the depot building below them, and headed across the lorry park. When it had gone they resumed digging.
It was approaching dawn, and several patrols had been by. It had been slow work in the dark, but they had managed to expose all four sides of the pit and Alan was contemplating moving on to the second one, when his fork went through something soft. He’d felt something similar before, when excavating a Bronze Age field system near Peterborough. In that case, it had been half a soft-fired pottery vessel that lay on the bottom of the ditch. But there was no mistaking that crunchy feeling. A bit like breaking into a huge soft-boiled egg. Alan glanced down. He didn’t want poor Indajit to have too much of a shock.
‘Indajit, are you ready for this?’
The lawyer nodded grimly.
Alan dropped down to his knees and shone his torch. Thinnish bone, but with pronounced muscle scars. He pulled at it hard and turned it over. As he suspected, a dog skull. Probably someone’s pet.
By now they were almost three feet down and the soil was getting much softer. Alan put the fork aside and took hold of the steel road-spike. It was about five feet long, had a curly pig’s tail top and a sharpened point. Indajit looked on, fascinated, as Alan very carefully leant on the pig-tail and the spike sank into the soft ground for about a foot. Then he repeated the process a short distance away. On his eighth attempt he distinctly felt a crunch, about six inches below the surface. He produced a trowel from his back pocket and rapidly dug down.
And, yes, this time it was human. A skull. He was sure of that. Few other large mammal crania are so thin.
‘I think we’ve found her.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’ve felt inside the orbit. The eye-socket. It’s very sharp. Almost certainly female…’ He had turned on a small pen torch which he cupped in one hand.
‘Ah,’ he whispered, ‘what’s this?’ Alan could feel that Indajit wanted to join him, but he gestured to him to stay back.
‘Sorry, Indajit, best not to look too closely. Wait till you’re ready.’
The lawyer nodded silently.
Alan held up a scrap of fabric up to the emerging light of a new day. ‘That’s silk alright. At least they didn’t strip her. I don’t think we need disturb her anymore.’
By now there was a very slight, almost indiscernible smell of putrefaction, which Alan recognised instantly from his time on the farm. Although he said nothing, he was surprised that decay was still so actively under way, after so many years.
As he climbed out of the trench, there was a rustle in the bushes behind them. Immediately Alan made a grab for his mattock. Then they were blinded by four powerful flashlights that cut through the feeble, misty morning light, like so many lasers. The words were chilling, but the voice was familiar.
* * *
‘I trust you found what you were looking for?’
Alan tightened his grip on the mattock.
‘Relax, Alan, relax. You’ve nothing to fear. You’ve all proved your point.’
It was Lane. As he spoke, he pointed his flashlight at his three companions, whose blue and white checked baseball caps revealed they were all police officers. Armed police officers, Alan noted. They were anticipating trouble.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Alan said, slightly exasperated, ‘my brother tipped you off, did he?’
‘Yes, he did,’ Lane replied, ‘and quite right too.’
‘Shhh…’ Indajit hissed sharply, pointing towards the depot. They all looked: a security patrol had started its rounds.
‘Kill the lights!’ Ala
n whispered as loud as he dared.
Suddenly it was dark again. He knew that if they were discovered, Mehmet and Abdul would immediately be alerted. After a couple of minutes, the danger had passed.
Then Lane bent forward, shining his shaded torch on the ground. ‘So what do we have here?’
‘A female,’ Alan replied, ‘decomposition very advanced, but shreds of silk and probably hair too. If she was buried in 2002 this suggests very acidic soil conditions. In another five to ten years the body would have vanished completely.’
Lane looked at Alan.
‘D’you want to excavate her yourselves?’
Indajit turned to Alan. He shook his head.
‘No, if you don’t mind, Richard. I think we can leave this one to you.’
Then he had a thought.
‘Why not fetch in that woman we met at Saltaire?’
Lane’s brow furrowed as he tried to think back. Then it came to him.
‘Ruth?’ He queried.
‘Yes,’ Alan replied, ‘I’ve heard she’s based in Norfolk. This would be right up her street.’
Indajit had stood silently while this was going on. Then he spoke softly.
‘May I spend a few moments with Sofia alone? I think I’m ready now.’
They withdrew up the bank and stood amongst the young trees and mown grass. Two officers remained with Indajit, but they faced away. By now it was bright enough to see clearly. Alan noticed they had unslung their weapons. Indajit knelt alone with his fiancée, his shoulders heaving as he wept. The scene had a quiet dignity. All was silence, only broken by the growing sound of the dawn chorus from birds in the young trees and shrubs around them. Then Indajit wiped his eyes. He looked up.
‘Thank you all. This has meant much to me.’
‘And to me,’ Lane said, walking forward. He shook his hand warmly. ‘Thank you for all your help.’
It was a warm night, but Indajit had begun to shiver. Lane nodded to one of the officers.
‘This gentleman needs a lift home. Make sure he stays warm,’ he paused, ‘and treat him like a celebrity. Because he is one,’ and then as an afterthought, ‘we can take a statement from him later in the morning. And I want two officers stationed outside his house until I personally give you the all clear. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir!’
They stood and watched while Indajit was escorted back to a car.
Then they laid a police reflective jacket over Sofia’s remains and Alan shovelled loose earth onto it. At this stage they still needed to hide what they had been doing from casual prying eyes. An officer stayed behind to guard her, crouching down out of sight. Meanwhile the rest of the group headed out through the security fence, before the next security patrol arrived.
* * *
Alan drove to the Central Police Station to have a short statement taken, while the reinforcements Lane had summoned, continued to arrive. While they were waiting, they discussed what to do next. They were both keen to have Paul picked up, as they were convinced he had to have known about Sofia’s burial, even if he didn’t organise it himself – which he almost certainly must have done: only an archaeologist who’d worked on that site would have known about those pits.
‘But even so,’ Lane responded, ‘he’s still just an accessory after the fact. He’s not likely to run away and I don’t think he’s the brains behind all this. That person is Mehmet, we’ve got to catch the bastard. And Abdul.’
As he said the last words there was a ruthlessness in his voice that Alan hadn’t heard before.
‘So what’s the plan, Richard? I don’t think we’ve got much time.’
‘No, we certainly don’t. I’ve already called in the team I’d reserved for this job.’
‘Oh no,’Alan broke in, ‘surely not Drugs Squad heavies?’
‘Certainly not.’ Lane looked a little peeved at this. ‘This is Leicestershire and we’ll use our own force, if you don’t mind.’
‘I’m sorry…’
But he was relieved, nonetheless. Then he had another thought:
‘Richard, shouldn’t we be keeping more of an eye on Priory Farm? Your single undercover man wouldn’t stand much of a chance if things got nasty there, would he?’
‘Don’t worry, Alan,’ Lane replied, ‘I’ve already thought of that. I sent two men round there an hour ago.’
For a moment Alan thought about the implications. He was certain they’d stay round the front and not venture into the hawthorn thicket at the rear of the hangar. Still, he’d done everything he could. Now it was in the hands of fate.
Thirty-six
DCI Lane’s team had all assembled in the station Incident Room by six o’clock on Sunday morning. While they were making plans to raid Mehmet’s home, an undercover officer on the team, who was keeping the house under surveillance, radioed in to say that Mehmet had just left. He had been carrying a suitcase when he got into his large Mercedes.
‘Tail him!’ Lane barked into the radio. ‘Don’t let him out of your sight. He mustn’t escape!’
Alan was listening closely.
Two additional patrol cars were despatched to assist him. Then Alan had a thought. Maybe Mehmet wasn’t trying to escape. He wasn’t a mind-reader: how could he possibly know what had happened? This was real life, not a drama. And anyhow, a suitcase isn’t what a multimillionaire takes with him to the airport.
Richard Lane was on the telephone when Alan came up to him. He hung up.
Alan said quietly, ‘Don’t pull him in, yet, Richard. Let’s see where he’s heading. I think this could be interesting.’
Lane looked at him doubtfully.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, quite sure.’
A short time later a report came in that he’d pulled up outside a large brick building in Albert Road and had gone inside, carrying his case.
‘Albert Road?’
‘That’s down by the canal, isn’t it?’ Alan suggested.
Lane was looking pensive.
‘Yes, I know it. An old leather works converted by the County Council with a Lottery grant. Usual old bollocks: cheap studios for so-called community artists, who couldn’t cut it in the real world.’
The radio crackled into life again:
‘There’s a big sign. Says “Waterside Studios”. The subject has gone inside.’
‘Report back immediately, if he comes out.’
‘He won’t do that,’ Alan said quietly. Lane shot a glance towards him.
‘Why not?’
‘He’ll be there for at least a couple of hours. Maybe more. Any time before then, and he’s ours for the taking.’
‘You certain about that?’ Lane asked.
‘Yes. Quite certain.’
Lane stood up quickly, taking his coat from a row of pegs by the door. In a loud voice he announced to the room.
‘We’ll do this one mob-handed. Call everyone in.’
In a few minutes fifteen men and two WPCs had assembled; Lane briefed four officers who hurried on ahead. Then he turned to the rest of the room:
‘OK, everyone, let’s go.’
Then, almost as an afterthought he gestured to Alan.
‘You too, Alan.’
‘What on earth can I do?’
‘I’ve no idea. But if you think that after last night’s excursion, I’m letting you out of my sight until this is all over, then you can think again.’
* * *
Waterside Studios opened to the public every weekend. There were two coffee shops on the ground floor and a gallery on the first. This was a big open-plan space, occupying the entire footprint of the building. Above it were two further storeys, which contained the artists’ studios. These could only be visited by appointment. Alan glanced at the list of names: two painters, a sculptor, three photographers, a silversm
ith, two commercial artists and a ‘textile artisan’ – whatever that was.
Richard Lane’s brow furrowed as he read the list. Alan smiled.
‘The vain bastard,’ he said, ‘I know where he’s heading. Follow me.’
Alan headed toward the emergency stairs. Meanwhile Lane had rapidly positioned men at all the downstairs exits. He produced his warrant card and ordered the main admission doors to be locked shut. The two early customers in the coffee shop looked on with open mouths. One held a cup to her lips.
‘Drink up, it’ll get cold,’ a cheeky constable advised as he hurried past their table. Lane gave him a dirty look.
A couple of minutes later, Alan, Lane and three constables gathered silently outside the sculptor’s studio. Lane turned the latch, but it was locked. They were meant to use the intercom by the door, but this might alert the people they’d come to see. So two of the constables, built like rugby forwards, hit the double door with their shoulders and burst in.
For a second or two Alan felt as if he had stumbled into a Victorian still life. The room was in semi-darkness, illuminated by a single sepia spotlight. Mehmet was standing on a stout wooden plinth, one arm raised as if delivering a papal benediction. On his head was a laurel wreath, which was meant to look noble, but failed miserably. His portly body was bedecked with the sculptor’s attempt at a Roman toga, complete with purple edging. He was bare-footed, presumably because the two sandals that lay on the floor had been too tight a fit for his podgy feet. The sculptor was taking photographs, his head beneath a black cloth.
The sight was too much, even for the hardened police officers as they crashed into the room. They were still laughing when they grabbed Mehmet. By this stage the toga which had only been draped for effect, now lay on the floor and Mehmet was wearing nothing but a capacious pair of boxer shorts. Alan was about to show the sculptor how a toga ought to have been folded, but decided not to.
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