‘Actually, I’m on Derwentwater.’ Skelgill seems contrite, as if he is taking some kind of easy option. He offers a defence. ‘The rain puts the tourists off – it’s the best time to come – no folk flailing oars about, bairns scopping stones – whatnot.’
‘Aha. Any success?’
‘I’m fishing for brownies. Couple. Couple of pound each. They’re taking damsel nymphs round the margins. Although I’ve got a dry on at the moment.’
‘Oh, the noble art. I rather wish I were with you. They are so sweet to the taste from Derwentwater.’
‘Aye – except I’ve put them back. Are you looking for your tea?’
The professor – of medieval history, most latterly Durham University, now retired – Jim Hartley catches his breath. With a certain degree of reluctance, he realises he ought to state the purpose of his call.
‘You know the archaeological excavation up here at Odinsgill?’
‘Above Cummacatta Wood. I thought you’d packed all that in?’
‘I am here.’ Now it is the professor’s turn to sound repentant. ‘I was tempted back – purely as an honorary consultant, advisory capacity – no specific time commitment, you understand?’
‘It were supposed to be all beer and skittles from now on, Jim.’
The older man chuckles a little uneasily at Skelgill’s admonishing idiom. He responds with an aphorism more characteristic of his vocation.
‘Ahem – well – wasn’t it Prince Hal who said, if all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work?’ The professor makes a decent fist of a Shakespearean stage accent.
‘I’ll have to pass on that one, Jim.’ Skelgill rather readily loses concentration – that is to say, a circular ripple that he recognises to be a rise, not an overweight raindrop, close to his home-tied daddy longlegs lure, draws his attention. But the fish eschews his handiwork, and takes a divergent trajectory to sip an alternative hatchling. Skelgill wipes a drip from his nose with the sleeve of his timeworn Barbour jacket. ‘I thought that were a Viking dig up there?’
‘Aha – but the medieval period spans a millennium – or, at least, a thousand years, if I may draw the distinction, roughly speaking five to fifteen hundred AD. The Vikings were slap in the middle – bear in mind the Scots did not see them off until 1263, the Battle of Largs – what, a mere hundred miles from here?’
‘Aye, right.’
‘However – enough of history – to the present.’ He clears his throat, as if to presage news of greater import. ‘This morning, in a cave – they have found human remains – more recent. They did not realise at first – they have some undergraduates working for a pittance – and you know what they get up to on a Saturday night.’
Skelgill’s antennae are pricked and he ignores the potential digression.
‘You say recent, Jim – how recent are we talking?’
‘Within your lifetime – if not mine.’
Skelgill inhales between bared teeth.
‘Have you called the police?’
‘Daniel – you are the police.’
There is a moment’s pause while Skelgill processes the nuances of his friend’s petition.
‘You mean you’re not sure?’
‘Well – it is true. I am a historian, not an archaeologist. But I know old bones and these are not they.’
‘But you didn’t want a hullaballoo.’
‘I shan’t be very popular if I become responsible for this dig being suspended.’
‘Happen there’s no choice about that – if you’re right.’
Skelgill glances at the time on his mobile and checks it against his wristwatch. He brings the handset back up.
‘Old Herdwick should be out of church by now – he’ll be in the Queen’s Arms. I’ll rustle him up. I’ll give you a shout – I’ll park at the Bowder Stone – I know a shortcut up the fell from there.’
*
There are numerous caves and quarries in and around the Bowder Wood, an area well known to Skelgill, hailing as he does from the adjacent dale, from just over the Honister Pass, from the hamlet of Buttermere. Indeed this was as much his childhood stamping ground as Lorton Vale. If Professor Jim Hartley was his mentor for all things piscine, then the Hope family up at Seathwaite – that limb of Borrowdale that reaches into the Scafell pikes – provided his education upon the fells; gnarled sheep farmer Arthur Hope and son Jud, Skelgill’s contemporary, and erstwhile fellow schoolboy adventurer. Thus Skelgill is no stranger to Borrowdale’s topography, to its gills and becks and tarns, and its features well publicised or lesser known. In the latter category would be the ‘Kissing Cave’, as locals call it, up in Odinsgill, a narrow vertical crevice that can only be negotiated in single file. The professor has reminded Skelgill of its name in Viking folklore, Friggeshol, a somewhat prurient simile that alludes both to its appearance and its ancient reputation as a place of fertility.
And it is not without some rumbling subconscious reference to his youth that Skelgill awaits news, a disquiet that troubles him, though he rather wishes not to acknowledge it. But it is difficult not to feel melancholy under the prevailing circumstances – not least that an hour earlier he was contentedly fishing just a couple of miles away on Derwentwater. He had allowed himself one last cast, for luck (no luck), shipped anchor, and rowed vigorously if not lung-burstingly to return his borrowed craft to Portinscale, whence he had driven to prise a protesting Dr Herdwick from his favoured hostelry bench; thence still complaining to the Bowder Stone; thence on foot in a near-mutinous state up through steep rain-sodden woodland by a less-than obvious path in borrowed leaky wellingtons to their present location. But such is a pathologist’s lot, and though outwardly cantankerous, to his credit the man did not actually waver. And now, while Skelgill awaits his return from the site, he avails himself of the shelter of what is a garden gazebo, erected by the archaeologists, and of their rudimentary but adequate means of making tea. The same level of comfort does not apply to young PC Dodd, a local constable who stands stoically beneath dripping oaks out of Skelgill’s line of sight, having been summoned to sentry duty.
This might seem an unnecessary precaution. In such weather conditions ramblers would hardly be expected; those around at this time of year are generally of the genteel, elderly variety, and the location of the archaeological investigation is not on an advertised footpath. But there is another class of possible interference. Skelgill had dismissed the meek-looking crew, who despite the professor’s misgivings did not strike him as the hell-raising variety – and indeed isn’t there a new wave of students known as Generation Sensible? However, there is also ‘generation social media’ to be contended with – and it will only take one of them to disobey his unenforceable threat not to post online an unauthorised photograph for all manner of ghouls, rubberneckers and press reporters to come swarming like flies to a stinkhorn. Nonetheless, in retrospect he feels a modicum of sympathy for the bedraggled volunteers, rather unceremoniously sent packing having made what ironically may prove to be the most significant find of their entire careers, no matter how long such may henceforth stretch.
Skelgill has taken first look in the cave – considering it to be his duty to witness the scene. In a land that is riddled with holes, hewn in roughly equal measure by Mother Nature and human endeavour, he is no connoisseur of the subterranean, but his training has told him it is safe, and surprisingly dry – a function of its gentle in-to-out declination, and the impervious andesite lava of the surrounding rocks (and, indeed, the Bowder Stone). Knowing its local reputation, he had not been immune from a teenage flashback – not that he ever availed himself of its facilities. Besides, the time team have it well lit with electric lamps powered by lightweight lithium motorcycle batteries that they have shipped up, and its air of the arcane is somewhat diminished. There are other crevices and ledges nearby, but none so deep as this cleft, penetrating a good fifteen feet into the mountain. Elsewhere in the fells sheep would use this place, further erod
ing its sides with their unrelenting back scratching. They might have served to enlarge it once, but these days the Bowder Wood is enclosed by well-kept walls and the free-roaming local quadrupeds – roe deer, fox and badger – would have little interest in such stony environs.
The students were picking away at a rockfall, thinking there might be a further chamber beyond, when they discovered the human remains. Prior to the professor being called upon, just a few bones were partially exposed. Skelgill has spent only a minute in their company, trying to convince himself that this was a tramp that met with misfortune when the ceiling came down, a person that moved beneath the radar of officialdom and was never known to be missing. Such skeleta must be scattered all over Britain simply because no one knows where to look, folk who creep into a ditch or under a hedge to die just like wild animals – it is only roadkill that ends up on public display. Or possibly it could be a caver or an inquisitive walker, someone from afar – Manchester or Newcastle or Glasgow – who never told their nearest and dearest where they were going (or maybe whose nearest and dearest were content with such an outcome). Moreover, if the remains are at the upper end of the professor’s estimated age range, back in the day sightseers travelled to Keswick by train, and went on by omnibus or on foot to explore the vicinity – there would be no telltale car to set warning bells ringing.
But against this theorising a growing anxiety laps like a flood tide, threatening to drown such ideas before they can bob with buoyant credibility; in his stomach there is a sinking feeling that has little to do with the fact that his packed lunch still nestles in his tackle box in the back of his car; it is a visceral discontent that grips him. Presently, however, there is respite in the imminent return of the two specialists, whom he hopes will disambiguate him of his doubts. He watches with some trepidation as they inexpertly pick their way down the wooded slope; it is uneven under foot, basically a moss-covered scree, and rendered doubly treacherous by the persistent rain, a route barred in places by sprawling ferns and patches of bramble laden with glistening ebony fruits. Beneath his hood the sharp features of the grey-haired professor are animated, his hands move with the practised signing of a lecturer. The pathologist, the bigger, sturdier man, wears an expressionless mask – or, rather, one that is set to his default, dour, disapproving – that Skelgill knows not to take too much to heart. The professor is expounding upon a point.
‘The Vikings were not in the habit of performing cave burials. Their modus operandi was to entomb their warrior chiefs with their sword and shield and to raise a prominent mound – a tumulus. In the pagan era they would cremate their proletarian dead and bury the remains in the vicinity; post conversion to Christianity they practised inhumation, and often interred the bodies beneath rudimentary gravestones. However, burial under piles of rocks is also known.’
Skelgill steps out of the shelter of the gazebo – this eavesdropped snippet seems to proffer a straw in the wind. But the more cynical ‘doctor’ of the pair, he of medicine rather than philosophy is alert to Skelgill’s optimism. He clears his throat with an ominous growl.
‘I might not be a forensic anthropologist – but I’d wager my roast lamb dinner that she’s not been dead above twenty-five years.’
Skelgill is alarmed beyond all expectations.
‘She?’
‘Aye – female of child-bearing age.’ The man grimaces, meeting Skelgill’s gaze defiantly; the straw is snatched away. ‘In fact – as far as the parturition scars on her pelvis can be relied upon – she was probably a young mother.’
2. CASE FILES
Monday morning, Skelgill’s office
‘Did you know her, Guv?’
Skelgill does not answer. He stands to attention, looking at his map, his back to his colleagues, or at least to the questioner DS Leyton, seated beside the tall grey filing cabinet; DS Jones is at an angle of forty-five degrees, in her regular chair before the window. Beyond, the sky is an amorphous blanket of cloud, paler at the southern horizon. It is no longer raining. Skelgill turns after a while; he eyes his tea and sits and drinks despite that it is steaming; his colleagues’ mugs are as yet untouched. Finally he shakes his head.
‘I used to knock about with Jud Hope up at Seathwaite. I were barely a teenager. You didn’t tend to know folk in their thirties. Besides, we were persona non grata down in Balderthwaite. Bad lads.’ He manufactures a grin that seeks to excuse, or at least explain any mischief that it was the boys’ duty to perform. ‘I took part in the search.’
DS Leyton jerks forward.
‘Cor blimey, Guvnor – that’s a turn up.’
But Skelgill looks disaffected.
‘Every man and his dog were involved – combing the fells for miles around. Arthur Hope organised it for the dale between his farm and Seatoller. It made sense for folk to cover the places they knew best. Make a proper job of it.’
DS Leyton’s heavy features strike a look of reproof.
‘Unlike the team that searched the wood – the cave.’
But Skelgill seems willing to forgive this oversight.
‘It were a massive area. Exhausting work. Try yomping through mature heather or bracken, Leyton. Folk thought they were looking for someone that had turned their ankle walking the dog, someone that were lying injured. There were limited police and no specialist resources – no cave rescue, none of your heat-seeking helicopters, cadaver dogs. The Kissing Cave’s just one of half a hundred in Borrowdale. And you’re assuming the body was there at the time of the sweep.’ This comment causes raised eyebrows among Skelgill’s subordinates, but he continues undeterred. ‘Besides, I reckon some were going through the motions. The unofficial theory doing the rounds was that she’d been abducted and driven off from near the Bowder Stone.’
Skelgill looks interrogatively at DS Jones, who has a stack of faded manila files perched upon the uppermost of her crossed thighs.
‘I’ve made copies of the final historical report. Also, attached as an appendix, the lab’s confirmation this morning that the dental records match.’
She slides a stapled sheaf of papers onto Skelgill’s desk, and leans to hand a second set to DS Leyton, who weighs the item and flashes her an impressed glance. Skelgill is not tempted to pick his up; instead he gazes expectantly at DS Jones. She smiles obediently. When she speaks, there is a note of animation in her voice.
‘I hadn’t realised this was Operation Double Helix, Guv.’
For his part DS Leyton emits a surprised grunt of recognition – and holds out his document with a sudden reverence.
‘I remember that being in the news. That was ground breaking.’ Then he looks mischievously at DS Jones. ‘But you’d have been in kindergarten, girl!’
DS Jones grins a little sheepishly. She glances at Skelgill, to see him apparently pained by her fellow sergeant’s observation. She is quick to dispense a palliative.
‘It came up at police college.’
Skelgill, however, wrestles the conversation back on track.
‘Leyton – it would have been ground breaking – if they’d caught someone. If you ask me, it set back DNA testing by a decade – made it look like searching for a needle in a haystack.’
DS Leyton appears unperturbed by his superior’s disparaging attitude. A light of fascination burns in his eyes.
‘Did they test you, Guv?’
Skelgill turns to his subordinate rather menacingly.
‘Are you trying to be funny, Leyton?’
DS Leyton throws up his palms in a gesture of supplication; perhaps now realising he is prodding a nerve more raw than usual.
‘Nah, Guv – don’t be daft – just curious. These cold cases – it’s like they’re not real – like something off the telly – but you were there, know what I mean?’
This might placate Skelgill to a degree, but it seems he still feels there is defending to do.
‘Leyton – as it happens I had a cast-iron alibi. I was with half the blokes in the dale running up and down Scawdale F
ell – High Spy, as they like to call it. Besides – I were nobbut a lad – it were adults they cast their net over – driving age and above, as I recall.’
His syntax seems to have dropped down a notch into the vernacular. For a few moments his expression becomes strained, as though he might be remembering these times, mingling with his kinsfolk. Then the trance is broken and he gestures to DS Jones, indicating that she should proceed. She gathers her wits, and bends with alarming suppleness to place the main body of the files on the floor. She picks out a photocopied page.
‘Actually, I thought this article from the Westmorland Gazette gave the most succinct account of Operation Double Helix.’ She glances up to see that her colleagues are nodding in agreement – the exercise was labelled retrospectively for internal police purposes in recognition of its pioneering role, albeit unsuccessful. She scans the document and inhales to speak. ‘This piece was written two years ago to mark the twentieth anniversary of Mary Wilson’s disappearance, and is entitled A Killer In Our Midst? It talks about how it was the first use of mass-DNA testing in a criminal case. When the search drew a blank and Mary Wilson still failed to return, the detectives wrote to every male aged over seventeen who lived or worked in the area asking them to give a blood sample. They set up three testing centres, one in the village hall at Balderthwaite and the others using blood donor vans, at the southern outskirts of Keswick and at Buttermere, routes in and out of Borrowdale. It was a voluntary scheme. A few men initially declined – giving excuses such as they didn’t like needles – or didn’t like the police!’ She looks up with a wry grin. ‘But it seems the majority of these bowed to social pressure. Those few that didn’t, the investigating team established satisfactorily that they weren’t suspects. So the local populace was cleared of possible involvement. The article goes on rather controversially, suggesting this was a convenient outcome – the corollary being that an outsider perpetrated the crime. Also that, given the newness of the technology at the time, and scientific advancements since, ought not the results be independently re-examined?’
Murder at the Meet Page 2