by M. J. Trow
‘Anything else?’ Maxwell wasn’t going to be drawn on that one. And, at the moment, no one had actually suffered that particular fate. Unless, of course, James knew something that Maxwell didn’t…
‘Some sort of deal was struck with the owners,’ the reporter went on. ‘The fields had recently been bought from the local farmer by Cahill and Lieberman Properties who wanted to open a golf course. We covered that, too. Upmarket clients, posh tarts in frocks with G‘n’T’s in the clubhouse, you know the sort of thing. Perfect antidote to the bloody Barlichway and Tony Blair’s Britain, really. ’Course, there were objections.’
‘There were?’
James frowned. ‘You do read the Advertiser, Mr Maxwell?’
‘Every word,’ the Great Man said. ‘Only the old grey cells aren’t what they were.’ He’d switched effortlessly from Jane Marple to Hercule Poirot. ‘This was weeks ago. Fifteen minutes are a long time in teaching.’
James had heard that somewhere, but he couldn’t place it. ‘Yes. Conservationists. Envious Lefties. Anti-Sports lobby. Saddos all. I enjoy a round myself. Got to be less contentious than fox hunting, hasn’t it, when all’s said and done.’
‘No Sepulchre Society of Sussex?’
‘’Fraid not,’ James smiled. ‘I’ll get Janice to run you off a list if it helps.’
‘Thanks,’ Maxwell beamed at the girl but she was miles away, probably up to her modem in Tottingleigh’s Flower Festival.
‘’Course, I don’t suppose Messrs Cahill and Lieberman were best pleased.’
‘Really?’
‘Before I came to Leighford’s sunny climes, Mr Maxwell, I worked on a London local – the Hainault Observer. Doubtless you’ve heard of it.’
‘Doubtless.’ Maxwell tried a wink. It wasn’t altogether successful.
‘We had a similar thing there.’ James was poking about in the briefcase by his feet. ‘Do you know, I know I’ve got a yoghurt in here somewhere. Yeah, rescue archaeology. Some kid found a few bits of pot – Roman, if memory serves. They were building a supermarket. Everybody was furious – delays all over the shop, if you’ll excuse the pun. They turned Tony Robinson down flat. Told the BBC where to stick it when they tried to steal Time Team’s thunder. It all got a bit nasty.’
‘A bit nasty in the Arthur Wimble sort of way?’
‘Could be,’ James nodded, holding up the plastic pot in triumph. ‘I’m a bit hazy on the details now. Oh, bugger, Janice. Where have all the spoons gone?’ Wasn’t that an old Edith Piaf number? Nothing.
‘No, I’ve met Cahill and Lieberman’s Mr Anthony Cahill. One of nature’s gentlefolk. Like something out of The Sopranos, but with an Eton accent. He was probably the school bully.’
‘Yes,’ Maxwell observed. ‘I thought that.’
‘Ah, you’ve had the pleasure?’
‘Let’s just say his associates and I had a difference of opinion. They wanted to smash my kneecaps and I didn’t – call me an old fuddy-duddy if you like.’
‘Then, of course,’ James was still fishing bits of paper out of his filing cabinet drawer, ‘Dr Radley became late.’
‘Did you get to the site yourself?’ Maxwell wanted to know.
‘Can Tim Henman play tennis? There was a yellow ribbon up around that lot before you could say “Any comment, officer?” That was weird, mind.’
‘What was?’
‘Well, after we’d taken piccies from beyond the cordon… oh, nothing we could use; my editor’s funny about body-bags on page one, I got back here to the office. There was a message on my answerphone. It said “Beware the wolf, the grey heath-stalker.” Spooky, huh?’
‘Spooky indeed,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Have you still got it? The message, I mean?’
‘No,’ James said archly. ‘Have we, Janice?’
Focus. Fixed stare. No reply.
‘No, you can’t keep stuff round here. We’d have a bloody warehouse full of tapes and cassettes if we started that game. We get a lot of cranky stuff. The messages we got when it looked like Britney Spears was passing through earlier in the year…well, even I had to look some of the words up.’
‘Do you remember the voice?’
‘Now you’ve asked. Woman, certainly.’
‘Accent of any kind?’
James shook his head. ‘Not that I can remember.’
‘A quotation, presumably?’ Maxwell was thinking aloud.
‘Do you know it?’ the journalist asked, ‘Man of letters like yourself.’
Maxwell shook his head. ‘It doesn’t ring any bells,’ he said.
‘All right, then,’ James said. ‘My turn to pick your brains. You’re the historian. Tell me about ash groves.’
‘The place they found David Radley.’
‘Correct.’
‘Well,’ Maxwell sighed. ‘We’re talking about a Saxon site.’
‘And?’
‘And it’s not my period.’
James snorted. ‘I bet you say that to all your classes.’
Maxwell smiled. ‘The early Saxons almost certainly believed woods were haunted. The Celts had regarded trees and stones and water as sacred objects. Even in the late tenth century, the Church was warning people about praying to idols like that.’
‘Some sort of ritual thing, then?’ James was piecing it together, pentagrams and naked virgins flashing before his eyes.
‘It could be.’ Maxwell said. ‘Of course, if there’s a church on the site, under the ash grove, I mean…’
‘That’s possible, is it?’
‘My fellow diggers seem to think so.’
‘Your…? Mr Maxwell,’ James shook the man by the hand. ‘You’ve been and gone and infiltrated them. Bloody marvellous! Tell me, what’s this new bloke like? The one in charge now.’
‘Professor Fraser? Old school. Bit of a tartar. Ex-tutor of David Radley.’
‘Cut up, is he?’ the journalist asked. ‘About Radley, I mean?’
‘I’d say so,’ Maxwell nodded, ‘In a cantankerous, Scottish sort of way.’
‘So what have you got? Not just dirt under your fingernails, I’ll be bound.’ He’d unconsciously picked up his pad again.
‘Uh-huh,’ Maxwell wagged one of those fingers now. ‘I came to you, remember, to ask about the Sepulchre Society.’
‘Oh, Christ, yes,’ James said, plonking the pad down again. ‘I’d forgotten about them already. What’s the link?’
‘Along with the Conservationists, Anti-Sports lobby and Envious Lefties, they don’t want the dig to go ahead. The difference is, they might just be doing something about it.’
The afternoon sun was streaming in on Henry Hall’s paperwork. He read it again, the letter from the Sepulchre Society of Sussex and he read the lab report on it. No fingerprints. Whoever had typed and posted this, they had used gloves from first to last. Stamp and envelope were both self-adhesive, those little improvements in technology that were designed to help everybody and which proved to be such a godsend to the poison-pen letter writer. No saliva, no DNA. No DNA, no point in checking a database of misfits. Then, there was the typing itself. It was Arthur Conan Doyle, bless him, who had first pointed out to a disbelieving world that you could detect differences in type writing machines (in his day, typewriters were the ladies who did the work). But word processors, computers, laptops were as anonymous as the phantom tiddler. The thing could have been written in Henry Hall’s outer office.
He checked the clock. Half-past three. It would soon be time for Professor Fraser’s daily progress check and he coldly eyed the phone, willing it not to ring. He was out of luck.
‘Sorry, guv.’ It was Jacquie Carpenter’s voice in the ether. ‘It’s Alison McCormick. I think we may have a problem.’
‘That’s fantastic!’ Peter Maxwell stared in wonder at the object in Douglas Russell’s hand.
‘Not bad, is it?’ the geophysicist said. ‘You know, I could get to enjoy trowelling.’
The two men looked at the ornate, chiselled key Russell
had brought to the main tent. Maxwell’s back was in half. Leaving a gabbling Reginald James flying late to his court session, and starting to bleed anew as he ripped the newspaper from his chin, Maxwell had pedalled like a thing possessed back to the Saxon graves. A knot of sightseers had loafed around the main gate where the ominously black-suited George and Julian were watching them intently from behind their impersonal shades. There was no sign of the police presence that Tam Fraser had hoped Henry Hall could spare him. Henry Hall had no one to spare.
In what might have been psychologically a bad move, the dig director had told his people to be extra vigilant, to take nothing for granted. A man or woman with a trowel, he had observed melodramatically, was by definition in a vulnerable position. Everybody had to watch their backs and, failing that, somebody else’s. Whatever those madmen of the Sepulchre Society were all about, Fraser told them, they’d killed already and might do so again.
‘What are we looking at here?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Church, I’d say. Certainly, this is a common ecclesiastical design. Late tenth, perhaps early eleventh – Aethelred, Cnut, somewhere around there.’
‘Wash and go?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Why not?’ Douglas Russell wasn’t a man given to smiling, but he did on that occasion.
‘Listen…er…Douglas.’ Maxwell stopped him, a picture in his pink washing up gloves and yellow goggles. What sort of fare does the Quinton serve? Any cop?’
‘Wholesome enough,’ the geophysicist shrugged.
‘Mind if I join you? The little woman’s out on a drug bust or something tonight, beating up Rastas and so on. I could use the company.’
‘Sure,’ Russell said. ‘Can you get there all right?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Maxwell smiled, waving to the spoil heaps where Surrey lay, bright in the rays of the late afternoon sun. ‘I have my trusty steed.’
She turned her head as far as she could in the darkness. She was cold and wet from the dripping wall at her back. She felt the ropes digging into her wrists. Why didn’t he come? How long had it been? Night? Day? She couldn’t tell. All she knew was that she was alone. Hungry and thirsty and tired. And so very, very afraid.
Chapter Twelve
They did a mean shepherd’s pie at the Quinton – in the sense that Peter Maxwell reckoned it probably contained half a spud and a knuckle of lamb. It was tasty enough, though, washed down with an unassuming Carlsberg, from the south side of the hop yard. And anyway, Maxwell was not looking to award any Egon Ronay stars; he had a murder or two to solve.
‘I’ve had another one,’ Douglas Russell told him in the snug of the hotel’s conservatory as the last of the sun dappled on the old barrack’s wall beyond it.
‘Oh?’
The geophysicist checked the coast was clear before uncrumpling a piece of paper from his pocket.
‘When did this arrive?’ Maxwell asked.
‘This morning. Or rather when I got back earlier this evening. I think you’d gone to freshen up.’
Maxwell had, but it had been a long and sticky day and, still unable to introduce soap to much of his face, he hadn’t altogether felt the benefit. ‘Envelope?’ he asked.
Russell was impressed. The master was going through his paces. He fished that out too.
‘Local postmark,’ the Head of Sixth Form peered at it. ‘First class stamp – a generous malicious letter writer. Tell me, Douglas, why didn’t you mention this earlier? Over dinner, for example, the last enervating hour I’ve spent in your company.’
Russell shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just wish this would all go away. It’s the ostrich in me, I suppose. If I left the letter in my pocket, it wasn’t there.’
‘All very David Blaine,’ Maxwell nodded, stony-faced.
‘I’m a geophysicist, Max. The electrical resistance of soil – that’s pretty well all I know. Polarisation, radiation waves, that’s where I’m coming from. I’m out of my depth with it all.’
‘But you’re investigating a murder yourself.’
‘What?’ Russell looked horrified.
‘According to the Advertiser, whose extraordinary level of expertise I have come to admire and respect,’ he waved crossed fingers in front of the geophysicist, ‘the first body at the site was a murder victim.’
‘Speculation,’ Russell said, digging deep for his pipe. ‘You don’t mind?’
Maxwell shook his head. ‘Nothing like a nice bit of shag,’ he said and caught the eye of a confused old spinster knitting in the corner. ‘Your speculations don’t run that way?’
‘Oh, I’ll grant you the death was violent,’ Russell said. ‘It was the first body we found. It was lying on its side in a semi-recumbent form, something like twenty metres from the edge of the cemetery.’
Maxwell winced and it wasn’t due to the shepherd’s pie biting back. The man was investigating a Saxon site, for God’s sake; why was he talking in metres?
‘The skull had been shattered from above and behind. By an axe, I’d say. And the other bodies show no such signs. They’re all fully recumbent, east-west, as you’d expect. So yes, it looks suspect. Could be ritual, though.’
‘Ritual?’ That word was cropping up a lot recently.
‘You’re familiar with Lindow Man? The Danish bog bodies?’
‘Comme ci, comme ça,’ shrugged Maxwell, ‘as I believe they still say down the Skaggerat way.’
‘Most of the corpses found in the peat bogs were ritually murdered – Tollund, Grauballe. In the case of Lindow Man, three methods were used to despatch him – garrotting with a ligature, cutting of the carotid artery with a very sharp knife and stoving in the head.’
‘No chances taken there, then? What we in the business call overkill.’
‘Indeed,’ but Russell couldn’t see the humour in it. ‘Of course, that was Celtic. Romano British at best. The Saxons, especially in the later period we’re dealing with on Staple Hill, no longer sacrificed. They were Christian.’
‘And what about David Radley?’ Maxwell asked, bringing his man to more pressing matters. ‘Was he a Christian?’
‘Right now, I’m more concerned with that,’ Russell pointed to the note still in Maxwell’s hand.
‘I work an awful lot better on a large Southern Comfort,’ he smiled, as wide-eyed as his bruises would let him.
Russell took the hint and was gone to the bar. He walked with a wariness that was pitiful. Had a pin dropped now, he’d have died of fright. With a deftness born of long years of confiscating smuggled pornography, Maxwell pocketed the envelope and took in the contents of the note itself. The last incriminating document he’d handled – John Fry’s note to Annette Choker – had disappeared into the bowels of Leighford nick via the inexperienced hands of Alison McCormick. He wasn’t having this one go the same way.
‘“You have been warned”,’ he read to himself, glad his lips were too swollen to be moving. ‘“Either you stop the dig or you’ll be burying more of your own.” Short and sweet,’ he handed it back to Russell as the man returned bearing drinks.
‘Only Scotch, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Is that all right?’
‘I’ll stretch a point,’ Maxwell said, taking the glass. ‘Is that one the same as the first?’
‘You haven’t seen the first?’
‘No.’ Maxwell shuddered anew as the alcohol hit his lips. ‘Professor Fraser simply told me about it.’
‘I wish he hadn’t done that.’ Russell looked away.
‘I think if our lives are being threatened, we have a right to know about it, Douglas. He spoke to us all at the site, if you remember, warning us to watch our backs.’
The geophysicist sank back into his Lloyd Loom, blowing pipe smoke to the fan curling lazily and ineffectually above them both. ‘I suppose you’re right. Sorry, I’m not thinking particularly clearly at the moment. Yes, in answer to your question. The wording isn’t exactly the same, but it’s got the same letter head.’
‘The Sepulchre Society,’ Maxw
ell ran the cheap crystal between his hands. He could get used to Scotch. ‘It has a ring to it. Who knows you’re staying here, Douglas? At the Quinton, I mean?’
‘Um…everyone at the dig. The University, of course. My mother.’
‘You’re not married, Douglas?’
‘No,’ the geophysicist smiled, as if at some long-forgotten joke. ‘No, Miss Right never came along.’
‘Ah,’ Maxwell laughed. ‘You’re still a young god, for Christ’s sake.’
There was a kerfuffle in the lobby beyond the open conservatory doors and a rattled-looking Tam Fraser stood there.
‘Thank God you’re both all right,’ he said. His hair was standing on end and his eyes flashed wildly around the conservatory. The old girl with the knitting needles sat transfixed at the apparition. He looked like he’d just spent three minutes plugged into Old Sparky.
‘What’s the matter, Professor?’ Maxwell asked.
‘This is the matter,’ and he slammed a skull down on the coffee table. ‘I’ve called the police.’
The old girl with the knitting needles screamed. ‘For God’s sake, madam,’ Fraser yelled at her. ‘It’s how we’ll all end up one day. Dinna distress yourself.’ Maxwell noticed how much more ethnic the man became when he was scared.
‘What’s this?’ Maxwell was glad it was Russell who asked the obvious. Like you do when part of a person almost lands in your lap.
Fraser leaned to him. ‘It’s a fucking skull, man,’ he hissed. ‘Somebody’s head. Oh, I forgot! You’re a geophysicist!’
‘Where was it?’ Maxwell wanted to know, looking at the thing from various angles.
‘On my bed. The police are on the way.’
‘Alas, poor Yorick…Douglas, get the professor a drink, will you?’ Maxwell asked. ‘And perhaps a Babycham for the old girl with the knitting needles. Here…’ and he reached into his pocket.
‘No, it’s fine,’ the geophysicist said and hovered briefly at Fraser’s elbow, before scuttling back to the bar, glad to be away from the man for a while.