The Deepest Grave: Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller Series Book 6 (Fiona Griffiths 6)

by Harry Bingham

  Is that exciting? I don’t know. Maybe for Jill, but definitely not for me. Not for Ed either, I wouldn’t think, but maybe when you get this close to someone, you have to merge your values a little.

  Anyway. I say what I think are the right things and Ed says things back and asks about my case and I tell him about severed heads and kitchen knives and Iron Age hill forts refortified against the barbarian tide.

  I tell him, ‘You’re English. An Anglo–Saxon. If I were a Dark Age Briton, I’d probably want to lop your head off. Sorry and all that, but that’s just the way it is.’

  Ed nods gravely and gets Welsh goats’ cheese and a cold pear from his fridge and we eat both things and watch a bit of TV, then Ed yawns, and I take the hint, and stand at his door saying sorry, again, for messing up this evening, and he says, again, not to worry and closes his door.

  I drive home. In my dreams that night, Gaynor Charteris and I keep looking at the neatly incised soft tissue at the front of her neck and saying, ‘A kitchen knife! They used a kitchen knife!’

  7

  The next morning. Pick up Katie, from a student-share house on Cathay’s Terrace. She doesn’t seem weird today. No foot-draggy thing. No ski stick. No pointless snippiness.

  I start driving.

  Katie fiddles with her phone and says, ‘In current traffic, we’d probably better head out east. The best route goes via Shrewsbury. Or, actually, it’s probably fastest up the M5/M6. Just hammer up the motorway, then the M56 to Chester and on from there.’

  I don’t say anything. Drive north.

  When Katie figures out that I’m not driving east, she says, ‘This isn’t right.’

  ‘Katie. I’m Welsh. We’re driving from the capital of Wales to what is, effectively, the capital of north Wales. You hairy-arsed barbarians might think it’s fun to go driving through your Anglo–Saxon lowlands full of our plundered villages and stolen cattle just because your roads are a bit faster, but I’m going to follow a route that stays in my own country and I don’t give a damn if it takes a little longer.’

  Katie laughs and shrugs.

  After a bit, she says, ‘Slave.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Slave or foreigner, but I prefer slave.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You say you’re Welsh, but Welsh is an English word, deriving from the Anglo–Saxon wealas, which means slave or foreigner. So if I’m a barbarian, you’re a slave.’ She glances at me to see if she’s annoyed me enough, then adds, contentedly, ‘And your cattle tasted really nice.’

  I don’t have a genius answer to that, so we just drive up into the hills that once stopped the hairy-arses from driving my people into the sea, and the beauty calms us, and Katie fiddles around until she’s got her phone plugged into the car music system and has it playing stuff much cooler than anything I ever listen to.

  We chat.

  She tells me about herself. Home Counties parents. Girls’ private school, then Oxford. Two brothers doing boring jobs in the City. She had no interest in any of that, her passion for archaeology shining bright and clear.

  ‘And after your Ph.D.? You’ll become an academic, is that the plan?’

  ‘The plan, slave? Yes, that’s the plan.’

  I don’t know why that question gets a snippy response, but I don’t care.

  We drive – slowly – through our green hills until even Katie’s eccentric temper is softened by the drive.

  We get to Bangor.

  The cathedral, the library, Aled Owen.

  He takes us to the site of the break-in. There’s some security, yes, but cathedral quality only, which means a thick oak door with an elderly, and now broken, lock.

  I inspect the cupboard from which the papers were taken. An ordinary wooden cupboard. Bare pine shelving, whitened with age. Papers sitting in stacks above little handwritten labels, denominating the diocese’s various parishes. Saint Afran, Saint Beuno, Saint Cwfan, Saint Cybi, Saint Edern, Saint Iestyn, Saint Illtyd and so on.

  Tydecho, the poor brute, occupied a fair chunk on the lowest shelf, and it was the bottom one, plus most of the one above it that got stripped.

  I say, ‘How much paper was there here? How high were the piles?’

  Owen blathers.

  I only half-listen, but it seems that Tydecho’s piles would, together, have amounted to perhaps three or four feet high in total. The other piles were all lower and often much lower. Tydecho had so much, just because the church was old and remote. The various disasters which swept so regularly over Bangor’s stony walls never really bothered the good citizens of Llanymawddwy, so it just stood there and accumulated documents as thrones tumbled and centuries passed.

  ‘How often is this room used?’ I ask. ‘How often is someone physically present?’

  That’s not a yes/no question, so Owen’s answer starts to bore me before the end of his first sentence, but it’s as you’d expect. Papers are stuffed in here to get them out of the way. Almost no one ever looks at them.

  I inspect the shelves closely. On hands and knees.

  ‘When you reported the theft, did the police dust for prints?’

  ‘Prints?’

  ‘Fingerprints, fingerprints, fingerprints. Did the police dust for prints?’

  Owen, looking scared, does his good-boy voice again. ‘No. Not that I know. And I would, yes, yes, I would have known.’ He pauses. Realises that wasn’t a one word answer and adds – low, humble voice – ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Are these shelves cleaned? On the inside, I mean. Does a cleaner clean the interior of these shelves?’

  Owen doesn’t know and doesn’t know how to express his not knowing in a way that won’t make me bite, but I sniff the shelves up close. Nose touching the bare wood. There’s some fake honey-wax scent there and an undernote of bleach.

  ‘Before the break-in. Was that outer door normally locked? During an ordinary working day, I mean.’

  ‘No. It was locked at the end of the day, then opened again when people came in in the morning. The thieves came overnight.’

  The window looks out on to a little courtyard. A young curate is talking to a middle-aged woman on a bike. An electrician leans against his van, phone to his ear.

  There are some modest attempts at security that I can see – a burglar alarm, a camera – and I go to talk to whoever looks after those things. Katie stays behind, fiddling with her phone.

  I get nothing useful.

  We leave. Eat sandwiches.

  Katie asks, ‘Why did you want to know about cleaning?’

  ‘DNA. Cleaning products will destroy any traces. Especially bleach.’

  ‘So. No clues?’

  I find a bit of roasted aubergine in my sandwich and eat it with my fingers.

  Katie may know a lot about archaeology, but she knows bugger all about detective work. Who would break in to that apology for a library, when you could just walk right in? No lock, no staff, no valuables, no security.

  ‘Clues don’t always look like clues,’ I tell her.

  We take the coast road to Llanymawddwy.

  8

  Caernarfon.

  Porthmadog.

  Dolgellau.

  Katie uses her phone to give me her version of a briefing on Saint Tydecho.

  ‘Formerly one of the most venerated saints in Britain. Humph, don’t know if that’s true. Strongly associated with his Mawddwy heartland. However the hell you pronounce that. Sixth-century saint, yes. A tough cookie too. Said to have been present at the battle of Camlan . . . blah . . . Lots of stuff about holy maidens, sacred wells, giant oxen, mountain fairies, some dodgy links to King Arthur, healing statues.’ She looks up from the screen. ‘Do you actually know what we’re looking for?’

  ‘No.’

  Welsh hills, slow roads.

  The purple-rust colour of dead bracken and cropped bilberry bushes. Frost-whitened grass. Grey rock and falling water.

  Katie finds a number for the vicar of Llanymawddwy, George Bowen. Asks hi
m to meet us at the church. He says yes.

  We arrive after six on a rain-sodden evening. In the west, rainclouds and gleams of silver. A low grey church. A churchyard shaggy with grass.

  In the church itself, a light is on.

  I say, ‘Bowen’s here, is he?’

  Katie: ‘No, ten minutes, he says.’

  A tarmac path leads to the church’s main door, but there’s a line of footprints in the long grass round the side. Stems bent. Their beads of silvery rain trodden into the deep green-brown of the root.

  People are allowed in churchyards, of course. And though this would be an odd time to lay flowers on a grave, people sometimes choose odd things. Or perhaps there’s a shortcut through to something at the back. Or—

  We walk round the side of the church, following the footsteps.

  The trail leads up to the vestry door, which has been forced open, wood splintered at the lock.

  I see it before Katie does. Halt her with a hand on her arm. Silently gesture her back.

  We move rapidly to the mouth of the churchyard.

  I make a call. North Wales Police, using the 999 operator.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Fiona Griffiths from South Wales. Requesting an Armed Response Unit immediately to the church at Llanymawddwy.’

  The operator maintains her professionalism, but a note of surprise creeps in anyway.

  ‘Confirm, you want an ARU?’

  ‘Yes. Suspects may be armed and very dangerous.’

  ‘ARU requested for you.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘To Llanymawddwy? We’ll do what we can.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘Hold please.’

  I hold.

  A mountain breeze blows. Some rain falls. Clouds move and change shape.

  Then: ‘We’ve got nothing in Dolgellau, sorry. We’re looking at forty minutes, minimum, from Oswestry.’

  ‘Forty minutes?’

  ‘Minimum.’

  ‘Well, make sure they’ve got their clown noses on and their squirty bow-ties. I mean, we wouldn’t want to scare any fucking criminals, would we?’

  ‘Sergeant, we don’t have units any closer. Do you want to cancel the ARU?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We can get regular uniformed officers to you in maybe fifteen, twenty minutes.’

  ‘Please, yes.’

  Another short hold, then: ‘Two patrol cars en route. Do you require other services?’

  She means fire or ambulance.

  ‘No.’

  She takes some more details and I ring off.

  As all this is happening, a dirty Land Rover has pulled up in the lane beyond. From it: George Bowen. Dirty jeans. Boots. A waxed coat, worn open. A thick woollen jumper, that you’d call green, in theory, except really you can’t describe it except by calling it the colour of moss and wood bark and lichen and old gates and Welsh valleys and damp springs. A clerical collar mounted in a black shirt peeps, just about, from the top.

  Fifty-something, perhaps. Stocky. That Welsh build that runs to girth more than height. Grey-haired, but sparkling eyed.

  He bounces up to us, checks his hands and wipes them a couple of times on the wet grass before delivering a bone-crunching handshake.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘You caught me lambing. I’m sometimes smarter than this. At least, that’s what I tell my bishop.’

  I interrupt. Tell him about the break-in.

  ‘A break-in? There’s nothing to take.’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’

  The churchyard gate has a few steps leading up and a stone entrance arch too narrow to admit a vehicle.

  I say, checking my memory, ‘The vestry door. It opens outwards, yes?’

  ‘Um, let me think,’ says Bowen, as his arms remember the motion. ‘Yes. Yes, it does.’

  ‘Is there any way to get a vehicle into the churchyard?

  ‘Round the back, there’s a hedge that’s not so amazing. You could probably just go through it.’

  ‘Good.’

  My Alfa Romeo isn’t going to love anything involving Welsh fields in March, but Bowen’s Land Rover won’t give a damn.

  I gesture at it and say, ‘Do you mind? Katie, please get back in my car and do nothing.’

  She stays where she is and says, ‘It’s OK,’ like I was inviting her to shelter from the weather.

  ‘It’s not fucking OK, Katie. I am a police officer and my first duty involves the protection of civilians. Get into that car, with the lights off, and do nothing.’

  She rolls her eyes at me, but does as I ask.

  Bowen fires up the Land Rover. Drives round the back: not the fastest process, because we have to fiddle with a couple of gates that want to stay glued up with mud and bailing twine.

  When he gets us to the bit of hedge that he was talking about – some thin hawthorn saplings protected by a poor bit of wire fencing – I say, ‘OK. I’ll take it from here.’

  ‘Gears are a bit cranky. I don’t mind driving.’

  ‘If I get hurt, I’m doing my duty. If you do, I’ve messed up.’

  He gets out. I slide over into the driver’s seat.

  I go at the hedge with a bit of speed and it’s not man enough to stop me. I can feel a tangle of wire dragging on something beneath the car, but it’s not my car and I don’t care.

  I drive in low gear over the hummocky churchyard, trying to miss the graves. At some point, there’s a hideous metallic twang and jolt, but the drag of wire is no longer present.

  Still don’t care.

  Roll up to the vestry door.

  Ram it shut.

  In the split-second before impact, the door moves as though to open. That could be the wind, but I don’t think so. I think whoever’s inside heard the sound of my motor and wanted to know what was happening. There’s the smallest of small chances that I managed to trap or disable the arm of whoever was opening the door, but I somehow doubt it.

  I slide down beneath the dashboard in case any bullets come blasting through the door, but no bullets, no spatter.

  Feeling a bit foolish, I get out of the car. Bowen, tramping over the wet grass, comes to join me.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘We wait. See if the intruders can get out faster than we can get reinforcements.’

  We stand at the church’s west end. Bowen looks down the north wall, while I keep an eye on the south.

  Nothing happens on my side. Then, after a minute or two, the sound of breaking glass summons me over to Bowen’s. A window has been punched through. Someone is beating out the jags of remaining glass with a leather-gloved hand.

  I say to Bowen, ‘Your voice is stronger than mine. Can you yell “Police”? Tell them the building is surrounded and they’re to remain where they are.’

  Bowen does so in the kind of bellow that could carry over two hills in the blast of a westerly gale.

  Whoever’s inside takes no notice.

  Bowen’s look is thunderclouds cut about with lightning.

  ‘Technically,’ he says, ‘that’s my bloody window.’

  A metal ladder lies alongside the church wall. Staying low, Bowen goes to get it.

  From the broken window, a man’s head emerges. Bowen brings the ladder hard down over his shoulders, a good old bash that yields a dull metallic clang.

  The man swears, disappears, then the snout of a shotgun emerges, and Bowen comes back towards me a lot faster than he left. We shelter behind the slab of a tombstone.

  ‘What now?’

  I shake my head.

  Nothing.

  Shotgun versus shouting: shotgun wins. They teach you that in the police.

  Two men climb out of the window. One gun between the two of them. Dark jeans. Dark coats. Their faces are uncovered, though they keep their hands up to their faces. One of them wears a small black rucksack. Aside from very short, darkish hair, approximately medium build and height, I can’t really tell anything useful.

  The two men look uncertai
n of their next move.

  Bowen, idiot man, leaps up and roars, ‘Get the hell away from my church. And drop the damn gun while you’re at it.’

  He tugs the front of his jumper down and juts his chin up to make his dog-collar more visible.

  The shotgun swivels again, towards us, towards Bowen. He freezes a moment, but doesn’t move.

  The gun fires, but it’s a warning shot, nothing more. A blast over his head and into the night.

  The two men run in the opposite direction. Towards the broken hedge, the fields and hills beyond. Bowen still doesn’t move and I stand up next to him.

  ‘That was stupid,’ I say, but in a way that says I’m pleased he did it anyway.

  He shrugs. ‘Better them in the hills than waving that damn thing in the village.’ He grins at me, white teeth in the gloom. ‘Anyway, no one shoots a vicar. It’s one of the rules.’

  I call the Emergency Control Centre again. Update them.

  Bowen gets Katie and unlocks the church.

  By this time: some actual police cars arrive – with lights and everything. Another ten minutes and we have some armed policemen, stabbing torchbeams into the dark and hoping beyond hope they get a chance to play with their toys.

  I do what I have to do, but all this activity comes too little, too late. In the absence of some real fluke, the men are gone.

  I enter the church.

  It’s small and cold, the chills of winter preserved in thick stone walls. Even with the lights on, the place is dim, clerical.

  Katie is up by the altar, somehow suiting this setting better than either Bowen or me. She flashes an unreadable look down the nave. Bowen calls attention to a smear of blood on the broken window and I get one of the uniforms to call in forensics.

  Which leaves the question of what the hell the men were doing here in the first place.

  The church seems tidy enough, but also empty. There’s just not much here.

  ‘Anything missing?’ I ask Bowen.

  ‘Not that I can see, no. Church doesn’t get much use now.’

  Behind a curtain at the back, we find a clutter of empty vases and flower arranging stuff. An elderly Christmas crib collection that looks like it would frighten more children than it would entertain.