We get ready for bed.
Katie has a tattoo down the inside of her left arm. In squirly writing, it reads, ‘YOLO,’ and then, in a very slightly different ink and style, ‘If you’re lucky.’
I say, ‘YOLO?’
Katie: ‘You Only Live Once.’
I nod. It wasn’t quite like that for me, as it happens, but I’m not going to quarrel.
We head peaceably for sleep in a bed that is easily big enough for the pair of us: the tall, skinny and crabby Katie, the short, skinny and ornery me.
Once in the night, I think, I hear Katie crying softly into her arm. She doesn’t know that I’m awake and doesn’t seem likely to want my help, so I say and do nothing.
Tomorrow is another day.
10
The next day.
We wake early, rise early. An hour later, I’m on the road again with Katie, porridged up and in a good mood.
Llanbrynmair.
Caersws.
Llandrindod Wells.
Green hills slide past us, a grassy lullaby.
My route is a slightly circuitous route, avoiding Rhayader, for no good reason except that I have some uncomfortable associations with that area.
As we squeeze down Llandrindod High Street, with its weirdly out-of-time collection of Victorian hotels and places of entertainment, I ask about something that’s been puzzling me.
‘When you told me about the Romans leaving Britain, you said that the native British were afraid of attacks from the Picts and the Scots. The northern barbarians, basically.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But that’s not where the problems actually came from, was it? I mean, it was your lot we should have been afraid of.’
Her lot: the Angles, Jutes and Saxons. A group that has come to be called ‘English’ in her language. A group that’s still called ‘Saxon’ in mine.
Katie laughs. ‘You don’t know? You don’t know the story?’ Then, seeing my headshake, continues, ‘You Celtic–British were afraid of the Picts and the Scots. So one of your kings, a guy called Vortigern, decides to take action. He looks around Europe for the hairiest, scariest soldiers available and invited a bunch of them – a bunch of us, I should say – over to help. Mercenaries.’
‘Ah, and let me guess. That idea didn’t turn out so well.’
‘Not so brilliantly, no. The Anglo–Saxon fighters looked around, decided they liked this new country and would rather like to have it.’
‘Which is exactly what happened?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Arthur, assuming that he existed . . .?’
‘Led the Celtic–British against the Anglo–Saxon invaders. He probably wasn’t a crowned king, in fact. Something more like a commander-in-chief . . .’
She trails off, like she’s just been bitten by the Thought Wasp.
I keep the car moving. Escape Llandod’s sticky traffic and pick up speed again on the road south.
‘Katie . . .?’
‘Do you have your iPad here? The one with our finds on it?’
I say yes. Where to find it.
She rummages. Finds it. Pulls up the relevant material.
I drive.
Caravans and cottages.
Roads dark with the wash of recent rain.
Wipers on, when passing lorries kick up spray.
Then Katie says, ‘Holy fuck.’
Says, ‘Can you stop the car?’
Says, ‘There’s something you need to see.’
I stop.
Pull over onto a bit of verge that isn’t quite wide enough for us, so we’re sticking out into the main carriageway. I put on my hazard lights, but an approaching horse-transport honks me anyway.
Katie says, ‘Are we OK here?’
I wave my hands. Like I care.
Katie does a little double-take, then decides she doesn’t care either. She shows me the iPad. Shows me, specifically, the photo of the little seal-box lid, that thing that might be worth £150 if attached to a whole box in good condition but which, as it is, is little more than ancient junk.
Katie says, ‘What do you see?’
‘Um, I don’t know. We thought a bear probably. A wolf maybe, but it’s more bear-like, isn’t it?’
‘I think it’s a bear, yes. And over its head? Those marks . . .?’
Marks that look like scratches. Marks that are scratches, but is it possible that the scratches conceal some piece of the original artwork?
I look more closely. The photo isn’t brilliant. These pictures were only ever taken on phones for easy upload to the project website. The proper analysis and cataloguing hadn’t yet begun.
Above the bear’s head, there’s a kind of horizontal groove and then some deep vertical slashes. I cast my mind back to what Katie was saying just a moment before the Thought Wasp got her.
He probably wasn’t a crowned king, in fact.
I say, ‘You think this bear is wearing a crown? Yes, you could be right. Now that you say it, I think you’re right.’
Katie says in a hollow voice – hollow, shocked, aghast – ‘The Bear King. Maybe that’s what we found. The seal box of the Bear King.’
I shake my head. A help-me-out-here kind of shake.
‘The Bear King. In your language, slave, the language as it was in post-Roman Britain, that would have been Arto-rı¯g-ios. Arto, bear. Rı¯g, king. It’s thought that the name Arthur derived from that root.’
I say, slowly catching up, ‘You found Arthur’s seal box? That’s what it was? The lid to his seal box?’
‘And somebody stole it. Killed Gaynor and stole her find. And she never even knew. She never even fucking knew.’
We feel, both feel, the press of something dark and old. Like those ancient Dark Age conflicts have come to life. Are, once again, stalking these damp valleys, leaving bloody footprints behind.
I say, quietly, ‘But Arthur never existed, you said. You bracketed him with Snow White and the Tooth Fairy.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘But?’
‘Look, most people who go on about Arthur are cranks. I’m not talking about George, just . . . there isn’t enough hard historical fact to go on, so people who say Arthur did definitely exist are basically willing themselves into it.’
‘But, you’re saying, Arthur could have existed?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Could have, maybe did?’
‘Look, think of this courtroom-style. Can you prove his existence beyond reasonable doubt? Answer: no way. But on a balance of probabilities? Is there a reasonable possibility?’
She tails off, not answering her own question. Perhaps she’s remembering her over-combative tone last night.
I say, ‘Katie?’
She says, whispering, ‘It’s perfectly possible. People like George would say actually probable. The best explanation we’ve got. And look, we just don’t know much about this era. Truth is, we don’t actually know much about major figures, even centuries later. Alfred the Great, for instance. I mean, he certainly existed and we know some of what he got up to. But beyond that?’ She shrugs. ‘We just don’t know much. That’s not weird. It’s history.’
‘So King Arthur could have existed and could have left seal boxes kicking around the fort at Dinas Powys?’
‘Yes. He probably wasn’t a real king, but yes.’
‘And, just possibly, the person who found the first hard evidence of Arthur’s existence was beheaded with her own sword?’
Katie doesn’t answer but the light of fear and wonder shines in her eyes.
We drive to Cardiff, pursued by Arthur.
11
Work hard.
Collect fragments.
Data that starts to drift in, like those flakes of burned paper that come floating down from a bonfire.
The blood we retrieved from Saint Tydecho’s: it was easy enough to retrieve the DNA, but there’s no match on the system. No easy wins.
Photo analysis of that seal box:
good news. Our analysts think they’re able to divide the image into ‘original artwork’ and ‘later scratching’. It’s not a perfect job by any means, and these things only ever give you a sense of the probabilities, but when we look at the image with the ‘original artwork’ only, it’s clear what we have. A bear with a crown.
Arto-rı¯g-ios.
Arthur.
That doesn’t prove that Charteris and her team found the seal box of King Arthur. It doesn’t even prove she found the seal box belonging to some other person called Arthur. Back then, bears and crowns could have all sorts of other meanings now lost to us.
All the same: Camlan, Tydecho, the crowned bear, that bit of broken cross. A chain of lamps is beginning to light up.
Fragments starting to form a picture.
And one more thing: that vellum. A lab in Oxford has dated the dead sheep in question to some time in the ninth century. That’s not as old as those finds at Dinas Powys, but it certainly confirms that Saint Tydecho was once home to some very old material indeed. Whatever the thieves escaped with could have been even older again.
I remember, too, Bowen’s comments about the oral tradition in areas like Mawddwy. Is it not possible that a collection of ninth-century documents could have recorded oral traditions that stretched much further back? Perhaps not merely possible, but likely?
I don’t know.
I’m still trying to make sense of all this, when Jones calls another case review. No Jackson this time. This one is Jones’s gig all the way.
I get ready.
Ready in a Jonesian sense.
Ready with bullet points and executive summaries and – God help me – Powerpoint slides.
I carefully mangle my English too. I concoct excrescences like: ‘Reshape current tasking procedure to introduce specific skillsets (e.g. archaeology, antiquities) into overall case management.’
I download and include in my pack as many pointless, pointless, pointless, stupid, stupid, stupid charts and maps and diagrams as I can. Charts that plot the acquisition, theft and sale of antiquities from across the world. A trade that is reckoned to be worth some six billion dollars globally. A trade that, in the Olympics of global crime, stands in bronze medal position, bested only by the superpowers of arms smuggling and drugs.
And pattering behind in the wake of all that money, all a-skitter in that dollar-tossed breeze, walks violence, bloodshed and murder.
Murder in Syria. Murder in Iraq. Murders aplenty in the badlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In China and India too, no site too holy or too old to be exploited, robbed or pilfered.
At ten o’clock sharp, we gather. Six of us, plus Jones.
Jones sits formally at the head of our conference-room table. Back straight. Tie knotted into a fatly silked triangle. He has four piles of paper in front of him. Neatly rectilinear, both the piles and their spacing. Also: I suspect the honourable Bleddyn Jones of being a man who likes to make sure that his nails are manicured. They have a palely even gleam I do not love.
He does his stuff.
Bloody Bleddyn, he blithers and blathers.
The blundering Bleddyn, he blubbers and blusters.
That blabbering Bleddyn, he blurts and he blares.
Billows of bullet points –
‘Fiona?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Fiona!’
‘Sir?’
‘You’re paying attention, are you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’re not taking notes.’
I look around the table. My five co-meetingees have all been writing busily. Their pads all contain at least two or three pages of blue-inked writing. My pad, a very nice feint-ruled yellow pad with pleasingly perforated tear-off sheets, has nothing on it except a little red doodle of a flower-head, which was there before I came into the room.
‘I find it’s more important to get the major issues straight up here,’ I say, pointing to my head. ‘I can always fill my notes out afterwards.’
I think Jones would have a go at most subordinates telling him that, but I am somewhat protected by an office reputation which credits me with an almost freakishly good memory. Jones, however, isn’t done.
He narrows his eyes in that nasty chemistry-teacher way and says, ‘So you could give me a quick summary of what we’ve just been talking about?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He widens his mouth in what is meant to be a be-my-guest sort of smile, except that smiles are meant to be nice things, all peach trees and sunflowers, and this rictus of his looks more like a beast of prey debating whether to start with a leg or a liver.
I smile back. Put as many peaches and sunflowers in there as I can manage.
‘So . . .’ he says, which is definitely not a sentence.
I say – still peachily – ‘Sir?’
So, Fiona, please give me a quick summary of what we’ve just been talking about.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see. OK, um . . .’
I screw up my eyes in a trying-to-get-my-memory-straight sort of way. Beside me, Jon Breakell, an ally, has tilted his pad towards me. He’s tapping his pen on the bit I need to read.
That’s helpful, certainly, but the truth is that I wasn’t entirely successful in blocking Jones’s discourse anyway. There’s a sort of painful throb in my head which I’d been trying to avoid but if I approach that throb, I find that it’s stored much of what Jones was yabbering on about anyway. Between Jon’s helpful tapping and my own sort-of recollection, I give enough of an answer to Jones that he’s either satisfied or (more likely) doesn’t have sufficient grounds to bleat publicly about his irritation.
On we go.
Blurt. Blabber. Blare.
I do take one or two notes now, but mostly extend my red flower into a whole garden of red flowers. Bulbs mostly. Crocuses and daffodils and the elegantly sexy tulips which are just starting to nose up above the ground in Bute Park.
We cover forensics.
Local angles.
Traffic mapping analysis.
Jones talks us through a psychological profile of the murderer which states that ‘the perpetrator should almost certainly be regarded as highly disturbed,’ and makes me think, We paid money for that advice. We actually paid money.
Then it’s my turn.
Jones says, ‘Fiona. So. You’re going to update us on . . . the “historical” angle.’
His tone and his look throws as many inverted commas round the word ‘historical’ as it can bear before outright collapse.
‘Yes, sir.’
I do my stuff.
Start out by summarising the scale of the trade in stolen art and antiquities. ‘It’s a multi-billion-pound industry,’ I say, ‘yet there are only about two or three specialist officers in the whole of the UK. Only perhaps five or ten per cent of stolen art or artefacts are ever recovered, and a lot of specialists put the proportion very much lower than that. The internet has made it easier than ever to connect buyers and sellers.’
Jones: ‘You’re saying that Charteris may have found an artefact of real value? This seal box thing?’
‘Um, yes and no.’
Jones: ‘What does that mean? You’re saying that seal box belonged to Arthur?’
‘No. Not that it did. That it could have done.’
‘It “could have done”? Seriously?’
‘Yes. Look. There’s a massive question mark there, obviously, but is it possible? Yes.’
‘So Arthur existed? You are saying that?’
I shake my head. ‘That’s just not known. It’s uncertain. But there are senior historians who’d say, yes, balance of probabilities and all that, but Arthur probably existed. Gaynor Charteris, for one, would have said he most likely did.’
And the stone cross. And Tydecho. And Camlann. And the seal box. And a Dark Age British nobleman sitting amidst the ramparts of Dinas Powys and thinking about the world that was lost.
Jones has no real idea how to pursue this line of questioning. For once
, I can’t blame him.
So he tries, ‘So let’s say your man Arthur existed. And let’s say this is his seal box . . .?’
I shake my head.
I have no answers.
I say, ‘Look, if we could be sure that this seal box actually belonged to Arthur, then of course it would be valuable. Maybe insanely valuable. But . . .’ I shrug, and here’s the rub. The hard knot of difficulty that lies at the heart of this puzzle.
‘Fiona?’
‘But without a secure provenance, who’s going to pay for the damn thing? I mean, who would pay, I don’t know, even fifty grand for something that might well prove to be a piece of junk?’
And that’s not even the end of the problems. If you wanted to steal the damn thing, then just steal it. Why kill Gaynor Charteris? And why kill her like that?
Jones: ‘So you’re saying this seal box has no value?’
‘Correct. Not unless someone has a way to prove provenance. A way that isn’t known to us.’
‘And how could anyone prove provenance? I mean, you think that somewhere there’s a document that says, “King Arthur’s seal box is lying on a hillside above Dinas Powys.”?’
‘No. No, I don’t think that.’
‘So you think this “historical angle” can be safely discarded?’
I gape.
No.
No, that is not even remotely what I’m saying.
I say, ‘Sorry, sir. The opposite. We followed a trail from Dinas Powys to a churchyard in north Wales. When we got to that church, we found an armed robbery in progress. A robbery which, almost certainly, had ancient documents at its heart.’
‘So, in your view, the motive for Charteris’s murder?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Likely perpetrators?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Actionable next steps?’
‘Don’t know. Probably wait. Probably . . .’
And I realise, I’m speaking lies. I think I do know what’s going on here. There are still lots of murky areas, yes. Some huge don’t-knows. But these are early stages, and I do, I’m sure, see the thread that connects this whole thing up. You have to look at it all backwards to see it, and I am troubled with a boss who has difficulty even finding the forward view.
The Deepest Grave: Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller Series Book 6 (Fiona Griffiths 6) Page 8