It’s still sunny.
I should spend more time outside, really. I like it when I do, but I always forget and spend too long in the office.
I get a text from Jones, but it looks boring and I don’t read it.
And then – I’m surprised it took this long – a message from Mordred.
‘We have your sister and Katie Smith. Please destroy your sword and remove your sale listing. We will return the girls seven days after the sale of our sword is complete.’
Girls?
Both women are in their twenties. I don’t mind using the term ‘girl’ myself in some contexts, but somehow it seems disrespectful to use it here.
I email back. ‘You can stick your broadsword up your arse, you piss-stained cockwomble.’
Hit send.
That might or might not have been a clever thing to do, but I don’t seem to regret doing it, so it’s probably OK.
I call Dad.
Ask if he fancies a trip. ‘To go and get Kay,’ I say. ‘Her and my friend, Katie.’
‘You know where they are?’
‘Not yet.’
I tell him he might want to come prepared.
A tiny double-take, then, ‘OK, love. See you soon.’
I call Jones.
He says some things. I wait until his mouth has stopped yabbering, then say, ‘Kay has been abducted. I’ve had confirmation from Mordred.’
Jones says stuff. I don’t know what.
I say, ‘Ivor Williams and his tunnel buddies. You should arrest them as soon as you find them.’
Jones talks about not escalating the situation. Prioritising the safety of the two ‘young women’. He said that, ‘young women’, not girls.
I say, ‘Fuck Mordred. Just fuck him. If he wants to put pressure on us, we’ll just put pressure on him.’
Jones says more things, some of which have to do with me returning to Cardiff. Something about doing my job.
I say, ‘You know that thing Jackson said? Early on. The thing about giving me my head. Some freedom of action.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I think now would be a good time. The whole freedom of action thing.’
He says OK. And, timidly, ‘What exactly are you planning?’
Another one of those perplexing questions. What could he possibly think I’m planning?
Patiently, as though speaking to a six-year-old, I say, ‘Free Katie. Free Kay. Arrest Yvain. Arrest Mordred. Arrest Mr Moneybags. Send those three to jail for a very long time.’
I want to ask, ‘What are you planning?’
If he’s not thinking along the same lines, then we really, really, really have some issues. But I think he’s OK with all that. Maybe he was just checking. Or perhaps there’s a police manual somewhere which says you have to ask three stupid questions an hour and he was running short of quota.
Anyway. He says fine. Wishes me luck.
Sometimes, under that beard and behind those bullet-points, there’s quite a nice man, perhaps.
I ring off. Stand up.
I feel a bit light-headed. Too much ganja maybe.
That thing about woods and forests, I remember it now. A forest is an old royal hunting ground. It doesn’t even need trees necessarily: if you had a royal hunting ground without trees, it was still a forest. But because of that whole royal thing, forests were generally big, so the way it tends to work these days is big equals forest, small equals wood.
I notice that the beech trees have very smooth trunks. Leaves spread like a cathedral roof. The light is golden blue. There are no spiders, or none that I can see. My legs feel tingly, almost pins-and-needlesy.
I walk unsteadily to my car.
Open the back door. There, on its bed of felt, is my sword. Caledfwlch. The hard-cleaver.
It burns in this Chiltern sunshine. It is the hardest, sharpest, strongest sword in history.
I nestle it in the front passenger seat, so I can see it as I drive. Drink some water. Start the engine. Head west.
They shouldn’t have taken Katie.
And they shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t have taken my sister.
47
Home.
Collect my gun. Collect my dad.
He does his bear-huggy ‘Fi, love’ thing, but not for long. He has a small black bag with him that chinks metallically.
Uncle Em stands just inside the front door. Doesn’t come out. Doesn’t say more than the most cursory hellos. But he’s wearing a leather jacket inside a warm house on a warm day. I think the occupants of that house have as much protection as they need.
And, in truth, I think Mordred is done with the abduction game. More hostages would add to his logistical challenges without adding particularly to his bargaining position.
We go.
Dad’s car, with him driving.
‘Where we going?’ he asks, reasonably.
‘North, I think.’
He waits to see if I’m going to say more, but it turns out I’m not.
He’s seen Caledfwlch, though. Transferred it carefully to the back seat of his Range Rover.
‘Nice sword,’ he says.
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’
Because the Excalibur theft is still all over the newspapers, he wants to ask about it. Wants to know if this sword is the one stolen from Liddington Castle.
I don’t answer that directly. Just say, ‘It’s Caledfwlch. “Excalibur” is only a stupid made-up name anyway.’
He says, ‘Caledfwlch,’ a few times. Rolls it in his mouth, gets used to the sound.
My dad, it occurs to me, is not a bad model for Arthur.
Big. Welsh. Combative. A natural leader.
And that rare thing: a man who is genuinely untroubled by violence, but who doesn’t need to seek it out for its own sake. Someone for whom violence exists as an option on a list of tactics, but who will make his selection unswayed by either anger or fear.
I think my Caledfwlch might be a bit small for Dad, though. Maybe we should have made it bigger.
I sort through my messages.
One from Matteo: yes, there have been some recent French users of the lab. He sends some links. Links to university sites, Université de Genève, Université de Paris, that sort of thing. Pages that show specific academics and their research interests.
Not Yvain, none of them.
I speak to Delyth Rowland, Aled Owen’s contact at the university of Bangor. Ask about visiting French codicologists.
And ker-ching!
Ask for a photo.
Ker-ching!
Yvain.
Real name, Yves de Boissieu. A researcher at the Université de Nantes, doing a guest scholar thing up at Bangor. The guy is a codicologist and palaeographer. A guy who knows about ancient manuscripts and inks and handwriting. A guy more than capable of forging a vellum palimpsest.
I get an email from Aled Owen too.
Yes, de Boissieu visited the Bangor cathedral library the day that Katie and I were there. Katie and I were together almost all the time, but not quite. I went off to see a guy about CCTV stuff. She didn’t come.
That allowed time enough for de Boissieu to have seen her. And perhaps she never saw him. Or saw him and forgot him. Or just had her brain too full of motor neurone disease and Gaynor Charteris to log these things in the normal way.
Anyway. De Boissieu remembered her. And his role here makes sense. He’s the missing link in our list of experts.
Ivor Williams – the tunnel guy.
Gheerbrant – the weapons guy.
De Boissieu – the manuscript guy.
Mordred and Moneybags, the two people who put the whole thing together, kept it tight.
That’s the whole group right there, or all the important parts of it anyway.
I get a home address for M. Yves de Boissieu. The university is pissy about giving it out, but I do my police schtick, get them to call Cathays to check on my credentials, and it’s not long before they bow before the power
and might of the Warrant Card.
We’re up by Merthyr now. Dad glances over to see if I know where we’re going yet.
I say, ‘Rhyd Ddu, in the hills above Bangor. But there’s someone we’ve got to pick up on the way.’
‘Right you are, love.’
Dad drives a silver Range Rover, the car Arthur would have chosen.
It hums as it drives, transfiguring the tarmac beneath its wheels into something finer, silvered, noble.
A wash of rain. Sunlight on a hill. Our slow-paced Welsh roads.
I get an email from Mordred. Slower than I was expecting, but the guy hasn’t had much sleep.
He tells me to delete the listing for my sword, ‘Or we will have to start getting nasty with the girls.’
That word again.
Pisshead.
I suspend the listing. Tell him I’ve done so.
‘Saxon fucker,’ I say, out loud.
Dad looks at me sideways.
I say, ‘Well, he is.’
Brecon.
Builth.
Rhayader.
I say, ‘I don’t like Rhayader.’
‘Why not? It’s all right.’ Dad starts telling me about a friend of his who has a pub there.
Get a text from Mike Atkins. ‘Possible sighting of Mordred/Yvain on Chester CCTV. Chasing up. Looks good.’
I don’t reply.
Llangurig.
Llanidloes.
We drove up this way once, all together. Me, Dad, Kay.
Kay had some idea she wanted to climb Cader Idris. Part of some distinctly temporary outdoorsy phase. Mam stayed at home with Ant, who must have been eight or nine at the time. And we had a nice day of it. Even the most ordinary day out with Dad always had the glitter of adventure. That sense of never quite knowing what might happen next.
We climbed the mountain. Got tired. Got lost in cloud and rain as we descended, and ended up in the wrong valley. We begged help from a local farmer, who put the three of us in the back of his pick-up together with a sick ewe and a bail of hay and drove us round to wherever we’d left the car.
Kay had been frightened by the whole thing and fell asleep against me as we drove home, her wet hair steaming itself dry on my shoulder.
I think of that now. Her hair gently steaming.
They should not have taken my sister. That’s not forgivable and I don’t forgive it.
I feel Gaynor Charteris’s stony weight too. She is disapproving. Angry and impatient. We feel a grim unity of purpose, she and I.
Llanbrynmair.
Glantwymyn.
Aberangell.
As we pass Aberangell, I point to the hillsides ahead and to our left.
Sheep-bitten fields. Stone farmhouses. Clumps of oak and ash. Barns of corrugated iron, whitened to the colour of limestone by sun and rain and frost.
I say, ‘That’s Camlann.’
‘Camlann, love?’
‘Arthur’s last battle. He died here, or at least picked the wounds that would end up killing him. The thing about him being carried to Avalon is probably just myth.’
Dad doesn’t say anything for a moment.
Just studies the passing green, blues and browns of the land that is ours, the land that was Arthur’s. The Range Rover hums. Carrying us forward to battle.
Dad says, ‘He didn’t die, love. Not really.’
Glances across at me in a but-you-know-that kind of way.
We stop at Cwm Cywarch. Pick up Bowen.
Dad gets out of the car, gives Bowen one of those big male handshakes, the sort of thing that would pretty much crush my hand if I was on the receiving end.
Bowen is wearing a tweed jacket over a black shirt and dog collar. He asks, ‘Should I bring the gun?’
I nod. ‘May as well.’
The gun in question, a shotgun, isn’t one of those gun-porn things, all polished walnut and silver filigree. It’s a farmer’s piece, with muck on the barrel and a faded canvas cartridge pouch that’s tearing at the seams. Bowen shoves it in the car the way you’d stow a pair of dirty boots.
He’s more respectful of Caledfwlch, though. Gives it its own space. A regal distance.
Bowen’s dog, Tidy, is lying out in the yard, panting in the sun.
Bowen says, ‘Jan’s away today and I’m meant to be looking after this one,’ meaning the dog. ‘Are you all right if he comes along?’
Dad says yes. He loves dogs and Tidy joins the gun and cartridge bag in the back.
That is, or should be, the signal for us all to go, but Dad is busy watching sheep graze in the fields below.
‘Those yours?’
Bowen says yes.
‘Nice flock. Beulahs, is it?’
‘Mostly Beulahs, yes. Jan’s trying some Llanwenogs there. See those white faces at the back? They’re good lambers and the wool’s better than we’ve been used to.’
And then – for two, three minutes Dad and Bowen are talking about sheep as though nothing else mattered in the world.
At first, I think, Dad, your daughter’s in the hands of some fucking fuckwit who’s already ordered the deaths of three people. Do you really want to be talking about some fucking sheep?
Then I realise, I’m wrong. What I’m seeing now is leadership. The real deal. Dad’s never met Bowen before. Knows nothing of him. Yet by the time these two men climb in the car, they’ll feel like friends. Bowen will already have that little speck of loyalty to Dad, which, if their relationship were allowed to mature, would end up growing into some unshiftable ballast of affection. The same dense blocks which provided Dad’s main protection through all his years of high-level criminality.
They get into the car now, talking of dogs not sheep. Training Tidy. The amount dogs understand.
Dolgellau.
Llyn Trawsfynydd.
Garreg.
Beddgelert.
Once Bowen tried asking about Kay.
But Dad just shakes his head and shifts the subject. I’m pleased he does. Her abduction is too big a weight to think about directly. It’s there all the time, a load leaning direct against the heart.
I think that’s true of Katie too, it’s just that Kay sits that bit closer. It’s hard separating the two of them.
I wonder again about Gaynor Charteris’s funeral. Whatever happened with that? It feels strange to have missed it.
As we get close to Rhyd Ddu, Dad arrests the chatter and, swivelling, asks, ‘How we doing, love?’
‘Fine. We’re doing fine.’
Mordred knew Yvain was a weak link. Neither brave enough nor skilled enough to evade police surveillance. So he brought him back. From Symonds Yat to Kings Cross. Shook any surveillance by messing about on the trains and in the tunnels. Then danced down the road to Euston. Train to Chester. Either change there for Bangor, or get out and do the last bit by road.
Mordred would have told Yvain to go home, speak to no one, sleep.
Perhaps, in the fullness of time, Mordred will kill Yvain too. But for now, Yvain looks like the only actual professional scholar they’ve got, and they’ve still got a sword to sell. They’re not done and dusted yet.
We get to Rhyd Ddu, then navigate into the hills above.
A couple of sharp ascents. A wash of loose stone and gravel, relic of some gurgling field drain. The banks and hedges a scramble of cow parsley, foxglove and late-blooming violets.
A cattle grid. A hard left onto a farm road. Crushed grey rock with a central strip of thwarted grass.
The road takes us down to a damp hollow, dense with marsh grass and bog cotton. We see a rock, the size of a bullock, and a rowan tree, mountain ash, growing up the side.
Also a cottage. Whitewashed. Small.
A rental property. Its current tenant: a palaeographer and codicologist from Nantes University.
A red Peugeot sits outside.
No lights, or none that we can see.
Dad parks on a grassy verge a couple of hundred yards from the house.
We get out. Tid
y wants to come too, but is told to stay where he is. He makes sad-eyes at us, but stays.
I take pick-locks and my handgun. Bowen carries a shotgun. Dad takes a handgun from his bag, pockets it, gives his bag to Bowen, and picks up Caledfwlch.
‘You can’t have a sword like this and not use it,’ he announces.
He marches ahead, blade aloft.
A peregrine falcon hangs in the air and Dad turns to watch, shielding his eyes from the sun.
‘Magnificent,’ he says. ‘Just look at that. Smashing.’
When Arthur went into battle he had the image of the Virgin Mary emblazoned on his shoulders or possibly – the words are similar in Welsh – his shield. I can’t quite see Dad taking the Blessed Virgin with him into a fight, but I do find myself wondering if he doesn’t have some more-than-human confidence at times like these. Some faith, however nameless, in a higher power. A light that will fall always on him.
Bowen walks with me, but something like reluctance blooms inside.
Before we get to the door, he says, ‘Fiona, I’m happy to wait here.’
‘I need you inside.’
‘This isn’t a police arrest, is it? And your Dad . . .’
‘My Dad is – or was – involved in organised crime. He’s used violence often enough in the past. And de Boissieu is part of a gang that has stolen his daughter.’
‘Look, I understand why you’re here, and here like this, but if anything happens in there that I think is wrong, I will have to stop it. I am a Christian and I am a vicar, Fiona. Those things first and last and always.’
I say I know that.
‘That’s fifty per cent of the reason I need you. If Dad goes mental, I need someone to stop him. He’d never hit or hurt a vicar. It’s one of the old-fashioned things about him. He’s Violence, but you’re Conscience. Today, I need you both.’
Bowen grins.
‘What are you, then? Brains, I suppose.’
I toss my head in a fetching manner. ‘I’m Youth and Beauty. I’d have thought that was obvious.’
We walk on.
‘You said fifty per cent. What’s the other fifty?’
But we’re at the door now and his question evaporates in this mountain air.
I have my pick-locks ready, but round these parts people don’t always lock doors and when I try the latch, it opens quietly.
The Deepest Grave: Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller Series Book 6 (Fiona Griffiths 6) Page 31