He took the file back to the car park, where Howarth was chomping at the bit, and returned it with a smile and a slightly acid, “No wonder you wanted that back.”
“Eh?” Howarth flinched. “What do you mean?”
“I couldn’t help seeing the tabs on the file dividers.” Robin pointed at the one labelled finance/confidential. “Not the sort of thing you’d want people poking about in.”
“No, very true.” Howarth forced a laugh. “Saved my bacon. Thanks.” He held out a limp hand for Robin to shake, then retreated to his big flash car. Robin narrowed his eyes: that reaction had been interesting, to say the least. Was it simply that Howarth would have got into trouble for leaving confidential information around, or was there something else in the file he didn’t want people to know about? If there was, it hadn’t been obvious. And where did Howarth get the money to buy a Merc?
Robin rejoined Pru, who brought him up to date on the discussion with Pryce. He’d been with the company for years, which was why he’d been appointed to help the police, and could talk about all the work they’d done at the site. The play area had gone in ten years previously, as part of a campaign to make the villa a better tourist attraction, a plan that had included a more effective perimeter fence—to ensure people paid for the privilege of seeing the walls and mosaics—and a café. The latter had closed following a disastrous outbreak of food poisoning, had never reopened, and had been demolished not long after.
“That would be two years ago.” Pryce’s brow crinkled. “They’ve got a fridge for soft drinks in the shop, and they sell snacks as well, although these days a properly run café can be a bit of a gold mine.”
Robin nodded. He’d spotted a line about shop sales on the accounts overview, and a pencilled note against it—there’d been several notes on the page—that simply said, Café? so maybe Howarth had been thinking of reopening a catering facility. “We heard it was Health and Safety that got the play area shut as well.”
Pryce, slowly shaking his head, gave a frown of distaste. “Only after the vandals got at it. The equipment was fine up until then. This place went through a phase when youngsters used to love climbing over the fence and getting up to all sorts of mischief here.”
“The swines.” Pru frowned. “Why do people want to spoil things for others?”
“Beats me. They’d plead boredom, I suppose, but I call it selfishness. Anyhow, what with the damage they did and the glass and God knows what else they left around—let alone the damage they kept doing to the fence—we decided to clear the area and leave it.” A sly grin crossed his face. “May have encouraged the nettles and brambles to grow, while we were at it. Cooled their ardour a smidge.”
“When was all this?”
“Eighteen months ago.” Pryce scanned the site. “I’d love to see the county make a real go of this place. Maybe if these students turn up a bathhouse, then it’ll kick a bit of life into the attraction. But Howarth”—he jabbed his thumb towards the car park, even though the man concerned had left—“faffs about. The local sites need a vision, but he plays about at things.”
“A case of ‘don’t tap it, whack it,’ would you say?” Robin asked.
“Along those lines. But he doesn’t want to speculate to accumulate, to use another cliché. Here, let me show you something.” Pryce led them to a spot ten metres away from where the body had been found. “They get a lot of the university students working up here, and not just digging. One of them did a project about viability of heritage sites, focussing on this place. Bright girl, thoughtful. She emailed me about some of the technical stuff. Sent me a copy of her finished work and it was full of good ideas, with some innovative suggestions about funding. I spoke to Howarth about them, but he wasn’t interested.”
“Why was that?”
“He had a dozen reasons. Most of them based on this lass not being a professional and how, if she lived in the real world, she’d understand what the problems really were. Which was a load of crap, if you’ll excuse the expression.”
Robin suppressed a grin. Pryce seemed to possess the same unimpressed view of Howarth as he did. “What’s your take on it?”
“He didn’t want to be shown up by what he regarded as some chit of a girl. And he’s cagey about this site. Like it’s his particular baby.” Pryce drew his finger through the air. “I suggested we could knock up a viewing platform right here for the public so they could watch the diggers. People are interested in that sort of thing. Time Team effect.”
“Not only that. Think of every time somebody’s digging a hole in the road—they always attract onlookers.”
“Natural curiosity, sir,” Pru agreed.
“Exactly. Only Howarth wouldn’t have it. Said it lowered the tone of what was an important archaeological excavation.” Pryce winced. “Made it like something off reality television.”
Funny how the more Robin learned about Howarth, the less he liked him. “Maybe it’s just as well you didn’t, given what happened.”
“True, but Howarth couldn’t have been expecting that, could he? Or maybe he was, do you think?” Pryce echoed Robin’s thoughts on the matter. “Although if he knew there was anything dodgy about the site, why allow the dig in the first place?”
“What do you know about Howarth and his connection to Culford?” Robin wasn’t going to get into idle speculation with a witness, but if the remarks about Howarth were based on other than just dislike or mistrust, he wanted to hear them.
Pryce spread his hands. “Not a lot, apart from the fact he seems to . . . overdo his official role, if that makes sense. When we’ve been on-site, he seems always to be hanging around. Even out of hours.”
Robin gave Pru an encouraging glance, urging her to take up the questioning.
She picked up her cue. “Out of hours?”
“Yep. One of the blokes I work with dropped his mobile in the car park but didn’t realise until he was halfway home. When he brought the van back, it was well past the usual closing time, but Howarth’s car was still here. You can’t help but notice it. Bloody great Mercedes. Not sure how he affords that on council wages.”
“I had the same thought.” Robin rolled his eyes.
“Maybe he’s got a rich aunty.” Pryce didn’t look as though he believed that.
“Maybe. When was this?”
“Sometime last summer. I’ll talk to Frank and get back to you.”
“Thanks for that.” Robin made a note to follow the point up with Howarth. “Just one more thing. Do you know anything about the Community Payback people who came to work here?”
“A bit. Why?”
“We’ve heard conflicting stories.” Robin left it there, not wanting to lead the witness.
“As far as I’m concerned, they worked a damn sight harder than some of the people we pay do. I dropped in at the start and the finish, and they’d done a really good job of clearing out stuff. They took down a mass of brambles and stripped the ivy off the fence.” Pryce nodded favourably.
“They cleared this area too?”
“Yes. They— Ah, I’m with you. You’re wondering if one of them could have something to do with the dead woman? Preparing the ground, quite literally?”
“We have to consider that.” Even if it seemed supremely unlikely. How thick would you have to be to return to where you’d very visibly dug over a piece of ground in order to hide a body there? Unless it was a brass-necked example of a double bluff.
“I guess so. But loads of people saw those lads at work. Just about anyone who visited the site would have noticed what was going on and could have made a note to take advantage of the situation.”
“Or remembered it afterwards,” Pru chipped in, echoing Robin’s thoughts.
They concluded the interview with the usual question about anything to add, Robin not expecting much else to be gained, but he was wrong.
“There is one thing I thought of, on the way up here, although I don’t see how it relates. Do you know about the letters
to the paper?”
“What letters?”
“Anonymous ones, to the Culdover Echo. They started couple of years back, and cropped up again again last autumn, all of them saying that people shouldn’t be digging at the villa because it was a sacred site. That if they poked around here, it would come back to haunt them.”
Haunt them to the extent of murder? “Any idea who wrote— Sorry, you said they were anonymous.”
Pryce grinned. “Yeah. I suppose the paper might have a contact address for them, although the reaction from other correspondents suggested they thought this ‘sacred site’ stuff was a load of tripe. I’d agree. Nobody gave us particular instructions about this site, and they would have done if it were special, believe me.”
“You’re probably right.” Evidently, any suspicions Pryce had centred around the site director; still, Robin would get on the trail of those letters.
Once he and Pru were on their own, Robin voiced his concerns about the flash car. “Does Howarth really have a rich aunty?”
“Nah, sir. Ordinary family. He’ll be the first of them to have a Merc.” Pru wrinkled her nose. “Something fishy going on, do you reckon?”
“That’s what my nose tells me, but whether it’s murder . . .” Robin shrugged. “He’s been hanging around out of hours, he has access to the site, and he’s surely one of the people who could hide a body there.”
“Bound to know all the wrinkles,” Pru agreed, “but why mess on your own doorstep, particularly if you know the area’s going to be dug? And if you’d already buried the body before the decision was made to look for the bathhouse, why not move the body from the shallow grave in the interim?”
“Exactly. And everything we say about Howarth could apply to Pryce, or another one of the contractor team, or the person in charge of the Community Payback team, even.” This wasn’t a closed-room mystery, where the murder had to have occurred in a small area within a small window of time. They had no definite time or place of death, nor a name for the victim or any hint of a motive.
It was going to be a hell of a case to solve.
Here we go again.
Adam took a deep breath as he entered the staffroom on Tuesday morning before lessons started. The place was already awash with talk of the murder, including wild speculation about who the victim might be and why somebody would bury a body on the Culford site. He made himself a coffee, listening in on the chat only to discover that there were a few amateur archaeology enthusiasts among the parents. One of them had apparently brought his metal detector into the school to show the children how it worked just the previous term, and they’d asked him to make regular visits, so there would likely be some uneasiness among the school community even if their connection to the murder was several steps removed.
Jim Rashford, the headteacher, hovered around being both soothing and sympathetic to all and sundry. Although Adam hadn’t yet got to know the largely female staff team, he suspected they’d be naturally concerned for their own safety, especially in the early days when nobody really knew what was going on, and whether there would be a risk to them. Any similar parental anxiety could easily transfer itself to their children.
Just before they dispersed to their classes, Rashford called for quiet, reminded his staff members not to discuss the discovery of the body where the pupils might overhear, then encouraged them to let him know if they noticed children showing signs of upset. He’d dealt with something similar in his previous school, and a string of nice, reassuring whole-school assemblies and the odd forceful reminder to parents to watch what they said could make all the difference.
Adam swallowed hard, took another deep breath, and made the announcement he’d been putting together in his head while driving in, just in case it was needed. “I think you’d better know that my partner is in charge of the investigation. That doesn’t mean you can’t discuss it while I’m around, but it does mean you can’t pump me for inside info.” He forced a grin, then pressed on. Better to get everything in the open. “He’s got experience of tackling murder cases, and a one hundred percent clear-up rate, so it’s in safe hands.”
There were one or two surprised expressions—and one of distinct horror—swiftly hidden among those present, but generally Adam’s revelations were taken well.
“It’s like having Cully from Midsomer Murders here!” Dilys, one of the learning-support assistants, a blue-rinsed woman old enough to be Adam’s mother and someone he’d already identified when he’d come for his interview as being a real asset to the children’s learning, gave him a wink.
“So long as Adam doesn’t cook like Joyce Barnaby and poison us all at the PTA barbecue, we’ll be fine.” Jim, with a smile at Adam, gently set his staff about their business proper. The pair of them were due to spend the morning in a conflab about rapidly improving teaching standards in the school, something which would involve Adam working alongside a number of the teachers to improve their lessons. It wasn’t an enviable task, but somebody had to do it. The meeting in Jim’s office would be followed by a learning walk round the school, which was making a few of the staff, especially some of the long-in-the-tooth ones, more agitated than the talk of murder.
“That was a brave admission,” Jim remarked as they reached the office and he closed the door. “Were you ‘out’ at Lindenshaw?”
“Not at first. But it’s hard to stay ‘in’ when you get spotted walking along a towpath holding hands with the policeman who was all over the school like a rash only a few months before.” Adam took his seat. “Your governors all seem to know about the murder there. As you’ll remember from my interview.”
Jim rolled his eyes. “I have no idea why he raised that. I’ve never felt more like murdering him. Sorry.” He raised his hand. “Poor choice of words, given the situation.”
“Poor but probably apt.” It had been a sticky moment, the then-chair of governors asking Adam outright what it had been like having somebody killed while on school premises. Adam had taken the question at face value and described dealing with the impact on pupils and staff, the practicalities of keeping the media off the site, and working with the police, but he’d clocked the headteacher’s annoyance at the interview going so wildly off script.
“I wondered if it was one of those trick questions,” he continued. “You know the sort of malarkey. ‘What would you do if you got to school and found two teachers were stuck in a queue on the motorway, an irate parent was in reception, and the headteacher couldn’t be contacted?’”
“I’ll make a note of that one. Good question.” Jim grinned. “Actually, your answer to being interrogated about the murder was one of the things that tipped the balance in your favour. We had a strong field and you were neck and neck with that woman who was relocating from London. I insisted we throw her a curveball question as well, in the interests of fairness, but she didn’t think on her feet like you did.”
“Not sure what to say to that, except ‘thank goodness.’” Adam had known it had been close, but not so skin of the teeth.
“You’re clearly good at dealing with the unexpected. Well done for getting the bit about your partner . . .”
“Robin,” Adam replied, to the obvious, if unspoken, invitation.
“Getting Robin’s job out in the open. The longer you didn’t say something about him, the harder it would be. The whole kit and caboodle.”
Adam hid a shudder at the echo of his conversation with Robin the previous evening about missing persons. His discomfort soon turned to puzzlement as Jim began to chuckle. “What’s so funny?”
“I was about to say Jane and I should have you over to dinner so you can meet her brother and his partner, who’s also male, but then I realised that was daft, if not downright offensive. Labelling you as probably wanting to meet each other because of that one common feature.”
“Thanks for that as well. It happens too often.” Adam shook his head. “Like we’re Freemasons or whatever.”
“Our ex-chair of governors w
as a Freemason. Didn’t he give you the dodgy handshake?” Jim got out his files, signalling a return to proper work. “But I would like you—and Robin—to meet Jane, anyway. She’s a Newfoundland fan.”
A pastime of taking Campbell on long walks had been mentioned on Adam’s application, and commented on during the interview. “Then she has great taste. Is her cooking better than Joyce Barnaby’s? Or are you the household chef?”
“You’ll have to come round to find out.”
They got their heads down over the school improvement plan and the deputy’s role in delivering it, although something that had been mentioned in the staffroom nagged at the back of Adam’s brain. Amateur archaeologists among the parents? Was this case going to drag him in too? If so, perhaps better to take the bull by the horns, just as he’d done that morning. Whether Robin would welcome it or not was a moot point, but his conscience persuaded him that if it helped to get the case sorted sooner rather than later, it had to be done.
By lunchtime it was apparent that the older children had heard about the dead body. Years five and six had been to Culford on a school trip when they were in year four, so their ears had evidently pricked up when it was mentioned on the news or by their parents. Jim called a special assembly for the upper school that weaved expertly between the proper concern for the pupils’ sensibilities and reassuring them that they were under no threat. Bad things did happen in the world, but that was why they had people like the police to keep them safe.
One of the year six girls—Sophie Baxter, who’d asked where Adam had taught previously—lingered behind afterwards, obviously wanting to talk to them. Jim beckoned Adam over with a subtle tip of the head so he could be involved.
“My dad’s a metal detectorist, sir.” She fiddled with her cardigan cuff.
“Yes, I remember, Sophie. He came to visit us before the Easter holidays, Mr. Matthews, to show the pupils the tricks of his trade.” Jim’s soothing tones clearly eased the girl’s anxiety.
Two Feet Under (Lindenshaw Mysteries Book 3) Page 5