Stick in the Mud: A riveting murder mystery

by Leo McNeir

  “Donovan, hallo.” She extended a hand. “Zoë Tipton, site director. Call me Zoë.” She glanced fleetingly at Dick. “Joint site director. Will you be doing much filming here?”

  “I hope so.”

  Zoë still had hold of Donovan’s hand. “Let me know when you need me.” She released her grip and quickly produced a business card. “Contact me … any time.”

  Turning away, she joined Miles Fennimore and they headed for the site exit. Behind them, Marnie, Philip and Anne came out together. They too walked towards Dick and Donovan.

  “Did I miss much?” said Dick.

  Philip shook his head. “Nothing you didn’t know already. The main thing is we’ve kept the main contractor on board. They know where they stand and also that they can’t make any public utterances about what’s found … now or in the future.”

  Philip excused himself and dashed off to his next meeting. For a few seconds the group stood quietly together in the sunshine, looking at the bustle of building work, with the sound of traffic in the background. Dick broke the silence.

  “Anyone fancy a coffee? I mean a proper coffee, not the stuff from that machine in the hut.”

  *

  The four of them occupied a table in Fellini’s, in a quiet side street. The staff who ran the establishment sounded like Londoners, except when they spoke to each other. Then, they used rapid-fire Italian, their conversation punctuated by the hissing and slurping of the coffee machine. The walls were hung with tasteful black-and-white photographs: the Coliseum, the Mount Palatine, the Forum and the Trevi fountain.

  Settled with their cups of cappuccino, mocha and americano, Dick’s guests thanked him for his hospitality. In reply, he nodded and chuckled to himself.

  “What’s the joke?” said Marnie.

  “I was just thinking …” Dick looked up at the photos. “It should really be Zoë here now. This is just her scene.”

  “She’s a coffee fan?” Marnie said.

  Donovan replied. “She’s a Roman fan, right, Dick?”

  “Absolutely. Did you notice the brooch she was wearing?”

  The others gave this some thought.

  “Quite a small one … like a bunch of grapes?” Anne ventured.

  “You got it. Romano-British, found in a field in Cheshire last year.”

  “How did she get it?” Anne asked. “And should she be wearing it for every-day use, just like that?”

  “It was found by a metal detectorist who didn’t know who owned the land, so he gave the brooch to Zoë.”

  “Why?”

  “Because …” Dick shrugged, “she has ways …”

  “You mean she’s used to getting her own way,” said Marnie. “That doesn’t seem to be the case here, at least not for the moment, does it?”

  Dick smiled enigmatically. Marnie continued.

  “I suppose you’re happy because you’ve got in first and found something that captures everyone’s attention. I didn’t realise there was such rivalry.”

  To Marnie’s surprise it was Donovan who replied.

  “That isn’t what it’s all about.”

  Marnie and Anne studied his face. It had been a typical Donovan utterance, and they could see the hint of a smile about his eyes.

  “Go on,” said Anne. “Don’t keep us in suspense. What do you know that we don’t?”

  “It’s not my story to tell,” said Donovan, turning to Dick who was still smiling.

  Marnie said, “Looking at you, Dick, thoughts of the cat who got the cream spring to mind. Come on, spill the beans.” They all laughed at the hopelessly mixed metaphor. “Time to tell us what you’ve already told Donovan.”

  Dick put on an innocent look. “I haven’t told him anything and I’m not sure what he’s found out. Why don’t you tell us, Donovan?”

  All eyes turned towards him. Donovan lowered his voice.

  “The person Dick found in the excavation was murdered.”

  6

  Loose Ends

  Wednesday 20 June 1997

  It was a different kind of silence. That was Marnie’s first thought on waking that Wednesday morning. She lay in bed for a short while in the sleeping cabin on Thyrsis, wondering if that thought made any kind of sense.

  Back in the flat in Docklands, the silence had been an enclosed variety. She had been insulated by walls lined with rockwool panels behind plasterboard, by thick double-glazing and by a structure fortified with steel and concrete. Here on a canal boat in Knightly St John, she was enclosed in a shell comprising a steel outer layer with expanded polystyrene sheets behind tongued-and-grooved pine cladding.

  The silence she could hear now was not absolute. She could feel the air moving around the boat, sense the fish swimming a few feet from where she lay, catch the occasional hint of birdsong.

  Ralph was oblivious to these flights of fancy, lying beside her, still sound asleep, and she would never reveal such thoughts to him. Not that he would mock them or chide her for them, but because they were part of her private relationship with the world of the waterways and she wanted them for herself alone. No doubt Ralph had his moments, too.

  She swivelled her legs out from under the duvet and lowered her feet to the floor. Her toes immediately made contact with clothing, jumbled in a heap where she had dropped everything the previous night. They had hastily pulled each other’s clothes off before falling into bed to make love after their protracted absence over the weekend.

  Stooping to gather up the abandoned items, Marnie smiled inwardly. Yes, Ralph definitely did have his moments.

  *

  Donovan rang during the morning to say he had completed editing his video material and wondered if Anne and Marnie would like to see it. A plan was formed: Donovan would come up by train that afternoon, and Anne would collect him from Milton Keynes Central.

  By the usual standards of Walker and Co the office closed early that day. Instead of their last session from six to seven o’clock, they switched on the answerphone and decamped to Ralph’s study to view Donovan’s footage on the television. With coffee mugs in hand, they sat around while Donovan plugged various leads from the video camera into the monitor. He switched the equipment on and operated the remote control.

  With Marnie and Anne on armchairs and Ralph seated at his desk, Donovan knelt on the floor beside the machine.

  For a first cut, the material was impressive. Donovan had edited the interview with Dick Blackwood into a clear exposition of what was happening at Horselydown. Beginning with a series of location shots showing the river, the historic buildings around and the construction site itself, Donovan homed in on Dick, who gave a good account of himself as a presenter. Donovan varied the image with cutaways to the lower-level finds to illustrate the points Dick was making.

  When they came to the end of Dick’s talk, the sequence ended with views of the scene below ground.

  “Can you run that last sequence again,” Marnie asked.

  Donovan gave a hint of a smile and rewound the tape to a point where Dick was speaking to camera.

  … much work still to be done, but we’ve made a good start and the best may yet be to come. In the days and weeks ahead we should be able to shed light on what really happened here at Horselydown in what are sometimes called the Dark Ages.

  The image resolved itself into a series of shots moving in on details of the skeleton from different angles before fading to black. Donovan switched off and sat back on his heels without comment.

  “What really happened here,” Ralph repeated. “That’s a rather enigmatic statement.”

  Still, Donovan said nothing. Marnie spoke next.

  “You said the person Dick found – the skeleton – had been murdered, Donovan. What did you mean and how did you reach that conclusion?”

  Donovan pressed buttons on the remote, and the image reappeared on the screen, running backwards. When he reached Dick uttering his last words, he pressed the forward button.

  “Watch carefully,” he sai
d, “and tell me when to stop.”

  The images ran on in the dim light, bones in the mud, torchlight reflecting off the wet ground.

  “There!” Anne called out, pointing. “What’s that?”

  Donovan smiled at her. “That … is what it’s all about.”

  “Can you run it again,” said Ralph. “I’m missing something here.”

  Donovan muttered Play it again, Sam and rewound the tape.

  “Look!” Anne pointed again.

  Donovan paused the tape and began running it in slow motion.

  “There,” said Marnie. “Is that what we’re supposed to be seeing?”

  “What is it?” Ralph asked, squinting at the screen.

  By way of reply, Donovan lay on the floor on his back and extended his arms and legs outwards like Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous Vetruvian man diagram of human proportions.

  “What you have there is the skeleton’s left arm,” Donovan said. “The Horselydown man – or perhaps woman – is lying more or less like this.” He resumed his kneeling position and pointed at the screen. “The significant detail is this.” He ran his fingertip across the image, close to the screen. “It’s the same for the other arm and at least one of the legs.”

  “That isn’t bone, presumably,” said Ralph.

  Donovan turned to look at Ralph over his shoulder. “No. It seems to be leather.”

  “Which could be why it’s been preserved in the mud,” Marnie added.

  “Exactly. That’s what Dick thought.”

  “And it’s why you think the person was murdered,” said Anne.

  “Yes,” Donovan agreed. “Or it could have been a ritual killing or something like that.”

  “Did the Anglo-Saxons practise sacrifice?” Ralph sounded sceptical.

  “Apparently not,” said Donovan. “But they did have a legal system.”

  Ralph narrowed his eyes. “Meaning?”

  “One possibility is this might’ve been an execution.”

  Everyone digested this idea for a long moment. In their imagination they saw the figure staked out on the ground at low tide, with leather thongs attached to wooden pegs hammered into the ground. They could imagine the horror experienced by the victim as he or she felt the rising water touch their skin, first tentatively and then in a steady surge, inexorably sweeping over them, knowing that the flood tide could not be halted and that death by drowning was inevitable, just a few minutes away. They gave a collective shudder.

  “It’s horrible,” Anne murmured. “Like what pirates did in the Caribbean.”

  “Perhaps that was the reason for what happened here,” said Ralph.

  “You think this might’ve been a pirate?” Marnie said. “I somehow never associated Anglo-Saxons with piracy, least of all down there in London.”

  “Do they know what that area was like in post-Roman Britain?” Ralph asked.

  “It might’ve been a ferry crossing point,” said Donovan.

  Ralph thought back through his studies of economic history and tried to recall how London developed as a port after the departure of the Romans.

  “Perhaps trading vessels tied up there waiting to be unloaded,” Ralph suggested. “There was brisk business between Continental Europe and Britain even in those precarious times when the stabilising influence of the Romans had waned.”

  Marnie chuckled. “You sound like an economic history textbook, Ralph.”

  “That’s what I am,” Ralph laughed, “a textbook on legs.”

  “And you think our skeleton might once have been a robber, who stole from trading ships?”

  “It’s only a guess,” Ralph said. “We’ll have to wait and see what Dick and the other archaeologists turn up, if anything. But whatever it is, it certainly isn’t a casual attack or a mugging gone wrong. There’s a certain amount of ceremony involved here, a ritual of some kind. This man – and I suspect it was a man – was probably put to death in accordance with some kind of legal procedure.”

  Another silence followed. Donovan asked if everyone had seen enough and began disconnecting the equipment. He gathered together the leads, bound them with plastic fasteners and stowed them in the rucksack with the camera.

  “A killing ground,” he said quietly.

  “You think so?” said Ralph.

  Donovan nodded. “The robber, the pirate … whatever, was executed there as an example of what happened to thieves, and he was left to rot for all to see for ever and ever.”

  “And he only disappeared from view when the channel shifted and he was covered over with silt and then soil,” Ralph added.

  “It’s all very grisly,” Marnie said.

  “And now we can understand Willards’ attitude,” Donovan said calmly.

  “Willards?” Marnie said, puzzled. “Where do they come in?”

  Donovan shrugged. “They don’t want the outside world knowing about this discovery, do they?”

  “They don’t want nighthawks getting in, injuring themselves and making a claim on safety grounds,” said Marnie.

  Anne raised an eyebrow. “Nighthawks?”

  “Unauthorised metal detectorists,” Marnie explained. “This would be like a magnet to them. Think how many thousands there are in and around London.”

  “I think Willards’ concern probably goes deeper than that,” said Donovan.

  “What do you mean?”

  “People have been executed on that spot for centuries, haven’t they? Dick’s skeleton might go back almost fifteen hundred years.”

  “And they hanged river pirates there in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for sure,” Anne added.

  “Think about it,” said Donovan. “If you were looking for a hotel in London, would your average visitor want to stay in a place with the tradition that criminals were put to death there since time immemorial?”

  *

  Donovan stayed for the evening meal. No-one could have been blamed if talk of killings, corpses and skeletons had blunted their appetite, but the aroma of cucumber and spring onions, tomatoes and peppers being sliced and chopped in the galley on Sally Ann soon revived their spirits. Outside on the bank, Ralph had rigged up the barbecue ready for grilling tiger prawn kebabs, and he busied himself with opening a bottle of Chilean chardonnay while the briquettes heated up.

  By common agreement they avoided further discussion of the Horselydown project or of putting criminals to death for the rest of that day. Instead, they turned their thoughts to plans for the summer. Sitting round the large circular table under the cream parasol, hearing birdsong in the warm evening air, it seemed a fitting way to spend their time.

  Ralph had taken a major decision: no lecture tour abroad that summer. For years such tours had been an important, and lucrative, part of his annual timetable. For the past few years, since living with Marnie, they had taken him away at times when she had found herself embroiled in all manner of dangerous situations.

  That year would be different. The BBC had invited him to write and present a series of television documentaries on the changing world of economics. Most of the filming would be done in Britain. But that was for later in the year. In the immediate future Ralph had a new contract from his publisher and was about to start work on another book.

  “That’s you nicely sorted out, Ralph,” Marnie said. “It’ll be lovely to have you around for the whole summer.”

  “What about you, Marnie?” Anne said. “Beth’s always nagging you to take a break. You haven’t had a holiday since you moved up here.”

  “Every day is like a holiday to me,” Marnie replied. “I just love what I do.”

  “But Anne does have a point,” Ralph said. “And so does Beth. All work and no play can lead to serious burn-out. Being self-employed, you can’t afford to run yourself into the ground. You need to recharge sometimes.”

  Marnie agreed to give it some thought. “But I can’t just up and away like that, not when my biggest ever project is coming on-stream.”

  Ralph conceded the
point. “I suppose not. But take a lesson from me. I got so bound up in what I was doing a few years ago, I ran myself into the ground. Now, I’m more careful.”

  “Ralph, when did you last take a holiday?” Marnie protested. “I haven’t noticed you packing a bucket and spade when you set off to tour America or the Far East.”

  There was laughter round the table at the thought of Ralph making sand castles on the beach at Martha’s Vineyard or Penang. Again, Ralph acknowledged the argument.

  “Okay, fair enough, but I do take days off for rest and relaxation in between lectures. And I always use hotels instead of accepting invitations to stay with my hosts. That way I can switch off in the evenings instead of being on duty all the time.”

  “Sensible,” said Marnie, “but it’s not an option for me, is it?”

  Before Ralph could respond, Donovan interjected.

  “The option for you is even simpler, Marnie.”

  Heads turned. Donovan was making one of his pronouncements again.

  “I’d love to know how,” said Marnie.

  Donovan grinned. “Surely, it’s staring you in the face.”

  *

  Marnie knew she should have thought of it first. Donovan had been right; the answer was staring her in the face. She turned off the shower on Thyrsis that night and began towelling herself dry. Sally Ann. The boat had come to her rescue before when she was desperate for a break from the stress of work. That sabbatical summer three years earlier had changed her life. What she needed now was nothing so drastic, just a short spell of freedom, a breath of fresh air. Nothing she knew could provide that better than a holiday on the waterways.

  Ralph had already showered and was sitting up in bed correcting the first draft of an article he had written for a specialist journal. As soon as Marnie entered the sleeping cabin, she sensed he was not happy.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “Mm …”

  “Really? You don’t say. I’d never have thought it.”

  Ralph looked up and caught her grinning at him. He smiled wanly.

  “I think, Marnie, you’re not the only one who could benefit from a change of routine. Reading this article, I get the impression I’ve already written it before.”