The Hidden Bones

by Nicola Ford

  Peter said, ‘Why should we believe you?’

  ‘No matter to me what you believe. But you’d do well to talk to your pal Ed before you go accusin’ folk.’

  Peter looked as if someone had punched him in the stomach. For a moment, Clare thought he was going to be sick.

  ‘What’s Ed got to do with it?’ Clare asked.

  ‘Ed Jevons can speak for himself. But I’ll tell you this – Estelle Hart wasn’t the only person who had cause to be upset when Jim did a moonlight.’

  ‘Are you alright?’ Clare shot a sideways glance at Peter, who was sitting silently in the passenger seat beside her.

  Barely a word had passed his lips since they’d left the pub.

  He turned to face her, his expression blank. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Don’t let him get to you.’

  ‘He made me so bloody angry.’

  ‘I gathered that from the flying furniture.’

  ‘Sorry. It was all of that rubbish about Gerald being a nutty old man.’

  ‘People like Clifford are emotional vampires. In a way, I feel sorry for him.’

  Peter snorted his disagreement.

  ‘No, really. The whole village obviously loathes him. I thought some of them were going to wade in with you when you flung that chair over.’

  Peter managed a weak laugh and Clare fell silent, considering whether she should venture her next gambit.

  Finally, she made up her mind. ‘Interesting what he said about Ed.’

  Peter turned away, staring out of the window. ‘More rubbish from Clifford. The sins of the father and all that.’

  Clare shot him a quizzical look.

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? He’s trying to drag Ed into this to get at me. He’s hated the Harts ever since my father ran off with his wife. Like you say, the man’s an emotional vampire.’

  ‘That was amazing, David.’ The man in question was sitting beside Sally on her living room sofa with a self-satisfied grin on his face.

  She’d spent the greater part of her day off cleaning and tidying her Devizes flat. Most of the plods she’d been out with had been too interested in beer and footy to pay any attention to her domestic arrangements. But, judging by what she’d seen of David’s house, academics were a different kettle of fish. And that, as she had just learnt, apparently extended to their culinary skills.

  ‘Where did you learn to cook like that?’

  ‘I had four brothers.’ He wiped his mouth with a serviette. ‘And parents who were both hospital consultants. They were at work more often than they were at home. So it was a case of learn how to cook or starve.’

  When she was a kid she’d lived on beyond-their-sell-by-date fish fingers and pizzas her mum had bought home from her twilight shifts at Tesco. But she had no desire to spoil the evening by dragging her family into it. ‘I never really learnt to cook.’

  ‘I could teach you.’

  ‘I can think of things I’d rather be doing with you than learning how to cook.’ She smiled and leant over to deliver a long, lingering kiss.

  ‘You’ve persuaded me. But there’s no point in letting good bubbly go to waste.’ He reached over to the table, picked up what remained of the bottle of champagne he’d brought with him and topped up the two glasses. He passed her a glass and raised his own

  ‘A toast. To the thing that brought us together.’ She looked at him quizzically. ‘The sun disc,’ he said, chinking his glass against hers.

  ‘Wherever it may be.’

  ‘Not much further along then?’ David took a sip of his champagne.

  ‘To be honest, David, the chances of recovering it aren’t great. We can’t even establish when it went missing. And even if we do manage to find out who stole it, the likelihood of recovering it after all this time is a million to one.’ She placed her glass down on the table. Taking his hand, she stood up. ‘But I think I know something that will take both our minds off it.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Clare straightened the pile of notes on her desk in the laying-out room and patted them contentedly. Everything was in place for the arrival of her eminent guest. David had managed to secure the services of a leading osteo-archaeologist with an enviable reputation in ancient cremation studies to examine the unexcavated urn. She’d had no time to dwell on her growing sense of unease about not telling him about her investigations as she’d busied herself preparing for Dr Granski’s visit.

  She glanced over at the large brown urn sitting on the Formica tabletop on the far side of the room, everything set out as the email had requested. She was congratulating herself on the efficiency with which she’d performed her task when the door clattered open, leaving the fire extinguisher shuddering in its wake.

  ‘Is there anywhere to get a decent cup of coffee in this place?’ The accent was unmistakably west coast America. The owner was a petite woman in her mid-twenties with pale blue eyes and unruly shoulder-length beach-blonde hair that she’d attempted, not entirely successfully, to pull back from her face in a ponytail. She was dressed in old blue jeans, a Grateful Dead T-shirt and canvas basketball shoes that had seen better days.

  Before Clare had time to respond, the woman swung her large camouflage rucksack onto the desk, causing the stack of papers Clare had placed there to cascade sideways into an untidy heap. Simultaneously, the newcomer jettisoned the crumpled Coke can she’d been carrying into the wastepaper basket by the desk.

  The phone on Clare’s desk rang, and she stood open-mouthed as the newcomer raised a hand in the air in a gesture demanding silence and picked up the receiver. Clare cast an anxious glance up at the wall clock. This couldn’t be happening. Who the hell did she think she was? She had to get rid of this woman.

  Clare said, ‘Excuse me. What do you think you’re … ?’

  The young woman looked straight at Clare and raised a finger to her lips. Clare was speechless.

  ‘Yup, yup. OK. I’ll tell her.’ She replaced the receiver and turned towards Clare. ‘That was reception.’ Clare nodded helplessly. ‘They called to let you know’ – she hung the words out one by one – ‘that … I’m … here!’ The younger woman watched in quiet amusement as Clare’s expression flickered from incomprehension to confusion to embarrassment. Both women looked at one another for a moment before simultaneously breaking into uncontrollable laughter.

  ‘Dr Granski?’

  ‘Jo will do just fine. Not what you were expecting, huh?’

  Jo was clearly determined to milk this for all it was worth. Clare could feel her cheeks burning. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t … I mean, David just said …’

  ‘Don’t worry. I get it all the time. How about we try to find some drinkable coffee before we get to work?’

  Clare busied herself procuring two large mugs of filter coffee, thankful for a task to distract her from her embarrassment, while Jo set about her preparations for the examination of the cremation urn.

  Clare could see why she’d developed such a formidable reputation. She was an intense worker, precise and focused in everything she did. It took her less than an hour to read through the large pile of papers Clare had prepared, making brief, one-line notes of her own in a small, neat hand in the spiral-bound notebook she’d extracted from her rucksack. When she’d completed her reading, she spent the next thirty minutes quizzing Clare about details from the notes and the site journals.

  Clare breathed an internal sigh of relief when Jo finally said, ‘I think that’s about everything.’ She smiled a warm, easy smile. ‘Great job with the notes, by the way. This kind of thorough preparation makes a heck of a difference.’

  Clare felt herself colour slightly – this time with pride.

  Jo said, ‘How about we get down to some real work?’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I need someone to assist. But if you’d rather not …’

  ‘No, that would be great,’ Clare said eagerly.

  Jo delved into the bottom of her cavernous rucksack. ‘Put these on.’ She handed
Clare a pair of thin, blue rubber gloves, then produced a roll of canvas which she untied to reveal a set of what looked like dental equipment. Jo laid them out side by side on the Formica tabletop next to the large mottled brown urn. Finally, she produced a small fine-meshed sieve which she placed on the other side of the urn.

  Jo adjusted the position of the anglepoise lamp that was attached to the side of the table, focusing the pool of light onto the top of the pottery vessel. Picking up a small metal probe, she began scraping away at the surface of the soil in the top of the pot. She worked her way methodically across the mouth of the vessel, her hands moving deftly and precisely to loosen the earth within.

  Clare watched as, one by one, tiny charred fragments of bone began to appear. Ensuring that each one had been completely loosened, Jo lifted them one at a time into a plastic box that Clare had provided for the purpose.

  Jo asked, ‘Ever done one of these?’

  Clare shook her head.

  ‘Like to join me?’

  Clare nodded. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘If I’m not sure, I don’t ask.’

  Jo passed her a metal probe identical to the one she was using. Clare’s hand shook as she gripped the tool.

  ‘No need to be nervous. The most important thing is to remember to keep going down in separate layers just like on a normal excavation. Stop if you see any changes in soil colour or texture.’

  ‘Because you sometimes get more than one cremation in a vessel?’

  ‘Right. You might get four or five separate individuals represented in one pot. Sometimes they’ve been deposited together and sometimes different cremations have been added at different times. So for each layer we’ll put the soil through the sieve to capture any small fragments we might have missed, then we’ll bag the soil matrix separately so we can analyse it later.’

  After a few minutes, Clare began to relax.

  Jo said, ‘You’re a natural.’

  Working in companionable silence, it took the two women most of the morning to work their way through the upper half of the urn. The product of their labours comprised two large, carefully labelled plastic boxes containing fragments of burnt bone, and two clear plastic bags full of soil samples.

  ‘Does it always take this long?’ Clare asked.

  ‘If you do it right. Sometimes it’s slower. The soil in this urn is surprisingly loose. Normally it’s more compacted.’

  As she spoke, Jo began to work her way through the third layer of material. ‘This is the easy stuff. The hard work starts when I get down to the analysis. That’s the real cool part – when you get to know the people who were cremated.’

  ‘So you can’t tell much from looking at the material now?’

  ‘Not everything. But sure, you begin forming an impression right away. See here.’ Jo extracted a large singed piece of bone about two inches long from the layer they were working on and held it in the light of the lamp for Clare to see. ‘The fragments in this layer seem larger and the bones themselves quite robust compared to the upper layers.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, it looks like this one’s been through a different cremation process. Probably the pyre wasn’t as well made.’

  ‘Is that usual?’

  ‘It happens sometimes. Ceremonies change with time, or maybe the wood for the pyre wasn’t properly seasoned. Hell, maybe it was just your English weather.’

  Clare smiled. ‘And the robustness of the bones?’

  ‘Can’t tell for sure yet. But if I had to take a punt I’d say the thickness and density of the bone means this was an adult male and the other two, in the upper layers, were women or children.’

  ‘So does that mean …’ Clare’s voice trailed off as she began to pick away at a small amorphous blob just visible in the surface of the soil.

  Jo looked up from her work. ‘What have you got there?’

  Clare shook her head. ‘Not sure. You’d better take a look.’ Clare moved aside and allowed Jo to take her place on the other side of the table.

  Jo worked in silence, painstakingly loosening the soil from around the object. ‘Get me another plastic box.’

  Clare did as she was asked and, using a pair of tweezers, Jo carefully lifted the small grey object into the box.

  Clare asked, ‘What is it?’

  Jo picked the clear box up and examined the shapeless little globule inside the container. ‘Can’t say for sure. It looks metallic. From the look of it, I’d guess it’s been melted by the heat of the fire.’

  Clare’s eyes shone with excitement. ‘That would mean it was placed on the pyre, wouldn’t it? Part of the pyre cremation ceremony.’ Clare looked at Jo. She could see she didn’t share her excitement.

  ‘Maybe … but it’s the wrong colour for copper or bronze, and it’s definitely not gold. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Not in a prehistoric context.’ Jo set the box down on the tabletop and stared down at the urn, deep in thought.

  Jo’s reticence was beginning to worry Clare. ‘But you’ve seen something like this somewhere else.’

  ‘We’re gonna have to run some tests. XRF, maybe.’

  Now it was Clare’s turn to look perplexed.

  ‘X-ray fluorescence,’ Jo explained.

  ‘That would tell us the chemical composition?’

  Jo nodded. ‘And we’ll need radio-carbon dates from all three cremation layers.’

  ‘Not a problem. We’ve got the money for RC dates and I’m sure we can persuade British Heritage to fund the XRF.’ The look on Jo’s face was making Clare feel queasy. ‘What exactly do you think it is?’

  ‘If it’s what I think it is, it’s not British Heritage we’re gonna have to speak to – it’s the coroner.’

  ‘The coroner! Oh, come on, Jo. What is it?’

  ‘A filling.’

  ‘A filling for what?’

  Jo looked up, her pale blue eyes unflickering as they looked into Clare’s. Her words were slow and deliberate. ‘A dental filling.’

  ‘That’s impossible. This is a Bronze Age cremation.’

  Jo shrugged her shoulders. ‘I could be wrong. It might be something else entirely.’

  But Clare knew Jo was right; the harmless-looking, dull, grey lump sitting in the clear plastic box in front of them was a dental filling. And she knew why Gerald Hart had gone to such lengths to ensure nobody got hold of the Hungerbourne archive while he was still alive.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Clare reached across the coffee table with the bottle and watched the Merlot glug into Jo’s glass. Jo was lying outstretched on a pile of cushions on Clare’s living room floor. Although she’d met the woman sitting in front of her less than twelve hours ago, it had seemed the right thing to do to offer her the use of her spare room while she was working at the university. She was glad she had.

  Jo took an appreciative slurp of her wine. ‘When are we going to tell David?’

  ‘Not yet. We have to be certain. We’ll need the results from the tests first.’

  Jo gave a bemused shake of her head. ‘Amalgam fillings weren’t introduced until the eighteenth century. But it makes no sense – a modern cremation inside a Bronze Age urn.’

  ‘What about the other two cremations we found above the one with the filling? Are they modern too?’

  ‘Based on what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think so, but we won’t know for sure till we get the radio-carbon dates. If they’re prehistoric, someone excavated them and deliberately placed them back on top of the more recent cremation.’

  Clare swirled the inky red liquid round in the bottom of her glass. ‘There’s something you should know.’

  Jo laughed. ‘That’s not a phrase I associate with good news.’

  Clare hesitated, then looked up at Jo. ‘I think I know who that filling belonged to.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  Clare shook her head.

  Jo’s eyes widened. She pushed herself into an upright position and sat c
ross-legged, staring at Clare across the top of the coffee table. ‘You mean you know who the dead guy in the bottom of the urn was.’

  Clare nodded. ‘If I’m right, it’s Gerald’s younger brother – Jim.’

  Jo slapped her wine glass down on the coffee table, her voice shifting up a tone. ‘What the hell is going on? When David invited me down here, he didn’t mention anything about modern cremations. Have you guys been holding out on me?’

  Where to start? ‘It’s complicated. One of the gold sun discs from the site is missing.’

  Jo’s body was a study in concentration. ‘Missing as in lost.’

  ‘That’s what David would like to believe. But I’m pretty sure it was stolen.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Jim Hart.’

  ‘OK. Back up. Gerald’s brother stole the disc.’ Clare nodded. ‘What makes you think he’s our cremation?’

  ‘He disappeared at the same time the Hungerbourne dig ended. He was supposed to have run off with his girlfriend, leaving his wife and son behind.’

  ‘Nice guy.’

  ‘I tracked the girlfriend down – a woman called Joyce Clifford.’

  Jo leant forward, elbows on the coffee table, entwined hands supporting her chin. ‘Go on.’

  ‘According to Joyce, Gerald paid her to leave Hungerbourne and stay away from the Hart family. What he didn’t know was Jim had already dumped her.’

  ‘Wow!’

  ‘You haven’t heard the best of it yet. I’ve seen Gerald’s bank statements. He kept on paying her right up until he died.’

  Clare got up, walked over to her bag in the corner of the room and withdrew a pile of photocopied sheets stapled together in one corner. Flipping over the first few pages, she found what she was looking for and handed the sheets to Jo. ‘There’s something else. I didn’t think much of it when I first read it, but now … See what you make of it.’

  Jo pulled herself upright, leaning with her back against the front of the sofa. While Jo read, Clare made coffee in the kitchen. The photocopied pages she’d given Jo were extracts from Gerald’s site journal. Two entries had been ringed with yellow highlighter.