by Nicola Ford
Jo clipped her seat belt into place and turned to face Clare. ‘You believe him!’
Clare slipped the Fiesta into reverse and manoeuvred it out onto the road. ‘Unfortunately, I do. Just about the only thing everyone I’ve spoken to agrees about is that the robbery was planned well in advance.’
‘So?’
‘Like Clifford says, no one in their right minds would deliberately steal a damaged sun disc when they could take their pick from any number of other pristine pieces of goldwork from the dig.’
‘Unless things didn’t go to plan. Maybe they were interrupted.’
‘That would certainly suit Sally’s version of events. Gerald discovers Jim stealing the disc and ends up killing him.’
‘I know you and Sally don’t get along, but you’ve got to admit that as a theory it’s got a lot going for it.’
Clare’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. ‘How I feel about Sally Treen is neither here nor there. But as a theory it leaks like a sieve.’
‘Why?’
‘If Gerald found Jim stealing the gold and killed him, where is the sun disc? We would still have it, along with the one from the excavated assemblage.’
It was a few minutes before Jo replied. ‘So what’s the alternative? Jim gets interrupted when he’s stealing the gold and only manages to take the damaged disc. Then someone else kills Jim and makes off with it. Do you think he had an accomplice?’
Clare shrugged. ‘I suppose it’s possible.’
‘But that doesn’t explain how Jim’s remains ended up as a heap of burned bones in Gerald’s attic.’
‘No. But it would mean there might still be someone out there with a damned good reason for not wanting us poking around in the past.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A light sprinkling of rain earlier in the evening had ensured Jenny had the canal-side pub garden to herself. She was exhausted. She and Margaret had spent the day herding the undergrads around Swindon and then, when they’d finally got back to camp, she’d had to supervise the chores duties too because Clare still wasn’t back from wherever the hell she’d buggered off to. She listened to the gentle lap of water as the barges bumped gently against their moorings. It all seemed so perfect. Really it was anything but.
Nothing seemed to be going her way. She’d known things weren’t right between her and Karl for a while. She was always the one to phone him. A couple of weeks ago, she’d finally plucked up the courage to ask him what was wrong and he’d denied there was a problem – but she knew he was lying.
She had to see him to sort things out. She couldn’t face talking about it with David, so instead last week she’d gone to see Clare and begged a couple of extra days off. She’d spent the whole train journey from Pewsey to Exeter determined to have it out with him. When she’d arrived at his place unannounced, he’d made it clear he was far from pleased to see her. When she’d demanded to know what was wrong, he’d put it down to being uptight about finishing his master’s dissertation. He’d been in a strop the whole time she was with him.
By the time she got back to Wiltshire, she’d managed to convince herself he was stressing because his folks had forked out a fortune for him to be there and now the shit was about to hit the fan. But when she’d texted him to tell him she’d got safely back to the dig site, he’d texted back to say he’d decided they should take a break, maybe see other people. By which she took it that he was already shagging whoever owned the blouse she’d found chucked behind his sofa that he’d lightly dismissed as belonging to his sister, Kerry, who – he’d claimed – had been down from London to see him the week before.
Bastard! He’d known she wouldn’t speak to Kerry – they hated one another’s guts. She’d wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. But instead she’d found herself telling him it was probably for the best, and maybe they could stay in touch, and then proceeded to drink the best part of the half bottle of vodka she’d been saving for the end-of-dig party.
She’d woken with a screaming headache she’d been unable to shake all day, despite drinking enough water to drown a fish. The last thing she’d needed was a row with Clare about that bloody knife. It wasn’t her fault the lads were a roaring pain in the arse. Anyway, what was the big deal about a rusty piece of junk?
By the time she’d got back to camp, she’d just wanted to collapse in her tent for a couple of hours before dinner. She couldn’t believe her eyes when she’d found her tent flap thrown back and most of its contents – including her bras and knickers – strewn across the grass outside. The lads in her trench had been winding her up for days, but they’d gone too far this time. When she confronted them, they seemed to think it was funny. They denied all knowledge. Which was when she’d lost it – started yelling and screaming at them. Then Clare had rocked up and had another go at her. It wasn’t fair; she was the victim, but she was being treated like she was the one in the wrong.
She’d spent the past couple of days worrying herself sick that Clare would tell David. She was sure to, if she hadn’t already, and she could say goodbye to any hope of a reference. This was meant to be her golden ticket – everyone had heard of Hungerbourne. But everyone knew everyone in archaeology. And once word got out, she could kiss any hope she’d had of a career in archaeology goodbye too. She wished she’d never signed up for the bloody dig in the first place.
A train clattered by on its way to the little red-brick station just up the road. Maybe it was time to cut her losses.
A shadow fell across the table in front of her, and she glanced up from what remained of her vodka and orange juice to be greeted by a familiar smile. ‘Hello. Hope I didn’t spook you.’
She shook her head. ‘Just thinking.’
‘Not always good for you, that. Want another?’
She nodded. Maybe her luck was changing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
‘Hello, you. What a lovely surprise.’ David stood up and moved towards the doorway to greet Sally.
She stood stock-still on the threshold of the Portakabin. The surprise she had in store for him was anything but lovely. She prided herself that she’d learnt how to deal with these situations professionally and sympathetically. But she had no idea yet how she was going to break it to him. She’d had far too much experience of doing this sort of thing since she’d joined the force. Whatever people might assume, it never got any easier. And standing here now, with David looking at her expectantly, she wondered where the professional young DI had gone.
‘What on earth’s wrong? You look dreadful.’
‘Do you have a student called Jenny Shelton on the dig?’ She knew the answer already. She’d seen her on her last visit to the site a couple of days before. Jenny had been sitting cross-legged beside a trench, poring over a ring binder full of paperwork. But she couldn’t take any shortcuts. Everything had to be done by the book with this one.
David nodded, clearly confused. ‘She’s a site assistant – one of my MA students. Is there a problem? Has she got herself into some sort of bother? Honestly, Sally, she won’t say boo to a goose most of the time, but when she’s had a few it’s a different story. At the end-of-dig party on our last excavation she drank herself under the table – literally. I found her sleeping like a baby on the floor of the bar. She was so drunk it took two of us to carry her back to her tent.’ He smiled at the memory.
‘Sit down, David.’
He complied, depositing himself into his mud-stained chair.
‘Jenny is dead.’
‘Dead.’ He repeated the word without intonation.
‘A dog-walker found her early this morning – in the Kennet and Avon canal in Pewsey.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Yesterday was the dig day off, wasn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, you know it was. Are you sure about this, Sal? There must be some sort of mistake. Jenny can’t be dead.’
She wanted to be able to reassure him. She’d thought she was used to breaking bad
news, but she’d never had to deliver it to the man she’d just spent the night with before. ‘I’m sorry, David. There’s no mistake. There’ll have to be a formal identification, but I saw her myself.’ The image of Jenny’s bloated face swam into her memory.
The realisation that she had seen the young woman’s lifeless body lying cold and sodden on the towpath seemed to jolt him into action. He stood up. ‘Oh, Sal, I didn’t think. Do you want to sit down? Can I get you something? Tea, or would you prefer coffee?’
She’d seen this reaction in people before; the need to block out the unbearable news they’d just received with some form of activity. But this wasn’t just another bereaved relative; this was David, her David. The sudden realisation that she thought of him that way felled her as soundly as any crowbar-wielding thug. She had an overwhelming urge to wrap her arms around him. But she had to treat this like any other unexplained death she encountered. The canteen grapevine had already sussed she was seeing one of the archaeologists from the dig. It wouldn’t take long for word to reach DCI Morgan that the dead woman worked for the man that Sally was sleeping with. And he would be less than happy if David received that news from anyone but her. Even then, he wasn’t going to be a ray of sunshine when she told him.
There was no guarantee that he’d let her stay on the case. And in the meantime, she couldn’t afford to put a foot wrong. If Jenny’s death turned out to be anything other than an accident she might be forced to make a tough choice.
‘I’m used to it, David. It’s my job.’ It was partly true, though she’d never entirely come to terms with the sight of sudden death. At times like this, she envied the detachment some of her colleagues appeared to have when they dealt with the discovery of the newly dead and its aftermath.
He looked hurt. Had she been too short with him? Maybe, but she couldn’t afford to let that distract her. ‘When did you last see Jenny?’
‘It must have been yesterday morning – she and Margaret were about to head off into town with the students.’
‘And do you know what she was planning to do when they got back?’
‘No. Margaret might know, but Jenny had been keeping herself to herself lately.’
‘Any idea why?’
‘I got the impression she was a bit down. I think she’d been having a rough time of it.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Some sort of trouble with her love life, I think. I don’t know the details. You’d be better off speaking to Clare about that.’
She moved on without acknowledging the suggestion. ‘Would you have said she was depressed?’
‘You think she killed herself!’ He seemed to take her silence as affirmation. ‘Look, Sally, I was her lecturer, not her best friend. If at all possible, I avoid getting tangled up in my students’ personal lives.’
‘I’m just trying to get an idea of her state of mind.’
‘Then you’d be better off talking to a psychiatrist.’
‘Look, David, I’m just trying to get to the bottom of what happened to Jenny and I could really use your help.’
He closed his eyes for a second and let out a deep breath before opening them again. ‘OK, point taken. Jenny is – was – a quietly optimistic soul usually. She rolled with life’s punches and got on with whatever she was asked to do without making a song and dance about it.’
‘You sound as if you liked her.’
‘I did.’ He paused as if weighing something up. ‘She was an intelligent young woman. Not a rocket scientist, but bright and hard-working too. I used to think she had enough about her to ensure she’d make a go of it in archaeology when she finished her master’s.’
‘You sound like you might have changed your mind about that.’
He nodded. ‘I don’t feel good about saying this, but to tell you the truth her work hadn’t really been up to scratch lately. She seemed distracted – stressed. The undergrads in her trench had noticed. They started playing her up on-site. I even thought about getting rid of her.’
‘She was that bad?’
David nodded. ‘This site’s so important we can’t carry a site assistant who’s not up to it. But, in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.’
If things were that rough for the girl, maybe that explained why he’d immediately assumed that whatever had happened to her had been linked to booze. The smell of alcohol on Jenny had been strong enough that Sally could still smell it even after her body had spent the night floating in the canal.
‘Can you think of anything at all that might have caused her to want to harm herself?’
‘Like I say, she seemed very down.’ He paused before saying, ‘There was one thing. But I don’t suppose it was important. I think there was some sort of to-do about her tent.’
‘What sort of “to-do”?’
‘Apparently, a couple of nights ago she got a bit hysterical when she came back from site. Started accusing some of the undergrads in her trench of ransacking her tent.’
‘Ransacking?’
‘Jenny’s words, not mine. She said someone had been into her tent, been through all her stuff, then deposited the contents of the bag containing her personal laundry outside on the grass.’
‘Was anything missing?’
He smiled for the first time since the start of their conversation. ‘Not everything’s a crime.’
It was true that she did view life through glasses with a darker tint than most of the inhabitants of rural Wiltshire. It was the job; there was no escape from it. It consumed your every waking moment and taught you to look for the worst in everyone and everything you came across. But there was more to it than that. Her early memories weren’t as warm and cosy as David’s comfortable middle-class upbringing. She knew he was only teasing, but it didn’t stop her feeling that sometimes she needed the Clifton Suspension Bridge to cross the gap between his world and hers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
‘It was pretty grim, to tell you the truth.’ A sudden gust caught the French windows overlooking the patio and Ed got up to close them. The freshening wind was accompanied by rain and before he’d regained his seat, heavy drops of water were running in rivulets down the glass.
Sally Treen, West and Ed were sitting around the coffee table in the latter’s well-appointed drawing room. Sally had spent a good deal of the last few days trying to tie up the loose ends with Jenny’s death. Dealing with the aftermath of the totally pointless waste of a young woman’s life made investigating a forty-year-old murder with a long-dead perp seem like an even more pointless waste of police time and her energy. But what Morgan wanted, Morgan got.
At least, to her surprise, Ed had admitted that he was on-site when Gerald had cremated the body. In fact, everything he’d told them so far backed up Joyce Clifford’s version of events. According to Ed, he’d arrived on-site only after the body had been burned and was unrecognisable. He claimed Gerald hadn’t seen him and he appeared to have no idea that he and Gerald were not the only two people on-site that day.
It was a mystery to Sally why so many people seemed determined to believe Gerald hadn’t killed his brother simply because he came from a nice respectable home with all of the advantages in life. But she couldn’t help feeling a certain satisfaction that the evidence seemed to be backing up her instincts.
‘Why didn’t you report what you saw to the police? You let a murderer walk free.’
‘I was seventeen, for Christ’s sake, and I’d just seen my best friend’s uncle roasting someone on a bonfire.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you saying you were in some sort of shock?’
‘No, Sally, I’m saying I was bloody petrified. The moment I realised what Gerald was doing, my world turned upside down.’
She bristled at the intimation of familiarity in the use of her first name. ‘The truth is you were a witness to a murder and you failed to come forward.’
‘But I didn’t see anyone being killed.’
‘So you’re saying tha
t when you saw Gerald cremating his own brother alone, on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, you thought he’d died of natural causes.’
She sat impassive, apparently unmoved by the image she had conjured up. But inside she shivered. What sort of a man could do that to his own brother and then calmly stash his crushed-up remains in the attic of his own house? In her experience, murder knew no boundaries. Even the most apparently respectable people proved to be completely lacking in morals.
‘You must have realised it was Jim – once you found out he’d disappeared. But you still chose not to say anything.’
‘Of course I had my suspicions. But I wasn’t certain until the inquest.’
‘You don’t seriously expect us to believe that, do you, Mr Jevons?’
Ed slumped back into his seat, his head on his chest. Then, pulling himself upright by the arms of his chair, he leant forward. ‘Put yourself in my shoes. Peter was my best friend and Gerald was more of a father to me than mine had ever been.’
Ed stood up and placed both hands on the mantelpiece. He let the solid block of hewn limestone take his weight and then, drawing in a deep breath, turned to face them. ‘Jim was a bastard. He treated Estelle and Peter like shit, and Gerald was constantly bailing him out of one mess or another.’
West looked up from his notebook. ‘What sort of mess?’
‘Money, mostly. Money and women. Jim’s two favourite pastimes were gambling and other people’s wives.’
‘Did Jim’s wife know about the other women?’
Ed nodded. ‘Estelle was an intelligent woman and Jim never went out of his way to hide his indiscretions.’
Sally said, ‘And Estelle didn’t object?’
‘What do you think?’
‘How exactly did Gerald bail Jim out?’ she asked.
‘Most of the women Jim hung around with were old slappers.’
West raised an eyebrow. His glance towards Sally didn’t go unnoticed by her.
Ed managed a diffident shrug by way of apology. ‘A few quid from Gerald normally sent them packing. Gerald must have known every bookie in Wiltshire by the time he’d finished paying off Jim’s debts. Even then the smug little shit wasn’t satisfied.’