Grave Consequences

by Dana Cameron

  On our way out, fifteen minutes later, Greg excused himself, pausing to speak with one of the men across the room. I decided to buy a candy bar, just in case my jet lag slowed me down later. Mads saw me pause in front of the small rack.

  “So, you’re here to work with Greg. You going to be here all summer, then?”

  Her voice was as thin as she was, not high-pitched but a little unsteady.

  “No, just a couple of weeks. I’ve got research to do in London and so I’m combining it with a visit to Jane and Greg.”

  “And you’re an archaeologist too?”

  “That’s right.”

  Mads rubbed a cloth over the cash register. “Are you married?”

  Ah, that’s it; she’s worried I’m poaching on Greg. “Yes, I am. Brian’s at home.”

  “What’s he think of you gallivanting all over the place?” She looked at me sharply.

  “Well, he misses me, but he knows it’s for work, and it won’t be forever. He has to do the same sometimes, so we just try to make the best of it.”

  “Hmm.” Apparently satisfied that I wasn’t going to disrupt things too much, she relented. “You want one of them candy bars?”

  “I’m trying to decide which one would be good. Any suggestions?”

  “I’m not supposed to eat sweets—they do awful things to my dentals—but…” She lowered her voice to a whistling whisper. “I do like one of them Double Deckers, every so often.”

  “Okay, I’ll take one of them.”

  Auntie Mads beamed approval as I picked a hideously colored one in a bright purple and orange wrapper and paid.

  Greg came up to us. “All right, then, Emma?”

  “All set.” I pocketed my candy bar.

  “Good-bye, Auntie. You be good today.”

  Mads kissed him on the cheek again. “Well, Greg, when I’m not good, I’m careful not to get caught. You mind yourself.”

  If I’d known what would be waiting for me at the site, I would have had a fourth cup of coffee, and maybe a fifth. As we approached the dig, I could see Jane chewing out Andrew. Even though I couldn’t hear what she was saying, I could see the tension in her body and how the sharp, jabbing movements of her hands as she gestured were echoed by the way her hair swung in short, uniform arcs as she moved her head. There were students already at work, removing the covering from their units, putting out tools and notebooks. They didn’t seem fazed by Jane’s tirade; in fact, I noticed with a frown, they had a radio on and I could hear the faint sounds of reggae music.

  “Let’s rescue Andrew, before Jane goes in for a spot of GBH, shall we?” Greg whispered to me.

  “GBH?” I didn’t think he was referring to the Boston public television station.

  “Grievous bodily harm. I suspect he’ll be his own worst punishment today, if history is any indication.”

  Before I could ask about that history, Greg picked up his pace; this caused us to hear the last of Jane’s words to Andrew.

  “—Don’t you forget your arsing about reflects on me as well—”

  Andrew uttered a short laugh. “And God forbid anything should tarnish your reputation.”

  Two bright spots of colors enflamed Jane’s cheeks. “Don’t you even think of diminishing how angry I am or what I will do to protect my position! Any more of this nonsense—”

  “Spare me, Jane,” Andrew said. “Why not make it easier on yourself and sack me now?”

  I almost chalked it up to imagination or a trick of the light through the clouds, but I could have sworn I saw an expression like eagerness flit across Andrew’s face. An instant later, there was nothing but the boredom that had been present before.

  “Because I need you, you know that, and you don’t really want to leave, in spite of your stupid antics. So pull yourself together, friend.” Jane pursed her lips, looking as though she wanted to shake Andrew; then she looked up, saw us, and waved us over. Her demeanor totally changed: there was no trace of her former anger now.

  “Emma, this is Andrew Freeman, our osteologist. Andrew, this is Emma Fielding, who’ll be working with us the next couple of weeks.”

  Since Andrew didn’t speak up, I decided not to volunteer anything about our early morning meeting. “How do you do, Andrew?”

  I could see full well how he did, however: his skin was almost gray, lines ran deeply around bloodshot eyes, and his brown hair was matted down, presumably still wet from a shower that hadn’t done much to revive him. He was wearing a blue workshirt untucked over baggy green khaki fatigues and a gray army surplus anorak that looked as though it had been dragged behind a Jeep for a year. This quite apart, I had to admit that Andrew—in the light of day and not reeling drunk—was not bad looking. His long face and high cheekbones—particularly with the beard that came down to a little point just at his chin—looked as though they ought to have been the carving on the top of a medieval crypt, a knight with his shield laid out over his body. In fact, the more I looked, the more the mournful quality of his face and sad eyes seemed downright attractive in the he’s-been-hurt-I-can-help-him-smile-again way that is the foundation of so many impetuous decisions and bad relationships.

  Damn.

  “I’m really pleased to meet you, Emma.” He clasped my hand warmly, with both of his own. “Jane’s told me a lot about you—and your work.”

  Okay, so it was clear that he really didn’t want me saying anything about our previous encounter. I decided to smile back. “I’m really looking forward to working on the site with, uh, everyone.”

  Jane beamed upon us both. “Since you’re both going to be housemates—Andrew’s just down the hall from you, Emma, did I mention it in all the excitement yesterday?—you might as well get to know one another straight off. Emma, why don’t you help Andrew work on this skellie? That way, he can show you the ropes here, you can have a look at the button I mentioned—if that will satisfy proper police procedure, Andrew?” she asked, mockingly.

  He shrugged almost apologetically. “It should be fine, Jane, at least until I get something conclusive.”

  “Then we’ll leave you to it; come on, Greg, let’s look at burial nineteen.” Jane took her husband’s arm and marched off. Andrew watched them leave.

  “I’ve got my tools right here,” I said, holding up my backpack. “Where shall I begin?”

  He started rummaging through his own large canvas backpack. “Nowhere, actually. You don’t use anything on one of my burials that I don’t first approve.”

  I raised one eyebrow. His burials? Andrew didn’t notice, but handed me a three-ring notebook. “Here’s the recording system for the site. Why don’t you get familiar with it while I start a separate set for the police? They have different set of requirements than archaeologists do, to maintain the chain of custody for artifacts and the like.”

  “I have worked with human remains before,” I said, as matter-of-factly as I could, flipping through the sheets. “I think I’ve got a good idea—”

  Without looking up, the osteologist rubbed his hand over his face and head. “Look, I am in the throes of a spectacular hangover, so if you could keep the chat down to a minimum, I would be eternally grateful.” He turned and smiled again, a little too late to make up for the edge in his voice.

  I shrugged. “I could just squat down over here silently and hand you things when you need them, how about that? Fetch you coffee and sandwiches, maybe? Wipe your fevered brow?”

  “It would make my life easier.” He turned back to his bag and pulled out a mechanical pencil. “Sounds good to me.”

  “Good, but also unlikely, I fear. Look, if you’re not in the mood for company, I’ll ask Jane for another job.”

  “And I don’t need Jane on my neck, again, do I?” He smiled ruefully.

  Again I was struck by Andrew’s appeal, but I wasn’t going to forgive him just because he’d smiled. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

  The osteologist cocked his head, sizing me up, and then nodded. “Fine. Once you’ve
gone over the sheets, there is a second set of bamboo probes, brushes, and a proper small trowel in my kit—Americans always use such whacking great things. You may take them and finish exposing the rest of the phalanges—you know, finger bones?—on the right hand. There won’t be too much trouble for you to get into.”

  I nodded and bent over Andrew’s bag to find the tools. Behind me, I heard a familiar mechanical click, followed by a low chuckle.

  “Piss off, Avery,” Andrew said. I glanced behind me and saw a thickset man with greasy dark hair, an expensive German camera in his hands. If his stance was any indication, he’d just taken a picture of me. Bending over.

  “You’re not wanted, Avery. I’ll call you when we’re ready to shoot our friend here.”

  The camera man didn’t answer, but chuckled again and scurried away, rolling from side to side, badgerlike, toward Jane and Greg, who were huddled in conversation. I turned to Andrew for an explanation.

  He sighed. “Site photographer. Very good at what he does, but a remarkable specimen of saddle sniffer.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Dean Avery is a pervert. Waits for young women to find themselves in some ungainly position, and then shoots candid pictures of them. He’s got them plastered all over his rooms; I had the misfortune to see his lair once and it imbued in me a desire never to return. I’d watch how I squat, if I were you. Archaeology is like a luncheon buffet for his sort.”

  I digested that in silence; like every dig, this one certainly was replete with characters. I paused, then looked down at the burial before me. The skeleton was on its left side, in a crouched position, with the head pointing south, toward the river. Most of the soil-stained bones that were present were now at least partially exposed, save for the last bones in the fingers, and the solid look of the bones’ surfaces suggested that they were in good shape.

  “He—it is a he?—wasn’t buried in a coffin,” I observed.

  Andrew hunkered down beside me. “Bright girl. Yes, it is a he, and no, he wasn’t buried in a coffin.”

  “That’s not unusual for burials, right into the nineteenth century,” I mused. “But the pelvis isn’t fully exposed and the long bones aren’t all that long. How do you know for sure it’s male?”

  “I just do, that’s all.”

  I looked at Andrew askance. He scratched at his beard. “I’m sorry, I’m not being obstructionist, it’s just that once you’ve handled as many skeletons as I have, you have an instinct before you have the reason. As for this one here, it’s just a very strong hunch, based on what I can see of the mandible and pronounced occipital ridge. Also, the femur is pretty robust.”

  Okay, so whoever it is is on the large side. “So it probably isn’t the missing student, who is a woman, right? The bones look like they’ve been there for years, not days.”

  Andrew looked startled. “Julia will turn up. Trust me.”

  I watched him struggle to find something to explain that.

  “She’s a very reliable girl. Something’s probably…just come up, that’s all.”

  I shrugged again and then examined the ends of the long bones and the sutures in the skull. “Looks like the epiphyses are pretty well fused, too.”

  He jotted down a few notes, then got up, stood back, and appraised the burial and nodded. “Yes, I’d say that we’re looking at an adult, fully mature but not too old. There’s only a moderate amount of wear on the teeth, if you look over here. I wonder if we’ll see evidence of modern dentistry, fillings or some such, once we are able to pull the skull.”

  I looked; the exposed teeth were worn, but not to the extent that you would find on an older adult. “Hey, what’s up with those foot bones? They look deformed to me, or am I just seeing things?”

  Andrew knelt down. “No, you’re right. I’ll get a better look at them in the lab, but whoever it was would have had quite a limp.” He smiled, this time genuinely. “It’s nice to have an informed audience.”

  I found it very hard to resist returning his smile, so I didn’t bother. “Jane said you found a button? Mind if I have a look?”

  “Certainly. I expect we’ll find more buttons as we expose more of the bones. Probably fell off the coat as it deteriorated.” Andrew reached into a deep tray, removed a small, plastic bag, and handed it to me.

  It was very dirty, and stained yellowish with age, perhaps, or the same chemicals in the ground that had stained the bones. Flat, with four holes punched through it. I could see a faint ridge around the rim of it.

  “It’s pretty recent,” I said. “It looks like bakelite to me.”

  “That so?” I got the impression that he was assessing me again.

  “It’s an early form of plastic,” I continued. “It was invented at the very beginning of the twentieth century.”

  “Yes, yes, I know what bakelite is.” Andrew snorted. “Even though I cut my teeth on the neolithic and they didn’t have mass-manufactured buttons…but this modern medieval shit is overburden as far as I’m concerned.”

  I handed the bag back to him. “Then why are you here?”

  “Greg needed someone to do the bones.” He tossed the button into the tray impatiently. “Look, why don’t you just get started digging? See if you can’t find those phalanges.”

  I got a small dustpan and bucket, but looked around. “Why isn’t everyone using a screen?” Andrew was the only one with a tiny hand screen; none of the students had one.

  He was amused. “We don’t generally use sifters, if that’s what you mean. You should be able to find everything by trowling. They dump their soil over there.” He indicated the backdirt pile with a nod of his head.

  “They’ll lose a lot of data that way,” I muttered, hunkering down.

  “Jane’s the boss here,” Andrew replied. “Now I need to concentrate on taking some measurements.”

  I was glad to start work and leave my changeable colleague to his. The soil was only moderately heavy, silty loam. It pulled back nicely, though, and even working carefully, I was quickly able to uncover several of the end bones to the fingers of the left hand. I left them in place on little pedestals of earth, not wanting to remove them before they’d been recorded and not wanting to dig any deeper.

  I turned to the burial where the right hand was raised slightly, closer to the head than the left hand was, finger bones fanned out in an arrangement that was in its own way graceful. I worked for a few moments, enjoying the feel of the fussy work, alternating use of the small trowel with a pointy piece of bamboo and a fine sable brush, being careful lest I damage the bone.

  Everything went smoothly, but then I realized that I was missing a bone—three bones, actually. I frowned, then scraped away a bit more soil, but to no avail. They simply weren’t where they should be.

  “Andrew? I’ve got something—or rather, I don’t have something.”

  He looked up. “What’s that?”

  “There’s nice preservation—no rodent disturbance, the soil’s not too acidic, and it looks like he was covered up pretty quick, not left exposed to the elements. I’ve got everything, even the small bones from the pinkie, but the middle finger of the right hand seems to be missing altogether. I just don’t think it’s here.”

  The osteologist considered and began speaking, almost as if to himself. “The presence of the other small bones, in situ, suggests that this was a rapid deposit, not left open to taphonomic forces, you know, wind, water, animals, anything that would have scattered the smaller bits post-deposition—”

  I nodded and tried not to roll my eyes; yes, I knew.

  Andrew stared at the hand a moment. “No chance it’s lying at an odd angle? You couldn’t have missed them, otherwise.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Do you mind if I take a closer look at something? One of the metacarpals is sitting right on top of the soil—”

  “Go ahead.”

  Leaving my trowel to mark the location, I picked up what would have been the last
bone in the hand proper and looked at it carefully. It was cool and a little damp from the soil, a little lighter than I thought it would be. The edge was imperfect, though not because of some trick of preservation.

  “Butchery marks,” I said, holding it up to him. “Not that someone was trying to eat this guy, but it looks like that middle finger was cut off. See, you can see where this bone was nicked. It happened shortly before death, I guess, there’s no sign of healing—”

  Andrew stared at the bone, a startled expression on his face. “My God, you’re right.” Then he dropped down beside me and I couldn’t help but notice how nicely male he smelled, some kind of herbal soap or aftershave under clean sweat. “But I think our friend here had worse things to worry about. Look there, the proximal sternum, near the top of the corpus sterni.”

  I followed where he was pointing, to the top of the long part of the breastbone. I had to strain to see it, and finally, in spite of my worries about becoming the unwilling target of the photographer, I bent over and brought my face to within two inches of the remains. At first, I couldn’t see anything as my shadow obscured it all, but then, as my eyes adjusted, I realized that there was a hairline crack in the bone, a crack that widened almost imperceptibly as my gaze followed it. Where it stopped, close to the center of the sternum, I could see the faintest discoloration showing against the discolored bone. Rust.

  “There’s a piece of iron in there,” I announced, rocking back on my heels, a little dizzy as I realized what this meant.

  “Got it in one, full marks.” Andrew clapped his hands together, almost jolly. “He didn’t die of old age, that’s for certain. Someone tried to bone our friend here like a frying chicken and pretty well succeeded.”

  Chapter 5

  “TCH, TCH, ANDREW. THAT’S A BIT COLD, EVEN FOR you, don’t you think?”

  We both looked up. I squinted, the sun in my eyes, and saw a short, sturdy wavy-haired blonde in a cardigan and dark trousers, her head cocked to one side, surveying our work doubtfully.