Something wasn’t right, something wasn’t working—her senses were betraying her. Hurry! Hurry!
Matilda kicked the table. It tilted. Her pile of books shifted. Letters from Roman Britain slipped over the edge and fell onto her foot. She almost welcomed the pain. That she could understand.
She picked up the book. Her fingertips tingled. Ionescu had said something about it when she first met him in Manchester. . . . That was it. That Sweeney hadn’t published all the letters in this book. There were other ones, some of them also dealing with Cornovium, which he was saving for a later volume. Trust Sweeney to parcel out his glory.
The sounds of revelry from downstairs and outside fluctuated like a police siren. Gold, Matilda thought. Celtic gold. What if one of the unpublished letters was an inventory of the temple treasure room?
She turned and flung open the door before Gareth could knock. A thin girl dressed in a fashionable hooker get-up leaned against the wall opposite, panting. Emma, Matilda realized. What a contrast from her fairy-princess festival photo.
Gareth seized Emma’s wrist, pulled her into the room, and dumped her on the edge of the bed. He shoved a sheaf of papers at Matilda. “Dunning’s boyfriend gave her these letters last night. It wasn’t Reynolds, it was Sweeney. He’s stolen the gold torc.” His eye lighted on Letters from Roman Britain. He pulled the book from Matilda’s hands and showed its back cover to Emma. “This is the man you saw last night, right?”
“Well, yeh. . . .”
Quickly Matilda flipped through the papers. Her heart melted into her stomach—no, not Howard. And yet that was his signature—she’d seen it a dozen times. “He’s been signing expertises for Dunning. What a tidy little scam. It’s his job to report the artifacts he uncovers. If he never reports them, no one will know they’ve been stolen. And with these papers they can be sold anywhere in the world.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Emma said from the bed. “Tell your rozzer friend here I’m just an innocent bystander.”
“Of course you are,” Matilda said. “All we’ll need from you is a statement.”
Emma’s red mouth turned up and then down again, the pout winning over the smile.
Matilda and Gareth stared at each other. She felt as though she had one end of a rope in her hands, and as soon as she tugged she’d haul in a net teeming with fish and worms and slimy bottom feeders. It can’t be Howard. Because if it is Howard, I’m an idiot.
Gareth pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. “P.C. Watkins, please. . . . March here. Did Howard Sweeney collect that gold torc from you last night? He did do? Damn and blast—sorry—meet us at the hotel straightaway.” He switched off with another vicious punch. “There’s your box, Emma.”
Matilda picked up her own phone. “Hand me my address book. There, on the dresser. Thanks.” Her fingers raced over the keys. “Come on, Ted, be a good little flunkey, be at work.”
“Ionescu here.”
“This is Matilda Gray. Did Howard bring you a gold torc last night?”
“I haven’t seen Dr. Sweeney for several days, Dr. Gray.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
Ionescu hemmed and hawed. “Oh, well—I don’t suppose he’d mind my telling. It’s all a bit of a giggle, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“He’s involved in a re-creation society. They wear costumes and play at being ancient Celts—like that lot in the States who play at knights and ladies. Dr. Sweeney’s the Druid. They’re having a party tonight at Durslow Edge, a bonfire and some beer and sausages. All in good fun.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Matilda rolled her eyes toward Gareth. Twin flames burned in his eyes. Behind him Emma inspected a long red fingernail. “Ted, does the name Linda Burkett mean anything to you?”
“She’s the girl who was murdered. Dreadful business. She was doing quite well in the adult education evening class.”
“The class Sweeney teaches?”
“Oh yes. He said she was his brightest pupil. Linda and Clive Adcox. Clive’s still with us, though, no trouble there.”
Matilda’s stomach was tying itself in a knot. Her heart seemed to have stopped beating. Howard. The unutterable gall of the man. Her own excruciating blindness. “Ted,” she said, “stay there at the lab. There’ll be a police officer by presently to take a statement.”
“I beg your pardon, Dr. Gray?”
“Just do it, please, Ted. You’ll hear much more than you want to know soon enough.” She ended the call and turned to Gareth. Hurry, hurry!
“It was Sweeney Linda hitched with,” he said, without her having to repeat Ted’s testimony.
“Yes. Reynolds thought Sweeney was out to stop his antiquities trading—such as it was, he was pretty small beer compared to Sweeney himself. And Howard was out to stop Reynolds, but not for the obvious reason. Sweeney’s been doing his, well, worst, to frame Reynolds for Linda’s murder, even to the extent of stealing Della’s receipt and leaving it at the murder scene. If Reynolds were in prison he could hardly be competition.”
“Sweeney had us in,” Gareth stated with a mixture of astonishment and exasperation.
“And there’s more to it than Reynolds.” Matilda scowled fiercely. “I think he knew about the gold torcs in the temple and asked me here so I would find them for him. He was sure I wouldn’t catch on to his scheme. He was right, wasn’t he? God help me if I’m not the world’s biggest fool!”
Gareth took her arm in a grip every bit as fervent as her scowl. “You’ve known him for a long time, why should you suspect him? He had us all well and truly on a string.”
“He hit Caterina himself and then jumped down the trench, didn’t he?”
“Clever bit of work, that. But we have him now. Where is he?”
“On his way out to Durslow for the Beltane ceremony. He’s been using the travelers and the other neo-pagans like he’s been using us, damn it all.”
“Here, what’s this?” asked Emma. “Something rum with the ceremony?”
“Yes, something very rum with the ceremony,” Matilda hissed. She pulled Gareth’s hand from her arm and stood for a moment holding it. His grip was as firm with resolve as hers. She sensed the pulse beating in his mind just as it did in hers, hurry, hurry!
“It’s not too late,” he told her. “We won’t let it be too late.”
Emma regarded their pose skeptically. The long rays of the westering sun pooled gold in the middle of the room, and cast shadows dark as boggy pools in the corners.
* * * * *
Watkins’s eyes bulged from his face in surprise. His mouth set itself in a straight line of rage. “I’ll lay Dunning by the heels,” he said. “If she don’t talk to us now, she’ll be in the dock with Sweeney, and no mistake.”
“No mistake,” Gareth repeated. He turned to Matilda and Emma. “Come along. We have to find Ashley and Nick.”
“Ashley?” asked Emma. “One of your students, is she? And Nick? The dishy one in the photo?”
“I’ll make a dish of him, right enough, if he doesn’t give me some straight answers.” Gareth started the engine of his Rover before the women had slammed their doors. The pulse in his mind ticked on, like a hammer tapping inside his skull, as disturbing a sensation as he’d ever felt. And he’d felt quite a few sensations.
Once beyond the town Gareth pressed the accelerator to the floor. The countryside smeared into a glimmering green and gold blur. Passing cars reflected explosive bursts of sunlight. Matilda sat biting her lip, her white-knuckled hands pushing the buttons on her mobile, over and over. But Ashley never answered.
It wasn’t Matilda’s fault, Gareth thought. She’d told him since the beginning her sense wasn’t infallible. He was the one who’d made a proper cock-up of the investigation. He was the one whose list of suspects had been one name short.
Who could you trust? That’s what it always came down to. Who could you trust?
Gareth braked and swung the car in
to the encampment. He remembered only too well which particular bit of rubbish was Nick’s caravan. If the sod had Ashley inside. . . .
A fully dressed Nick opened the door to Gareth’s battering ram of a knock. He stared with bloodshot eyes at the warrant card almost touching his nose. Gareth smelled the smoke gathered inside the caravan and snorted like a horse. “Detective Inspector Gareth March, Scotland Yard. Matilda Gray. Emma Price. We want to talk to you about Linda Burkett.”
“I knew you were a pig,” Nick muttered, but the insult lacked any force. “Please, step into my stately home.”
Gareth handed Matilda up the step and shot a searching glance round the caravan’s interior. Unless Nick had chucked Ashley’s body into a cupboard, she wasn’t there. But his relief was tempered quickly by the thought, If she’s not here, then where is she?
From the step Emma made a quick inspection of Nick’s haggard features. “I remember you, the bloke with the mistletoe,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll wait here, shall I?”
“Just there,” Gareth told her. “Don’t run off.” He left the door swinging open, hoping to air the place out, and turned on Nick. “Where’s Ashley Walraven?”
“Dunno,” said Nick. “Went back to town.”
“When?” Gareth demanded.
“Half an hour, maybe. Maybe more. Dunno.”
Matilda’s eyes glinted. When Nick sat heavily down on the bench beside the book-littered table and reached for the smoldering cigarette, she whisked the ashtray away and dumped it into the sink. “You’ve royally fouled things up for us by involving Ashley in your plots and plans,” she told him. “And by not telling the authorities what you know about Linda’s murder and the antiquities scam.”
“Linda who?” said Nick. “What antiquities?”
Gareth grasped Nick’s shirt front and half-lifted him from the seat. “Your lover, Linda Burkett. The antiquities that might have been packed in boxes like those on the opposite seat, there. We’ve talked to Della and to Ashley both. Stop wasting our time with the flannel.”
Fear flashed in Nick’s face, the fear of a child caught in an undertow of time and place and circumstance he doesn’t understand. Nothing like fear to sober a man up. Gareth dropped Nick back on the seat.
“Dunning was nobbling the goods, wasn’t she?” said Nick. “She and Adrian Reynolds. Linda said they were stealing from the past, stealing from the gods. . . .” He licked his lips and swallowed. “Linda pretended she was working with Reynolds to get evidence against him. He found out. He killed her.”
“Did you see her with him with night she died?” Gareth asked
“My car had a breakdown. She said she’d hitch a ride into Corcester. Reynolds is always poncing about in that red MG, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is. But his wife was with him the night Linda died.”
“Not a bit of it,” said Nick. “She was wrong about which night it was. She was wrong about a lot, Della was. What do you expect from a sweet helpless child? Like Ashley, she was, asking for some sod to do her over.”
Gareth’s hand closed into a fist, but he kept it at his side. Della had been only too willing, it seemed, and Ashley was—well, if she wasn’t intact, it wasn’t Nick’s doing. “Neither of them is as stupid as you think. And you’re bloody well not as clever as you think.”
“How old are you, Nick?” Matilda asked. “Twenty-three or four? You’re not the first man to mistake sexual bravado for maturity. Della helped to ease the pain of Linda’s death in the only way you’d accept. So did Ashley. It’s a shame you couldn’t bring yourself to trust either one of them. You would have found your answers a long time ago.”
Nick stared up at Matilda, both resentful and grateful, Gareth estimated. He looked down at his own muddy shoes and for a moment felt sorry for Nick, pinned in the light of Matilda’s uncompromising gaze.
Voices drifted in the open door. Gareth spared a quick glance outside. An even scraggier girl with long, lank hair was greeting Emma. Emma said, “Hello Shirl. Yeh, it’s me, turned up again like a bad penny.”
“Where is Ashley?” Matilda asked again.
“I told you,” replied Nick. “She couldn’t stick it. She went back to Corcester.”
“How did she go back to Corcester?”
“Walked. I saw her off down the road. She’s safe enough, Reynolds snuffed it good and proper, didn’t he?” Nick leaned his head against the wall and shut his eyes.
“Is Reynolds dead, then?” Gareth asked quietly. “That’s interesting. Tell me about it.”
Nick’s eyes flew open. “You’re the clever bugger, aren’t you?”
“Not clever enough by half.” Gareth took an evidence bag from his pocket and held it open. “Give me the knife.” With a grimace, Nick pulled a pen knife from his own pocket and dropped it in the bag. It was stained a dark umber brown. “You’ll need to make a statement. Several statements. If you cooperate you might get off with a fine for molesting a dead body.”
“Reynolds did worse.”
“Did he?” Matilda asked. “Even if he had killed Linda, two wrongs wouldn’t have made a right. And he didn’t kill her.”
“Eh?” Nick looked from face to face. “Now you’re flanneling me. . . .”
“Here,” said Emma, clambering into the caravan. She bumped into Gareth, who bumped into Matilda, who with a jangle stepped into the bead curtain defining a bedroom. “This Ashley, does she have long blond hair?”
“Yes,” said Gareth.
“Shirl here is telling me she saw Nick’s bird with the blond hair picked up by a posh white BMW.”
Gareth felt the blood slowly drain from his face. Matilda’s went stark white between one heartbeat and the next.
“Shirl’s scared,” Emma went on. “Said she was going home to Chelsea. Her Dad’s an accountant in the City, can you credit her living like this when her Dad’s an accountant in the City?”
Matilda took Gareth’s arm in a crushing grip. “I asked Ashley to trust me. I asked her to trust you. I told her Howard knew who we were and by extension she could trust him. . . . Gareth, it’s going to be Linda all over again, picked up by someone she trusts. And we’re the ones who put her in harm’s way!”
Her anguish scraped fingernails down his spine. The blood flooded back into his face. “Steady on,” he said, even though he felt anything but steady. “She has the mobile phone—though he’ll have that off her, won’t he?”
Nick’s body seemed to change from jelly to steel as the last molecules of the drug burned away. “What the hell are you talking about? Who’s this bloke in the BMW?”
“Howard Sweeney,” Matilda spat. “Sweeney’s the professor from the University who’s in charge of the dig at Corcester. He’s the man who’s been working with Celia Dunning to steal and sell antiquities. We have proof of that.”
“Linda was in one of his night classes!” Nick said. “She called him a dotty old dear. She would have hitched with him, right enough. And asked his advice on how to catch Dunning. He killed her?”
“Seems so, doesn’t it?” Gareth told him. “We have to find him before he kills Ashley, too.”
“He’s on his way to Durslow for the ceremony,” added Matilda. “He calls himself the Druid.”
“He’s the Druid, is he? Of all the bleedin’ cheek!” Nick leaped up, cracked his head on the overhanging ceiling, and sat back down. “We have to catch him out.”
“We?” Gareth demanded. “You’ve fancied yourself a detective long enough, Sunshine, it’s time to leave it to the professionals. . . .”
He couldn’t tell whether it was own body or Matilda’s that was quivering like a harp string. “I know what we need to do, Gareth,” she said, “but we’re going to need their help. Nick, Emma, tell us about the ceremony.”
“Well then,” Nick began, frowning in concentration. Emma leaned against the door jamb, interjecting a phrase or two. Matilda nodded, drawing out their words, shaping them into images. Gareth saw what she was after and qu
elled the impulse to clap his hand over her mouth.
He could see what she was planning, what Nick was thinking, what Emma was feeling. The pulse in the back of his mind ticked as briskly as the clock on his grandmother’s mantelpiece at Aberffraw. He wanted to crouch, his hands over his ears, until he couldn’t hear it any more. And yet he had no choice but to listen.
The sun was a blood-red globe just above the western horizon.
Chapter Eighteen
The crimson light that flooded the western sky slowly drained away, drawing darkness across the Cheshire countryside. The scene, Ashley thought, was like one out of some old Celtic tale, blood and shadow mingled in the hands of the gods.
No wonder the place was getting to her, with Sweeney emptying the bottle of wine into her glass. She was just a little buzzed. So much for her resolution to stay sober. But it was such a relief to be with someone she could trust. “Thanks for the picnic,” she said
He lounged against the hood of the BMW, looking at her with the same indulgent half-smile her mother smiled just before she said, “I told you so.” What Sweeney said, though, was, “Do you know about the pagan re-enactment scheduled for tonight?”
“Oh yes,” she said, “I heard about it.”
“Would you like to attend? It’s not an exclusive group, by any means, despite the misguided folk who take it all seriously.”
Ashley remembered Nick’s exhausted face. He took it seriously. How misguided he was she couldn’t say. Whatever—with Sweeney she could see the ceremony after all, without having to watch her back. Then she’d have a really good report for Gareth and Matilda. It was like eating her cake and having it, too. “Yes, I would, thank you.”
“Come along, then.” Sweeney gathered up the bottle and the plastic sandwich wrappers. He seated her inside the car, shut her door, and drove them away from the viewpoint. She looked around for the cell phone but didn’t see it. She’d find it later. No problem.
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