by Kim Fleet
Pamela scribbled a note in her ring binder. ‘Anything else?’
‘I’ve been doing some digging in the records at Hailes, and I’ve come up with something potentially interesting,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘A post-Dissolution planting scheme.’ Aidan fetched the plan he’d made. ‘There’s a pattern here, and it seems to match the rosary.’
Pamela gazed at the drawing. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure what this has to do with the skeleton or the Holy Blood, but it’s original and interesting. I’d like to include it. Will you go on camera and explain it?’
Aidan felt himself flush. ‘Me? Lewis seemed to think I wasn’t … er … eccentric enough.’
‘Bollocks to that,’ said Pamela. ‘I want experts talking about their area of expertise. We’ll mike you up and go in five.’
The rest of the day passed quickly, Pamela issuing brisk orders and the technical guys jumping to perform her commands. Even Xanthe and Jocasta seemed more focussed on the job. Jocasta had voiced a protest about the new direction the documentary was to take, but was soon disabused of any expectations that it would continue to follow the Holy Grail and eternal life crap that Lewis was so enamoured of.
Even Lisa fell into line when confronted by Pamela’s curt efficiency. She tied on her surgical scrubs and was poised and ready to explain the dentition on the skeleton without a single flounce or pout.
‘We’re filming today and today only,’ Pamela informed everyone. ‘So we get it right first time, every time. Got that? There will be no extender fees if we’re back here on Monday. Understand?’
At six o’clock that evening, Pamela declared, ‘It’s a wrap. Thank you, everyone.’
She approached Aidan with her hand extended. ‘Thank you for putting up with us. I’ll get you to come and check the footage once I’ve cut it, just to make sure I’ve got the history right.’
‘No problem,’ Aidan said, impressed that she cared to get the history right. ‘Nice working with you.’
They packed away the skeleton, wrapping it in bubble wrap and placing it in a long cardboard box. Strange to think that a full-grown human could occupy so small a space. The technical guys wound up their cables and packed their equipment in record quick time, anxious to be home before they lost any more of the weekend. Even Lisa seemed keen to be back in Oxford, calling, ‘Bye, everyone. Hope to see you again soon, Aidan,’ as soon as her re-shoots were done. She held his eyes for a second too long, raising her hand in farewell, then her shoulders sagged a little and she was gone.
The bright lights and relentless pace of the day had taken their toll, and pain sliced from the top of his head, through his eye sockets to his jaw. Now Aidan wanted nothing so much as a cool bath and the poems of Catullus to soothe his mind. What a bloody week it had been. Murdered TV executives, stolen artefacts and Lisa in the frame for all of it, but now at last there was a return to normal. Whatever passed for normal in the Cultural Heritage Unit these days. He prayed that on Monday morning they would all be back to their usual routine. He switched off the basement light and clattered up the metal stairs to the ground floor to find Trev and Mandy waiting for him.
‘All done?’ he said.
‘All sorted,’ Trev said. ‘See you Monday.’
They trundled off down the street to the pub, leaving him to lock up. Aidan went home, his head screaming in pain. He stretched full length on the settee, and fell asleep.
He awoke an hour later, his head still banging and his tongue with the tell-tale numb tingling that meant a migraine was on the way. He eased himself up from the settee, wincing at the pinch in his neck. His stomach clenched with foreboding. Something was wrong. It was a moment before he realised what. He’d forgotten to lock the safe. He remembered handling the Holy Blood for the filming, and remembered wrapping it and putting it in a box, and lodging it in the safe. And he remembered closing the safe door, but there his memory clouded. Did he lock the safe?
He grabbed his coat and ran back to the Cultural Heritage Unit, fumbled with his keys and finally got the door open. His hands were shaking with cold and fear. Leaving the Blood in an unlocked safe! He prayed he was wrong, that the Blood was in the safe and the safe was locked and secure.
He flicked on the lights as he went in, slammed the front door shut behind him, and headed down the metal stairs to the basement. The safe was in the corner of the finds room: a shoulder height, weighty monstrosity with a dial on the front and a hefty lever to open the door. He tried the handle. The door didn’t budge.
He collapsed against the door, relief flooding through him. Locked. He’d locked it, after all. Better just check the Holy Blood was inside. He twizzled the dial and yanked the heavy handle. The door swung open, slow and stately. There was the box, right at the back. He brought it out and opened the lid. Gently, he started to unwrap the Blood from its protective cocoon, knowing he’d never rest until he was convinced it was safe.
A noise above made him jump. He held his breath for a moment, listening, but was unable to hear anything apart from the beating of his own heart. He placed the box back in the safe and pushed the door to, then went to investigate. Probably just a mouse. It was a wonder they weren’t overrun and explaining themselves to the council rat catcher, the amount of biscuit crumbs Trev scattered over the carpet on an hourly basis. No vacuum cleaner could keep pace with him.
He went down an avenue of shelves stacked with boxes of human remains, an army of the dead flanking him, and up the stairs to the ground floor, aware he was tiptoeing. Aware, too, of the pulse pounding in his throat. In the entrance hall, he checked the front door. Shut, but unlocked. Did he forget to lock it in his hurry to check the Blood was safe? The migraine was burning away his memory like acid. He dropped the snib on the front door and went to check the rest of the building.
The staffroom was empty, the mugs rinsed out and left upside down on a tea towel on the draining board to dry. A sheet of plain paper bearing the half-reconstructed remains of a Roman amphora stood on the table: Andy’s latest jigsaw. A rustle behind him. He whipped round, stifling a cry. No one was there, just an old crisp packet, crunched up and tossed in the bin that had chosen that precise moment to unfurl. He swore softly. Heart failure induced by crisp packet, he chided himself.
The office shared by Mandy and Trev was also empty. A green light glowed on the computer monitor, an evil sprite lurking. He clicked on the overhead light and winced at the sulphur glow it cast over the room. He flicked it off again and went to his office. The door was closed. He grasped the handle and opened the door and a jolt punched him in the chest. Someone had been in here. His pens, which he always left in a neat line in ascending size order at the side of his blotter, were muddled up, and his blotter was no longer exactly parallel with the edge of the desk.
He crossed to it. The drawer was slightly open, too, the contents stirred about. And papers that he had filed in the bottom drawer were now in a pile on the top. He hurried to the filing cabinet and tugged at the top drawer. It flew open. He always locked it. He dipped into the top files, searching to see if anything was missing.
A step behind him. He turned, a cry of surprise, then an incredible pain in his head. He fell, striking the edge of the desk and slumping to the floor. Another blow and all went black around him.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Friday, 30 October 2015
19:24 hours
Eden could hear the screaming when she was still two houses away. The noise intensified when the door opened, and she stuck her fingers in her ears. Judy grabbed her and yanked her into the hallway.
‘Please take me away,’ she begged. ‘I can’t stand any more.’
She pushed open the door to the sitting room and Eden peeped in. Three small boys surged round the room, armed with a range of plastic weaponry, all of them screeching at the tops of their voices. The sofa cushions had been dragged onto the floor and fashioned into a barricade, which they alternate
ly leapt over and crouched behind making machine-gun noises, aiming the guns at the TV, which was playing an episode of Doctor Who. The Daleks didn’t stand a chance.
Eden pulled the door shut. ‘Where’s Marcus?’
‘Hiding in the kitchen.’
Eden went down the hall and found Marcus at the kitchen table, noise-cancelling earphones rammed on his head, a pile of paperwork in front of him. She waved at him and he hitched the earphones back.
‘Hello, Eden. How you doing?’
‘Fine thanks, Marcus. Can Judy come out to play?’
He cast an anguished glance at the sitting room door. ‘Er …’
Judy bounded over and planted a kiss on his cheek. ‘Thanks, sweetie. Come on, Eden, where are we going?’ She clattered down the hallway with Eden in her wake, and grabbed a jacket from the heaving racks. ‘Give them another ten minutes, then it’s calm down time, story, bath and bed,’ she shouted back towards the kitchen.
‘Thanks, Marcus,’ Eden called. ‘Have a good evening.’
They were out on the pavement before he could reply.
Judy let out a deep breath that fogged in the chill air. ‘Freedom. This is what freedom smells like.’
‘It was your decision to have three children.’
‘The first one was an experiment,’ Judy said, buttoning her coat. ‘And the other two were a cruel joke by pixies.’
They clambered into Eden’s car and set off into the centre of Cheltenham. ‘Mind if we’re cheap and cheerful?’ she asked. ‘Nothing on my books after I finish this case.’
‘Fine by me. I’ll tell Marcus we went somewhere posh and spend the difference on a new handbag.’
‘I’ll borrow Aidan’s parking space,’ Eden said, pulling into the space in front of the Cultural Heritage Unit. The building was shrouded in darkness, the windows blank.
‘Not seeing him tonight?’
‘No, I’m cross with him right now,’ Eden said.
‘What’s he done?’
‘Lying about what he was up to, and trying to shield his ex from a murder charge.’
‘Blimey! You two don’t do things by halves, do you?’ Judy said. ‘Let’s get inside and you can tell me all about it.’
At the corner of the street was an old pub that had been turned into a café. During the day it was haunted by yummy mummies and outsize prams clogged the doorway, but in the evening it was the venue of choice for students. The menu was varied, the prices cheap, and the portions generous. The café maintained a functional interior, with exposed pipes and rough woodwork giving it an industrial look, which all contributed to its hip and trendy vibe.
Eden and Judy found a table and draped their coats over the seats, then went to the counter to order from the multi-pierced server. Back at their table, with drinks in jam jars with handles, Judy said, ‘So what’s this about Aidan and do I need to go and thump him for you?’
Eden smiled. Judy was always in her corner. ‘It’s a bit complicated,’ she began, ‘and it’s to do with this client of mine who was killed.’
Judy’s eyed widened as she sucked on her straw. ‘Have you ever thought of having a normal job, you know, in an office from nine to five, whingeing by the water cooler instead of clients dropping dead all over the place?’
‘Who would employ me in an office?’
‘True. Go on.’
‘When I found the body there was a paper swan in the room. It was exactly the same as the ones Aidan makes. He’s got a thing about origami at the moment. It looked like he had been in the victim’s room so I asked him about it.’
‘Confronted, more like, I imagine,’ Judy added.
‘And he said he had no idea how it got there. Later it turns out he went out for dinner with Lisa, his ex, and made one of those swans and she picked it up, and she was the one who left it in Lewis’s hotel room.’
Judy ducked her head forward to whisper, ‘And she killed him?’
‘She says she was just there to steal back the Holy Blood.’
Judy put down her drink. ‘Hang on a minute. Steal back the Holy Blood?’
‘All-day breakfast and a kedgeree and a side order of chips.’ A waiter materialised beside them, armed with plates.
‘Thank you,’ Eden said.
‘There are sauces over there.’ He pointed to a table with an array of ketchup and mustard bottles.
‘Thanks,’ she said again. She waited until he’d gone, then said in a low voice, ‘There’s this artefact, found with the skeleton. It looks just like a religious relic called the Holy Blood. Lewis stole it while they were filming. Lisa says she went to get it back.’
‘And she killed him?’
Eden shook her head, mouth full of chips.
‘Why not?’
‘Because he was receiving poison pen letters, and they started before she’d even met him. And because someone doctored his eye drops.’
‘How?’
‘Put oven cleaner in them. Whoever did that knew he was always putting drops in his eyes. Lisa wouldn’t have known that. Not in time to mess with the drops, anyway.’
Judy grabbed a chip and dunked it in the egg yolk in her all-day breakfast. ‘So who did know about his drops?’
‘Anyone who worked with him, his mother, his foster mother, anyone who had a relationship with him, and there’s no shortage of suspects there.’
‘So one of them killed him.’
‘The people who worked with him all have an alibi. They were all out together that evening.’
Judy’s eyes gleamed. ‘Like Murder on the Orient Express,’ she said. ‘They all provide alibis for each other.’
‘And they all trooped into his room and bashed him?’
‘I thought you said his drops were poisoned?’
‘They were, but that’s not what killed him. Someone bashed his head in.’
Judy speared a bit of sausage and chewed it thoughtfully. ‘So our murderer writes a load of poison pen letters. “You’re going to die, sonny Jim”, that kind of thing. Then they poison the drops. Then they come along and bash him on the head. Talk about overkill.’
Eden paused with her fork part way to her mouth. She’d been blind, absolutely blind. Love, lust, lucre: those were the motives for murder, and in this case, she had all three. She’d been working on the wrong timeline and looking for a single motive. No wonder nothing fitted: she needed to start again.
21:49 hours
Eden and Judy came out of the warm fug of the café into the cold shock of the street.
‘Are we going to a strip club now?’ Judy asked, tucking her hands in her pockets.
‘How about a hot chocolate at my place then I’ll drive you home.’
‘An excellent alternative. Those posing pouches only make me laugh. Maybe it’s because I’ve got three boys, but I don’t find willies very interesting any more.’
Eden chuckled. ‘No, Judy, it’s called middle age.’
‘Cheek! You’re only a few years younger than me, remember.’
They reached Eden’s car. ‘Is that a light on in the Cultural Heritage Unit?’ Eden said.
‘Someone’s working late.’
‘On a Friday night? No way. Besides, I’m sure it was dark when we parked.’
‘It’ll be the cleaners.’
Eden shook her head. ‘No, they come in earlier. I’m just going to check it out.’
‘Burglars don’t put the light on!’ Judy called after her, as she headed up the stone steps to the front door.
Eden pushed at the front door. It swung open. She sprinted back to the car and fetched her heavy torch. ‘Stay here,’ she said to Judy. ‘Something’s wrong. I’m going to check it out.’
‘Not on your own you’re not,’ Judy said. She hustled up close behind Eden and together they went in.
Eden froze in the hall, straining her ears for a sound. Nothing. Light came from the basement. She crept along to the stairs, then inched down them, scouting for movements and tensing her senses for sig
ns they weren’t alone. The strip lights were harsh in the low-ceilinged room, casting sharp shadows on the walls. She moved from room to room. Everything seemed in place: the skeletons in their brown cardboard boxes filed on the shelves; the finds boxes with their labels facing outwards; the metal shelves in neat parallel lines.
As she reached the far end of the finds room, she stifled a cry. The safe was open, the door swinging wide, the contents of the safe scattered over the floor. She spun around and charged back up the stairs to the ground floor, Judy breathing hard behind her. The staffroom was empty, so was the first office. The door to Aidan’s office was shut. Gripping the torch tightly, she seized the handle and burst in.
It was a moment before she saw him. A foot, sticking out from behind the desk, his body slumped on the floor in a pool of blood. A broken pot lay in bloodied shards beside him. She ran to him and turned him over, her heart gripped with fear.
‘Aidan! Can you hear me?’
‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ Judy said, pulling her phone out of her pocket. ‘Is he breathing?’
Eden tilted her cheek close to his mouth. ‘Just. But he doesn’t look good.’
‘Conscious?’
‘Aidan, Aidan!’ No response. She tapped his cheek. ‘Aidan! Can you hear me?’
He groaned and opened then closed his eyes. ‘Eden,’ he croaked. ‘What happened?’
‘The ambulance is on its way,’ she said. ‘Just hold on.’
‘The Blood,’ he said. ‘Is it still there?’
‘Don’t worry about that now.’
‘You must go and check. It’s in the safe.’
Judy bent over him. ‘What does it look like?’
‘Like a red perfume bottle with a silver stopper,’ Eden said.
Judy touched her shoulder. ‘You stay with him. I’ll go and check.’
She disappeared and her footsteps clattered down to the basement. There was a hiatus then she reappeared again, shaking her head.
‘It’s gone,’ she said.