The Lost Shrine

by Nicola Ford

  Jo nodded. ‘Sure did. And a whole bunch of pit burials. Old grain pits, mostly. They’d reused them to make offerings in the bottom, including some folks who looked like they’d been deliberately sacrificed.’

  Clare said, ‘Sort of makes a shiver run down your spine, doesn’t it? Thinking about what must have happened to those babies.’ She paused. ‘I didn’t know you had religious leanings, Jo.’

  Jo looked at her friend, puzzled for a second about what she meant. ‘Oh, you mean the whole crossing myself thing. I guess it was just a reflex. Some habits take a long time to fade. Us Granskis are all good, honest-to-God Polish Catholics. Or at least we were until this one came along. I think I was a bit of a shock to the system.’ She laughed.

  ‘Being an atheist, you mean.’

  ‘No, dumbo. Being gay.’

  Clare opened her eyes wide. ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Clare. Don’t tell me you hadn’t realised.’ For a moment Jo sat silently, staring at Clare. Then she leant forward and broke out into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. When she finally managed to bring herself under control she said, ‘You really didn’t know, did you?’

  ‘How the hell was I supposed to know? In the two years I’ve known you you’ve never mentioned it once.’

  Jo sat looking at her friend, hands on hips. ‘And how many times in those two years have you told me you’re straight?’

  Clare blustered, ‘But it was obvious. I was married to Stephen.’

  ‘Like that makes a difference.’

  Clare looked at her friend in stunned amazement. ‘Really?’

  Jo raised an eyebrow and smiled. ‘Really. You know, sometimes, Clare, I think you’re one of the smartest people I know. And then others …’

  The two women laughed. Clare said, ‘OK. I guess you might have a point.’

  When the laughter had subsided, in an attempt to recover her equilibrium, Clare returned the conversation to the fate of the dead infants. ‘What happened to those babies brings it all home to you, though, doesn’t it?’

  Jo asked, ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, that life could be pretty gruesome and bizarre at times back in the Iron Age.’

  Jo shrugged. ‘I guess so. But some pretty crazy shit happens today too, wouldn’t you say? You only have to look at what happened to Beth to see that. And like I told Stone, there’s no telling when those burials date to until we get the radio carbon dates through.’

  ‘But you said yourself they’re not modern.’

  ‘I know what I said.’

  Clare placed her glass down and stared at Jo open-mouthed. ‘Are you telling me they could be?’

  ‘Ninety per cent sure they’re not. But there’s always a chance.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re telling me this.’

  Jo lowered her voice. ‘Look, they’re probably old. And in all probability very old. And if they’re part of the same pit group that that terret ring came from, they’re almost certainly Iron Age. But it’s impossible to be certain until we get the dates back from the lab.’ She looked Clare straight in the eye. ‘And we couldn’t afford to have the site shut down, could we?’

  For a moment Clare looked as if she was going to be sick. ‘But what if they are modern? That would mean …’

  ‘I know what it would mean.’

  ‘We can’t just sit around for weeks waiting for the RC dates to come through if there’s even the slightest possibility that those burials are recent. What if there’s some sort of baby killer in Bailsgrove?’

  Jo couldn’t remember seeing Clare get this stressed before. Not even when someone had tried to kill them both at Hungerbourne. ‘Calm down, Clare. And lower your voice! I’ve already been on the phone to a guy I know in the lab in Florida. He can cut us a cheap deal to get them processed real fast.’ Jo could see the anxiety written on Clare’s face. ‘Chill out! I didn’t tell him.’

  Clare’s relief was clear to see. ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘I can take the samples once we’ve finished lifting them tomorrow. If we courier them, we should have the results in three, maybe four days. The way police budgets are these days we’ll probably get the dates back before the police could anyway.’

  Clare took in a deep breath. ‘I hope to God you’re right. I don’t want to think about what it might mean if you’re not.’

  Jo said, ‘One thing’s for sure: we know that at least one of those children must have been buried there before Beth died.’

  Clare asked, ‘How do you figure that out?’

  ‘Well, that first grave had been cut into by modern disturbance. The cut looked just like the pits our friendly neighbourhood nighthawks had left behind. So, if they were poking round the site between the police leaving and us arriving, the baby burial must be earlier. And they were on-site as soon as Beth’s body was found.’

  Clare sat silently, swirling the last dregs of her Chardonnay around in the bottom of her glass. She seemed to be struggling with something. Eventually she looked up at Jo. It was difficult to make out her expression in the lengthening shadows.

  Clare said, ‘Well, as it seems to be the evening for confessions, there’s something I need to tell you about those pits.’

  Thirty minutes and another gin and tonic and white wine later, the two women sat staring into near total darkness, with only a couple of bats hunting their prey in the rapidly cooling night air for company.

  Clare said, ‘So you see, I really don’t know what to make of it, Jo. Those finds obviously couldn’t have come from our site. But they were definitely there. I’ve seen the photos. And the people who put them there must have come within inches of digging up that first burial.’

  Jo grimaced. ‘That would have given them one hell of a surprise.’

  Clare said, ‘I suppose we have to be thankful for small mercies. And I guess it means at least our man in the car park and his friends can’t have had anything to do with the baby burials. If they’d known they were there, surely they would never have run the risk of showing Margaret and me those photos.’

  Jo nodded. ‘But what the hell has been going on here, Clare? First Beth kills herself. Then we have a bunch of antiquities dealers planting stuff on the site just to dig it up again.’

  Clare said, ‘The only sense I can make of it is that they were hoping to cash in on the publicity the site got from Beth’s death being splashed all over the papers. Everyone in the country knew that this place was meant to be some kind of Celtic temple.’

  Jo nodded. ‘I guess. And all to give the stuff they’d ripped off from Lord knows where fake provenance so they could sell them to a bunch of rich dudes who don’t give a damn.’

  ‘And in the middle of it all we’ve got two murdered babies. You don’t suppose any of this had anything to do with why Beth committed suicide, do you?’

  Jo wasn’t sure what Clare was getting at. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m not sure I know, really. Maybe the guys with the antiquities were sniffing around before she died. Or maybe if, God forbid, those two burials turn out to be modern, perhaps she knew something about them.’

  ‘I know you said Stuart Craig thought she was a fruit loop, but do you really think Beth Kinsella could have murdered two babies?’

  Clare shook her head. ‘No. Or at least I don’t think so. But what if she’d seen something? Or found out something that she wasn’t meant to know?’

  Jo said, ‘You mean what if she didn’t kill herself after all?’

  ‘Or perhaps she was frightened or being threatened in some way. Maybe that’s what drove her to take her own life.’

  Jo took a last slug of her drink. ‘I’m beginning to think ye olde English Cotswolds aren’t quite so idyllic after all.’ She slammed her glass down on the table. ‘Come on. Let’s go inside. This place is starting to give me the creeps.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Standing on the threshold of The Lamb, Sergeant Tom West took a last drag on his fag befor
e surreptitiously flicking it into the gutter. He’d spent most of the last three days trawling through the CCTV footage from every camera between Jack Tyler’s flat and The Market Place in Devizes. And there were more of them than he’d ever imagined possible. If his missus wanted to watch the box tonight she could bloody well do it on her own. But square-eyed though he might now be, he felt an inner glow of satisfaction. His persistence had finally paid off.

  Checking through Tyler’s bank account, it was obvious he’d been in money trouble. And West had discovered that he’d flogged his car a few weeks ago. Given the amount of alcohol still in his system when he’d been found and the bowl of vomit lying in the middle of the living-room floor, it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to work out that he must have been out on the tiles the night before he died.

  He’d had a hunch that without a car Tyler’s favoured watering hole wasn’t likely to be far from home. So he’d asked Sally Treen if he could spend some time trawling through the CCTV footage in the area. She’d made it clear she thought he’d be on a hiding to nothing. Nine out of ten times shops and pubs either had dummy cameras up or they wiped the footage every few days. Tyler’s neighbours claimed to have heard voices sometime after midnight, but nothing after that. There was absolutely no sign of a murder weapon and SOCO had found bugger all else of any use by way of forensic evidence. So in the end, as it was his time he was wasting, Sally had agreed.

  He’d eventually struck lucky when he’d picked up an image of Jack Tyler staggering into the appropriately named Snuff Street from The Market Place on Thursday night. According to Frank Barlow, he’d died sometime on Friday morning.

  From what West could make out from the grainy images, Tyler looked as if he’d been absolutely bladdered. And that tallied with what Frank had said in the autopsy report about the amount of alcohol still in his bloodstream. It didn’t seem to get them very much further, but it was at least a record of the last time he’d been seen alive. Then a few minutes later someone else walked into shot. He seemed to be saying something, though West couldn’t make out what. He headed towards Tyler and for a good couple of seconds glanced upwards, almost straight at the camera. Tyler tried to stagger to his feet, then the second man dragged him fully upright and appeared to be helping him out of the alleyway. After that he’d found nothing in the way of useful footage. But those few seconds where Tyler’s rescuer had looked up at the camera were enough for West to get a pretty clear image of him on the freeze-frame.

  When he showed it to Tyler’s neighbours they claimed not to recognise the bloke. So West had started on a trawl of the pubs and bars on the Market Place side of Snuff Street. Thus far he’d had no luck. Though he did at least now know they served a decent pie in The Vaults. He wasn’t altogether surprised at his lack of progress. Some of the places he’d been in so far were a bit of a long shot – all a bit upmarket for Tyler’s sort.

  As he stepped inside he was relieved to see that The Lamb looked like a different kettle of fish. It was a proper pub.

  There were a couple of blokes sitting at a table by the fireplace. But other than that there were no more customers to take the barman’s attention. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Better make it an orange juice. And a bag of cheese and onion while you’re at it.’

  ‘You sure, mate? You look like you could do with a pint.’

  West showed him his warrant card.

  ‘Ah, right you are then.’ He handed West his drink.

  West took a slurp before answering, ‘Business, unfortunately.’

  The barman, a stocky, straightforward-looking man in his late fifties with a crew cut, leant towards him and asked in a whisper, ‘Is this to do with what happened to Jack?’

  Bingo. West’s face brightened, but he suppressed the urge to smile. He didn’t want to give anyone the wrong impression. ‘You knew Jack Tyler, then.’

  He nodded. ‘He used to be a regular down here.’

  West echoed his words, ‘Used to be?’

  The barman said, ‘Jack ran up against a bit of bad luck. He didn’t like talking about it, but I think he lost his job a while back. We haven’t seen so much of him in here since.’

  ‘Was he in here on Thursday night a couple of weeks ago?’

  Without a moment’s hesitation the barman nodded.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure? It couldn’t have been another evening?’

  ‘Positive. Like I say, we hadn’t seen him in a while, but Scatter Gun were playing and Jack left no one in any doubt that he didn’t think much of them.’

  West asked, ‘Was he normally a bit of a loudmouth?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have said so, but he’d had a few and I think his volume control was shot, if you know what I mean.’

  West nodded his understanding and reached into his jacket. He placed the CCTV still of the second man on the bar. ‘Do you recognise this fella?’

  The barman nodded, but the apprehension was clear in his voice. ‘That’s Damian. Damian Kelly.’

  West drained the last of his orange juice. ‘He a mate of Jack’s?’

  ‘Used to be. I think Jack’s done the odd bit of work for him in the past.’

  West asked, ‘What line of work’s Mr Kelly in?’

  ‘Builder. Sub-contracts for bigger firms mainly. But like I say Jack hadn’t been in here so much lately. So I don’t know what he was up to these days.’

  West got the impression that the barman was trying to avoid telling him something. ‘Was Mr Kelly in here on that Thursday night? The last night Jack was in here.’

  The barman nodded reluctantly. ‘Yes. I think he might have been.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘No. I’m certain he was. Jack had come in and bought himself a couple of pints early in the evening.’ He inclined his head in the direction of the pub’s two other patrons sitting by the fire. ‘He sat over there nursing the second one until Damian came in. Damian had been down the races in Salisbury in the afternoon and won a few quid. He stood Jack his drinks all night.’

  West said, ‘That was very generous of him. Does Mr Kelly often flash his money around?’

  The barman reached down behind the counter and, producing a cloth, began wiping the bar down in what appeared to West to be an entirely unnecessary gesture. ‘To be truthful I’ve never known him win before. Betting’s a mug’s game if you ask me. But Damian’s always liked a flutter.’ He looked up at West. ‘You a betting man?’

  West shook his head. ‘Football. Swindon Town. What about you?’

  ‘Wrong-shaped ball, mate. The blue, black and whites for me when I can get away from this place.’

  West couldn’t help smiling. ‘Takes all sorts.’ He paused. ‘Did you happen to notice if Jack and Damian left at the same time on the Thursday night?’

  The barman said, ‘It was packed in here because we had the band on so I wouldn’t normally notice. But as it happens Jack was so pissed he nearly knocked a bloke off his bar stool on his way out.’

  ‘Any idea what time that was?’

  ‘Can’t have been long before last orders.’

  West asked, ‘And did Damian Kelly leave at the same time?’

  A look of obvious relief spread across the barman’s face. ‘No. Damian and a couple of the other lads stayed behind to give me a hand clearing the glasses when we closed up.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you happen to know where Damian Kelly lives?’

  With a hint of reluctance in his voice, the barman said, ‘Not sure. Somewhere off Nursteed Road, I think.’

  West thanked him and turned to leave, shoving his crisps into his jacket pocket alongside the photo of Damian Kelly. He stepped out into the June sunshine with a decided spring in his step. A pie, a bag of crisps and a suspect. He couldn’t wait to share the good news with the DI. It was amazing what a bit of shoe leather and some good old-fashioned police work could produce.

  The limestone dust coated Clare’s skin like a shroud. She took a swig from her water bottle and swallowed
a couple of paracetamols. She had a splitting headache, and it wasn’t all the fault of last night’s wine. The whole team seemed subdued. The site was unnaturally quiet in this oppressive heat. There was a storm coming and Clare wished the weather would get it over and done with.

  She looked up to see Jo kneeling down by the side of the cutting. ‘Is it tea break yet?’

  Jo said, ‘Nope. But you’re in charge, boss. You can have a cup of warm brown sludge any time you damn well want.’

  Clare laughed. ‘I guess I can. But I need to crack on with this. We need to get this pit dug and photographed before the rain sets in.’ She lowered her voice. ‘How are things going at your end?’

  ‘Just finished sampling the second one. All I need to do now is package them up and get them down to the pick-up point at the gas station. They should be winging their way to Florida by this afternoon.’

  Clare nodded. She’d barely slept a wink last night. She couldn’t stop thinking about the child burials. She knew Jo was probably right. She always was – which was why she was the best in the business. But as unlikely as it was, even Jo had said there was a possibility that the burials might be modern. When Clare had finally dropped off to sleep she’d dreamt about Beth Kinsella’s lifeless body hanging up there in the beech grove. And when she’d woken she couldn’t escape the feeling that there was something going on here at Bailsgrove that she was missing.

  She stretched out her hand. ‘Give us a hand up, will you?’

  Jo reached down towards her, but as she was about to grab Clare’s hand she stopped and pointed towards the pit that Clare had been digging. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What’s what?’

  Clare turned to look behind her as Jo stepped past her into the trench. Now that Jo pointed it out she could see there was a tiny light brown splodge of something just emerging from the top of the loose soil next to where her hand shovel lay.

  Jo said, ‘Hand me your leaf, will you?’

  Clare reached into her toolbox and handed her the plasterer’s leaf tool. It was an implement they normally reserved for the most delicate jobs on-site. Clare watched Jo, entranced at the skill with which she wielded it, but with growing trepidation about what it might reveal. As Jo worked, the splodge became larger and gradually took on a smooth, domed appearance.