The Lost Shrine Page 10

  He slumped down in a heap in the chair next to her, his head in his hands.

  Clare asked softly, ‘And was she?’

  He lifted his head out of his hands and stared at her. ‘Was she what?’

  ‘Was she a genius? Everyone talks about how single-minded she was, how dedicated. Even how inspiring.’

  ‘Pah! That’s got to be Fuller.’

  She didn’t bother trying to deny it. ‘Look, I’m not here to defend Neil Fuller, or Beth Kinsella for that matter. And I don’t want to pry into your private life. I’m just a jobbing archaeologist who wants to do justice to the site I’m working on. But half of it has already been dug by Beth. So, what I really need to know is, was she really brilliant? You knew her better than anyone else. Do you think her work can be relied on?’

  Pulling himself upright in his chair, he got up and moved to the other side of his desk. For what felt like several long minutes he stood motionless, staring out of the window onto the broad leafy street below.

  When he turned to face her, he was a picture of calm, the resentment and anger so evident before dissipated. ‘When I first met Beth, one of the things that attracted me to her was her intellect. No one could be in any doubt that she had a razor-sharp mind, but she didn’t shout about it. It was plain for everyone to see. I used to love working with her on projects, sharing the buzz of discovery. Being with her was energising. But as she got more recognition, things began to change. All she wanted to do was the research. She had no interest in the day-to-day stuff academics have to do. No one likes it, but we all have to knuckle down and get on with it. But Beth thought her work was too important for her to be bothered with that. It was the same at home. Everything else could go hang. She spent more time living in the Iron Age than she did in the twenty-first century.

  ‘She was focusing more and more on Celtic death and sacrifice; it was all-consuming. And things started to get really difficult between us. Our whole house became like a shrine to the long-dead. Most people have wallpaper – we had pictures of garrotted bog bodies and chariot burials. It destroyed our relationship. The university put up with it all the time it was upping their research scores in the REF, but eventually they couldn’t even get her to submit the paperwork for that. It was impacting on all of us reputationally.’ He hesitated. ‘And there were worries about the effect it was having on her students too. It wasn’t healthy.’

  Clare asked, ‘So, what happened?’

  ‘It was inevitable really. Paints – Professor Clive Painter – put up with it for as long as he could. He’s been in post for years. He’s a nice old boy, but he was a bit long in the tooth to be in charge of a department. In the end even he could see that the only answer was for Beth to leave the department.’

  ‘So she was sacked.’

  ‘As good as.’

  ‘And that’s when she took Bailsgrove on.’

  He nodded. ‘Not long after that. Shows how deluded she’d become. From academic stardom to a nothing contract job in the middle of Christ knows where.’

  Craig obviously wasn’t any sort of diplomat. But she hadn’t come here to have her ego massaged. She needed answers.

  She fixed a smile in place. ‘When I asked you before whether you were surprised when you heard Beth had taken her own life, you didn’t seem certain. But you seem to be suggesting that she wasn’t entirely stable. And that her fortunes declined rather rapidly. Did her suicide really come totally out of the blue?’

  He paused for a moment as if to consider something, and then shook his head. ‘No, not entirely. She lived in her own little bubble. It was difficult for anyone to predict what she would do – least of all me. Even when we were living together her actions weren’t always entirely rational.’ He sighed. ‘So as much as I’d like to be able to tell you that you can rely on Beth’s work, Clare, I really don’t think I can.’

  Clare stood up from where she’d been trowelling and stretched her back. Removing her sun hat, she ran her fingers through her hair. She felt exhausted. She’d tried to throw herself into her work on-site since her trip to Bristol. But despite her best efforts, it hadn’t worked. Her visit to see Stuart Craig had left her feeling unaccountably despondent.

  From what Craig had said it sounded as if Beth had been an obsessive and more than capable of weaving her own fantasies about the site. The single-mindedness certainly chimed with what Margaret had said about her. And much though Clare would have liked to believe what Neil had told her, she was beginning to wonder if his version of Beth had been coloured by his feelings towards her. Even if what Craig had said about Beth and Neil had been born out of jealousy, there must have been something there to have sparked it in the first place.

  She knew that she should feel relieved. If they were going to keep the Hart Unit afloat they needed to get in, dig the site and get out as quickly as possible. And now that it seemed there was every likelihood that there was nothing of any real significance to find at Bailsgrove, that had just become a whole lot easier. Paul Marshall would be happy, the unit would live to dig another day and she would get to keep the job she loved. Perfect.

  Yet she couldn’t help feeling desperately disappointed. When she’d found that reference in Beth’s journal to the inscription, she’d begun to hope that maybe, just maybe, she had an Iron Age shrine on her hands. Realistically it would have been a huge challenge to dig. She would have had to put a massive amount of work in to do the site justice. And her dealings with Paul Marshall thus far had left her in no doubt that digging the thing with him breathing down their necks would have been an absolute nightmare.

  But despite all that she’d allowed herself to hope that this quiet Cotswold backwater might have been a centre of worship and sacrifice before the Romans ever set foot on these islands. And to hope, too, that she’d be the person to reveal its secrets. Now, instead, it looked as if they faced the prospect of weeks of digging with nothing to show for it but blisters, a bad back and the odd visit from abusive locals. Pull yourself together, Clare! You should be grateful you’ve still got a job.

  She climbed out of the trench and headed back towards the Portakabins. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Malcolm on the far side of the trench, staring intently at his patch of earth. He was wearing a puzzled expression. Over the last few weeks she’d come to learn that there wasn’t much in the way of archaeology that puzzled Malcolm.

  Intrigued, she called across to him, ‘What you got, Malc?’

  He shook his head. ‘I thought it was another one of those bloody pits. But now I’m not so sure. Come and take a look!’

  Clare made her way over to the far side of the trench. In front of her there was a circular depression about a foot deep. As she leant over to examine it she could see there was something poking out of the surface of the soil that had yet to be removed.

  Malcolm said, ‘The top of it was really loose and it had a bit of old crisp packet in it. But the stuff underneath is different. More compact. Nothing like the fills of the other modern holes we’ve found. And now there’s this.’ He waved his trowel in the direction of the dark brown earth that filled the bottom of the pit.

  Clare pulled out her trowel from the pocket of her moleskins and, kneeling down, started to flick the soil gently away from the slender object that lay partially buried in front of her. It was a bone. As she worked more of it began to appear, revealing a gently curved appearance. Gradually a second bone appeared just to one side and then a third, on the other side of that. All in a neat, near parallel row.

  She took in a deep breath and rocked back on her heels, looking up at Malcolm. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  Malcolm raised an eyebrow. ‘Ribs?’

  Clare nodded. ‘Still articulated. And so tiny.’ She stood up. ‘Can you clear up around this and get it photographed? And, Malc, keep this to yourself for the minute, would you? I need to make a couple of phone calls.’

  Clare and Mark Stone were standing on the edge of the trench w
aiting anxiously for Jo Granski to deliver her verdict. ‘Well, you were right on the money, Clare. It’s an infant. From the look of it I’d guess around six months.’

  Mark Stone looked distinctly unimpressed. ‘Any fool can see it’s a baby. The question is how long has it been here?’

  ‘I’m an osteo-archaeologist not a miracle worker, DCI Stone. There doesn’t appear to be anything else in this part of the pit to date it. So we’ll need a radio carbon date before we can say for sure.’

  ‘And how long will that take, Dr Granski?’

  Jo said, ‘Generally a few weeks. Could be a while longer. A little quicker maybe if we could find some extra funding.’ She looked at Stone hopefully, but to no evident effect. Turning to Clare, she said, ‘And you’re gonna need a Ministry of Justice licence to lift it, Clare.’

  Stone harrumphed. ‘Do you lot always fanny around like this?’

  Jo said, ‘In your line of work I would’ve thought you’d appreciate due process, Chief Inspector.’

  Clare seemed destined to play the role of peacekeeper. ‘It’s all sorted. I sent off the application yesterday – as soon as we found the remains. And the licence came back this morning. So there shouldn’t be any delay in excavating them.’

  Stone said, ‘Good. I need to know whether or not I’m dealing with a murder.’

  Jo said, ‘Now that I can tell you. You’re definitely dealing with a homicide.’

  Clare and Stone opened their eyes wide in disbelief and stared at her. And at precisely the same moment, both said, ‘What?’

  ‘See that horseshoe-shaped bone right there?’ She pointed towards the tiny skeleton with her trowel. ‘That’s the hyoid bone. From what I can see so far, I can tell you that it has a cut mark on it. It’s a sure-fire sign the child’s throat’s been cut.’

  Clare opened her mouth in shock. ‘Oh my God, that’s horrible. It was only a baby.’

  Stone reached inside his jacket and retrieved his mobile. ‘Right, I need to get SOCO over here right away.’

  Clare couldn’t believe this was happening. There was a murdered baby in front of her. And now her whole site was going to be closed down. From the moment she’d got here she’d known she should never have persuaded David they should take this job on. But Jo appeared to have no such worries. She just laughed.

  Stone stopped, his fingers poised over his phone. ‘What’s so funny?’

  Jo said, ‘Like I say, I can’t give you an exact date until we get the RC dates through, but from the condition of the bone, given it’s in an alkali environment, I’d say this baby has been here a while.’

  Stone looked distinctly unamused. ‘How long is a while, Dr Granski?’

  Jo said, ‘Hard to say for sure, but in my professional judgement we’re talking centuries or millennia here, not months.’

  Stone said, ‘And you’re certain about that?’

  ‘As certain as anyone can be.’

  Stone looked at Clare. ‘Well, in that case, you’ve just escaped having your dig shut down again by the skin of your teeth.’ As he walked away he turned back and shouted over her shoulder, ‘And if you’d like to avoid it happening again, Mrs Hills, I’d suggest you have a word with your colleague here about her sense of humour. Wasting police time is a criminal offence on this side of the Atlantic.’

  Every digger on the site had stopped stock-still. Most of them were standing up, staring. Clare could feel her face flush from top to bottom. She wanted the ground to swallow her up. Why on earth had Jo decided it was a good idea to play verbal tag with a member of the local constabulary in front of the whole team? Mark Stone already had a lowly enough opinion of her without Jo adding to it.

  As soon as Stone had climbed into his car, Clare yelled, ‘What are you lot staring at? We’ve got work to do.’

  Jo turned to her friend. ‘That was a little rough on them, Clare.’

  Clare maintained a studious silence, half afraid of what she might say to her friend.

  ‘Hey, come on, what’s up?’ Jo reached out to put a hand on Clare’s shoulder, but she brushed it aside.

  The Californian pointed in the direction of the burial. ‘This stuff is exciting. I know you, you’d normally be ecstatic about a find like this. We’ve got some sort of deliberate killing on our hands, maybe even a sacrifice.’

  Clare closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘Oh, just ignore me, Jo. It’s been a long week. I’m just tired, that’s all.’

  ‘OK. If you say so.’

  Jo sounded unconvinced. But the last thing Clare wanted right now was the third degree in front of the entire dig team. ‘I tell you what, Jo, if you want to help you could finish excavating the baby burial while Malc and I start digging those two pits that Neil found this morning.’

  Jo acquiesced to her suggestion readily enough. And after a few hours of channelling her energies into the archaeology, Clare had calmed down sufficiently to regret being so short with both her dig team and Jo. Glancing at her watch, she was just about to climb to her feet and call a tea break when her trowel struck something solid in the pit she was excavating. A few small scraps of what looked to the untrained eye like dog biscuit in the plastic seed tray that lay beside her attested to the presence of prehistoric pottery in the top of the pit. So she was hopeful that this one might turn out to be ancient rather than the product of their ‘friend’ from the Crickley car park.

  It took a few minutes of careful trowelling before she’d scraped away enough of the crumbling black earth to reveal a metal object about three inches across. On first glance it resembled a small bracelet. She lifted it, carefully placing it into the palm of her hand, and began to gently brush away the loose soil with her fingers. As she did so she could see the giveaway green colouration that told her it was made of some sort of copper alloy. But set into its surface were a series of interlinked spirals and swirls, much like the ones she’d seen on the La Tène sword. But these were inlaid with red and blue enamel.

  She was sitting on her heels admiring the exquisite craftsmanship when a shadow fell across her, blocking out the afternoon sunshine.

  ‘What you got there?’

  She looked up to see Crabby leaning over the section edge. She smiled. Despite David’s misgivings, over the last few weeks Crabby had become a regular visitor to the dig site. She’d begun to look forward to his visits. If truth be told, she rather envied his ability to believe in a myriad of possibilities that most of humanity dismissed as nonsense.

  She lifted her hand up to show him. ‘It’s a terret ring.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A piece from a horse harness to you and me. But this one’s Iron Age.’

  Crabby’s eyes lit up.

  Clare stood up to let him get a better look and Jo came over to join them. ‘Hi, Crabby. Wow, that’s gorgeous.’

  As the three of them stood admiring the find, Malcolm suddenly let out a shout. ‘I’ve got another one.’

  Clare said, ‘Another terret ring?’

  ‘No, another baby burial.’

  Clare and Jo looked at one another.

  Crabby’s gaze flitted between Malcolm and Clare. ‘Another one? You didn’t say you’d found a burial.’

  ‘We only had the first one confirmed a couple of hours ago, Crabby,’ Clare said defensively.

  There was something about his tone that was making her nervous. Why couldn’t Malcolm have waited until the tea break to make his announcement?

  The Druid looked at Clare and asked quietly, ‘Can I see them?’

  Clare said, ‘Sure,’ with a greater confidence than she felt.

  The three of them made their way over to the pit with the latest find, and, perhaps sensing his earlier error, Malcolm stepped respectfully out of the way. There was no doubting what lay in front of them. It was a second child burial, maybe a little older than the first. And this time there was something distinctly disquieting about the way it was positioned. It was ringed around by large lumps of honey-coloured limestone. The back of it
s skull had clearly been crushed by something very heavy and it was lying face down. In an instinctive gesture, Jo crossed herself, and then seeming to realise what she’d done quickly clamped her hands firmly down by her side.

  Crabby meantime appeared to be in a world of his own. He crouched down, gazing reverently at the fragile heap of tiny bones that had once been a living, breathing child. Bowing his head, he mumbled something that they couldn’t quite hear.

  Then, standing up, he turned to face them. ‘Beth was right. This place truly is hallowed ground.’

  It was days like today that made Jo remember why she’d made the decision to move to this side of the pond. Sitting in the late evening sun in the beer garden of the King’s Arms, sipping gin and tonic after a hard day’s digging and a good pub meal – what could possibly be more perfect?

  She raised her glass. ‘Happy Solstice Eve!’

  Clare reciprocated the gesture. ‘Do you know, the last few weeks have been such a whirl I hadn’t even noticed the date.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’d say Crabby’s got it covered for all of us.’

  ‘Oh, don’t, Jo. Why did Malc have to open his big mouth when Crabby was on-site?’

  Jo took a long, appreciative sip of her gin before replying. ‘Seems to me it wouldn’t have made much difference. Crabby was gonna find out sooner or later. And he seemed pretty chilled about it.’

  ‘I suppose so. What did you make of that second burial? It was a bit bizarre.’

  ‘For today, maybe, but not if it’s Iron Age. When you look at places like Danebury there was some weird stuff going on back then.’

  ‘I seem to remember they found a shrine there, didn’t they?’