‘Good lord,’ said Nightingale. ‘I didn’t realise it was still open.’
‘Could it have been for his work?’ asked Seawoll.
‘We’re checking that now, but he went to some lengths to keep it secret from the missus,’ said Guleed.
The missus, perhaps because she was missus number two, had twigged that Richard was keeping secrets. And, having way less faith in his fidelity than his first wife – go figure – followed him down to Whitechapel to see what he was up to. This sort of thing is pretty common – people often draw more attention to themselves trying to hide their activities than whatever it was they were up to would. Plus sometimes the cover-up is more illegal than the thing they were covering up.
Still, if people were brighter routine police work would be much harder.
Guleed had held off contacting the bell foundry directly.
‘I didn’t want to risk tipping anyone off,’ she said, and both Nightingale and Seawoll nodded approvingly.
‘I think you two should go and have a poke around the place,’ said Seawoll. ‘While we finish up with Chiswick.’
He looked over at Nightingale, who gestured at me and Guleed.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ he said.
5
Two Sticks and an Apple
‘I think I preferred it when they didn’t get on,’ said Guleed.
‘They still don’t,’ I said. ‘They’re just being professional about it.’
So professional, in fact, that if you listened closely you could hear both Nightingale and Seawoll creaking under the strain. Fortunately, modern technology allows the modern minion on the go to do his prep work far away from his superiors and, bonus, get some reconnaissance in while he’s at it.
Me and Guleed had ensconced ourselves in the Café Casablanca, whose window seats afforded a nice view of the front and back entrances to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and who served coffee that was strong, hot and properly grande. It also served a selection of Indian sweets made on the premises that were doing their best, through smell alone, to convince me that type 2 diabetes was a small price to pay.
Back in the day, or rather rursus in diebus antiquis, your newly minted Romano-Brit with a decent torc and his eye on the main prize might want to get his bullock cart full of garum from the burgeoning port of Londinium to the brand spanking new capital of Britannia – Camulodunum. To facilitate this vital trade in fermented fish guts the Roman Army thoughtfully laid one of their famously straight roads between the two cities – that this allowed for the rapid redeployment of various legions in their quest to bring the joys of underfloor heating to the benighted tribes further north was mere serendipity.
You could tell Whitechapel Road was Roman by the fact that it was straight and wide enough for bus lanes, a cycle superhighway, and a street market. It carved a line from Aldgate to the Mile End Road and beyond. It’s been the East End’s one-stop shop for life, death and culture since the docks drove the massive expansion of the city eastward. You can shop in the market, worship in a mosque that was once a synagogue, that was once a Huguenot church, educate yourself in the Whitechapel Library, culture yourself in the Whitechapel Gallery, live in the shadow of the sci-fi tower blocks of the City, and then die in the London Hospital.
And still get the, allegedly, best bagels in London.
And if you wanted a bell made good and proper, you went to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, established 1570. Currently occupying the best part of a Georgian townhouse and various industrial extensions out the back. It was here that they recast Big Ben after the original bell cracked.
While Guleed chased her paperwork and eyed up the halal delights of the café’s menu, I spent an interesting half an hour on the phone to MOLA. They recognised the names of the site reports I’d found in Richard Williams’s office but didn’t think they had anything in common beyond being digs from the last five years and all from around the city proper. Most archaeology in London these days is rescue archaeology – projects designed to preserve as much as possible from the relentless cash-driven redevelopment. It’s not a new problem. Ask a medievalist about Victorian cellars or an Iron Age specialist about medieval ploughing – but take snacks, because you’re going to be there for a while.
‘There was one thing,’ said the helpful lady at MOLA. ‘At one of the sites . . . Adrian will know.’
There was much shouting to see if Adrian was around, a bit of a wait and then the man himself took the phone – he sounded like he was from the Northeast with just a threat of full-on Geordie, should the need arise.
‘Is this about the thefts?’ he said.
Thefts – plural.
‘How many thefts have there been?’ I asked.
‘That depends on how you define it,’ said Adrian.
Because material went missing off sites all the time, which is why important finds were collated and secured the day they were found.
Important in archaeological terms not always being the same as valuable – at least not in the fenceable sense. Archaeology came in all shapes, sizes, and apparent degrees of nickableness.
‘We wouldn’t have even noticed some of the thefts if they hadn’t been important to the context,’ said Adrian.
Context being the key concept of modern scientific archaeology, and what separates your modern professional from the fumbling archivists and swivel-eyed tomb raiders of the past. It’s a religion they share with scene of crime technicians and it had been drummed into me from my first day at Hendon.
Context – where you find an object – is more important than the actual object. In policing it’s whether the broken glass is on the inside or the outside. In archaeology it’s whether that datable coin is found in the wall foundations or its demolition infill. You can live without the coin, but you need the dating information.
‘Material was taken from about five sites,’ said Adrian. ‘I’ll have to check the reports to be certain, but as I recall it was nearly all Roman brick.’
Apparently, the only thing the sites had in common was that they were within London and they all either had ritual significance in the Roman era or had been repurposed as church sites during the five hundred years or so following the withdrawal of the Empire from Britain.
I asked whether the thefts seemed random or whether the pattern made sense in archaeological terms.
‘Whoever it was didn’t just scoop things up at random, so I’d say they knew what they were looking for,’ he said. ‘Assuming it was the same person.’
I got a firm promise that he’d email the details to us, and warned him I might need to contact him again. He seemed moderately pleased by that.
The boys and girls back at the Annexe would soon be adding archaeologist to the mix of qualities they were looking for in an associate of Martin Chorley – see, context.
But I did wonder what the hell they wanted Roman bricks for.
‘Nothing good,’ said Guleed.
Both us having actioned our morning actions we finished up and popped over to find out exactly what Richard Williams had wanted a bell for.
When you arrive unexpectedly at someone’s house you go in through the front door, often after making sure you’ve got a couple of mates waiting round the back. For a business, especially the kind that involves big trucks and heavy metal, it’s always better to go in through the back. The customer-facing part of any modern business is purposely designed to be as politely unhelpful as possible. If you go in from the rear, the customer-facing staff are all facing the wrong way and everybody starts their conversation on the back foot.