‘OK.’ said Rob. ‘But it’s still a pretty wild theory. Tenuous.’
‘Maybe. However…’
It dawned on Rob. ‘You were testing Kiribali.’
‘And you saw how he reacted! I was right. There’s something in those cellars.’
The tea was nearly cold. Rob drained his glass and looked across the table. Christine had hidden depths. Hidden cunning. ‘You want to go and look?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, but it’s locked. And the door is keycoded.’
‘Another break-in? Way too dangerous.’
‘I know that.’
The wind sussurated in the limes. Over the bridge, a woman in full chador was holding her baby and kissing the baby’s fat pink fingers, one by one.
‘Why do you want to do all this, Christine? Who go to these lengths? On a hunch?’
‘I want to know how and why he died.’
‘So do I. But I’m getting paid for it. This is my job. I’m on a story. You are taking big risks.’
‘I do it…’ She sighed. ‘I do it because…he would have done it for me.’
A realization, half-formed, crept over Rob. ‘Christine, forgive me. Were you and Franz…ever…?’
‘Lovers? Yes.’ The Frenchwoman turned away, as if concealing her emotions. ‘A few years ago. He gave me my first real chance in archaeology. This amazing site. Gobekli Tepe. There weren’t any bones then. He didn’t need an osteoarchaeologist. Yet he invited me because he admired my work. And a few months after I came we…fell in love. But then it ended. I felt guilty. The age difference was too much.’
‘You ended it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he still love you?’
Christine nodded, and blushed. ‘I think he did. He was so gracious and courteous about it. Never let it interfere. Could have asked me to go, but didn’t. It must have been very difficult for him, having me there, still with those feelings. He was a fine archaeologist, but he was an ever finer man. One of the nicest men I have ever known. When he met his wife it was easier, thank God.’
‘So you think you owe him this?’
‘I do.’
They sat in silence for several minutes. The soldiers were feeding the carp in the pond. Rob watched a waterman on his donkey, loping down a path. But then, he had an idea. ‘I think I know how you can get the code.’
‘How?’
‘The curators. At the museum. Your pals.’
‘Casam? Beshet? The Kurdish guys?’
‘Yes. Beshet particularly.’
‘But…’
‘He’s got a huge crush on you.’
She blushed again, this time fiercely. ‘Not possible’.
‘Yes, yes possible. Totally.’ Rob leaned across. ’Trust me, Christine, I know what pathetic male adoration looks like. I’ve seen how he stares at you, like a spaniel…’ Christine looked mortified. Rob chuckled. ‘I’m not sure you realize the effect you have on men.’
‘But what does that matter?’
‘Go to him! Ask him for the code! Odds on he’ll give it you.’
The woman in the chador had stopped kissing her baby. The tea-house waiter was staring at them, wanting the table for new customers. Rob took out some money and laid it on the cloth. ‘So you go and get the code. And then we’ll go to the museum and see what’s in there. And if there’s nothing we go. Agreed?’
Christine nodded. ‘Agreed.’ Then she added, ’Tomorrow’s a holiday.’
‘Even better.’
They both stood. But Christine looked hesitant and troubled.
‘What?’ said Rob. ‘What else?’
‘I’m frightened, Robert. What could be so important that Franz hid it in the vault without telling us? What could be so horrifying that it had to be hidden? What was so terrible that it must be compared with the Cayonu skulls?’
24
Were they too late? Had they missed them, again?
DCI Forrester gazed across the stone circle at the brown-green moorlands of Cumbria beyond. He recalled another case that had seen a search for clues, in a place like this. A murderer who buried his wife on the Cornish moors. That homicide had been macabre: the head was never found. And yet, even that hideous crime lacked some of the sinister quality of this present mystery. There was a real danger in this sacrificial gang: psychopathic violence allied with subtle intelligence. A menacing combination.
Stepping over a low wooden stile, Forrester focused on his latest evidence. He knew the gang had fled the Isle of Man-just a few hours after the murder. He knew that they’d caught the first car ferry from Douglas to Heysham, on the Lancashire coastline, long before any alert had been sent to ports and airports. He knew all this because an observant docker at Heysham had remembered that he’d seen a black Toyota Landcruiser coming through the port on the earlymorning ferry two days before, and he’d noticed five young men climbing out of the Toyota in the ferryport terminal car park. The men had gone for breakfast together. The docker had gone in for breakfast and sat next to the gang in the café.
Forrester approached one elegant grey standing stone, filigreed with lime-green moss. He reached in his pocket for his notebook, and flicked through his record of the interview with the docker. The men were all tall and young. They had expensive clothes. Somehow they didn’t look right. The strangeness of this scenario had piqued the young docker’s curiosity. Douglas to Heysham was not the most energetic of shipping lanes. The early morning car ferry from Douglas usually got farmers, the odd businessman and maybe some tourists. Five silent tall young men in a very expensive black Landcruiser? So he had tried to chat with them over their bacon and eggs. He hadn’t had much luck.
Forrester scanned down the notes. The men didn’t want to talk. One of them said a very brief good morning. He maybe had a foreign accent. French or something. Could have been Italian, not sure. One of the others had a posh English accent. Then they just got up and left. As if I had ruined their breakfast.
The docker hadn’t taken down a number plate. But he had heard one of them say a word like ‘Castleyig’ as they walked out of the café, in the pale morning light, to their waiting car. Forrester and Boijer had rapidly researched Castleyig. To no one’s surprise there was no such place. However, there was a Castlerigg not that far from Heysham. And it was quite well known.
Castlerigg turned out to be one of the better preserved stone circles in Britain. It comprised thirty-eight stones of variable sizes and shapes and was tenuously dated to 3200 BC. It was known also for a group of ten stones forming a rectangular enclosure, the purpose of which was ’unknown’. In his Scotland Yard office, Forrester had Googled ‘Castlerigg’ and ‘human sacrifice’ and found a long tradition associating the two. A stone axe had been discovered at the Castlerigg site in the 1880s. Some had surmised that it had been used in a Druidic sacrificial rite. Of course many scientists disputed this. Antiquarians and folklorists maintained that there was no disproof of sacrifice, either. And the tradition of sacred butchery was old. It was even cited by the famous local poet Wordsworth, in the 1800s.
With the Cumbrian breeze at his back, Forrester read through the stanza of the poem. He’d copied it down at Heysham library:
At noon I hied to gloomy glades
Religious woods and midnight shades
Where brooding superstition found
A cold and awful horror round
While with black arm and bending head
She wove a stole of sable thread
And hark, the ringing harp I hear
And lo! her Druid sons appear
Why roll on me your glaring eyes
Why fix on me for sacrifice?
It was a warm spring day up here on the Cumbrian hills, the late April sun was shining brightly on the surrounding, bare green hills, the dewy turf, the distant firwoods. And yet something in this poem made Forrester shiver.
‘“At noon I hied to gloomy glades”,’ said Forrester.
Boijer, striding across the grass, looked nonplussed. ‘Sir?’