Dying Fall, A (25 page)

And now Sandy’s old mate has turned up. Harry Nelson, as much of a legend in the department as Sandy himself. So many of Sandy’s stories begin ‘When Harry and I were young coppers . . .’ and end ‘that was policing, that was. None of this hand-holding you buggers get, none of this PC nonsense either’. Tim was expecting a Sandy clone, another jovial relic of the good old days. Instead, DCI Nelson turned out to be a good-looking man in his forties, rather quiet and slightly sad. Tim, who prides himself on reading verbal and non-verbal clues (he has done a course on neuro-linguistic programming, not something he’d admit to Sandy), thinks there is more in Nelson’s relationship with both Cathbad and Ruth than meets the eye. Either he’s having an affair with one or both of them. Tim’s straight (something that would surprise some of his colleagues) but he’s not against keeping your options open.

Now Tim trawls through the names of participants cautioned at a recent EDL rally. He is cross-checking with a list of recent Pendle graduates so a name that’s not on the second list initially passes him by. It’s only a mental double take that sends him scrolling backwards until he finds it again. He pauses, thinking hard, and then makes a call on the internal phone.

‘Would you like another cup of tea?’ asks Guy.

Ruth hesitates. She would like another cup of tea, and a large slice of cake, come to that, but she should be getting back to Cathbad and Kate. On the other hand, she senses that there is more that she can learn from Guy. He was Dan’s trusted friend and he knows Clayton and Elaine too. He might know who took the laptop in the first place.

‘Just a quick one,’ she says.

Guy stands up. A couple who are hovering, waiting for a table, step back in disappointment when they realise that Ruth is staying put. The pier is getting crowded now; Ruth can no longer see Kate and Cathbad on the beach. Families trail past carrying large stuffed meerkats won on stalls. One of the shops is selling Simon Cowell masks and it’s rather disturbing to see the grinning features of the X-Factor Mephistopheles attached to a two-foot child or waving from the helter-skelter. Ruth sits, waiting for Guy, feeling the unusual sensation of the sun on her face. If it wasn’t for the fact that she is scared to death half the time, she would be quite enjoying this holiday.

When Guy returns, she says, ‘Clayton Henry seemed to think that Dan’s discovery might be a lifesaver for the department.’

‘Yes.’

Ruth is interested to see that Guy has bought a beer for himself. It’s nearly midday so not an outlandish time to be drinking but, even so, he must be more uptight than he seems. She remembers how much he was sweating at the barbeque. He seems over-heated now too, taking a deep draught from his glass and mopping his brow.

‘Clayton’s in trouble financially,’ he says. ‘You’ve seen his house. He likes a grand lifestyle, good food, good wine, nice holidays. My guess is that he’s been dipping into department funds for years. Well, when Dan made his discovery, that was Clayton’s chance. If the bones really were the remains of King Arthur, well, that would change everything. There would be books, TV programmes, personal appearances. Clayton could make a packet and pay back everything he’d borrowed. But if anything went wrong . . .’

Like the bones going missing, thinks Ruth. She wonders if Guy has got wind of this.

‘What about the White Hand?’ she asks. ‘Is Clayton scared that they’ll make trouble?’

‘Oh, no one takes them seriously,’ says Guy. ‘They’re just a bunch of idiots who think that God was a white Englishman. Complete losers, all of them.’

Except you did take them seriously, remembers Ruth. You insisted that the bones be taken to the forensics lab. What had Dan written?
I thought Guy was becoming too obsessed with the White Hand.
And a few days after writing those words Dan was dead. She wonders again exactly why Guy wants Dan’s computer so much.

‘What if the White Hand were responsible for Dan’s death?’ she asks.

‘Is that what the police think?’ counters Guy.

Ruth curses herself for saying too much. ‘They’re investigating the fire,’ she says.

Guy shivers, looking out over the sea of holidaymakers. ‘Don’t talk about the fire. I still have nightmares about it. Elaine and I were just coming back from the pub and we saw the flames. Couldn’t believe it was Dan’s house at first. It was an inferno.’

‘Did you try to save him?’ asks Ruth, trying not to sound judgemental.

‘We couldn’t get near,’ says Guy. ‘The heat was just too intense. I called the fire brigade,’ he adds, as if in mitigation.

‘When did you know that Dan was dead?’

‘We saw them bring his body out,’ says Guy, shivering now, despite the sun. Whatever his motivation about the laptop, there is no denying his genuine distress. ‘They were giving him mouth-to-mouth, there on the path. But I knew it was too late.’

‘Must have been upsetting for Elaine too.’

Guy looks at her, his eyes anguished. ‘What do you think? She saw his body blackened from the fire. She was screaming. I don’t think she’ll ever be the same again. I don’t think either of us will,’ he adds, almost as an afterthought.

‘Terry Durkin,’ says Sandy. ‘Well, well, well. That’s one in the eye for old Grassy Arse.’

‘Doesn’t mean he’s necessarily involved,’ says Tim.

‘Rubbish. He’s a racist, isn’t he?’

‘Well, he’s a supporter of the English Defence League.’

‘Same thing. He’ll be hand in glove with these white supremacists, you mark my words. As soon as he gets word that their precious King Arthur might be one of your lot . . .’ Ruth had rung Tim with the news that morning. Sandy had laughed for ten solid minutes.

‘Actually, my ancestry is Caribbean, not North African,’ says Tim. But his words are lost on Sandy, as he knew they would be.

‘Soon as he gets word that the Great White King might be—shock, horror—the Great Black King, he whips the bones and replaces them with some other skeleton he’s got handy. It all fits.’

‘And that’s not all,’ says Tim. ‘Guess which forensics company investigated the fire in Dan Golding’s house.’

But Sandy is there before him. ‘CNN.’

Tim nods. ‘So Durkin could easily have taken the computer. It was a sealed site but he had access.’

‘We’d better go and talk to him,’ says Sandy. ‘Turn up at his house in a marked car. Put the pressure on.’

Tim sighs, foreseeing an afternoon of reminding his boss of the concept of
habeas corpus.
‘There’s another thing,’ he says.

Tim has also been looking at Pendragon’s computer. His emails are mainly to other wizards and subscriptions to homeopathic health sites. His photos are almost all of a white bull terrier. Except one. It is this picture, printed and enlarged, that Tim puts on the desk in front of Sandy.

‘What’s this?’

It’s a photograph of two men wearing white robes. One is large, white-bearded, with a certain presence. The other man is smaller and plumper and seems to be having trouble with his long skirts. His face is partly turned away from the camera.

‘The taller man’s Norman Smith, alias Pendragon,’ says Tim. ‘But do you recognise the other one?’

Sandy peers closer. ‘Couple o’ nutters. Bloody hell!’

‘Do you recognise him?’

‘It’s the bloke in the windmill. Clayton Henry.’

Ruth meets Cathbad and Kate on the beach. They show her their henge, which is certainly the only such structure on the sands.

‘Henge,’ says Kate, jumping up and down, her Hello Kitty hat askew. ‘Henge, henge.’

‘It’s positively Bronze Age,’ says Ruth.

The circle of sand megaliths is attracting attention. People are crowding round and taking photographs. For once Ruth has her camera with her and she kneels down to take a shot. Cathbad and Kate pose proudly by their construction, and seeing them there with the sea in the background reminds her of a similar photograph showing her with Peter and Erik on the Saltmarsh beach. They had just found the henge and Ruth vividly remembers the feeling of excitement and triumph as they stood by the ancient timbers, Erik waving his hat in the air. This would have been what Dan felt when he raised the stone and saw King Arthur’s face looking at him.

‘Take it home,’ says Kate.

‘No, Hecate,’ says Cathbad. ‘Let the sea take it. That’s what it’s for, an offering to the gods of the sea.’

Amazingly, this seems to satisfy Kate. Of course, this is what Cathbad had wanted for the original henge, to let the sea come for it rather than preserving the wood in a soulless museum.

‘Erik would be proud of you,’ says Ruth.

Cathbad shoots her a quick look. ‘I still feel his presence, don’t you?’

‘No,’ lies Ruth. ‘Let’s go back to the house and get some lunch. Thing will be missing us.’

Ruth feels rather nervous about having left Thing alone in the cottage but dogs aren’t allowed on the beach in summer. Cathbad agrees that they need to get back and, with one last photograph, they leave the henge to the incoming tide. Kate makes a routine fuss as they pass the posters for the Pleasure Beach.

‘Want Dora! Want Dora!’

‘We really must take her to Nickelodeon World before we go home,’ says Cathbad.

‘I’d rather die,’ says Ruth.

‘I’ll take her then.’

In the car, Ruth tells Cathbad about Clayton and his money troubles.

‘We should have guessed,’ says Cathbad. ‘I mean, when you think about his house. And that party. Champagne flowing like water.’

Well, you drank most of it, thinks Ruth. Aloud, she says, ‘Do you think Clayton knew about the DNA results?’

‘Didn’t Dan imply that he’d told someone?’

‘Yes. In his diary, he wrote,
I won’t tell anyone except . . .
’

‘Except Clayton?’

‘Well, maybe. He was his head of department. It would make sense to tell him.’

‘But if Arthur was black it would make even more of a story and make Clayton even more money. If he knew, why didn’t he mention it to you?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Ruth. ‘Maybe he was just terrified of the White Hand. Dan thought they had been threatening Clayton.’

‘But he also thought Clayton was shielding someone.’ Ruth has told Cathbad what was in Dan’s diaries but she hasn’t let him see the files. It’s one thing for her to read them but Cathbad didn’t know Dan.

‘You ought to tell Nelson,’ says Cathbad. ‘About Clayton and the money. It could be something for the police to investigate.’

‘I will.’

‘Do you really think that Clayton was involved in Dan’s death?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Ruth. She is thinking of the cafe next to the derelict amusement park, of Clayton boasting, ‘I’m a real gadget boy.’ Could Gadget Boy have stolen the computer and fixed it so that it would leave a trail, like a thread running through a labyrinth?

Nelson lies back in his chair and heaves a sigh of contentment. He is in the garden of Michelle’s mother’s house in Newton. The sun is out and he has a cold beer within reach. In the distance he can hear Michelle and her mum laughing as they prepare food in the kitchen. Best of all, he can’t hear, anywhere, Maureen’s loud Irish voice asking him what on earth he thinks he’s doing lying round when there’s work to be done, his father never lazed around like that, God rest his soul, honestly how Michelle puts up with such a husband . . . A bird sings in the tree and Michelle’s mum’s cat stretches out in a patch of sunlight. Nelson closes his eyes.

Michelle’s mother, Louise, is sixty, but she could be a generation younger than Maureen. She’s an attractive woman with ash-blonde hair and a teenager’s figure. She works in the local building society and drives a pink Fiat 500. Like Maureen, she’s a widow, but there the resemblance ends. Louise seems to live the life of a happy singleton, going on cruises with friends and belonging to several choirs and bridge clubs. Her home is always immaculate, and when she knows her son-in-law is coming to stay she fills her fridge with his favourite food and drink. Nelson wonders if he’s unique in thinking that his mother-in-law is perfect.

He knows that Michelle, too, is happy to have embarked on the second half of their holiday, traditionally the more relaxing week. She gets on well with Maureen but the atmosphere in her house is not exactly soothing. Now Michelle can have a real break at last, and he can look forward to some quiet evenings when Michelle and Louise go to the cinema or out to meet friends. He’ll even enjoy taking the two of them out; he likes being seen with two such attractive, well-dressed women. Louise helped a lot when the girls were young and Nelson knows Michelle missed her when they moved to Norfolk. Nice for them to catch up now.

‘Harry,’ Michelle is standing in front of him. Nelson wonders if lunch is ready. Enticing smells are wafting from the open window.

But Michelle does not look like a woman announcing a delicious light lunch. She is holding his phone at arm’s length.

‘Call for you,’ she says. ‘It’s Ruth.’

As Michelle walks back inside, a cloud moves slowly across the sun.

Clayton Henry, cornered in his office at the university, denies everything.

‘It was just a laugh. We were dressing up for Halloween.’

‘There are crocuses on the grass,’ says Tim.

‘What?’

‘In the picture.’ Tim points at the photo which lies on Clayton’s desk. ‘There are crocuses on the grass so it’s not October.’

‘Another of those pagan feast days then. Pendragon knew them all. There’s one in February. Imbolc, I think it’s called.’

‘How well did you know Norman Smith?’ asks Sandy, stretching back in his chair. He looks like a man who is making himself at home.

‘Who?’

‘Pendragon,’ says Tim. ‘When did you meet him?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Clayton, twisting his hands together. ‘He was always around. He came to lots of history department events, always in his robes and everything. Everyone knew him. He was a character. An eccentric.’

‘Do you know he’s dead?’ asks Sandy chattily.

‘I had heard.’

‘Who from?’ asks Tim. ‘It only happened two days ago.’

‘One of my students told me. I can’t remember who.’

‘It’s the holidays. How come you’re in touch with your students?’