Passage Graves (12 page)

Chapter 29

TUESDAY 2:48 p.m.

Cambridgeshire Constabulary Headquarters

Huntingdon, England

“He’s not in the records room either,” the detective said as he slowly approached the desk.

Chief Detective Inspector Lang was away from the office for the afternoon, and the elderly detective on duty was clueless about Brenton’s case, and it seemed, even more clueless about how to use a computer. After a database search for Brenton Hyden ended without success, a paper trail of records and case files
was David and Thatcher’s last hope.

“I searched the “H” cabinet twice, just in case your old man was misfiled,” the detective said. “Even got myself a paper cut.” He held up a pinky finger as if it warranted some sort of condolence.

“You people can’t be that disorganized,” David said.

“Oh, you’d be surprised.” The detective placed his finger in his mouth. “Especially if it’s a cold case. You sure it was
a murder…in this area?”

“He was found in Stonehenge,” David said. “I identified the body myself.”

“And Lang moved the case up here?” The detective shook his head. “It’s not our jurisdiction. And we don’t get many murders. I’d remember something like that.”

“Yeah, you’d think.” David was annoyed.

“There’s nothing else you can do?” Thatcher said. “We came all the way from Highlands.”

“Scotland, eh?” He looked her up a
nd down. “And DCI Lang knows you’re looking for him?”

“He rang us and told us to come
in,” David lied. “He insisted we go through my father’s file.”

Thatcher took David’s lead and leaned over the counter, flashing her NATO badge as if it gave her some authority. “This is very imp
ortant,” she said. “A matter of international security.”

The detective scratched his head. “Well, I guess it can’t hurt if you look yourselves.
Maybe your old man was just misfiled.” He unlocked the counter door and swung it open. “But if this poor chap was murdered, he’d be listed in records at the capital. All homicides are reported to London. It’s protocol.”

Thatcher pulled out her cell phone and nodded at David. “
I’m on it,” she said. “Enjoy the records.”

****

“Here’s a good one.” David sat on the laminated floor in the police station, his head buried in a drawer. He pulled out a file and read the name. “Umbrela, Anita Umbrela.” He let out a tired, neurotic laugh and then sat back against the cabinet. “Don’t you get it?”

Thatcher rolled her eyes.

It seemed everyone in the small town of Huntingdon possessed some sort of rap sheet, mostly alcohol-related disorderly conduct. Out of the hundreds of case files they’d thumbed through, none belonged to Brenton Hyden.

“
Well, he’s not in the ‘U’s,” David said, shutting the drawer.

“Keep looking.” Thatcher shuffled through the V’s.

She stopped with a gasp.

“You found him?” David sat up.

She put a finger in her mouth. “Paper cut.”

“David!” a voice bellowed
outside the door. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

David looked up at Lang, and then to Thatcher.

Thatcher flushed. She was very aware that they were breaking at least a dozen privacy laws.

“My father’s file was misplaced,” David said.

“It’s not misplaced.” Lang’s hands were on his hips. “Why are you looking for it?”

David dropped his head sideways and forced a look of naïveté. “Curiosity.”

Lang frowned. He wasn’t that stupid. “It’s on my desk.”

Thatcher closed her eyes and pinched her brow.
David groaned in agreement. They had wasted hours.

“The detective on duty said this was a matter of national security?” Lang asked.

David shrugged. “He let us in.”

Lang pursed his
lips. He looked down at the open file in David’s hands. David handed it to him with a smile.

“Anit
a Umbrela?” Lang read the name. He turned on his heels. “Come, you two. Now!”

David shut the cabinet drawer and raised his eyebrows at Thatcher. They follow
ed Lang to his office, and waited at his desk as he searched through stacks of papers.

“Brenton… Brenton…”  Lang reached the bottom of the pile and brushed down his mustache. “Bollocks. I
t must be on one of the detectives’ desks.”

“You’ve lost the inquiry?” Thatcher asked.

“It’s not lost.” Lang looked up at her, annoyed.

“You’re investigating his murder, though, right?” David questioned.

“Of course we are.”

“Just without any documentation, photogr
aphs, paperwork?”

“What are you insinuating, David?” Lang took a seat. He set one hand on the top of the pile. “I hate to disappoint you, but things can temporarily go missing within a bureaucracy. You have my word Brenton’s file is here and active.” He stood and placed one hand on David’s back, guiding David and Thatcher through the office and back
out to the lobby.

“How about I try to forget about this abuse of privacy incident and ring you as soon as Brenton’s file turns up, eh?”
he offered.

David
was tight-lipped.

“Homicides don’t dis
appear, David. You have my word.” Lang headed back toward his office. “I will phone you!”

They
watched as Lang disappeared into his office.

David flexed his jaw. He threw open the exit door and bolted out of the police station.

Thatcher was right behind him, following him into the parking lot. “David, wait. Stop for one second, will you?” She grabbed his shoulder.

His cheeks were flushed. “I told you
I couldn’t help you.”

“We
need to go to Maeshowe,” she said. “I humored you. I can’t waste any more time.”

David stared at the ground
.

“
We’ve got to get a grip on the situation. You haven’t even explained how these things could be related.”

“What I want
to show you…what this whole wild goose chase is about...” he stumbled over his words, too frustrated to talk. “The eternal stone. The symbol you found in Maeshowe. That same mark was glowing on my father’s palm the night I identified his body.”

“Glowing?” Thatcher’s eyebrows skewed.

Her cell phone rang before he could respond. “This is Thatch—”

“Brynne, I looked up your
dead man.” Brimley, her American contact at the Embassy, spoke quickly. “Well, I tried to look him up,” she said. “He’s not in the database.”

Thatcher bit her lower lip. “What does th
at mean?”

“If this
guy was murdered, like you said, there’s no record of it anywhere.”

Brimley paused.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t much help.”

“No, you’
re brilliant, Brimley. Thanks.”

Thatcher ended the call and met David’s eyes. Maybe he
was
onto something. “That was my contact at the consul,” she explained. “She has access to all U.K. records belonging to American citizens. There’s no record in London pertaining to your father’s murder.”

David crossed his arms over his chest. “Then there’s been no investigation?”

“No.”

“We’d better find his body, then.”

Chapter 30

TUESDAY 6:24 p.m.

Grantchester Meadows

Southwest Cambridge, England

Thatcher studied the headstones along a lushly forested row of graves
. They were within an overgrown corner of the cemetery, and losing daylight quickly. Most of the markers were cracked and broken, difficult to read in the dusk. Some were centuries old, others prematurely aged by the extreme environmental conditions. Perpetual rainfall kept the ground sopping with mud. Her boots sunk deep into the earth. She stumbled over a shallow, overgrown root and toppled to the ground.

“Bloody hell.” She sa
t there for a moment, annoyed. Mud covered the front of her Gianfranco Ferré suit. The outfit was ruined. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered in a world where passage graves came alive with noise and slaughtered entire populations.

“Dr. Thatcher!” David
called from across the field.

She forced herself to her feet, wiped the brown sludge from her pants, and headed towards h
im, careful to not trip again. He waved excitedly through thick underbrush at the bottom of the gully and pointed to a small obscure clearing under an immense oak.

“Over here,
” he shouted.

Thatcher pushed through the scrub, trying to step over
the in-ground grave markers covered with moss and leaves. It was bad luck to step on them. Footsteps came down the hill behind her. The sound sent a tingle through her spine. She looked back. No one was there. She could hear someone following them, but there was only wind blowing through the low tree boughs.

“What is it?” David asked.

She stopped beside him. “Can you hear that?”

“What?”

“Footsteps?”

He
glanced up at the trees. “I think it’s the wind.”

A
continuous breeze blew wet leaves across the mud. It
was
the wind, trudging like heels.

Thatcher shivered. “C
reepy.”

David
squatted beside a modest ground stone. The grave marker was barely the size of a dinner plate. He pointed at fresh dirt packed in a long rectangle shape that protruded slightly from the earth around the grave. “Does this look recent to you?”

The ground hadn’t yet settled around the coffin.

Thatcher bent over the headstone as David brushed the leaves away.

“‘Arise my beloved; my beautiful one, and come…
” she read the engraving. “There’s no name.”

“It’s him.”

For never having visited his father’s grave before, David seemed certain. She frowned. What now? They couldn’t just dig up a body. What if David was wrong and this was some stranger?

David
tried to explain. “I’m telling you, this scripture is significant. This is him.”

T
he setting sun punched a narrow hole through the drab clouds and penetrated the overgrowth where they stood. A kaleidoscope of shadow and light spread over the grave. For the first time, Thatcher noticed a dozen marble archangel statues circled them in the thicket nearby. The effigies abided the hallowed cove, posing with stoic gestures. The crumbling fragments of broken faces, wings, and arms were strewn about the weeds. The entire southwestern corner of the cemetery suffered from neglect. It was like these were the grave markers of the ashamed and forgotten. She stepped to the side of Brenton’s marker.

“Wait, David. Look,
” she said.

A
line of identical ground stones spread across the ground at their feet. There were at least thirty markers, side-by-side, in five columns forming a square underneath a massive oak tree. She brushed debris off a nearby stone, and then off another. “They all say the same thing.”

David uncovered another line of gravestones a few feet away
, unearthing a sixth column. “‘Arise my beloved, my beautiful one, and come,’” he read.

“There’s more.” Thatcher found another row. The entire grove was filled with identical markers. “
There are hundreds of them. Do you still think that one is your father’s?”

He looked
at the first headstone. It was definitely the most recent addition. He nodded. “I’d bet my life on it.”

****

The noise of a backhoe echoed through the cemetery. Its grumble was loud enough to wake the dead. After a few hours of pleading with the groundskeeper and five hundred pound sterling, they were in luck.

In spite of her anxiety, Thatcher forced herself to recline in the heated car seat
. David bounced from foot to foot beside the grave. Lit by the backhoe headlights, he was strangely giddy to uncover the corpse he had identified at Stonehenge nine days earlier.

Her cell phone rang. “
This is Thatcher.”

“You’re not going to believe th
is,” Marek’s voice was rapid but hushed. “I isolated the noise that Golke and Bailey recorded in Maeshowe.”

She heard him click his mouse
. A roar blared through the phone.

“Sorry about that,” he apologized, turning down the volume.

Thatcher returned the phone to her ear.

“The volume and frequency of Maeshowe’s soundwave
s are way beyond our capacity to analyze effectively,” he said. “Inside the grave, we’re talking thousands of decibels at subsonic levels. But, I got brilliant. I divided the recording in half. And then I did it again, and again, and again, and ag—”

“Get to the point
.”

“You’re not going to believe this.” He breathed heavily i
n the phone. “I kept dividing into the thousandths, the millionths, the billionths…and then I found something.” He paused. “There’s way more than just noise here.”

H
e clicked his mouse again.

Voices intermixed in playback
. Their guttural words repeated in a harsh scream. “
Lachsa’arhhh pahrash htsssa
!”

“I don’t know what it means, but if my calculations are correct, we’ve recorded
about 32.8 million voices saying
lacksar
—whatever.” He paused for her response.

Thatcher’s mind was suspended in disbelief.

“Brynne,” his voice trembled. “What the hell is going on?”