The Grave Tattoo (18 page)

‘Probably not. But there might have been something…’ Jane’s voice tailed off miserably.

‘If there were, it would be in her married name. And since we don’t know what that is, we’re stuck.’ Barbara signed off from the internet with an air of finality. ‘I think the best thing is to hope your colleague strikes it lucky at St Catherine’s House.’

Jane recognised dismissal when she saw it. ‘Thanks, Mrs Field. You’ve been a big help.’ Three minutes later, she was climbing the lane back home, determined not to be defeated. Dorcas Mason’s descendants were out there somewhere. Between them, she and Dan were going to track them down. And when they did, they were going to find out what the Wordsworths had been so determined to keep hidden.

‘Bloody rain. Bloody country,’ Jake Hartnell yelled in exasperation. ‘Who the hell drives around in a tractor at ten o’clock at bloody night? All because I miss one fucking road sign and end up on the road to nowhere.’

Oblivious to his frustration, the tractor continued to crawl along at twenty miles an hour. The road was too winding for Jake to risk overtaking so he kept creeping closer to the tractor only to pull back when its muddy spray obscured his windscreen yet again. What might have been mildly amusing on the Akrotiri peninsula was infuriating in the dark in the middle of the Lake District. ‘God, but this is the pits,’ he complained. ‘What are you doing here, Jane? I’d have thought you’d be glad to get away from this godforsaken hellhole, not run back at every opportunity. Jesus Christ, how could I be so fucking stupid, talking this up to Caroline? I’ve more chance of finding the crew of the bloody
Marie Celeste
than you have of finding Wordsworth’s lost masterpiece. Bloody tractor.’

After a couple of miles, the tractor finally turned off and Jake roared past. Within minutes, he was on the outskirts of Keswick. ‘Thank Christ,’ he said. He made a couple of passes round the small confines of the town centre before settling on what looked like the most civilised of the hotels. He drove through a narrow archway into a cobbled yard which was surprisingly full. He finally found a space in a far corner and squeezed the Audi in between a people carrier and a Range Rover with an alarming collection of scratches and dents.

There was nobody on reception, though the bar seemed still to be doing a brisk trade. Wearily, Jake rang the bell on the desk. As he waited, he idly flicked through a display of local attractions.
Dear God, a pencil museum
, he thought. What hope was there for him in a place whose prime wet-weather attraction appeared to be an entire museum dedicated to the insertion of graphite into wood?

At last, a matronly woman emerged and greeted him with a beaming smile. ‘Sorry to keep you. How can I help you, sir?’ she said cheerily.

Jake wondered briefly what medication she was on and whether she could spare any. ‘Have you a room available?’

The woman looked doubtful. ‘Is it just for the one night?’ She opened a fat ledger and ran a finger down the page.

I wish.
‘I’ll be here for a few nights,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure yet.’

The plump finger halted. ‘We’ve got one single left,’ she said. ‘I can let you have four nights.’

‘That’ll do nicely,’ he said, praying that would be long enough to settle things with Jane. He took out his wallet and presented his company credit card. ‘Has it got internet access?’ he said, with no hope of a positive response.

‘You can plug into the phone if you want analog access, but there’s a wireless LAN area just off the Derwent Bar,’ she said, as nonchalant as if he’d asked whether they had running water. ‘Now, do you need something to eat? The kitchen’s closed, but I can rustle you up some soup and a sandwich if you’d like?’

‘That would be wonderful,’ he said, meaning it. ‘And is there any chance of a copy of the local paper?’

Less than an hour later, he was lying back on his bed, stomach full of ham sandwich, leek and potato soup and Theakston’s best bitter. ‘It’s actually called the
Keswick Reminder,’
he said to Caroline, who sounded remarkably perky considering it was past one in the morning on Crete.

‘How fabulously Victorian,’ she said. ‘Do they still have the fatstock prices on the front page?’

He chuckled. ‘Not quite.’

‘Still, if one is marooned out there in the sticks, I expect it does contain all one needs,’ Caroline said. ‘So have you learned any more about this body in the bog?’

‘There’s a lot more local colour, but not much detail about the body itself. I suppose the forensic anthropologist hadn’t had much time for tests by the time the paper went to press.’

‘Pity. So have you made contact with Jane yet?’

‘I’ve only just got here, and they go to bed early in these parts,’ Jake protested. ‘Besides, I thought I’d check out the lie of the land first. See if I can have a chat with this Dr Wilde, the forensic anthropologist. Maybe she can narrow down the age of the body.’

He heard Caroline sigh. ‘The body’s not the thing, Jake. It’s Jane’s manuscript that we’re interested in. You need to win her over as soon as you can.’

‘It’s not as simple as it would have been in London,’ he said. ‘It won’t be so easy to get her on her own. And I need to talk to her face to face, one to one. If I turn up at Cold Comfort Farm, I’ll have her dad glaring at me and her mum plying me with home baking laced with arsenic’

‘So what do you propose?’

It was Jake’s turn to sigh. ‘I’m going to have to act like some bloody silly spy. Find a vantage point where I can watch the farm, follow her when she goes out and hope she ends up somewhere I can speak to her.’

Caroline’s voice was rich with laughter. ‘Oh God, I’d love to be a fly on the wall. Jake auditioning for the cloak and dagger.’

‘I’ll keep you posted,’ he said, resentful at her apparent lack of confidence in him.

‘Do. I expect great things of you, Jake. Sweet dreams.’

And she was gone.
Sweet dreams
, he thought, bouncing experimentally on the overly soft mattress.
As if.

A waning moon hung low over the car park, turning the remaining leaves on the overhanging trees into ragged tatters. River shivered as the damp night chill invaded the hotel hallway through the door Ewan Rigston held open for her. ‘Brrr,’ she said, passing him. ‘Nothing like the Lakeland air to make that warm glow disappear.’

‘It doesn’t tempt you to a moonlight stroll round Derwent Water, then?’ he teased, falling into step beside her.

‘You’re not serious?’

He laughed. ‘I’m not dressed for it. And even if I was, I wouldn’t pick a night like this.’ He sniffed the air and pointed up at a mass of cloud shouldering its way over Castlerigg Fell. ‘It’s going to rain.’

‘Better call it a night, then. I wouldn’t want anything to spoil it.’ They’d reached her Land Rover and River turned to face him, suddenly uncertain of what she wanted. ‘I had a great evening, Ewan.’

He inclined his head. ‘Me too. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed myself so much.’

His face was in shadow and she couldn’t read it. ‘We could do it again some time?’

‘I’d like that. You could give me an update on Pirate Peat.’

She felt a twinge of disappointment. ‘If you like.’

He leaned against the Land Rover. ‘You know what the locals are saying?’

‘About Pirate Peat? No, what?’

‘They’re saying Fletcher Christian can finally be laid to rest.’

River frowned. ‘Fletcher Christian? As in the mutiny on the
Bounty?
What’s that got to do with our cadaver?’

‘He was a local lad, Fletcher. And the word round here has always been that he made it back home afterwards. Some say he was a smuggler up on the Solway Firth. And some reckon his family on the Isle of Man took him in.’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

River was intrigued. She mentally reviewed what she knew about her cadaver and set it against the little she knew about the
Bounty
story. ‘I suppose it’s possible. Pirate Peat had been to the South Seas, no question of that. But I’d have to do some research. Check out dates and such.’ She grinned. ‘Now that would really excite my TV guys. I’ll have to tell them in the morning.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed Rigston on the cheek. ‘Thank you for that.’

Before she could move away, he pulled her close. ‘Thank you for this evening,’ he said, his voice low and dark. Then his mouth was firm against hers, the fine sandpaper of his stubble sending a shiver through her that had nothing to do with the cold. Her lips parted and her tongue darted against his. Heat spread downwards from her belly and her hands found their way under his jacket. When they separated, they were both breathing heavily. ‘I’m sorry,’ he gasped. ‘I didn’t mean…’

She slid her hand round to the front of his trousers and ran her fingers over the hard outline of his penis. ‘Oh, I think you did,’ she murmured. ‘It takes forty-six minutes to get to my place. How long to yours?’

Two hundred and fifty miles away, a coach lumbered through the outskirts of Oxford. The passengers were an ill-assorted bunch: a minor civil servant who had spent the evening after work at the cinema with a colleague; a handful of students returning from an indie gig in Shepherd’s Bush; three Australian backpackers on the next stage of their world tour; a scatter of couples and singles coming home from an evening out in the big city. Some dozed, some read, some chattered, some stared through their own reflection at the shops and houses that lined the bus route through Headington towards the narrow thoroughfare of St Clements.

The young black kid slouched in a seat halfway up the bus hadn’t merited a second glance from anyone. The peak of a baseball cap cast most of the face in shadow, a sanction against the sort of insolent stare that might have awakened a twitch of apprehension among fellow passengers.

Tenille shifted in her seat and checked the time. The bus was running on schedule. She had no idea what kind of place Oxford was, except there were a lot of students and old buildings. But she figured it couldn’t be that hard to find a quiet corner to doss down in. She didn’t care if she didn’t get much sleep. She’d be on buses all day, she could nap then. Besides, every time she nodded off, she risked those nightmare images of Geno coming back to haunt her. Sleep really didn’t matter. What mattered was staying out of the way of the cops. And she had no doubt she could manage that.

She wondered whether they were looking for her outside the Marshpool yet. She wondered whether they’d been in touch with Jane yet.

But not for a second did she wonder whether she was doing the right thing.

18

A single road ran through Fellhead. Unless a driver was determined to twist and wind up the side of Langmere Fell and over a difficult, narrow mountain pass, there was only one logical way in and out of the village. Jake set his alarm for six, and by quarter to seven he was at the Fellhead road end, worn out by the previous day’s travelling and feeling aggrieved that Keswick had been unable to supply him with a takeaway carton of decent coffee to kickstart his brain. A thin drizzle fell relentlessly, cutting visibility and leaching colour from the landscape. Low cloud covered the fell tops and lowland sheep huddled miserably against stone walls and trees.

He didn’t want to drive into the village; there were a few residents who might just recognise him from the previous visits he’d made with Jane. And he certainly had no desire to bump into Judy Gresham popping into the village store. Whatever Jane had said about the ending of their relationship, it wouldn’t have painted him in the sort of light that would endear him to a parent. Instead, he parked in a gravelled area twenty yards up from the road junction, a place where walkers could leave their cars convenient for the footpath that climbed up Langmere Fell.

There was more traffic on the narrow road than Jake had expected and he had a couple of false alarms; one Land Rover looked much like another at a distance. But just after eight, his patience was rewarded. Red Fiestas like the one Judy drove were less common and when one emerged from the village to speed down the road towards him, Jake pulled the brim of his baseball cap further over his eyes and squinted out from under it. As the car drew level, he recognised Jane’s profile. He waited till she had turned north on the main road, then he slipped into gear and after her.

The road towards Thirlmere followed the arrow-straight line of the old Roman road, so Jake hung well back. At least the weather meant Jane had her lights on, so it was easy to keep her in sight. He was oblivious to the misty beauty of the lake on his left and the ghostly outlines of trees on his right as he drove, focused only on the red tail-lights up ahead. He didn’t even notice the signs announcing roadworks ahead. Jane’s car disappeared round a long shallow bend and, as he swung round behind her, he saw disaster ahead. The lights controlling the single-lane traffic through the roadworks turned from amber to red just as Jane shot through. He was tempted to jam his foot down and go for it, but at the last minute he ran out of nerve and slammed the brakes on, slewing to a stop just as headlights approached from the opposite direction. Heart pounding, he clenched the steering wheel. Christ, that had been close.

Jake wiped sweat from his upper lip and waited impatiently for the light to change. He glanced down at the map to confirm what he already thought. There wasn’t anywhere for Jane to turn off, not till she got to the head of the lake. On one side was water, on the other the steep wooded lower slopes of Helvellyn. If he stepped on it, he might just catch her. As the light changed from amber to green, he shot forward and raced up the road. But by the time he reached the point where decisions had to be made there was still no sign of the Fiesta. Here, Jane could either have carried on into Keswick or forked right towards the main drag leading to the M6 and anywhere. Jake hesitated for a moment then gambled on the road to what he considered civilisation. His superior speed and road-holding might just be enough to catch her. And if he didn’t, he could always double back to Keswick and cruise the car parks.

A mile later, he rounded a bend and almost went into the back of a tractor ambling along between the low stone walls bordering the road. Time to give up the chase. Frustrated beyond words, he took advantage of the next gateway to make a seven-point turn and head back to Keswick. Half an hour’s searching later, he was forced to admit defeat.

There wasn’t much point in going back to the road end. When Jane returned, she would be going home, back to the protective bosom of her family. And he couldn’t think of any other way to cross her path. At least he could be fairly certain Jane hadn’t come up with any documentary evidence to support her theory, otherwise she would have been spending her time with Anthony Catto at Dove Cottage.

At that thought, his brain made one of those unfathomable leaps that scientists call inspiration and priests divine intervention. When he and Jane had been together, they’d spent a week in Barcelona. To save on luggage, they had taken only his laptop. She had loaded her email software on to his machine and he had never removed it. It should still be there, complete with stored password. He could raid her account without her ever knowing. He had no doubt whatsoever that there would be a trail. These days, there was always something in the mail.

River pulled on a white lab coat over the clothes she had been wearing the previous day. In spite of only having had a couple of hours’ sleep, she felt as if her brain cells were sparking like metal under a welding torch. Good sex would do that every time, she thought, stretching her arms out above her head and enjoying the feeling of well-being that surged through her. It had been the best fun she’d had in a long time.

There had been nothing awkward about waking up together either. They hadn’t spoken much, it was true–she’d been too eager to get online to see what basic information she could gather about Fletcher Christian, and he’d been happy to let her use his computer. It had all felt very relaxed, very natural. She had no idea where it was going. But for now, she was more than happy to make the journey.

River fastened her coat, grabbed a clipboard with her notes and hurried through to the funeral parlour’s embalming room where Pirate Peat lay in wait for her, his body exposed under the glare of fluorescent strips and TV arc lamps. As she entered, she gauged her audience. Two students taking their masters degrees in Forensic Anthropology, one other from Archaeological Sciences and one palaeobotanist. And to one side, a cameraman, sound woman and a director. ‘Before we begin,’ she said, looking at the students, ‘I’m going to apologise to you in advance. Some of what I’m going to go through today will be simplistic in the extreme. That’s because I have to pitch it at a TV audience who don’t have the advantage of your undergraduate degrees. After we’re done with the filming, we can sit down and go over what we’ve looked at with a little more scientific rigour. But please watch carefully what I’m doing and take notes where you need to. Are you all happy with that?’

They nodded and grunted assent. ‘We’ll need you all to sign a release,’ the director chipped in, ‘authorising us to use your images in the final programme.’

‘Will there be a fee?’ one of the male students asked slightly mutinously.

‘Just being here should be fee enough for you,’ River said. ‘This is not an opportunity that comes along very often. I can say with some degree of certainty that you’ll be the only two masters students in the country who’ll be getting such a hands-on experience with a bog body this year. So just be grateful we’re not charging you for the favour.’ She turned to the director. ‘Before we get started, I wanted to run something past you. I’m told there’s a rumour buzzing round the town that this could be the body of Fletcher Christian.’

‘Who’s Fletcher Christian?’ the director asked.

River tried not to roll her eyes. ‘The guy who led the mutiny on the
Bounty.’

‘What? Like in the Mel Gibson film?’

‘That’s right.’

The director looked at her as if she was mad. ‘So how did he end up in a bog on Langmere Fell? I mean, that was in the South Pacific, right?’

‘Right. But apparently he was from round here. And there was a rumour that he made it back to the Lakes.’

‘Cool.’ The director looked vaguely impressed.

‘I was wondering if we could incorporate the speculation into what we’re doing? Wouldn’t that make it a better sell to the viewers?’

‘I suppose so. I’ll need to run it past Phil, though. He’s the boss.’

River tried to curb her impatience. ‘I’ve already done a little bit of research online this morning. Why don’t we just proceed as if we’re going to go down that path? I can make reference to it as I work. Then if Phil decides against it, you can always edit it out. How does that sound?’

The director spread his hands. ‘Why not? Anything to make a dead body sexier.’

River allowed herself the smile of a woman who knows what sexy really means. ‘Are we ready?’

The sound woman stared down at her dials and muttered, ‘Up to speed.’ The cameraman looked through his eyepiece and said, ‘Rolling.’

River stared down at the body. ‘Even a body as old as this one gives us a wealth of information. Our bodies encode our personal identity. They tell the world what has been done to them and what they have done to themselves. Even the most superficial examination can tell us something.’ She pointed as she spoke. ‘The skull, the pubic synthesis, the joint degeneration–all this conspires to tell us our man was around forty years old.’

She looked up at the students. ‘This body was found in Carts Moss, a boggy area towards the base of Langmere Fell. That’s unusual enough in itself to generate local interest. But when the word spread about these tattoos…’ She paused to indicate the dark shading on the chestnut-coloured skin, then looked up again and continued: ‘…a completely different level of interest was aroused.’

She ran her hand gently over the remains on the table. ‘Forensic anthropology is all about identity. Who was this person? What happened to them while they were alive? And what impact did that have on how they died? Most of what we do is solid scientific fact. But like the archaeologists, we also have to rely on other evidence, some of it anecdotal, some of it social, because the science is meaningless without a context. And when it comes to anecdotal evidence, we’ve already got an intriguing possibility right here. Could this be the body of a Cumbrian called Fletcher Christian who sailed away in the
Bounty
on a voyage to the South Seas where he led a mutiny against his captain? Certainly that’s what some locals believe. As we make our journey towards discovering all this body has to tell us, let’s bear in mind the possibility that we might just be able to identify this body very precisely even though it’s been in the ground for a couple of hundred years.’

She turned to the whiteboard set behind her. ‘And cut,’ the director said. ‘We need to change our camera position, River. So we can see what you’re writing.’

A few minutes later, everything was ready again. River took a blue marker pen and started to make a list on the right-hand side of the board. She headed it
Fletcher Christian.
Below, she wrote a list based on what she’d garnered from her swift sweep of the internet.

Born 25/9/1764 Moorland Close, nr Cockermouth, Cumbria

Male

Height 175 cm

Hair: very

dark brown Dark complexion

Strong made

Star tattoo on left breast

Tattooed in South Sea Island style–buttocks completely coloured black, probably with decoration lines round the upper border

Slightly bow-legged

Very sweaty, particularly in the hands–? primary hyperhidrosis?