Paternoster Page 4

  The builders clustered together by the silent machinery, muttering to each other in a language close enough to Russian that she could understand it.

  ‘You son-of-a-whore, you should have turned a blind eye.’

  ‘What will happen to us now?’

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ Aidan asked one of the builders. The man shrugged and pointed towards the school. ‘No, who’s in charge of the site? Foreman?’

  The builders glanced uneasily at each other and hung their heads.

  Eden tried, her Russian creaking after a long hibernation. ‘Кто отвечает здесь?’ Who is in charge here?

  The men refused even to look at her. She tried again. ‘Где скелет?’ Where is skeleton?

  Avoiding eye contact, the youngest pointed, and muttered, ‘He моя вина.’ Not my fault.

  She was at Aidan’s shoulder as he walked towards the trench, where a policeman was unfurling blue and white crime scene tape.

  ‘Dr Aidan Fox,’ Aidan introduced himself. ‘Cultural Heritage Unit. You called me.’

  The policeman nodded, then peered past Aidan at Eden, taking in her short kilt and electric blue leather jacket. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘She’s with me.’

  The policeman waved to another man, standing well back and smoking a cigarette as though his life depended on it. ‘Archaeology’s here!’ he called. To Aidan he explained, ‘That’s Detective Inspector Ritter.’

  Ritter was a rat-faced man with dirty blond hair, greasy at the roots. He cast an anguished look at his cigarette, sucked a last, forceful drag, then tossed it on the ground and smudged it out with his toe. He stumped over and shook hands with Aidan, giving Eden a good ignoring.

  They stood behind the police tape and peeped into the trench. Eden felt the chill breeze nipping at her fingertips and dug her hands in her pockets. It had been a long time since she was sent on a forensic procedures course, and she dredged her mind for protocols and crime scene management procedures.

  Aidan nodded at the trench. ‘Who found the skeleton?’

  ‘Haven’t established exactly what happened,’ the detective said. ‘The foreman is the only one who speaks any English.’

  ‘At all?’

  Ritter shrugged. ‘The only one who seems to understand. Bloody EU.’

  While Aidan shucked on a set of white crime scene overalls, Eden craned to see into the trench. In the claggy soil she could just make out bands of different coloured soil. At the bottom of the trench was something she initially identified as a hollow stick. Her assessment changed as her eyes followed the line of the trench and picked out other sticks, one with the smooth double bulb of a hip joint.

  Aidan climbed into the trench, carefully avoiding the protruding bones. For a long time, he simply stood and looked, mapping one square of the trench before moving on to scrutinise another.

  Itching with impatience, Eden called, ‘So? Human or dog?’

  With a small trowel, Aidan scraped away the soil clinging to the rounded hump of a rock poking out of the cut. He worked away until it was fully exposed, then gently eased it out of the mud and held it up. ‘This one was never called Fido.’

  It was a human skull.

  Ritter groaned. ‘Shit! How long’s it been there?’

  ‘Your first question should be how many,’ Aidan said.

  ‘What the …?’

  Eden’s pulse quickened as he pointed to a brown hump at the far end of the trench.

  ‘Another cranium, so at least two people,’ he said, drily. ‘Unless this was a burial ground for circus freaks.’

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ Ritter muttered. ‘OK, how many?’

  Aidan straightened. ‘Can you pass me a tape measure from my kit?’ he asked Eden.

  It was slotted in place in the lid. All his tools were clean and neatly placed in the toolbox, not thrown in any old how covered in muck. She leaned over the trench to hand it to him. Just his head and shoulders poked out of the trench, his head swaddled in white plastic like a spaceman. One by one, he measured the long bones.

  ‘Only two at the moment,’ he said. ‘We’ve got two skulls, and the thigh bones are of two lengths.’

  ‘Is this a burial ground?’ she asked.

  ‘Doubt it,’ he said. ‘The bones are all over the place, suggesting there was no coffin. And they’re not oriented the same way. It looks as though they were slung in unceremoniously.’ He caught Ritter’s eye. ‘Means this isn’t a conventional burial.’

  ‘Suspicious circumstances,’ Eden said, her mind quickening. This was more like it. Better than trawling for adulterers all day.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Ritter said. ‘How old are they?’

  ‘I’d have to do some carbon dating to know for sure, but the discolouration on the bones suggests they’ve been in the ground a long time.’

  ‘Ancient?’

  Aidan crouched down and bent his face to the earth and sniffed where he’d removed the bones. ‘I’d say over a hundred years old,’ he said.

  ‘You can tell that by the smell?’ Eden asked, horrified and fascinated in equal measure.

  ‘An old burial only smells of earth,’ Aidan said. ‘And these bones are crumbly. I’ll have to run other tests, but I wouldn’t start panicking about a serial killer just yet.’

  He clambered out of the trench.

  ‘We’ll treat this as a crime scene until you’ve got all the bones out and can confirm it’s a historical burial,’ Ritter said. ‘Make sure everyone suits up and photograph and measure as you go. Treat it as forensic, not archaeology. OK?’

  ‘Sure,’ Aidan said. ‘I’ll get a team in to lift the bones and go through the spoil heap.’ He grimaced at the pile of soil the digger had hacked out.

  ‘Rather you than me, mate. It all looks the same.’

  ‘Could be more bones in there.’ Aidan drew his mobile out of his pocket and called his team. The call made, he turned back to Ritter. ‘I’ll leave you to deal with the builders.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Ritter groaned. He pulled a cigarette out of the packet with his lips and patted his pocket for a lighter. Approaching the builders, he spoke to them in exaggerated English. ‘Where is foreman? Boss, where? I speak to Boss man.’

  Eden considered going to help him. Her fragmented Russian would surely be more use than his staccato bursts and gesticulation. Then again, Ritter had ignored her since she turned up. Let him work it out himself.

  Aidan sent Eden to the car for his camera and to get herself a crime scene suit. She bagged up at the car, wriggling her kilt down inside the suit. She’d forgotten the feel of the suits, the rustling at every twitch, and the smell sent her spiralling back through the past. Last time she’d worn one she was attending the aftermath of a shoot-out between rival drug lords. Brains and intestines sprayed over the walls of a lock-up garage. A gang of white-suited colleagues, like survivors from a pandemic, moved about the scene, photographing, swabbing, measuring, and maintaining a constant, lurid banter, the rowdy camaraderie of violent death. Later, they’d mobbed the pub close to the Unit, sinking pint after pint, joshing each other and making up jokes about the corpses until the horror was washed away. Happy days.

  Eden blinked away the memory. She missed the comradeship the most. The teasing, the nicknames, the un-PC jokes. But here at least there was a crime scene, and good old Aidan had smuggled her into it. She rootled in the car for the camera and slung it round her neck. As she returned to the trench, she found a smartly dressed woman in her forties trying to duck under the crime scene tape.

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ the woman demanded, a severe black bob skimming her jaw.

  ‘And you are?’ Eden said.

  ‘Mrs Mortimer. Rosalind Mortimer, the headmistress. Who are you?’

  From within the trench, Aidan called, ‘I’m the archaeologist. My team are on their way.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Talk to the police, Mrs Mortimer.’ He turned to Eden. ‘That lu
mp is definitely a skull.’

  ‘A what?’ Rosalind Mortimer paled and staggered away a few steps.

  Eden took her arm and led her back towards the school. She didn’t like people fainting or being sick at crime scenes. It created a lot of paperwork. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Just a shock. He said skull, didn’t he?’ Mrs Mortimer said. ‘Do you know what’s happened?’

  ‘The builders have unearthed a couple of bodies,’ Eden said, watching Rosalind Mortimer’s face closely. Mrs Mortimer’s hand went to her throat. Her nails were well manicured and painted in pale peach varnish. She had a silk scarf in a fussy pattern looped around her neck, making her look older than she was.

  ‘Bodies? Who?’

  ‘They’re skeletons,’ Eden said. ‘Who told you the police were here?’

  ‘I was away from school at a meeting. When I came in, my secretary said there was a disturbance and the police were here.’ Rosalind paused for breath. ‘I never imagined it was a murder.’

  The word hung on the air for a moment before Eden said, ‘Who said anything about murder?’

  Rosalind coloured. ‘You said … and the police … and the skeletons.’ Rosalind pressed her hand to her eyes and visibly tried to compose herself. ‘I’m sorry. You must think I’m hysterical. It was a nasty surprise, being told the police were here. I imagined terrible things. The girls …’ Her gaze swept the school buildings.

  Eden caught sight of the billboard with the artist’s impression of the new science block and gymnasium. She nodded at it. ‘Big project,’ she said.

  ‘We desperately need new facilities. The parents have such expectations,’ Rosalind said. ‘We’re lucky we can still offer boarding. Many have had to give that up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It simply isn’t financially viable any more.’

  ‘I thought you’d have to build something that was more in keeping with the main building,’ Eden said. ‘Georgian, isn’t it? Is it listed?’

  ‘It is, as a matter of fact,’ Rosalind said, icily. ‘But this isn’t a museum. We have to move with the times.’

  Eden ignored the hint and carried on. ‘My aunt had a grade two listed house and she had to get planning permission to change the colour of the railings outside.’

  ‘Really.’ They’d reached the main entrance: a colonnaded portico of cream marble. ‘I must get on. Goodness knows what I’ll tell the governors. Hopefully the building work won’t be held up too long. We’ve got a tight schedule. We need that new science block to be opened by September.’

  Eden whistled. ‘That’s pushing it.’

  Rosalind gave her a frosty smile and clipped up the steps into the school. Her calves were well developed, her ankles skinny, and she was wearing seamed stockings. Eden watched her go. Fussy scarf and naughty librarian hosiery: there was an enigma.

  When Eden returned to the trench, Aidan was positioning measuring sticks against the edge of the dig so that the photographs would give an indication of scale. He moved cautiously, photographing the protruding bones from all angles.

  ‘We’ll keep on photographing as we take this layer back,’ he said to Eden. ‘Make sure it’s all recorded. It looks like an old burial to me, but I don’t want to get to the bottom and find a digital watch, then realise we’ve destroyed a crime scene.’

  Eden made a rueful face. At least they weren’t skidding in blood, or dodging a rookie cop’s vomit. Compared to the crime scenes she’d attended, this was pristine.

  ‘You’re pretty handy with a camera, aren’t you?’ Aidan asked.

  She thought of that morning’s work with a telephoto lens. Scumbags from all angles. ‘I know my way round a camera.’

  ‘You busy?’ Aidan asked. ‘Or have you got a couple of hours spare?’

  ‘Sure.’ It was either this or skulking in her car outside a house for a cheating husband. Random skeletons won hands down.

  ‘I’ll tell you what to shoot,’ Aidan said. ‘It means when my gang gets here we can concentrate on getting the skeletons out.’

  ‘Definitely your turf, not mine,’ Eden said.

  She had just started photographing, to Aidan’s barked instructions, when Mandy, Trev and Andy arrived, bagged in white and looking deliriously happy.

  ‘We’ve got two skeletons, possibly more,’ Aidan told them. ‘The digger has cut through them and there might be bones in the spoil heap.’ He pointed his trowel at the heap of claggy earth stacked beside the trench. ‘There’s not enough room for all of us in the trench, so Andy you can help me take this back in here; Mandy, can you record the site and finds; and Trev, riddle your way through that lot.’

  Trev swore and pulled a long-suffering face but set to with a riddle and soon struck pay dirt with some finger bones, which cheered him up and he tackled the task with much more gusto from then on.

  They worked hard until the light started to dim, painstakingly removing bones, cataloguing and storing them in cardboard boxes lined with bubble wrap. Aidan and Andy scraped back the soil from the skulls, then left them in situ while they worked out the orientation of the skeletons. The scratch of trowels was soothing, Eden thought, crouching to photograph a section of rib cage that Andy had unearthed.

  A few minutes later, Andy said, ‘Aidan?’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘Have a look at this.’

  Aidan straightened. Andy sat back on his heels, the rib cage in front of him, a pick-up sticks of thin bones. He pointed his trowel.

  ‘What do you reckon?’

  Aidan squinted at the ribs and sucked in a breath. ‘Looks like we might have a cause of death,’ he said. He called to Eden, ‘Photos needed here!’

  She scrambled over, and narrowed the lens in to where he pointed. He inched the tip of his trowel into the bones and lifted out a small object. He rubbed it clean with his glove and held it up to the light. It was a metal point. ‘Looks to me like the tip of a blade.’

  She raised her eyes to his. His face was serious. ‘Better phone our friends at the nick,’ he said.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  London, March 1795

  Rachel Lovett flung down her fork and rang the little bell on the table. A maid answered, a chewed-up and spat-out girl who trembled when Rachel nodded at the breakfast remains and ordered her to clear the dishes.

  The girl bobbed a curtsey and set about clattering the china into a wobbly pile.

  ‘When you’ve finished that, Kitty, come and help me dress,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  Rachel swept out of the parlour and into her bedroom. Heavy drapes adorned the windows and tumbled to the floor, and the bed was festooned with pink silk swags and hangings. Her sheets were rumpled: the remains of a poor night’s sleep. Not the first these past weeks.

  Pouring hot water into a bowl, she turned a bar of scented soap over in her hands and lathered herself clean. The soap was French, the very best, a present from Darby. The whole room was a present from Darby. Her eyes made a swift inventory: the tangle of dresses a knotted rainbow on the divan; the shifts of lace and satin tumbling out of drawers; the candles everywhere. Wax, not tallow. The big gilt-looking glass that flooded the room with light.

  The face that confronted her in the glass was heart shaped with pert tendencies, a small mouth that could soothe and caress when it wanted, or screech like a docker’s whore when it chose. A bosom not rounded but there was enough there to push upwards and create two plump pale delights.

  And it was all Darby’s. The Honourable Darby Roach, her lover. Who had been growing absent over the past few weeks. A missed appointment; a blank look in his eye; problems poking the fire. Not that the shit had been near her for five days. And a man who shuns his mistress for five days must have another cat in the bag.

  Rachel hissed at her own reflection, just as Kitty crawled into the room and set about picking up dresses and folding them away, gathering up stockings and chemises as fine as spiders’ webs.

  ‘
How old do you think I look, Kitty?’ Rachel asked.

  Kitty cast her an anguished glance. Calculation chased over her features; the girl never could dissemble, no matter how Rachel instructed her.

  She sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter, Kitty. Come, my finest today, I think.’

  ‘Mr Roach calling?’

  ‘He’d better,’ Rachel said. Further conversation was impossible, as Kitty had her knee in her back and was straining on the stay’s laces like a thoroughbred given its head in the Derby.

  Two hours later, Rachel was draped in a lilac silk gown and her hair was curled and arranged in loops about her head. Each wrist held five bracelets, a slave bangle throttled her plump forearm, and her bodice glittered with trinkets. Her face was powdered, rouged and painted. She was ready.

  She draped herself over the sofa in the drawing room, arranging herself on the cushions in a series of artful poses. None of them was comfortable enough to sustain for longer than a few minutes, so she picked up a novel, curled her feet underneath her, and threatened to strangle Kitty if she showed in Mr Roach without warning her mistress first.

  So the morning passed.

  And the afternoon.

  At three o’clock, when no carriage had stopped at her door and Kitty had still failed to creep into the room to hiss, ‘Mr Roach, miss,’ Rachel sprang from the couch, threw her novel across the room and shouted for Kitty.

  ‘Get my pelisse and gloves and my shoes,’ she said. ‘The new ones. And my bonnet. And put on your spencer and bonnet, too.’

  ‘Miss?’

  ‘I’m going out.’

  ‘What about Mr Roach, miss? What if he calls?’

  ‘Then he can leave his card like everyone else,’ Rachel said, coolly. ‘He has chosen not to call for the past few days.’ Five days. Five days and no message from him. A worm of uncertainty crawled in her stomach. He couldn’t have, could he?

  ‘He might be ill, miss.’

  ‘Then he should have sent a note.’

  ‘He might have been called to the country. His father’s place.’

  Rachel fixed her with a stare. ‘Bonnet, gloves, and pelisse, Kitty.’