Time Enough To Die (29 page)

"The Dunning's closing the shop at noon. I might even be able to hitch a ride with her, if she'll let me sit in that posh car of hers. Says she always goes to the festival, it's good for antique-hunting."

Better and better. Gareth softened his voice until it was the texture of Della's clotted cream. “Emma, I need your help. I'm afraid I wasn't quite honest with you Wednesday."

"You're married."

"No, no, no. It's when I told you about the article I've been assigned. I'm writing on ‘Our Roman Heritage’ for the
Times,
yes. I'm also writing an article for the
Sunburn
about the murder of Linda Burkett."

"Oooh! Dead thrilling!"

Gareth rolled his eyes heavenward, realized what he was doing, and quickly lowered them. “You gave me a lead when you told me about Dunning's boyfriend. He might be involved. My editors need to know who he is. There could be a packet of quid involved. If you could search Dunning's files for letters...."

"No need, luv. I got curious, like, after we talked, so I hung about after closing tonight and actually saw the bloke. I reckon they're having it off at this very minute."

"Super! It's Adrian Reynolds, isn't it?"

"Yeh—looked like him, stoop-shouldered.... Well, it was just a glimpse, wasn't it, through the window. He slipped the trout a paper folder and a box. I'll watch for them when I do the filing tomorrow, shall I?"

"Brilliant! Emma, if you can bring them to me, I'll make sure you're rewarded."

"I know just the thing. There's posh hotel in Chester, the perfect place for a dirty weekend...."

"Sorry,” Gareth said. “Call waiting. See you tomorrow, Emma. And thank you again."

"Pleasure's mine. Ta-ta."

Gareth switched off his phone. He sat on the edge of his bed looking round the room but not quite focusing. Whether he was prepared to prostitute himself for Scotland Yard was a question that didn't yet need answering. With any luck, once Emma found out who he really was he'd lose his appeal.

Gently he burped cucumber and strawberry jam. A walk, that was it, he needed to have a walk. Maybe Matilda would like to go, too. She couldn't be eating supper with the students, not after that tea. Not that she starved herself like some women he'd known—Nicole, for example, he'd almost chipped a tooth on her rib cage. Or scraggy little Emma. It wasn't natural for a woman to have a body like a twelve-year-old boy smuggling balloons in his shirt. Matilda's body was well-proportioned, as a woman's should be. He wondered which posh hotel in Chester Emma had been thinking of. Matilda would prefer to see Wales. Holywell. Gwytherin. Carnarvon. Cozy little inns with canopied beds.

Gareth found Matilda in the sitting room. She'd cleared away the magazines and was spreading pieces of graph paper across the coffee table. “Did you talk to Emma?” she asked.

"Yes,” he replied. “She actually saw Reynolds with Dunning tonight. He gave Dunning a folder and a box. Emma's going to nick them for me."

"All right! Well done!"

"It's still not a complete case,” Gareth warned. “I hope the box and the folder turn out to be the final bit."

"The last straw, or the keystone—whatever. Oh yes.” Matilda distributed photos of the dig round the table. “Emma's sure the man was Reynolds? Might it have been Nick?"

"No, she wasn't sure. But the man fits Reynolds's description. And she'd have smelled Nick's androgens from forty paces. Besides, how many women can a chap handle?"

"I've always wondered that.” Matilda looked up at Gareth as though he were an Old Master painting and she an art critic. “As for Reynolds being the murderer—I don't know."

They'd already quarreled once today, Gareth told himself. There was no need to go at it again because she was still doubtful. He changed the subject. “Would you like to have a walk, see if the Maypole is up yet?"

"Thank you, I'd love to, but the students are coming in here after supper for a mini-course in plotting and stratigraphy. Give the Maypole my regards.” Her blue eyes twinkled.

"I'll do that,” he returned, and walked out into the night tempering his concerns with Emma and Reynolds, Della and Ashley and Nick, with musings on the ancient and honorable rites of spring.

It was barely light when Gareth awoke abruptly from a deep sleep. He heard a scratching and shuffling. Someone was in his room.... No. The noise came from his window.

He slipped from the bed, his heart thudding against his rib cage. Every object in the room was outlined with a thin translucent shimmer. The curtained window was a square of silver. He was on the second story, he reminded himself, with the ground and first floors between him and any evildoers. Only a monkey could climb the drainpipe or the ivy. He leaped forward and yanked the curtains aside.

A crow, the largest he'd ever seen, stood on the sill. It ruffled its feathers and looked at him with eyes like icy beads of jet.

With a convulsive shudder, Gareth shrank back. It was a
derwyn corph,
a corpse-bird. His grandmother had told him tale after tale of how the uncanny bird tapped on the window of someone who was about to die....
Steady on,
he told himself. The festival preparations had disturbed one of the crows that lived in the tower of the church. There was nothing supernatural about this one. It wasn't even tapping on the glass.

He flung open the window. With a harsh cry the crow launched itself into the air and went winging away toward Fortuna Stud. Gareth leaned over the sill watching the bird until it disappeared, the only moving thing in the mist-shrouded silence of dawn. The chill of the air drew gooseflesh from his naked torso. He slammed the window, went back to bed, and pulled the covers to his chin. But still he felt cold.

The tea was hot and milky sweet. Gareth downed his first cup and poured a second before he told Matilda about the crow. “There I was,” he finished, “looking forward to a nice lie-in, and the damned bird knocks me up."

"A bird of ill-omen,” she replied. “Did it give you nightmares?"

"No,” he lied, and ducked her knowing look. They finished their late breakfasts and wandered out onto the street to discover that the mist had cleared, leaving the morning polished by sunshine.

Whistling, Clapper was setting up a sandwich board advertising his menu. One of the cottage-owners across the street hung a banner over his wall proclaiming, “Parking, 1". The lawn bowlers, kitted out in straw hats and white jackets, were setting up a souvenir stand. From atop the fort Gareth and Matilda watched Reynolds canter toward the river, Gremlin's coat gleaming in the sunshine.

"Hi ho Silver and away,” Matilda said.

"When he gets back,” said Gareth, “his head will be well and truly in the noose. Not literally, more's the pity. People who play dangerous games have to pay the price when they lose."

"Does that mean us, as well?” Matilda asked.

"We're not going to lose.” Gareth turned to see several of the American students, along with some local youths, hiking up the side of the hill. They were carrying bits and pieces of silver-painted plastic armor and an assortment of bed sheets. “Looks to be another Roman invasion."

"Clapper's idea,” said Matilda. “He was asking my advice last night. The kids are going to dress up as the ancient citizens of Cornovium and show tourists around the dig—in the process making sure no one steps on the edge of a trench or makes off with bits of inscription."

"Tell them to mind the ghosts.” Gareth left her to run through the script with the impromptu guides and strolled toward the town. Gaily-colored streamers fluttered from the top of the Maypole. The vicar was supervising a squad of stained-glass-window washers.

Ashley stood looking at the book shop's display of volumes on history and folklore. “Good morning,” she said. “Cool books, huh?"

"I don't think I've read a one of them,” he replied.

"I've seen a few. Nick has most of them in his caravan.... “She shot a glance at Gareth, half-defiant, half-pleading. “He's a real scholar, you know."

"Ah—yes.”
We'll see,
he told himself, and went on, “Did Matilda give you the mobile phone?"

"Yes, she did, said she bought it for me specially. Thanks."

"Well, take care.” It would've been easier to throw himself on a grenade to save Ashley's life than to send her to do his work for him. Gritting his teeth, he went on his way.

After roaming through the town and stopping into a cafe for a coffee he returned to the hotel feeling better. Emma would bring him the last piece, wouldn't she? Ashley would be all right, they were only harmless nutters. It would all be over soon, the crow be damned.

He found Matilda with Ashley just inside the door, their gestures indicating a serious discussion of clothing styles. “Thanks,” the girl said, and bounded up the stairs.

"She wanted to know what she should wear tonight,” Matilda told Gareth. “I hope she keeps focusing on such mundane details, then maybe she can keep her head if anything goes wrong."

"You're expecting something to go wrong, are you?” Gareth asked.

"Yes.” The corners of Matilda's mouth tucked themselves in, producing a stiff upper lip.

Good show.
“I'll fetch my camera,” Gareth said. “A few snaps of the students in costume...."

Watkins burst through the front door of the hotel looking less like the cavalry coming to the rescue than General Custer at his last stand. He seized Gareth's arm and in a husky whisper said, “The peat cutters found a body at Shadow Moss."

"That's Dr. Sweeney's department,” Gareth began, but Matilda interrupted.

"Who is it?"

"From the description, it's Adrian Reynolds. His head's been bashed and his throat cut. It's another murder, right enough."

"Have you told Della yet?” Matilda asked.

"W.P.C. Innes went to collect her."

A house of cards collapsed in Gareth's mind, thoughts skittering to and fro and landing in a messy pile. Reynolds? But he was the murderer himself, wasn't he?
Bloody hell.

Watkins coaxed Gareth toward the door. “I rang Manchester, you'll be wanting to have a look before they arrive."

The crow had flown toward Fortuna Stud....
No, no, no,
Gareth told himself. He hurried out the door and into Watkins's orange-striped squad car. It wasn't until the constable sped away, siren blatting, that Gareth realized Matilda was sitting in the back seat. He turned round, mouth open to speak.

Her level gaze intercepted and blew away any protest he'd been intending to make. Closing his mouth, he faced front again. The countryside streamed by in a green blur. A bit of forest momentarily compressed the sound of the siren. The car sped down Racecourse Road and turned onto a muddy track that bumped and shivered across open heath dotted with birch scrub.

Even in the sunshine Shadow Moss seemed like an otherworldly place. The air was heavy with a musky, weedy smell. Amidst their green mosses and reeds and white-tufted bog myrtle the dark pools reflected no light. The smudge that was Durslow Edge loomed like a thunderstorm on the horizon. Gareth's head spun. He was caught in a weird time conversion not of past centuries but of his own life. He had been here before, squelching with Watkins across the boggy ground. No matter that it had been chill and damp then, not warm and sunny. He and the constable had only to say the same words, in the same order, and it would all happen again, time repeating itself, Linda Burkett dying and Matilda sitting in Forrest's office....
Steady on,
he ordered himself.

The peat-cutting machine was a mud-stained metal contraption on the opposite side of a black sheet of water. Two workmen lounged beside it—the rest, Gareth assumed, were spending the day dancing and drinking in Corcester.

Judging by his wilted suit and tie, it was the foreman who was waiting beside a patch of stone that shouldered through the tussocks of grass and shrub. The man twitched aside a tarpaulin, then fled upwind. What lay beneath the cloth was not a brown severed hand, both horrible and beautiful. There was no beauty in Adrian Reynolds's corpse.

Matilda sighed. Watkins swore quietly under his breath. Gareth knelt down and made a quick inspection of the remains.

Reynolds was lying face up. His open eyes were beads of jet. They didn't reflect any light either. His face was blank, wiped clean of expression. The back of his head was crushed. Dark crimson blood stained the rock on which it rested. A gaping wound sliced across his throat, exposing the severed ends of trachea and esophagus. Flecks of blood spattered Reynolds's white shirt.... No more than flecks. Gareth lifted and jiggled Reynold's limp arm. He replaced the tarpaulin, stood up, and caught Matilda's eye.

"It was violent and sudden,” she said. “He was angry, and then he was dead. I can still feel his fury, thwarted now, unfocused. How sad, to die angry."

"It's better than dying scared.” Gareth turned to Watkins. “It was the blow that killed him. Since there's very little blood on his clothing his throat was cut some time after his death. He's been dead about two hours, I'm estimating. The medical examiner can give you the details."

Watkins stopped looking dubiously at Matilda and started looking quizzically at Gareth. “Someone cut his throat after he were already dead? That's a bit of devilish jiggery-pokery, isn't it?"

"It looks that way.” Matilda frowned. “What was used to hit him, Gareth?"

He scouted the area. The stone where the body lay was an outcropping of the same red sandstone that formed Durslow Edge. A few loose pebbles lay scattered about, but none were large enough to have made such a crushing wound. The flat of a shovel might have done, although its edge would have left a relatively well-defined furrow. “The killer must have taken the weapon away with him. I don't know what it was. Something large and slightly rounded."

The wind lifted Matilda's hair from her furrowed forehead. “Like the Earth?” she asked.

Gareth knew immediately what she meant. “Yes, that's it. We saw Reynolds ride out on Gremlin this morning. Gremlin can be as skittish as a colt. He threw Reynolds on his head."

"He were thrown off his horse,” said Watkins, pulling out his notebook.