‘Right – plus the fact that the people running the exercises thought there was nothing here to find, so I doubt the squaddies were given much time to search the building anyway – certainly not long enough to find a door like this, and Woodruffe says the storeroom was full of packing cases and there’s still loads of them around.’
‘And what’s the explanation for the trapdoor being concealed?’ asked Dryden.
‘He says it was like that for as long as he can remember. He was brought up at the inn – his mother was the licensee, the father before that. He says he thinks the building might have been a shop at one time – hence the tiles, which are Victorian. In that context, tiling over the trap isn’t that bizarre.’
They walked out into the street.
‘But it adds to the picture, doesn’t it?’ asked Dryden. ‘The Skeleton Man, an empty grave, a hidden door.’
‘Yes,’ said Shaw.
‘I said the grave was empty,’ said Shaw. ‘But that’s not quite true. We found this.’ Another evidence bag, a cigarette butt inside. ‘Ducados,’ said Shaw. ‘Our exotic
friend again – and because the water hadn’t soaked down that far there’s some DNA material this time, enough for an ID if we’re lucky.’ Shaw smiled. ‘And I feel lucky.’
18
The rain was setting in, falling in curtains of newsprint-black from a low grey sky. They walked up the street towards the hump-backed bridge over The Dring which trickled now with water from the hill. A rat scuttled in the gutter beside them, slipping effortlessly down a drain with a languid splosh. Birds’ wings fluttered amongst the exposed roof beams of Palmer’s Store, where Magda Hollingsworth had so painstakingly written her diary.
Dryden caught his own reflection in the broken window of a house by the bridge. Startled, he jumped visibly, and Shaw stopped. ‘There always seems to be something moving in the shadows in this village,’ said Dryden, and a sparrowhawk took up position high above their heads, as if listening.
They turned south towards Neate’s Garage as Magda had done that last evening seventeen years earlier, but then cut up through the allotments to the church. A single uniformed PC stood guard at the oak doors of St Swithun’s, a radio set on the graveyard wall helping to break the suffocating silence.
The shattered stained-glass window had been boarded up and the hole the shell had ripped through the roof had been patched. But somewhere water fell, plashing on stone, reviving the smell of winter’s damp and on the altar steps a crow lay dead, a wing sticking up like an arrow. In the draught from the door the feathers twitched, making Dryden’s stomach tighten.
They walked to the Peyton tomb, which lay now in the depressing shadow of the boarded window. Dryden took a torch and tried again to peer inside the shattered top of the burial chest – which brought his own face close to the mutilated cheek of the reclining crusader. Up close the genius of the medieval sculptor made the alabaster face almost human, and Dryden had to suppress the uncanny fear that it was about to move.
‘So what was in here?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. Memorial funeral chests like this are always empty – I’m an expert now, believe me. Just a bit of conspicuous consumption after death apparently, something for the neighbours to gape at. The body is usually buried beneath or near the tomb, or there’s a crypt underneath for multiple burials.’
Shaw went behind the monument, to the space between the stone chest and the nave wall. The neat pyramid of sand, soil and loose stones Dryden had found on the day the church had been hit by Broderick’s wayward bombardment seemed larger, and had been moved to one side.
‘We had a look at this right at the start, of course – after you’d found it. But it didn’t seem to mean much more than a bit of gruesome vandalism until our friends made their telephone calls.’
The two large stones which had been taken up from the floor were now laid neatly on wooden pallets. The inscription of P above an etched sunflower had been washed clean to reveal the precision of the original workmanship. The hole itself seemed deeper, cutting down through the foundations into grey, damp clay; the shadow at the bottom impenetrable.
‘They had to work for it then?’ said Dryden, kneeling at the stone edge.
‘We dug down a bit further – just to check it out, and we’ve tidied up the spoil. They broke one of the covering stones, in fact they made a right bodge-up of the whole job. We’ve sieved the soil and there’s little to report, some splinters of wood, a churchwarden clay pipe fragment. But, our grave robbers did leave this…’
It was an entrenching tool, bagged in cellophane. ‘Isn’t that army issue?’ said Dryden.
‘Originally yes. But you can get them anywhere. This one’s got a truly staggering six sets of fingerprints on it. My guess is they lacked a bit of muscle and needed to do the job in shifts. We’ve put all the prints on the national computer but there’re no matches, which may explain their carefree methods.’
Dryden imagined them, working by night, the light of a lantern splayed across the medieval vaulting above. They might lack the cool intelligence of the real extremists, he thought, but there was no doubt they had guts.
‘And all that confirms they’re amateurs on a first job?’ said Dryden.
‘Possibly.’
Shaw squatted by the open grave and picked up a handful of soil. ‘They must have taken some coffin wood too – if there was any left. We could be talking several centuries since the last burial – so I doubt there was much to get hold of but some thigh bones and a skull.’
But Shaw looked worried.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Dryden.
‘Probably nothing. The Peytons were rich – you’d expect a few bits of metalwork off a coffin – nails, screws, handles, that kind of thing.’
Dryden nodded. ‘Perhaps they took them.’ But he didn’t believe that either, so he checked his watch. ‘Look, I need to get back. So if they ring, they’ll ring tonight? My mobile?’
