Cryptic Clues

Chapter 3

Martin was working at his computer in the detectives" first-floor office at HQ, typing up the report of the morning"s investigation, when Ray hurried in.

"Those metal detectorists have been identified," he announced with a smile of satisfaction, "so that"s a bit of progress. Evidently they"re a couple of familiar faces – not from our area, I should add – known for knocking off copper from closed-down factories and for handling all manner of stolen industrial goods. They"ve both done time. They"re also suspected of nicking artefacts from archaeological sites." He laughed. "Can"t say they lacked initiative!" He waited for Martin"s question.

"How did they die?"

"What would you have thought? Logically."

Logically.Martin didn"t enjoy Ray"s inclination to be constantly challenging him, but he went along with it.

"The most obvious cause would be from burns. Or from organ failure like Al said. Or a combination of both."

"You"re right, of course. There was no evidence of violent blows or bullet wounds."

Ray lapsed into silence, but Martin knew his colleague well enough to sense there was more. "Is there a but?"

but"Yes, I"m afraid I"ve a doubt." Ray paused. "I have to wonder if they had to die at all."

Martin sighed quietly. It was another of Ray"s agonised wrestlings, but as he’d seen for himself, they sometimes led to the solving of difficult cases. He forced a smile. "Tell me more."

Ray eased himself back in his chair. It was anecdote time, Martin realised.

"When I was a young uniformed officer I was called to a case where an elderly spinster had died in a house fire. Neighbours told me she had appeared in her yard shouting for help, but had rushed back into the house again to rescue her cat. No one could get to her. She died of severe burns. The cat escaped by jumping through a shattered window." Ray lapsed into silence, preoccupied with his recollections.

"You"re saying she didn"t have to die?" Martin prompted.

"I can"t get away from the possibility that these cases have similarities." Ray admitted. "The case of the spinster gave me a couple of sleepless nights. Then I realised her fear of the fire had been cancelled out by her selfless love for the cat. I"m wondering if something similar – a huge emotional counter-force – happened to those two detectorists."

He"s building castles in the air, Martin thought. "Maybe we shouldn"t take Jack"s word for what happened."

He"s building castles in the air,"You saw the bodies."

Yes, indeed. So he had.

It was Martin"s turn to fall silent. "Okay," he said eventually, "they went back in. They were more scared of something else than they were of the fire. But we don"t know what."

Ray took a deep breath. "I"ve a hunch that if we can discover the reason, it may be close to becoming a murder inquiry."

* * *

That afternoon Ray and Martin sat at a large table laden with document wallets and papers in Tony Danby"s office in the university archaeology department.

"Why are we here?" Martin asked, revealing faint irritation.

"For clarification," Ray replied. "And because I"m curious. I"d like to know why the archaeologists didn"t show up today."

Their conversation was cut short when Tony breezed in, introduced himself, dumped the document wallets on the floor and sat opposite his visitors. "Sorry to keep you waiting," he said. "Bit chaotic here at the moment."

"Mr. Danby," Ray began, "I understand you"re in charge of the excavation at Ludd"s Castle."

"The dig is focused on a Celtic burial ground on the hillside below Ludd"s Castle – that"s the ringfort enclosure on the top of the hill. And Charles Bellingham was the archaeologist in charge. Charles suffered a stroke yesterday and is in hospital. I"m the project"s senior archaeologist in his absence. However, the dig has now been suspended," Tony clarified.

Martin made notes while Ray leaned back in his chair and studied the archaeologist.

"Well that"s cleared up at least four points already." Ray paused before asking his next question. He wouldn"t have asked it at all but for his nagging doubts about the detectorists" deaths. "What caused Mr Bellingham"s stroke?"

"No idea," Tony said. "It happened so fast. Everyone else had gone and we were alone on site. I was turning the uni"s van around as we were about to leave."

"You didn"t see anything unusual?"

Martin continued making notes, looking increasingly perplexed by Ray"s line of questioning. Ray leaned forward, hoping he would be given a clue.

Tony thought for a moment. "No... nothing at all. I heard a cry through my open window and saw Charles hit the ground. My attention was entirely focused on him. Why do you ask?"

"Just curious, Mr. Danby. I like to examine all the possibilities." Ray leaned back in his chair. "So you"ve no theories about the stroke?"

Tony hesitated. "I... I think he was very stressed."

"Why was that?"

"A group of young men from Pen Crags warned us off. They made threats. They said the site was theirs, though it"s in Stone Clough parish."

"Ah, yes," Ray nodded, "I"ve heard something along those lines already."

"Might Mr. Bellingham have felt his life was in danger?" Martin asked.

Tony fell silent for a moment, weighing his reply. "I suppose it"s a possibility. The whole ugly business began when Charles received a death threat via an anonymous phone call. At the time he didn"t seem to take it all that seriously. Then the following day we had the intimidating visit of these young men from Pen Crags parish. But Charles faced them down and flatly refused to abandon the dig."

Martin made notes and seemed to have no more questions. Ray decided to change tack.

"Do the names Peter Ford, or James Cooke mean anything to you?" he asked.

Tony"s features registered immediate concern. "I"ve heard those names far too often over the last five years. They"re known nighthawks."

Ray was confused. "What"s a nighthawk?"

"It"s a term applied to an unsavoury minority of metal detectorists who steal items from archaeological sites at night. Valuable grave goods like jewellery and weapons. Why do you ask?"

"Seems those two guys were busy robbing your site last night. But don"t worry. As far as we know they didn"t get away with a single item."

"You arrested them?" Tony asked hopefully.

"I"m afraid that wasn"t possible," Ray replied. "They both died in a car accident after leaving the scene." In response to Tony"s look of surprise, Ray elaborated. "It appears they fled for reasons so far unknown, leaving their metal detectors and these objects behind."

Ray got to his feet and took evidence bags from a large holdall. He placed the bags on the table in front of Tony. The contents included the gold torque, finger rings, brooches, bracelets, pendants and jewel-encrusted sword and dagger hafts.

"In your opinion are these items likely to have come from your archaeological excavation?"

Tony examined the objects in the evidence bags. "At a quick glance I"d say they look like typical Iron Age grave goods. We"ve found similar examples at the dig already. The trouble with these items is we don"t know the precise level the nighthawks found them on. Are they third, second, or first century BC? All we can do now is guess. It"s very unsatisfactory."

"I"m grateful to you, Mr. Danby," Ray said. "Not least for opening my eyes to the destruction these guys cause. We may need to call on your expertise again in the future." He returned the evidence bags to the holdall. "You"ll get all these items back in due course."

"I"d be pleased to advise whenever and wherever I can to reduce the threat of nighthawking," Tony replied with passion. "It"s theft and should carry a custodial sentence long enough to be a deterrent to anyone who thinks it"s a way to make easy money. They"re destroying our country"s past by these acts of criminal vandalism."

"Can you describe for us how the excavation went, so we can get a clear idea of the order of events?" Ray asked with an inviting smile.

"It was 9.30 in the morning on the Monday before last," Tony began. "Charles and I were studying a geophysics survey of the excavation site. The survey was very promising and was the main reason we got the go-ahead to excavate. The site was a flat area of pasture half way up the side of a high grass-covered hill, which was crowned by a Bronze Age tumulus.

"We could also see the remains of a ringfort, four hundred metres south of the tumulus on the western edge of the hilltop. The ringfort was called Ludd"s Castle. The hilltop gave way to high moorland that stretched eastwards into the distance.

"Charles, at fifty-five, was the senior archaeologist. I was his junior colleague by ten years. We had worked together on several digs and knew each other well. We had reconnoitred the site the previous year, but now funding had come through, this was our first official visit to what we hoped would become a fascinating dig." Tony paused. "Shall I go on?"

"Please continue, Mr. Danby," Ray said encouragingly. "If you don"t mind, I"d like a blow-by-blow account of the time you spent on the dig. I need to get my head around the details."

Martin"s heart sank. He had been relegated to note-taker for the duration. He dutifully opened his notebook as Tony began his account of events.

"Charles told me it was thanks to Robert Moorhouse we were there at all, as he was the only local historian to mention the existence of a Celtic burial ground. You would never know it was there from the appearance of the hillside. Whatever we might think of Victorian amateur archaeologists Moorhouse was an unrivalled source of local knowledge.

"The decayed bank of the ancient ringfort was visible from the burial ground and we felt it was a pity we couldn"t excavate Ludd"s Castle while we were there. Moorhouse was right, it did contain a building. And it might have been a pagan temple, as he thought. Charles wanted to track down the missing stones Moorhouse found, as he felt sure someone must still have them. We hoped the dig might jog a few local memories, though it had been a long time since Moorhouse"s day."

"Was the Moorhouse excavation a large-scale affair?" Ray asked. "Or was he just up there on his own with a wheelbarrow and spade?"

"Charles told me Moorhouse had just started digging the week before he died." Tony pulled a relieved face. "At least he didn"t get the chance to mess the place up with random trenches."

"Wasn"t Moorhouse"s death supposed to be a bit of a mystery?" Ray asked.

"Local folk are full of hair-raising tales. My wife and I were dining at the Packhorse Inn in Stone Clough one evening last June, when I made the mistake of mentioning Moorhouse"s name to the landlord. He told me a ridiculous story about the man being killed by a demon that had been raised by magicians in the nearby village of Pen Crags, as a punishment for breaking some ancient taboo or other." Tony pulled a dismissive face. "We"ll never know for sure how the man died. All that"s certain is he met his end alone, out on the Pen Crags moors."

"The fellow sounds like he should be the subject of a gothic novel!" Ray commented drily.

"A Dark Tale of Sorcery and Thwarted Hopes by Emily Headstone!" Ray and Martin joined in Tony"s laughter.

Martin found he was enjoying writing these notes. It was a welcome change to the urban routine of drugs" crime and domestic squalor. At last, he thought, something different!

theseTony described the arrival of their team of four younger professionals: Marcus and Nigel who were freelance archaeologists, Annette and Sue from the university.

"A large expanse of wild grasses had been mown and a digger from Stone Clough had begun to strip the topsoil from a marked-out area. We watched the activity, feeling the nervous excitement of a new project about to begin.

"We set up a finds" tent, with trestle tables, folding chairs and trays for artefacts. Charles spread the geophysics survey on one of the tables and we gathered around to study it. Charles and I both thought the survey showed a disturbance pattern consistent with Celtic cemeteries elsewhere and the site could be a rare survival from the ancient Celtic kingdom of Elmet."

"By Elmet you mean West Yorkshire?" Ray asked.

"Pretty much," Tony confirmed. "Though the precise boundaries of ancient Elmet will forever be uncertain. We felt we were lucky to be excavating a site which we hoped would date back into pre-Roman times. I must admit we were excited, anticipating amazing pre-Christian grave goods.

"Marcus thought that if we found a chariot burial that would surely clinch future funding. He mentioned the discovery of the one at Ferrybridge, which proved they weren"t all found in East Yorkshire."

"Was Ferrybridge in ancient Elmet?" Martin asked.

"I explained it was hard to be certain of boundaries in the Celtic Iron Age. It may have been Parisi territory like much of the old East Riding. Or it may have belonged to the Brigantes. I said we were well into Brigantian territory here and we were hoping for high quality finds. But perhaps not any chariot burials! If, for no other reason, than the chalk land of the East Yorkshire Wolds was less destructive of wheeled vehicles!

"Charles thought the dig could almost certainly offer a career-enhancing experience. Some of the team should get the chance to write papers on the work they did there. As we were talking Charles"s mobile rang. He answered, listened for a moment, then put the phone away. He made no comment, but I thought he seemed troubled.

"As soon as the four younger team members had left the tent to begin marking out trial trenches, Charles closed the tent flap and told me he"d had an anonymous call. He had no idea how the caller had got his number. A muffled male voice had said if he valued his life he should stop the excavation and leave."

"Extraordinary!" Ray exclaimed, leaning forward with sudden interest. "How did you handle this?"

"I asked what Charles intended to do and he said he"d carry on with the dig. He felt he owed it to the country, the funders and the team to keep going."

"A brave decision," Ray stated solemnly. "Did he have any idea who the caller could be?"

"I asked Charles if he"d been making enemies and if someone was trying to sabotage his career. But he didn"t think that was possible, because he"d been writing a book on the Celtic diaspora and hadn"t had contact with anyone for months, apart from his editor and publisher.

"I wondered if it could be someone from earlier, when he was lecturing, but he couldn"t think of anyone, saying he thought it was just some crank. I asked if he was going to tell the others, but he thought it wasn"t necessary. I pointed out that if something nasty happened what would he say in his defence?

"He relented and agreed to tell them."